How is the CCP Leveraging COVID-19?

 

Leveraging the Virus to Achieve Chinese Communist Party Goals and Objectives

Long-time China-watchers have come to understand several tenets in monitoring the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the Chinese Communists seized power in 1949:

  • The CCP lies routinely, and their official public statements, as well as the semi-official public statements through the use of state-run media, cannot be trusted.
  • The CCP plans and operates in terms of decades and centuries while Western planning horizons are typically in months and years at most.
  • The CCP is the Chinese government; the two entities are fully integrated and inseparable.
  • The CCP uses whatever level of repression necessary to retain power and control, including the use of force on its own population when necessary.
  • The CCP maintains and exploits an enormous propaganda apparatus aimed at anesthetizing Chinese citizens while conveying the Party line on all topics to audiences around the world; this apparatus includes state-run media such as Xinhua News Agency and Global Times, as well as influence agents (either purchased or ideological fellow-travelers) in Western media, non-profit organizations, and think tanks around the world.
  • The CCP only reacts to the exercise of naked power.

CCP Goals and Objectives

  • The number one goal of the CCP is to retain power in China – at all costs, no matter how great the burden foisted on the Chinese people.
  • The number two goal is extending the CCP authoritarian model of government worldwide, with the CCP exercising global leadership in all spheres of human endeavor. Globalism has been an objective of the world’s elites since World War-II, and the CCP is their instrument in building a socio-economic model to compete with and displace the US in order to consolidate authoritarian rule over the globe.
  • CCP strategies for achieving world economic domination associated with goal number two are laid out in three initiatives: (1) One Belt One Road (OBOR)/Belt-Road Initiative (BRI), (2) Maritime Silk Road; and (3) Made in China 2025. While the linked articles about each warrant a careful reading, the end objective of these inter-linked initiatives is for Communist China to become the leading economic and manufacturing power in the world while facilitating Chinese-controlled trade routes that ensure the provision of raw materials to China and finished goods to the world (nothing less than world domination through control of maritime trade).

Milestones associated with these goals and objectives are many and diverse and include:

  • Co-opting international organizations to enable CCP objectives and thwart foreign criticism of China; examples include the World Trade Organization and World Health Organization
  • Convincing the world to accept CCP rules and authoritarian leadership for solving problems, such as the spread of the virus (despite the CCP’s foundational lies about the virus’s origins), as a means of conditioning the rest of the world to eventual CCP leadership on all topics
  • Building the largest and most-capable military in the world: (1) People’s Liberation Army (PLA); (2) PLA-Navy (PLAN); (3) PLA-Air Force (PLAAF); (4) PLA-Rocket Forces (PLARF); PLA-Strategic Support Force (PLASSF)
  • Purchasing (corrupting) sycophants in Western media, think-tanks and the political class, as well as among Western capitalists themselves, in order to favorably influence policies that enable and support long-term Chinese industrial growth, as well as to blunt and undermine any criticism of CCP methods and aggression
  • Asserting claims to world leadership whenever and wherever possible, whether true or not, in order to lay the groundwork for CCP hegemony and future political control
  • Advocating the elimination of borders and any controls that impede the exchange of people, information, and technologies “for the common good,” a precursor for implementing globalism (pretty hypocritical for the xenophobic CCP, but they know that propaganda point sells in the West, especially among the globalist elite)
  • Implementing debt-leveraging contracts associated with Chinese investments in Asia and Africa (in particular) in order to gain guaranteed long-term access and/or control of ports, railways, and other transportation systems
  • Becoming the world’s largest manufacturer of finished goods in the world – the world’s number one supplier
  • Capturing control of the world’s supplies of rare earth elements, which are required ingredients in many industrial products
  • Resourcing a robust and extensive espionage organization aimed at stealing any useful advanced technologies, research and development, and intellectual property, especially anything with military applications (mission accomplished, as the CCP has the largest spy organization in the world)
  • Implementing and ensuring the security and stability of global supply chains dominated by China of strategic items such as pharmaceuticals, automobile parts, handheld computer devices, commercial goods, etc.
  • Dominating blockchain technology in order to monitor and control world commerce; the technology provides a distributed and decentralized public record-keeping capability that enables digital information to be recorded and distributed on a transactional basis
  • Building the world’s largest commercial shipping fleet, especially container ships
  • Making Shanghai the number one financial services center in the world
  • Building “smart cities” in China to demonstrate Chinese leadership in using big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies to modernize urban governance
  • Leading the world in 5G technology solutions in order (aimed at authoritarian control of people): artificial intelligence, quantum computing, big data processing, and wideband mobile networking

Origins of the Virus

Theories abound on the origins of the virus, from the reasonable to the conspiratorial. Possibilities include:

  1. The coronavirus was one of many that infect animals; this one “jumped” from a bat to a Chinese “Patient Zero” in a wet market in Wuhan, China. This Chinese report provides additional information toward that end.
  2. The coronavirus was under study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and “jumped” to a laboratory technician who became “Patient Zero”, or was carried out by a lab technician who infected “Patient Zero” in the city.
  3. A variation on #2 is that the original Patient Zero was a lab technician who contracted the virus, was isolated and treated, subsequently died, and the virus was transmitted outside the facility by a mortician who disposed of the body.
  4. The coronavirus was bio-engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with Patient Zero a lab technician who inadvertently carried the virus from the lab to the local populace in Wuhan (and thence to the world).
  5. A variation on #4, the ChiComs purposely (and cynically) released the bio-weapon to their own population to mask their real intention, which was to destroy the world economy (they could easily sacrifice a few Chinese toward that objective).
  6. The coronavirus was the result of multi-national research and collaboration (Chinese, US, Australia, others?) but was released by the ChiComs with the same objective as #5.
  7. The ChiCom propaganda version, which that a US military member was “Patient Zero,” and he purposely infected Wuhan residents during a US-China military games in the fall of 2019.

Since the Chinese destroyed the initial virus sequencing results and other laboratory and clinical data, the precise origins of the virus are unknown at this point. One would hope that the world community – led by the US State Department – continues to put pressure on the Chinese to divulge the withheld information in order to develop drug treatments and vaccines to better combat the virus. In any event, the Chinese Communist Party covered up the virus, then they prevaricated with the help of the World Health Organization, then they shifted into propaganda mode to try to deflect the truth about the origins of the virus and their cover-up and lack of cooperation with public health authorities around the world. Had the Chinese acted earlier and released what they new about the virus – as they well  could have, had it not been for the ingrained CCP tendency to withhold vital information – much of the pandemic could have been thwarted, as reported here:

A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.

This timeline, compiled from information reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post and other sources, shows that China's cover-up and the delay in serious measures to contain the virus lasted about three weeks.

The reasons why the CCP withheld the information (and had much of the early clinical data destroyed!), are a limited set: (1) the CCP wanted to “save face” and not admit culpability to the world; (2) more cynically, the CCP wanted to save face and avoid legal liability for the virus; (3) equally cynically, the CCP sought to withhold the information in order to shift blame for the virus to external parties, especially the US; (4) simple ineptitude and inefficiency led to a delay in providing the data (unlikely since they purposely destroyed the sequencing information and other clinical data); and (5) they purposely withheld the clinical data in order to exacerbate the spread of the virus to the rest of the world, in particular, the United States.

Door Number 5: Exploitation of the Virus

When Xi Jinping ascended to CCP General Secretary and president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2012, he returned to the more traditional CCP authoritarian rule as a break from his immediate predecessors who were more pragmatic rulers. The result was a sweeping new vision of Chinese rejuvenation and an assertive and more influential government that implemented aggressive domestic and foreign policies. Initiatives such as OBOR/BRI and Made in China 2025 were examples of the new vision that would lead to Chinese economic dominance worldwide. The authoritarianism at home has led to the implementation of a traffic-light system that uses smartphone software to assign a “social quality” to categorize people as either red, yellow or green in order determine whether they can be allowed to move about the country or meet with other Chinese. Abroad, Xi’s aggressive foreign policy has led to saber-rattling in the Taiwan Strait, months of Hong Kong riots as the CCP rescinded the previously agreed upon social contract, militarization of the South China Sea, and ongoing confrontations between PLAN and US Navy ships and aircraft in international waters.

Despite the atrocities perpetrated on the Chinese people during the Cultural Revolution, the CCP subsequently leveraged its substantial economic growth since the 1970s to legitimate its authoritarian rule from Beijing. That is the social compact that has evolved in China: the CCP delivers continuing perceptible improvement in the standard of living (especially for Chinese elites), and the Chinese people acquiesce to CCP rule. Chinese have become accustomed to rising living standards to the point that younger generations have much greater expectations than their parents and grandparents did. That means that the growth must continue, or the CCP will face severe unrest at home – the Hong Kong riots are just a glimpse of what could transpire.

Enter President Donald Trump and his twin policies of “America First” and decoupling China and the US. The trade war could not have happened at a worse time for China. The CCP made yuuuge investments in overseas initiatives like the OBOR/BRI – money that in retrospect would have been better spent at home. The Chinese domestic economy was fueled by over-investment in real estate and a subsequent massive debt accumulation that could dwarf the problems the US faced in 2008. This is from a CNBC report in late 2018; who knows what the total debt has grown to be in the midst of the trade war with the US since then?

The actual level of off-balance-sheet Chinese local government debt could be several times more than what is publicly disclosed and range as high as 30 trillion yuan to 40 trillion yuan, or about $4.34 trillion to $5.78 trillion

The Chinese have reached the limits of investment-driven economic growth. Xi has once again exposed the flawed notion that a Communist government can effectively manage a complex economy. This is standard fare for Communists everywhere; just ask Russians about the Soviets’ 5-year plans worked out! Add to that the Chinese demographics problem resulting from the CCP’s “one child” policy: the Chinese population is aging rapidly, putting an increasing strain on social services resources. Because of these problems, the CCP knew they were facing imminent economic disaster despite the lies and bluster from their state-controlled media. Enter the virus.

Xi cannot reverse course; his aggressive authoritarianism is a feature of his regime, not a bug. Shifting blame to others is the only way to save himself and the CCP. What better way to mask impending economic doom than to exploit the virus in order to crash the world economy – especially the American economy of the hated Donald Trump? The multi-pronged CCP gameplan is clear in retrospect:

  1. Delay release of clinical data while knowingly allowing infected Chinese to spread the virus to the unsuspecting world for months before grudgingly notifying the WHO of the virus and then dribbling out incomplete clinical data. As reported here, over 750,000 Chinese entered the US during the virus outbreak before President Trump implemented the travel ban on 31 January. The CCP goal is to destroy the American economy and the economic leverage that President Trump has exerted on China with the trade war and decoupling policies.
  2. Withhold virus clinical data in order to mislead foreign experts about the seriousness of the virus.
  3. Kick out Western media in order to control information about Chinese infection and death statistics.
  4. Under-report Chinese virus statistics while claiming that China has the virus “under control” through “superior Chinese methods.”
  5. Offer Chinese medical services assistance to other countries struggling to control the virus while claiming Chinese leadership in the “fight against COVID-19” (psychological information warfare)
  6. Exploit the vast Chinese propaganda apparatus worldwide to convey messages demanding international cooperation and coordination, following Chinese leadership, attacking the US for demanding Chinese accountability, and conveying other CCP-approved baloney. This includes the CCP’s proposal for a “new health silk road” led by China, of course.
  7. Force Chinese to go back to work by underreporting domestic infections and deaths while blaming new cases on foreigners and returning Chinese (keep the export economy propped up)
  8. Devalue their currency to promote Chinese exports during a world recession in order to capture market share from Western industries in decline.
  9. Acquire distressed assets entering foreclosure in the West; this is already happening in Australia, as reported here; there will be MUCH more of this in the coming weeks and months as businesses go under all over the world.
  10. Continue penetration of US capital markets and exploit US globalists who are still willing to sell out to the CCP despite the pandemic. One impending danger is granting the CCP access to the federal government’s $600 billion Thrift Savings Plan retirement fund for federal employees, as reported here.
  11. Exploit any and all opportunities to advance CCP interests and seek strategic advantage, especially in China’s “near abroad” (Taiwan, South China Sea, Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.), as detailed here. This is what we have to watch for in the months ahead.

Summary: What Do I really Think?

  • The CCP knew they had mismanaged the Chinese economy with grandiose investment schemes abroad and promotion of an unsupportable real estate boom at home.
  • The CCP determined that President Trump’s twin policies of “America First” and decoupling from China are direct threats to the long-term CCP goal of globalization under CCP leadership.
  • The CCP realized that the Phase I US-China trade deal was the beginning of the end of the predatory trade practices and exploitation of the US and international organizations like the WTO that both fueled and propped up Chinese growth for the last 40 years.
  • The CCP leveraged their virus as a direct counter-attack on the Trump Administration’s efforts to reset US-China relations on multiple fronts, as well as mask their own impending economic disaster.
  • The belligerent CCP will use the virus pandemic to promote Chinese leadership on the world stage, acquire distressed assets entering foreclosure around the world, and seek strategic advantage in foreign affairs especially with neighboring countries.

Bottom line: The CCP, being themselves ignorant of basic supply and demand economics, finally figured out that they were sitting on a real estate bubble of gigantic proportions and were thus facing an economic disaster that was made obvious by the US-China trade war. In order to achieve CCP goal number one (retention of CCP power no matter what), they loosed the CCP virus on the world and are hiding behind the subsequent devastation being wrought on the world economy as an excuse for their own macroeconomic incompetence. And they are exploiting the crisis to further CCP strategic interests and long-term goals and objectives wherever they can.

When this crisis is over, the CCP need to be held to account – bigly!

Stu Cvrk served 30 years in the US Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. An oceanographer and systems analyst through education and experience, Stu is a graduate of the US Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education. This functions as the key foundation for his political commentary. He threads daily on Twitter on a wide range of political topics, such as the military, foreign policy, government, economics, and world affairs.

Twitter: @STUinSD
Web: stuinsd.net

 

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