Versión Español
Spanish – “We are at war with an invisible enemy!” And no wonder, what has happened in the world in the last month is undoubtedly the most grievous attack on world peace we have had since Hitler and the Second World War, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel said aptly. We have not seen a pandemic of this magnitude, spanning so many latitudes, in centuries.
As science has evolved, wars have also mutated. Wars are no longer fought closely with swords and axes as in the days of the Mongolian empire, nor is it the war of the trenches of World War I, nor the heavy artillery fighting that occurred a couple of decades later. Today, wars are epidemic, virtual, at a distance. What began as a trade war between China and the United States to compete for world economic supremacy has escalated into the crisis we have today, where more than 100 nations have had to shelter their citizens and enforce quarantines to prevent spikes in death from the “Chinese virus.”
While it is still too early to conclude anything about the geopolitical implications of this network and, of course, the origin of this pandemic, much is clear already. Firstly, a tariff dispute has been going on for years between the United States and China- one that Trump seemed to be winning. Secondly, the virus currently attacking the world originated in China, although it is not certain whether it was triggered by the eating habits of the Chinese, negligence in some laboratories, or even by laboratory expertise. What we can confirm is that there were Chinese doctors who tried to alert the world about the tragedy the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) would bring and that the Chinese communist regime led by Xi Jinping silenced them. After that, they sold the world the idea that the virus was not transmitted between human beings as their health authorities claimed. So “there was no need to be alarmed.” And then they let their citizens travel outside China without any restrictions, allowing them to spread the virus around the world. So, after all this, do you know what the response of Chinese diplomats was? They are saying that the virus had been brought into their country by the American military. They even started a cyber-war with bots and false information to spread the story and shake off their responsibilities. I have already seen these stories on my Twitter feed:
The Chinese Communist Party suppressed initial reports on the Chinese Virus and punished doctors and journalists, causing Chinese and international experts to miss critical opportunities to prevent a global pandemic.
— Emmanuel Rincón (@EmmaRincon) March 19, 2020
The fact that today, Trump calls the coronavirus, the “Chinese virus,” is not unwarranted. It makes perfect sense. China is the country responsible for this pandemic that has resulted in almost ten thousand deaths so far and has paralyzed the planet’s economy. One only has to look at the numbers on the American stock exchange to understand the magnitude of the issue. Now, when this pandemic is just beginning to advance, the American stock market has already lost everything that had grown since Trump took office. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy has remained much more solid, and in fact, as of today, they are already claiming that they have no new infections from the virus that they spread across the world.
The losses are worth millions. The International Labor Organization has warned that 25 million jobs could be lost worldwide. All of this will translate into an uncontrollable fiscal imbalance throughout the West, which, in turn, will entail more poverty as well as more bankruptcies, illnesses, and deaths from famine. Moreover, the whole range of side effects due to the stress caused by the financial throttling of millions of people will be unquantifiable.
Strangely enough, today, China and its neighbors seem to be the nations that best handle the crisis caused by the coronavirus, while in Italy alone, 475 people died yesterday. In Spain, the situation is no more optimistic. And today, all of South America has announced quarantines that paralyze trade in an attempt to control a health crisis that is evidently beyond the control of the authorities.
Whatever the reason for all this, one thing is undoubtedly true: the spread of the virus happened was either a decision of Xi Jinping and the Chinese authorities or it at least happened with their consent. And we need to understand that Chinese citizens are also victims of the communist regime ruling their country. Mao’s Great Leap Forward that resulted in 40 million deaths, through starvation, continues to have repercussions today. If the Chinese are now eating bat soup and cooking live dogs for food, it is because of the distortion in their brains that led to an unprecedented famine on the planet. And I want to make it clear that this is not an attempt to justify anyone’s vile acts, but simply to put things in perspective: the enemy yesterday, today, and tomorrow has always been socialism and communism. All the perversions that have occurred on the planet and burden us today are produced in these totalitarian collectivist regimes that attack the individual and condemn humanity to a homogeneous mass.
For many years the major powers of the West, and even our Latin American nations, have boasted of doing business with the Chinese tyranny. The Chinese have shares, branches, companies in almost the whole world. Today, the communist regime is the country with the greatest investment in the African continent, and so they have been expanding their influence on the planet until they are capable of producing an epidemic of these proportions to trample the world.
Today and tomorrow, with a world in an economic recession, hundreds and thousands of companies on the verge of bankruptcy, and little capital to finance bailouts, do you know who will be there? Yes, you guessed it, China. And this isn’t a mere possibility. It is happening already, and you have no idea how dangerous it is that China has the power and influence to control the world’s economy.
The most logical thing that should happen after this great act of war by China against the West is that trade relations with the Asian giant be cut off. This is not a joke, and China is not a small island like Cuba that can be ignored while dealing with communism. Continuing to trade with China is continuing to provide legitimacy to a 70-year-old regime that is starving people, oppressing its citizens, and which has enormous military power along with great economic capacity, and which, as if all this was not enough, has brought half the world to its knees today with a deadly pandemic.
Many leaders like to engage in diplomacy with totalitarian regimes until the bombs explode in their faces. It happened with Castro, and today, despite its economic inability, Cuba has managed to destabilize Latin America through an ideological battle. It happened with China, and now, we see the consequences, just as it happened with Maduro and Chavismo, the main allies of the actors mentioned above and of the theocratic and terrorist regime of Iran.
Anyone who advocates and appreciates their freedom, anyone who defends western values, anyone who has any sense at all, must stand up against a perverse tyranny that is attacking the world today to impose its interests. To buy from China is to finance our own crushing.
Don’t be confused. Xi Jinping is not Mao Zedong. He is much worse.
