By Rafael Avilés (IST)
As the 2020 global corona virus pandemic rages on all over the world, there appears to be one nation that seems to see the situation as the perfect moment to push its global agenda: China. We have been told, for decades now, that China was destined to become the major superpower of the world, but we just brushed those claims as conspiracy. Now that we are in the thick of this year’s long list of catastrophes that perspective has certainly changed.
China does not care about morality! Something that can be seen right from the start of the year. Let’s begin with Hong Kong and the people’s fight for freedom and liberty from the big red menace. Since early 2019 Hong Kong has seen a wave of civil liberty protests sparked by a controversial extradition bill that would have allowed criminals to be tried in China instead of Hong Kong and to be incarcerated in mainland China ever since Hong Kong’s citizens have tried to push back on the SAR’s (Special Administrative Region) 1 Country 2 Party system. However, in early 2020 the Chinese government began to get worried about the situation in Hong Kong and decided to take dramatic action on the matter. This came in the form of arrests and disappearances of prominent freedom activists and other major actors in the 2019 protests.
"China knew about the existence of this virus as early as mid-December".
Very little international backlash came for these actions for fear of condemnation. This was in early January and February, in the meantime something worse was brewing in a city called Wuhan:
Jan. 3 — China reports a total of 44 suspected patients with the mystery disease.
Jan. 7 — China identifies new corona virus as cause of the outbreak.
Jan. 9 — China reports first death linked to the new corona virus, 2019-nCoV.
These are some of the headlines that flew under the radar of most nations worldwide, a mistake we would pay for dearly.
We now know, however, that China knew about the existence of this virus as early as mid-December. This censorship of information would later cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Meanwhile, in the central government of China the dire situation seemed more like an opportunity to show Chinese dominance. First China put on total lock down the city of Wuhan, placing 11 million in home confinement. Then China built 2 hospitals in 11 days each, a world record. Later things took a much darker turn, cases of COVID-19 were identified in Iran, Japan, Korea, USA and Italy.
March 11 — WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declares the global COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.
This was the moment when COVID-19 stopped being an “Asian virus”. Nations all over the world began to go into lock down and blame began to shift towards China; however, China did not break and push back on every accusation, a move that culminated with China announcing that it would stop using the dollar for business and that will have global consequences. Since then the Chinese push for global hegemony has not stopped. The Central Bank of China has lent 30 billion dollars to nations affected by the pandemic, expanding its already large roster of nations in debt to China.
China is pushing for dominance and the question now is if the rest of the world will stand by in an absent-minded way? Join our conversations!