“China’s going to dominate whether we couple or decouple. They have the resources, they have the money, they have the technology. The question is do they operate on global platforms or do they operate on their own platforms?
“The more segregated the platforms are, the more dangerous it is.”27
Concerns about the Chinese government’s role in technology have given way this year to concerns about its role in the spread of infection. Back in January, just two days after the United States and China signed the Phase One trade deal, the Trump administration learned details of a new deadly virus from China that had escaped its borders and was bound for America—if it hadn’t arrived already.
The Chinese government initially downplayed the coronavirus, failing to tell the world what had happened for critical weeks. The Chinese Communist Party arrested the Wuhan doctor who sounded an early warning. Arkansas senator Tom Cotton questioned the origins of the virus from the start, because the only level 4 superlab in all of China is located in Wuhan, not far from the wet markets blamed for the virus. In that virology lab scientists study coronaviruses along with other deadly diseases. “Look, they knew in China early on, probably as early as the early days of December, that this virus was both highly contagious among humans and it was very deadly for certain people. Yet they wanted to save face.… They wanted to make sure… once they realized this virus was going to cripple their own economy, that it did not remain limited to China,” he said of the Chinese regime on Sunday Morning Futures on May 10, 2020.28
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said that, along with lying about the coronavirus and denying the U.S. Centers for Disease Control entry into China to investigate Covid-19’s origins, the Chinese Communist Party also attempted to corner the market on protective gear like masks and gloves while the rest of the world was in desperate need of these items, which are largely made in China. “China has a plan to take us over and take the world over. That’s not hyperbole. All you need to do is look at what they’re doing,” according to Navarro.29
The Trump administration called out the reliance on China’s manufacturing and prioritized moving supply chains to other countries. Attorney General William Barr said, “We’ve already seen during the pandemic what it means when they have some leverage over manufacturing of things we need.”30 It was during the coronavirus that many Americans realized that 70 percent of the active ingredients in many prescription drugs are made in China. “We have to address our supply chains in China and move manufacturing back here,” said Barr. “But this is even more fundamental than our supply chain. If all our industrial practices and our manufacturing practices are built on a platform that they dominate, they will have ultimate leverage over the West. So, this is a competition for the future.”31
While the world was dealing with the deadly coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party seized the opportunity to dominate its region and intimidate its neighbors. In early May, Chinese soldiers killed twenty Indian soldiers in a disputed area along the Himalayan border. Meanwhile the Chinese regime was also breaking the promises it made to allow the people of Hong Kong to maintain the liberties they have long enjoyed. After months of threats from China, the Communist Party introduced a new security law in Hong Kong that destroyed the city’s autonomy and tradition of free speech and forced Hong Kongers to live under the same tyranny as the people of mainland China.
In 1997 the United Kingdom transferred control of Hong Kong to China, on the promise from Beijing that Hong Kong would maintain separate governance and economic systems from China for fifty years. It was called “One country, two systems.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Mornings with Maria, “The Chinese Communist Party had entered into an agreement… that they would allow Hong Kong to have autonomy for fifty years. Halfway through it or so, they’ve now broken those commitments, those promises that they made to the world. The United States had a series of preferences. We treated Hong Kong more favorably than we did China for all those years because of that treaty. The Chinese Communist Party has now broken its promise.”32
Maria called billionaire businessman and democracy activist Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong. The founder of New Digital in Hong Kong was on the front lines of the daily protests. “Xi Jinping is just taking advantage of the pandemic to deal aggressively with the world, especially to deal with the Hong Kong rebellion. He thinks this time the whole world is in a crisis—that he can have the space and room to take Hong Kong without other countries reacting to it. We are fighting a war for freedom. We are fighting your war. Please help us,” said Lai.33 He was arrested and jailed several times after her first interview with him.
In 2019 Hong Kongers took to the streets every day for months to push back on China’s authoritarianism. “After the three-month confrontation with the government, we know that the Beijing government is not going to give us any room for freedom,” Lai stated. “They are trying to take away our freedom, our rule of law, the way of life that we have had, and the only way we can do is to go on and persist, to fight for it. Or whether we can win and eventually get a universal suffrage, we don’t know. But what we know is if we don’t—if we don’t fight—we will lose all we have and we will lose the freedom, the rule of law, the way of life, all
