Gordon G. Chang
§
The
virus is hitting China in a second wave. The second wave is claiming victims,
including the Party's propaganda narratives. The most dangerous of these
narratives is that ruler Xi Jinping, with heaven's mandate, has an obligation
to dominate the international system.
§
To
push America aside and seize global leadership, China got Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, to say that
China's response to the coronavirus showed the "superiority of the Chinese
system and this experience is worthy of emulation by other countries."
Then Beijing set about making a big show of "donating" medical
equipment and diagnostic kits, most notably to stricken Europe.
§
Xi's
initial policies turned a local outbreak into a pandemic, and now they are
making even more people sick and forcing China into another pit of disease.
China's inaccurate diagnostic kits and substandard protective gear donated
around the world along with the new infections will show the truth: communism
is incompetent if not downright malign.
§
China
can lie with statistics, but the virus gets the last word. "Victory"
over both COVID-19 and the United States is still far out of sight.
A funny thing happened on the way to victory,
however. The virus is hitting China in a second wave. The second wave is
claiming victims, including the Party's propaganda narratives. The most
dangerous of these narratives is that ruler Xi Jinping, with heaven's mandate,
has an obligation to dominate the international system.
China, after reporting no new infections on
March 19, said the virus had been contained. Since then, Beijing has been
reporting dozens of new cases each day but has maintained that virtually all of
them were "imported" -- in other words, the infected were individuals
arriving from other countries.
Of the very few in-country transmissions, most,
Beijing maintained, were transmissions from the imported cases.
China's official numbers of deaths and new
infections, however, must be bogus. Chinese officials are taking actions that
are, as a practical matter, inconsistent with the no-new-infection reports.
For instance, on March 27 Beijing closed all theaters nationwide,
after re-opening them just the previous week.
In Shanghai, tourist attractions that had just
resumed operations were shut again. For instance, the municipality re-closed
the observation deck of the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China, and
the nearby Oriental Pearl Tower. The Jin Mao Tower is now shuttered "to further strengthen pandemic
prevention and control." Madame Tussauds, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, and
the Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park are now dark, along with the indoor portions
of another 25 attractions.
Shanghai Disneyland? "Temporarily Closed
Until Further Notice."
Shanghai is not the only metropolis turning out
the lights. In Chengdu, karaoke bars and internet cafes were also shut just
days after Sichuan province opened up all entertainment venues.
Fuyang in Anhui province ordered the closure of
"entertainment spots" and indoor swimming pools. Henan province
locked down internet cafes.
On March 31, ESPN reported that the Chinese central
government had delayed the resumption of team sports.
The regime has also not rescheduled its premier
political events, the annual meetings of the National People's Congress and the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, both originally scheduled
for early March.
Finally, the authorities in Jiangxi province
are not allowing people from
next-door Hubei to enter, indicating they do not believe the epidemic in that
disease-ridden province is over.
Does any of this matter? It does: Xi Jinping
thinks he should rule the planet. "China, the country where the virus
first appeared and claimed its first several thousand lives, is now using the
global spread of the disease to bolster an increasingly vocal, assertive bid
for global leadership that is exacerbating a yearslong conflict with the
U.S.," the Wall Street Journal wrote on April 1.
As the Communist Party's Global Times on
March 30 triumphantly put it, "COVID-19 Blunders Signal End of' American Century.'"
To push America aside and seize global
leadership, China got Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the
World Health Organization (WHO), to say that China's response to the
coronavirus showed the "superiority of the Chinese system and this
experience is worthy of emulation by other countries." Then Beijing set
about making a big show of "donating" medical equipment and
diagnostic kits, most notably to stricken Europe.
Finally, Xi Jinping, beginning around the first
week of February, forced China back to work to demonstrate that China had ended
the epidemic.
None of these showy displays will convince
anyone, however, if the virus ravages China again. Unfortunately for Xi, that
is what is happening: people in China are re-infecting each other. For
instance, in industrial Dongguan in southern Guangdong province, workers
returning to their jobsites have been carrying the coronavirus, and
this has forced health officials to quarantine other workers. China's leader
can jump-start the economy or throttle the coronavirus, but he cannot do both
at the same time.
When the second wave of coronavirus infections
hits China hard, Xi Jinping's boasts about the superiority of Chinese communism
will begin to sound hollow, absurd even.
Xi's initial policies turned a local outbreak
into a pandemic, and now they are making even more people sick and forcing
China into another pit of disease. China's inaccurate diagnostic kits and
substandard protective gear donated around the world along with the new
infections will show the truth: communism is incompetent if not downright
malign.
Incompetent and malign communism in turn means
Xi's predicted decline of America will again have to be pushed back to another
day.
China can lie with statistics, but the virus
gets the last word. "Victory" over both COVID-19 and the United
States is still far out of sight.
Gordon
Chang, Gatestone Institute, 6-4-2020
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and
a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow.
Follow Gordon G. Chang on Twitter
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