The China syndrome, pandemic edition

Yesterday I regretted that Tucker Carlson’s interview with Steven Mosher was not included in the FOX News clip of Carlson’s opening Thursday monologue. Today the New York Post delivers the substance of Mosher’s remarks in the illuminating column “China has helped spread four epidemics — and COVID’s not the last.” The column is an excerpt from Mosher’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Pandemics, to be published by Regnery later this month.

It occurred to me yesterday that I should have noted Mosher’s expertise on China. Readers may recall his (horrifying) field research on China’s one-child policy for his book Broken Earth (1984).

He was condemned by the Chinese government and expelled from his Ph.D. program at Stanford in 1983 just short of achieving his doctorate. The Washington Post covered the story here and here. The second of the two Post stories includes this passage:

Mosher reiterated that he is an innocent victim of Stanford’s desire to placate Chinese officials angered by the publication four years ago in a Taiwan journal of a Mosher article about China’s controversial population control program, including Mosher’s vivid pictures of coerced abortions involving women in their eighth month of pregnancy.

[Stanford President Donald] Kennedy, in his letter to Mosher, admitted that it “is very likely true” that the Chinese were angered by the article and a book later published by Mosher.

Kennedy acknowledged that he received a letter last year from an official of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences warning that “Mosher’s behavior seriously damaged the cultural and scholastic exchange between China and the U.S.”

I lost the thread of the story after the publication of Broken Earth. I will only say that when it comes to China, Mosher has paid the price of his expertise and knows what he’s talking about.

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