Part two of a three-part series.
While the U.S. government and private sector have both been working hard to battle the coronavirus, the Chinese government has been working hard to preserve the Communist Party by blaming the United States for the pandemic.
China’s President Xi Jinping
When Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang warned his colleagues in late December about a possible coronavirus that resembled SARS, local police reprimanded him for “spreading rumors” and he was “called before a disciplinary council of the local Communist Party and forced to repent and confess, in writing, that he had spread rumors harmful to the glory of the Party,” according to City Journal.
In early January, news of the virus started circulating on Chinese social media accounts. The government responded by shutting them down. By silencing news about the outbreak of COVID-19, Communist leaders allowed it to spread, resulting in the pandemic and thousands of deaths that could have been avoided.
Xu Zhiyong, an activist who criticized Chinese President Xi Jinping’s response to the coronavirus, was jailed for “subversion.” Journalists Li Xehua, Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi, who tried to inform the public about the coronavirus outbreak, are all missing. And Western journalists who brought these stories to the world’s attention have been expelled from China.
Wuhan activists, professors, and lawyers who had asked for President Xi’s resignation have all virtually disappeared. In addition to stifling the news at home, China’s leaders failed to inform other countries about the severity of COVID-19 or to prevent its spread outside of China.
Should China be paying reparations to the rest of the world? Should it at least admit its guilt and apologize? According to an editorial in state-run media agency Xinhua, “We should say righteously that the U.S. owes China an apology, the world owes China a thank you.”
In addition, while the U.S. has shipped medical supplies to China to help fight the outbreak, China has threatened to impose export controls on pharmaceuticals needed by the U.S. to fight COVID-19.
“In an article in Xinhua, Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19,” according to Fox News. “The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge America into ‘the mighty sea of coronavirus.’ ”
Without disclosing which drug or drugs are in short supply, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a shortage of raw materials made in China that are needed to produce the drug.
While the U.S. is the world leader in medical research, China supplies 80% to 90% of antibiotics used in the U.S., 70% of acetaminophen and about 40% of heparin, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.