China's Real Disease: Not Coronavirus

by Gordon G. Chang  •  March 17, 2020 at 5:00 am

     

• Beijing has, according to President Trump's trade advisor Peter Navarro, already nationalized one American factory making medical masks. Moreover, Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo on air repeatedly said the Chinese forced at least one ship carrying masks, gloves, and other protective gear to the United States to return to China.

• Trump's optimism is not shared in Beijing.... China, using the epidemic as an excuse, is now pushing to change the agreement by deferring its purchase obligations, the heart of the arrangement as far as the U.S. is concerned.

• Xi Jinping, after all, knew about the coronavirus epidemic long before he signed the deal in the White House. In February, he said he had chaired a meeting of the Party's Politburo Standing Committee on January 7 in which he issued orders to contain the epidemic. Xi's knowledge of the outbreak on January 15 and his push for relief now, therefore, makes him look cynical. In all probability, he had no intention of honoring his side of the bargain from the beginning.

• Americans — and the Chinese people, who are now demanding fundamental political change — realize that the real disease is communism.

China, as we now know, allowed the coronavirus to spread for six weeks in December and January before President Xi Jinping publicly acknowledged the disease. So, it is no surprise that Americans — and the Chinese people, who are now demanding fundamental political change — realize that the real disease is communism. Pictured: Communist Party "community volunteers" secure the entrance of a residential area as they take the temperature of a man on a street in Beijing, China on February 23, 2020. (Photo by Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

Last July, five American analysts who have been consistently wrong told us "China is not an enemy."

Actually, this time they were technically right. China's communism is not an enemy. It is the enemy.

After the coronavirus pandemic subsides, Americans should not forget Beijing's malicious campaign against their country.

For more than a month, the central government's foreign ministry and the Communist Party's Global Times have been trying to tar the Trump administration. The campaign culminated in a series of tweets from rising Beijing star Zhao Lijian, foreign ministry spokesman and deputy director general of the ministry's Information Department.

On March 12, in a tweet, he accused U.S. officials of being "immoral." Hours before, he had tweeted that "patient zero" was in the U.S. and suggested that the U.S. Army had "brought the epidemic to Wuhan" -- intimating that America was conducting germ warfare.

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Coronavirus: Europe's 'Open Borders' System Faces Collapse

by Soeren Kern  •  March 17, 2020 at 4:30 am

     

• "Merkel knows that the instruction to close the border, in general to take consistent national measures to protect her own citizens, would be tantamount to her own declaration of political bankruptcy." — Ferdinand Knauss, commentator on the German blog Tichys Einblick, March 16, 2020.

• "Merkel is now fighting. But as always in her chancellorship, she is not fighting for her country and its citizens, for which she is responsible. She is fighting for her power, for her legacy. When the citizens come to understand this, the corona crisis will have been Merkel's last fight in the political arena." — Ferdinand Knauss, March 16, 2020.

• In a March 13 press conference, the president of Italy's hard-hit Veneto region, Luca Zaia, said that Europe's borderless zone was "disappearing as we speak." He noted that the stringent border controls imposed by Austria shows that Schengen "no longer exists and will be remembered in the history books."

As a growing number of countries close their borders to fight the coronavirus pandemic, the European system of open internal borders — a cornerstone of European integration — is on the brink of collapse. Pictured: German policemen speak to people at the border crossing to France on March 16, 2020 in Kehl, Germany. (Photo by Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images)

As a growing number of countries close their borders to fight the coronavirus pandemic, the European system of open internal borders — a cornerstone of European integration — is on the brink of collapse.

The so-called Schengen Area, which comprises 26 European countries, entered into effect in 1995 and abolishes the need for passports and other types of control at mutual borders. It is a key practical and symbolic achievement of European integration and is now falling apart.

In a move packed with political significance, Germany, the largest and most powerful country in the European Union, on March 16 introduced controls on its borders with Austria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland after it registered 1,000 new cases of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in just one day.

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Is Your Risk of Getting Coronavirus 14-Times Greater if You Vape or Smoke? Reportedly, Yes. That Is In Addition to Lung Cancer. SO PLEASE DO STOP?

March 17, 2020 at 4:00 am

     

(Image source: iStock)

Gatestone Institute to examine the impact of legalized cannabis and the effect of smoking and vaping on contracting coronavirus. In China, people who smoked or vaped reportedly had a 14-times greater risk of getting coronavirus than people who did not — and that is in addition to the risk of getting lung cancer. SO PLEASE STOP NOW? Details to follow...