China is waging a propaganda war against the coronavirus on several fronts. In addition to its well-documented efforts to deflect attention from its early suppression of information about the disease and to claim that it has among all nations now halted the scourge, it is also pushing an alternative explanation of its origins—namely that it didn't start in Wuhan after all, but was a creation of a military biochemical lab in the United States and was brought to China by an American team that competed in the Military World Games in Wuhan last October.
Go read it all. And tell me your reaction isn't "Those mothereffing commie bastards!"
As far as I'm concerned, the CCP fired the first shots:
Among the biggest victims of the coronavirus pandemic is the fiction of amicable U.S.-China relations. Those ties have been worsening for years, even before President Trump decided to call out Beijing’s predatory behavior starting in 2017. With the crisis now pitting America and China openly against each other, it seems impossible to salvage the old working ties. Washington now faces an unambiguously adversarial relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, one in which global ideological blocs may be drawn. Losing this new cold war would be a grievous blow to global transparency and liberal order. It would also threaten a significant reduction of American power and influence abroad.
The Wuhan Flu is just making us notice that the CCP is a bunch of evil bastards who wish to harm us (tip to Instapundit). Much like 9/11 rubbed our noses in the fact that jihadis were at war with America despite our only sporadic attention to that fact.
Oh, and about that Chinese "aid" that China has loudly publicized:
And, far from acting as an altruistic partner attempting to help other stricken countries, Beijing is actually charging ;nations for the emergency aid it is giving, even when those supplies are defective, as in the case of test kits sent to the Czech Republic.
But the propaganda works, as I saw at a press conference when an overseas reporter asked if America was helping Italy the way China had. I sincerely doubt China "helped" Italy.
But the propaganda may only work on our media class as the rest of the West catches on:
It was only a matter of time before the coronavirus pandemic started to show a rupture in Western relations with China. Today, the market got some of the first hints of a rising probability of “decoupling”. ...
The wide spreading disease throughout Europe is turning people off to China in leadership positions who, only a few months ago, were fine with Beijing and thought the U.S. trade war with China was just Trump being Trump. Three years ago, Davos Man invited Xi Jinping to the World Economic Forum, heralding him as the new leader of the free trade world.
Still, given the CCP's actions during the Wuhan Flu it's an open question of whether the CCP hates the American-led free world or its own people more.
I'm going to really enjoy decoupling from China's economy as much as possible. Rich communist bastards are much worse than poor communist bastards.
UPDATE: And yes, an alternative to Huawei's 5G communications technology would be a smart thing to get.
UPDATE: "If you claim that calling it ‘Wuhan coronavirus’ is racist, you are part of the cover-up[.]" Hard to argue with that.
