As a deadly new virus first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, the regime downplayed the severity of the virus and concealed the true scale of the outbreak.
It wasn’t until late January 2020 that Chinese officials disclosed that the mysterious virus was caple of transmitting between humans. The delay in public warning allowed the disease to develop into a global pandemic: By the time Wuhan was locked down, cases had already been reported in the United States, Thailand, and several other countries.
To contain the virus’ advance, dozens of nations imposed travel restrictions on Chinese visitors around February 2020. The regime, in response, lashed out at countries taking precautionary measures, with the foreign ministry accusing these nations were “sowing panic,” even though a swath of China had shut down.
“You put those two things together, and it means they deliberately spread this disease beyond its borders,” said Gordon Chang, author and a senior fellow of Gatestone Institute.
“The reason why we need that context is because we’re seeing something similar today. As this disease … is ripping through China, they are now opening up the doors to Chinese leaving [the] country for tourism. And they are not sharing sequencing. They’re not telling the world what’s actually going on in China right now,” the China expert said in a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program, due to premiere on Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m. ET.
His comment came as the regime becomes increasingly angry at countries requiring travelers from China to take COVID tests, measures taken ahead of the regime’s border reopening on Jan. 8.
“We will take corresponding measures based on the principle of reciprocity according to different situations,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Tuesday.
China is battling with a massive outbreak that has yet to peak. The World Health Organization is appealing for transparency, saying China’s official tallies are underreporting the actual scale of the outbreak.
China’s top health body stopped publishing daily infections and has acknowledged only a handful of deaths during the current outbreak. But as many as 248 million people, or 18 percent of the country’s population, were estimated to have caught the virus between Dec. 1 to 20, according to a memo from the health regulator’s internal meeting leaked online and confirmed by news outlets. Local officials and domestic health experts estimated the infection rate likely exceeded 50 percent in multiple provinces and reached 80 percent in Beijing.
Amid the explosive outbreak, the lack of reliable data has stoked global concerns, particularly regarding the possibility of a new, more dangerous variant circulating in the country.
By Dorothy Li and Jan Jekielek
Read Full Article on TheEpochTimes.com
Is Omicron the COVID-19 variant spreading in China? Or is it something else? And what does the explosion of the virus—and the associated real death toll in China—mean for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the author of China’s draconian “zero-COVID” policies? We sit down again with China analyst Gordon Chang to discuss the complicated realities the Chinese regime is facing.
“I don’t know what’s going on in Xi Jinping’s head, but I do know that he’s engaged in the most rapid military buildup since the Second World War,” Chang says.
Why is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) collecting DNA profiles of Americans? Why are CCP-linked companies buying up land next to U.S. military bases? And is an attack on Taiwan imminent?
