Bombshell: China Using Coronavirus Masks as Bribery to Push Business Interests, Congressman Says
It’s not business, it’s blackmail.
After unleashing a zoonotic virus that’s killed more than 70,000 people and brought the global economy to a halt, the communist government of China is trying to use the crisis as leverage to push its own technological prospects, a Republican congressman charged in an interview.
Because apparently Chinese communists, like American liberals, never want to let a crisis go to waste.
Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee made the claim Sunday in a Fox News interview, where he said Chinese President Xi Jinping had used a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron to try to coerce the French into a deal with Huawei Technologies Ltd., the Chinese technology giant with deep ties to Xi’s government.
We must increase our strategic stockpiles and fix our reliance on China– the country that started this virus– for our Nation’s supply of medications and medical supplies.
Joined @LelandVittert on @ANHQDC to discuss: pic.twitter.com/EXqe6C5Jut
— Rep. Mark Green (@RepMarkGreen) April 4, 2020
Widely suspected of essentially being an arm of the Chinese military — Huawei is already being targeted by the U.S. sanctions first imposed in May 2019 for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. (Chinese communist technology firms and Islamic fascist regimes might make strange bedfellows, but that’s geopolitics.)
The sanctions on Huawei were aimed, in part, at hurting the company in the race to the next generation of wireless technology known as “5G,” according to The Associated Press.
The company is also at the heart of the now years-long trade conflict between the United States and China, according to the AP.
“Huawei is at the center of tensions with Washington over China’s technology ambitions and possible spying that helped to spark Trump’s tariff war with Beijing in 2018,” the AP reported last week.
Yet, according to Green’s account, Xi has no compunction about using the current world coronavirus crisis – which originated in his own country – to try to force Europeans into working with the corporation the United States is trying to make an international pariah.
During the interview with Fox News’ Leland Vittert, Green said French President Emmanuel Macron had requested China’s help with material to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, but Chinese President Xi Jinping had explicitly tied the aid to Huawei’s business future in Europe.
“[W]e were told yesterday on a conference call that Macron was talking to Xi and Macron asked for a billion masks and Xi said, ‘we’ll give them to you if you implement 5G with Huawei.’ That’s who China is and it’s time the world wake up and recognize it,” Green said.
Well said. It is too risky to rely on #CCPChina for medical supplies. In #WuhanCoronavirusOutbreak, the regime can restrict the export of 3M products out of #China. Why let the regime put the health & lives of US citizens at risk? It is time to move production line back to US.
— Hazel Lai (@HazelLai10) April 5, 2020
Green didn’t elaborate on who “we” meant, or who was speaking on the conference call, but considering he’s a member of both the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on national security, it’s a good bet he wasn’t talking about his church bingo committee.
It’s also a good bet that his charge — shocking to the conscience as it is — will confirm the suspicions of anyone who’s watched China’s behavior over recent years, and particularly its arrogant deceptions during the coronavirus outbreak.
As much as Democrats would like to pretend otherwise, the trade war President Donald Trump launched in 2018 was only the latest round in a long struggle between the U.S. and China for trade advantages, the only difference in the Trump case was that the United States was fighting back for a change.
When it comes to the coronavirus outbreak, the Beijing dictatorship has lied consistently about its actions and the reality of the virus in the Middle Kingdom – lies that affected how the United States and countries in Europe determined their own responses.
As recently as Jan. 14 – less than three months ago – the World Health Organization was parroting Chinese assurances that the coronavirus could not spread through human-to-human contact.
That was a lie that cost other nations valuable time – and likely cost the world thousands of lives. According to Johns Hopkins data, the death toll from COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes, was nearing 71,000 as of Monday morning.
And this is the country, remember, that only last fall – long before a large percentage of the U.S. population ever heard of a city called “Wuhan” or the word “coronavirus” – was forcing the avaricious cowards of the NBA to kowtow to its demands for silence about its crackdown on democracy supporters in Hong Kong.
Green didn’t discuss who was on the conference call, and he didn’t cite any evidence that China’s Xi was using the coronavirus crisis to coerce the president of France into accepting a commercial deal in exchange for aid to deal with the deadly health situation China actually created.
But no one who’s halfway aware of what’s happening in the world, and the role Chinese communists have consistently played in world affairs, should have trouble believing there’s something to his account.
This is why our corporations and politicians have to stop suckingup to China.
Regardless of how much money they throw at you.
They don’t want to be allies, they want servitude.
— dontclicksend (@dontclicksend) April 6, 2020
There’s no getting around the fact that Trump, like every American president, will have to work with or around the communist Chinese government in the future.
But there’s no getting around the fact that it needs to be done with eyes that are wide open to the Beijing government’s history of lying and propaganda that make it untrustworthy as a trading partner and deadly dangerous as a potential enemy.
And Chinese communists, like American progressives, never want to let a crisis go to waste.
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