The Washington Post is out with a bombshell report tonight that the US State Department warned in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virulogy was carrying out risky experiments on bat coronaviruses without proper safety procedures, lending further support to growing speculation that the origin of the global pandemic was not a natural event, but rather likely an accidental transmission caused by reckless behavior of Chinese scientists. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that China has systematically underreported the extent of the pandemic and engaged in a massive cover-up to suppress the truth of how the virus was transmitted and the origins of the virus.
We believe that as America recovers from the pandemic, the focus will increasingly shift to a bipartisan investigation into the origins of the coronavirus and that the Communist leadership in China will come under international scrutiny for their actions. Tonight, President Trump took the first step of halting additional funding for the World Health Organization, which initially downplayed the threat of the disease in line with the public pronouncement of the Chinese government. However, we think this is merely the beginning. If as we suspect that the Washington Post story is verified and confirmed by whistleblowers from within China who escape to the West, the response from Congress and the American people will become overwhelming. We believe that their will be bipartisan demands for reparations from China, incentives for bringing manufacturing back from China to the United States, and a broad reassessment of our relationship with China.
It will be interesting to see how far President Trump goes in taking on the Communist leadership in China. To date, Trump has largely focused on trade issues, refraining from raising most moral and civil rights issues inside China, with the notable exception of offering support to the people of Hong Kong. In contrast, Biden has a long history of going easy on Communist China on economic as well as political issues and even criticized Trump’s late January travel ban on passengers from Wuhan as xenophobic. We expect him to quickly try to adjust his positioning on China but this will be tricky given his very public statements downplaying the risks posed by the Communist Chinese regime.
We note that the condemnation of the Communist Party of China is now global. In Japan, for example, the government has included a stimulus package to encourage Japanese companies to shift manufacturing production out of China and back to Japan. Likewise, calls are also growing in the United Kingdom and continental Europe for an international investigation of the origins of the coronavirus within China.
We believe that the Washington Post has unleashed a political and humanitarian story that will help define the 2020 election and transform international economics and trade policy. The media narrative is changing and China will find itself the center of attention.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 