Coronavirus: China's War on the Truth
by Giulio Meotti • March 7, 2020 at 5:00 am
"The epidemic has exposed this country completely in its corruption, bureaucracy, information control and censorship." — Phillip Wu, a freelance writer in Beijing, The Guardian, March 1, 2020.
Then there are many instances of journalists and activists who told the truth, but who were arrested or "vanished". The Chinese regime is now even announcing plans to publish a book in six languages about the outbreak that portrays President Xi as a "major power leader" with "care for the people".
Italy's main fatal mistake was trusting China's regime. Instead of checking everyone -- Chinese or Italian -- returning from China since January, Italy kept its borders open. We are now dealing with tens of thousands of Italians under quarantine....
The idea that the coronavirus might be related to Wuhan's virus research laboratory is considered by some a "conspiracy theory", yet China's refusal immediately to accept help from the US Centers for Disease Control understandably arouses suspicion.
"On current course, China is liable to do significant damage to the rest the world, by accident or intent," wrote columnist Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal on January 29.
"The Chinese Communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large", wrote the noted historian Victor Davis Hanson on February 20.
According to The Sunday Times,
"Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news, a Chinese media outlet has revealed.
