China
July 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Niall Ferguson writes about the emerging Cold War between the U.S. and China. Ferguson calls this Cold War both inevitable and desirable. It’s desirable because, among other things, “it has jolted the U.S. out of complacency and into an earnest effort not to be surpassed by China in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other strategically crucial technologies.” Even Henry Kissinger, architect of the policy of U.S.-Chinese engagement, acknowledges the new
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June 5, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In response to China’s coming crackdown on Hong Kong, Boris Johnson says he’s prepared to grant British residency and working rights to approximately 3 million Hong Kong residents — about 40 percent of its population. Johnson says he will make this move if China implements its new security laws, which will criminalize conduct deemed sedition and subversion, and enable Chinese security forces to crush dissent in Hong Kong as they
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May 12, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
At yesterday’s White House briefing on the Wuhan coronavirus, Weijia Jiang, CBS News’ White House correspondent, asked President Trump about his frequent statements that the U.S. is doing more testing for the virus than any other nation. Jiang didn’t dispute the claim. Instead, she asked: Why does that matter? Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives. . .? The question
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May 9, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Max Baucus is the former U.S. Senator from Montana. For some reason, the people of that great state repeatedly elected him to the Senate. Less surprisingly, President Obama selected Baucus to be his ambassador to China. He served in this position for almost three clueless years. This week, Baucus told CNN that President Trump’s “over the top rhetoric” and “red baiting” of China reminds him of Joe McCarthy. Baucus also
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April 27, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Having spread the COVID-19 epidemic to the rest of the world, the Chinese Communist Party has put it to its own uses. Reporting from Hong Kong, the Washington Post’s Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin noted one such use that has mostly escaped notice. It is cracking down on Hong Kong. The Post’s troubling April 24 story is headlined “One country, one system: The week that China shredded its promise on
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April 23, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
China’s behavior during the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has been disgraceful — marked by deceit and an unwillingness to cooperate with the rest of the world until it was too late. In addition, there’s reason to believe that the virus originated in a Chinese lab that did not meet safety standards. By contrast, Taiwan’s behavior has been exemplary. According to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S., Taiwan
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April 22, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Early on in the current pandemic, before the Wuhan coronavirus virus began killing Americans, Sen. Tom Cotton raised the possibility that the virus originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak. Given the very close proximity of the lab to the outbreak’s point of origin, the suggestion was plausible. At least as plausible was the notion that the source of the
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April 16, 2020 — Scott Johnson
First we were instructed that it was racist to refer to the origin of the COVID-19 virus in Wuhan or China as racist. Then we were instructed that the thought it might have derived from a Wuhan virology lab as a right-wing conspiracy theory. The Wuhan virus from a Wuhan lab? Doubleplusungood. So bad it can’t even be thought. As Harry Kazianis puts it in a good column at The
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April 15, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
I think I’ll take a day off from looking at Wuhan coronavirus numbers and writing about the pandemic. Instead, I will refer readers to a few articles on the subject. This one is from Townhall. It reports that an Israeli professor, Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University, has concluded that this virus follows its own pattern, irrespective of social distancing measures. He found that whether the country was quarantined
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April 10, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
When the dust from the current pandemic has settled, there will be aspects of President Trump’s response at which, legitimately, to snipe. It’s unrealistic to expect any leader to make all the right calls when confronted with this kind of unexpected crisis. Other than Sen. Tom Cotton, I don’t know of any politician who fully had the right line on the Wuhan coronavirus from the beginning. However, Joe Biden will
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April 9, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Further to Paul Mirengoff’s post “Don’t let China off the hook” and my own “The China syndrome,” I want to offer a few additional resources that I have found to be helpful: • Cleta Mitchell’s March 31 Federalist column “The real Coronavirus chronology.” • Giulio Meotti’s April 5 Gatestone column “Coronavirus: China’s Great Cover-up.” • Michael Waller’s comprehensive and frequently updated Center for Security Policy chronology “China’s propaganda pandemic in
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April 2, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Further to Paul Mirengoff’s “Don’t let China off the hook,” I want to offer a few resources that I have found to be helpful so far: • First and foremost among those I have saved is Jim Geraghty’s NR Morning Jolt The Comprehensive Timeline of China’s COVID-19 Lies.” Subhead: “A day-by-day, month-by-month breakdown of China’s coronavirus coverup and the irreparable damage it has caused around the globe.” The whole thing
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March 31, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Our friend Michael Auslin explains the importance of pushing back against China’s effort to deflect blame for the origin and spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. The case for holding China accountable is founded in morality, global governance, and the need to protect against future pandemics. The moral case stems from the Chinese government’s reprehensible response to the early outbreak of the pandemic there. Auslin reminds us: Chinese officials knew of
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March 29, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Michael Auslin reviews the quandaries of Chinese behavior concealing the facts surrounding the Wuhan virus in the RealClearPolitics column “Has the U.S.-China Cold War Now Begun?” The text includes a valuable collection of links. Today a reader provides this eyewitness testimony via email from Beijing: Skepticism of China remains healthy. Yesterday there was an 8-plus hour escalating protest by Hubei citizens AND Hubei police against neighboring Jiangxi province police. Why?
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March 28, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
I doubt anyone does. No one should. The Washington Post is skeptical: China is winning its “people’s war” against the coronavirus. That’s the message being sent by Chinese leaders and diplomats and amplified by the Communist Party-controlled press. A central part of the narrative is that Wuhan, the onetime center of the outbreak and the site of a recent visit from Chinese leader Xi Jinping, has stopped transmission in its
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March 19, 2020 — John Hinderaker
This comes, I think, from today’s COVID-19 press briefing. A reporter from One America News asks President Trump whether he considers it alarming that American reporters–“even in this room”–are echoing Chinese Communist narratives by asserting that calling a Chinese virus a Chinese virus is “racist.” Trump responds: The faces made in the room as @ChanelRion asks Trump: Is it alarming that major media players…are consistently siding with a foreign state
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March 19, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Marc Thiessen argues that the Wuhan coronavirus “should be forever linked to [China], the regime that facilitated its spread.” He’s right. I’ll let him explain: We are in the midst of a pandemic lockdown today because the Chinese Communist regime cared more about suppressing information than suppressing a virus. Doctors in Wuhan knew in December that the coronavirus was capable of human-to-human transmission because medical workers were getting sick. But
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