China must be brought to heel for trying to hide COVID-19 disaster from the world
Canada needs a prime minister who will stand up to China and hold it accountable for the untold damage this pandemic has caused the world.
Instead, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sanctimoniously says that now is not the time for criticism, but for international co-operation.
How bloody naive. Is this about statesmanship or getting China’s endorsement for a seat on the United Nations Security Council? Beijing is a bully and a rogue nation that thumbs its nose at global norms, laws and institutions. Its attempts to cover up the COVID-19 epidemic is simply its latest, and most destructive, in a long list of harmful actions that includes abuses against Hong Kong and Taiwan, trade cheating, monumental pollution and technology theft.
International cooperation was not what the People’s Republic of China had in mind when its leadership hid the COVID-19 scourge from the world in the fall, then locked down an entire province — but not its international airport until weeks later. This allowed hundreds of thousands of people to spread the deadly virus all over the world.
“This will go down as the biggest cover-up in world history,” said White House trade adviser Peter Navarro in an interview with CNN. “On Jan. 15, China came here and signed a trade deal and nobody told us there was human-to-human transmission and the possibility of a pandemic. China hid the virus from the world and, while they did, went from a net exporter for PPE (personal protective equipment), to importing it. Now they are profiteering from that.”
If China were a Canadian corporation, nobody would do business with it and its partners and clients would be in court suing for “detrimental reliance.” This is when the words, actions or inactions of one party mislead others to their detriment.
China is thoroughly untrustworthy, according to a recent report by the Five Eyes alliance (of which Canada is a member), which claimed that China orchestrated an elaborate COVID-19 cover-up that included destroying evidence, silencing officials, scrubbing the internet and launching a propaganda campaign.
Meanwhile, Canada says and does nothing, while Australia demands an international inquiry and Europeans and Americans contemplate reparations. Missouri has already sued China for damages, and other states are likely to follow suit. U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested that America should seek $10 million per fatality. But that’s hardly enough. In response, China’s propagandists have launched vicious counterattacks, ridiculing those who suggest the country is somehow liable by accusing them of incompetence, threatening to halt imports and trotting out a conspiracy theory that the Americans developed the virus as a bioweapon.
It’s clear that international cooperation, at least when it comes to dealing with China, doesn’t work. North America must therefore decouple itself from Beijing. This means banning Chinese ownership in key industries, encouraging the repatriation or relocation of manufacturing from China, blocking Huawei from contributing to our 5G network, stopping the flood of mainland Chinese students who come here to acquire knowledge that will eventually be used against us and removing all Chinese representation from international institutions until amends are made.
China, as currently constituted, deserves to be treated like Russian athletes who dope in order to win gold medals: disqualified and vilified.
There is also the deliberate attack on oil prices by Saudi Arabia, Russia and OPEC nations, which aims to destroy our domestic oil industries and hold countries hostage. These malevolent nations have launched an economic version of the Third World War, which makes clichés about international co-operation embarrassing. In fact, such diplomatic bromides out of Ottawa, and the slavish belief in international institutions that have been infiltrated and corrupted by countries like China and Russia, is the problem, not the solution.
China should have been brought to heel years ago. Instead, oil jobs have been lost, Canadian agribusinesses damaged by cancelled contracts, Canada’s workforce gutted by cheap Chinese labour and dumping, two innocent Canadians have been jailed for months out of spite and a Trojan horse of Chinese-paid lobbyists and influencers has been unleashed here.
The only way to change this is by fortifying North America.