The US launched a major economic attack against China threatening to collapse the world’s financial system. The likelihood of a slide into a hot war is growing.
American pressure
The blame game between the US and China on the origin of the coronavirus continues. Citing its sources, American President Donald Trump’s favorite TV channel Fox News reported that the “zero patient” was a member of the laboratory at the Wuhan Virology Institute. Later the head of the Pentagon Mark Esper accused China of allegedly providing insufficient information about the origin of the Coronavirus.
Washington is attempting to put pressure on China on all fronts. Sanctions bills against China for withholding information about the coronavirus and combating social media and freedom of speech have appeared in the Senate.
The Missouri attorney general’s office has already filed a lawsuit against the Chinese authorities and the Communist Party of China for damages caused to the state.
President Donald Trump says China is hiding data on the epidemic. According to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “the Chinese Communist Party will pay a price for what they did here, certainly from the United States.”
As Fox News reports “The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has sent various GOP campaigns a memo encouraging attacks on China in relation to the coronavirus pandemic and guidance on how to link their democratic rivals to Beijing”.
The US also stopped funding the World Health Organization, accusing it of being under China’s control and being partially responsible for the spread of COVID-19 in the world.
The United Kingdom supports the United States. UK Foreign Secretary Dominique Raab said that against the backdrop of the epidemic London could not do business with China as usual. French leader Emmanuelle Macron noted that Beijing had not been frank with other countries about the causes of the epidemic.
Who should be blamed?
How justified are the accusations made by the US and its allies?
First of all, nobody knows for sure if China was the actual source of the coronavirus. Let us recall that the Spanish flu of 1918 did not appear at all in Spain, but in the armies of the warring powers, neutral Spain was simply the first country where the new disease was openly reported. The same could very well be true in China. China was the first country to report the new disease, but this does not even mean that it appeared there.
Second, there is evidence that the US may have actually been the source of the pandemic. COVID-19 antibodies were found in a significant number of Americans who had previously had influenza, suggesting that the coronavirus appeared in the US earlier than in Wuhan.
Third, China is showing that it has nothing to hide. Beijing has released more than nine thousand genomic passports of the new coronavirus based on data from the beginning of the epidemic last December.
The interests of the United States
So why did the US start accusing China of spreading coronavirus? There are several reasons.
From the point of view of domestic policy, Trump has had to somehow justify himself to the public for his ineffective policies in dealing with the coronavirus. At first, the president ignored the threat, then he hurriedly started taking measures to fight it. In the meantime, the US had become the world leader in the number of people sick and dead from coronavirus. For a month now, the US has continued to hold that position. The epidemic has revealed problems of social and racial inequality in the US – African-Americans are the group with the highest number of coronavirus cases and the highest number of deaths.
However, for the opposition in the Democratic Party, especially among the governors, this has been an excuse to start resisting Trump and criticizing him. As a result, the US is showing the world its weaknesses: an ineffective health care system, a crisis in the political system that paralyzes the country’s salvation, and Trump’s personal problems as a leader who is unable to take full responsibility for the situation.
At the same time, leading political scientists and international experts all claim that after the Coronavirus pandemic, China will only increase its influence, and the United States will withdraw from the position of global leader.
Therefore, the US leadership is now trying to shift the responsibility for its own inefficiency to China. It seems the same has been true for a number of leaders of European states.
The instruments of war
The question is how far the US is ready to go now to prevent China’s rise and the final collapse of the unipolar world system.
Senator Lindsay Graham, for example, compares China’s actions to sponsoring terrorism and calls for a waiver of its debt to China because China must pay the US for the coronavirus damage.
I want to make our response to this so overwhelming China will change its behavior.
I want the medical supply chain back in the US, and I want to stop canceling some debt that we owe to China because they should be paying us – not us paying China. https://t.co/P4cKaLwMeE
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 10, 2020
Republican senators also propose to give up US debt to China, which exceeds one trillion dollars. Many countries invest their foreign exchange reserves in US Treasury bonds as a reliable financial instrument.
And a default on such securities – even to China alone – would have unpredictable consequences. Beijing’s response, which seems almost inevitable in this scenario, could completely collapse the global financial system.
Senator Ted Cruz has proposed a law to end Chinese health care censorship and cover-up.
Ted Cruz introducing legislation to hold China accountable for hiding and suppressing public health information about the #coronavirus that has endangered the lives of millions across the globe. pic.twitter.com/IV9e1Adt99
— Catt (@CattHarmony) April 18, 2020
To punish those who kept silent about COVID-19, Cruz suggests withdrawal of US visas, blocking property located in the US and prohibiting certain transactions. In other words, imposing sanctions against China.
US Senator Josh Hawley introduced a bill to make the “Chinese Communist Party (CCP) responsible for causing the COVID-19 global pandemic”.
Against the background of these reports, several American warships have appeared in the South China Sea. They were joined by a ship from Australia. The reason was an incident with a Vietnamese fishing vessel that collided with a Chinese border ship in early April.
At the same time, globalist media are actively promoting information that China is allegedly preparing to attack Taiwan.
Tensions are rising
The Coronavirus, despite calls by the UN and the willingness of some world leaders to develop some kind of truce, has not reduced international tensions. It is obvious that such a combination of financial, economic and social, energy and oil crises alongside the coronavirus pandemic could lead to a sudden sharp deterioration of the situation and deterioration of relations between the United States and China. Conflicts are growing.
Under these conditions, it is to be expected that in contrast to the emerging bloc of Western powers against China, Beijing will try to offer favorable conditions to other regional leaders, primarily Russia, Iran and Turkey. The weight of these powers is growing. However, there is also a growing danger that they may be drawn into not only peripheral international conflicts, but also a real world war.
Mesut Hakki Casin, a professor of law at Istanbul’s Yeditepe University told Turkish Anadolu Agency, said that ”this conflict will be reflected in a military dimension, contrary to the Cold War era”.
He believes that the Third World War – one between the US and China – has just about started. All that remains is to find out in what manner this war will be conducted.
At the same time, it is obvious that China and the US are already in the state of intensive information warfare. There are all signs that the world is heading toward military,epidemiological and financial war. In such circumstances, there is a danger of sliding into a hot conflict that will affect all countries in the world. It seems that at the very least, a new cold war cannot be avoided.
To avoid this, the will of the world community is needed to stop the dangerous actions of the United States and isolate the Americans. The US should be quarantined for the benefit of all humanity. China’s actions show that China does not want war. This explains Beijing’s refusal to accuse the US of developing a coronavirus and its calls not to look for the culprits, but rather to join the world’s efforts to fight the pandemic. The next developments will show whether this strategy was the right one.