Will democracies recognize that Communist China is a menace, not a trusted partner?

“In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn 

Xi Jinping or Mao Ze Dong: Who will end up being the greatest mass murderer?

Original Source: Freedom Synergy

There is a willful blindness when dealing with China’s dictatorship that is now costing the world much in the way of lives and treasure.

This Communist regime took power in 1949 and to reorganize the Chinese populace, its agricultural and industrial production along communist ideological lines created a mass famine and a death toll of 30 million Chinese between 1959 and 1961that it called the Great Leap Forward. 

In the midst of it communist China exported 9.6 million tons of grain, that accounted for 20% of famine deaths. Seven million more were killed between 1966 and 1976 in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. 

During “liberalization”, another half million people were killed, including students and workers massacred in June 1989. A British diplomatic cable, declassified in 2017, revealed that at least 10,000 were killed in the Chinese army's 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Despite this history, Democracies pursued a policy of empowering this regime, providing foreign direct investment, turning it into an economic powerhouse. 

They believed the monstrous regime would change for the better, they were wrong.

China covered up a November 2002 outbreak of an "atypical pneumonia called severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)."  Officials became aware of the illness in December 2002 and in January 2003, reports were marked top secret, and anyone who broke the silence on the outbreak would risk punishment for leaking state secrets. Because of the delay in making it public, the SARS outbreak spread to 8,096 people in 26 countries, killing 774 before it was contained.

This pattern was repeated in the November 2019 SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Wuhan, identified by physicians in December 2019, and covered up by the communist hierarchy, who ordered test results destroyed. On December 30, 2019, Dr. Li Wenliang “who sounded the first alarms and released initial evidence online” was punished by the Chinese government for releasing the information. He allegedly perished from the Wuhan virus.” 

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on March 26, 2020 that in January 2020 and continuing through February the "Chinese government-backed global property giant Greenland Group were instructed to put their normal work on hold and source bulk supplies of essential medical items to ship back to China."  This was a worldwide effort "sourcing bulk supplies of surgical masks, thermometers, antibacterial wipes, hand sanitizers, gloves and [acetaminophen] for shipping." ... "According to a company newsletter, the Greenland Group sourced 3 million protective masks, 700,000 hazmat suits and 500,000 pairs of protective gloves from "Australia, Canada, Turkey and other countries"  

On January 11, 2020 the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission resumed updating infection cases of the new virus after suspending reports for several days. But the Chinese dictatorship repeated its claim that there had been no medical worker infections and that there was no evidence of human transmission, and reported that the number of confirmed cases had dropped to 41. On January 22, 2020 official Chinese TV finally recognizes that the disease was spreading from person-to-person. Two days later, Wuhan, a city of 11 million, was placed on lock down.

Antonio Regalado writing in Technology Review on March 4, 2020 reported that genetic sequencing research showed that the first cases of Coronavirus entered Europe and the United States from China as early as mid-January when both Beijing and the World Health Organization were denying the severity of the outbreak. SARS-CoV-2 has spread to over 721,903 individuals in 186 countries with 33,996 dead and climbing. 

Nevertheless on January 23rd the World Health Organization (WHO), that based its response on reports provided by Beijing, said “novel coronavirus is not a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).” Seven days later, WHO finally declared the Wuhan Virus a PHEIC, but continued to defend the Chinese response as exemplary.

On February 1, 2020 the United States  announced that it would "deny entry to all foreign visitors who had recently been in China."  The head of WHO criticized the measure stating it, "can cause more harm than good by hindering info-sharing, medical supply chains and harming economies."  On February 3, 2020, China accused the United States of creating and spreading fear because it had closed entry to recent foreign visitors to China.

On February 3, 2020 news appears in Mother Jones that the Russians were engaged in a disinformation campaign charging that the United States was to blame for the Coronavirus outbreak in Cuba.

Beijing began an effort to sell aide, it had stockpiled, around the world in a highly visible manner in an effort to present itself as humanitarian. However, between 70 to 80% of  the COVID-19 test kits that China firms sold to Spain, the Czech Republic, and Turkey were defective and sparked outrage in these countries.     

The New York Times reported on February 28, 2020 that China was spinning that it was the leader in responding to the Coronavirus outbreak, and accused the United States and South Korea of responding too slowly.  Foreign Policy reported on March 2nd that in the prior week the Chinese had also been peddling that the United States was responsible for starting the pandemic, echoing earlier Russian disinformation.  

China claims it has the outbreak under control, but in Wuhan there are still hours long lines to collect the ashes of their dead loved ones.

The consequences in lives lost and wealth destroyed by this pandemic will take some time to calculate, but at this early date point to large numbers on both counts.

Will democracies learn their lesson that empowering China, a regime that has murdered tens of millions of its own people, and systematically lies about dangerous epidemics should not be legitimized or economically empowered or will short term greed triumph again?