China s Horrific Triumph amid the Coronavirus Pandemic | National Review
In geostrategic terms, given the often-proclaimed Chinese intention of becoming the preeminent power in the world, it is objectively difficult not to respect the PRC s talents of improvisation in instantly transforming a domestic public-health crisis into what amounted to the stealthy unleashing of bacteriological warfare against the entire outside world, with particular emphasis on disturbing China s principal rivals, the large, economically advanced western countries. Japan, by some combination of good fortune and astuteness, moved at the outset to take drastic precautions and has not been overly disturbed by the coronavirus. But the world s other large, economically advanced countries the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, Brazil, and even India and Russia have all been hard hit, and have mainly responded with more or less economically self-punitive lockdowns that have inflicted great hardship on their populations and severely strained their treasuries in caring for the suddenly and blamelessly COVID-related unemployed. If we concede, as seems reasonable, that the Chinese government did not deliberately create this virus and was taken by surprise when it arose, then we are also obliged to respect their ruthless ingenuity in levering upon the severity of their dictatorship and their official indifference to domestic humanitarian problems in inflicting the coronavirus on the world and thoroughly exploiting the humanitarian sensibility and vulnerability of the western countries.