China Boomeranging By Victor Davis Hanson

[mystery-ak]

   China Boomeranging
By Victor Davis Hanson

March 17, 2020 6:30 AM

Its bad behavior in the wake of COVID-19 will leave it in its weakest global position in memory. And the U.S. will emerge stronger.


S ometime in late November the Chinese Communist Party apparat was aware that the ingredients of some sort of an epidemic were brewing in Wuhan. Soon after, it was also clear to them that a new type of coronavirus was on the loose, a threat they might have taken more seriously given the similar Chinese origins of the prior toxic SARS coronavirus and the resources of a Level 4 virology lab nearby.

Yet the government initially hid all that knowledge from its own people in particular and in general from the world at large. Translated into American terms, that disingenuousness ensured that over 10,000 Chinese nationals and foreigners living in China flew every day on direct flights into the United States (Washington and California especially) from late November to the beginning of February, until the Trump travel ban of January 31.

more
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-china-response-will-weaken-it-on-world-stage/

[PeteS in CA]

I doubt we'll ever know the exact dates, but I suspect there was a gap of weeks, probably more than a month, between Wuhan officials being told they had a problem and the Chinese government notifying WHO (12/31/19) that they had a problem. And even then travel from Wuhan and other major Hubei Province cities was not restricted until January 23rd. That 6-9 week (or whatever it was) delay allowed coronavirus to become a nationwide epidemic and to become a worldwide pandemic. It also proved to corporations worldwide that they could not place all their production eggs in Chinese baskets. I don't know how the percentages will play out in the next 1-5 years, but that 6-9 week delay will have lasting effects on the economies of China and the nations to which some manufacturing is shifted.

IMO, China is compounding that shift by threatening to cut off US pharmaceuticals. The US may be their target for now, but countries not currently targeted will be paying attention. This threat will come back on China like a storm of boomerangs.