69°F
weather icon Windy

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: China isn’t letting a pandemic go to waste

Updated June 6, 2020 - 9:17 pm

George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis when a police officer used brutally excessive force to arrest him. It was the latest in a string of high-profile cases nationwide in which citizens, most of them African-Americans, died from reckless police force. Once again, protests over police brutality turned violent and rioting ensued.

The United States is torn apart over the national mass quarantine. Liberal blue states accused red restart states of recklessly endangering national health by allowing their populations to go back to work before the virus left. Red states countered that blue states were hypocritical in wanting federal money to subsidize their locked-down residents while expecting other states to generate needed federal revenue. They also contended that there was no longer scientific evidence to justify the lockdown.

The nationwide protests and rioting have inadvertently adjudicated the issue: States cannot jail the law-abiding barber who wears a mask at work but allow the arsonist without one to roam the streets burning with impunity.

There is mounting evidence that an array of federal officials had plotted to disrupt Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and his presidential transition, leaving Trump supporters furious.

Meanwhile, likely Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is sequestered in his basement. He often appears confused. Yet Biden seems content that, the more people do not see or hear him, the more they like the idea of him as president. Indeed, the more inert Biden has become, the more his poll numbers have risen against Trump and his tweeting.

As the United States protested and bickered, China attempted to strangle what was left of Hong Kong’s enfeebled democracy. China’s theory seemed to be that if it’s going to be blamed for the spreading virus due to its deceit anyway, it might as well not let such a pandemic go to waste.

The Chinese strategy in reaction to disclosures that it hid vital data about the virus and exposed the world to contagion while it quarantined its own cities has devolved from, “So what?”to the current, “What exactly are you going to do about it?”

China also decided to ramp up its perennial border confrontations with India, as its forces encroached on Indian soil in the Himalayas. What better way to show the world that a defiant China is dangerous than agitate the world’s largest democracy?

Beijing has warned European nations that if their independent media continued to condemn China, there could be commercial retaliation. A few European journalists still exposed Chinese deceit, even as shaken EU leaders backtracked and tried to contextualize Chinese misbehavior.

Japan and South Korea worried that China might move on Taiwan. They knew that if China did, only the United States — convulsed by quarantines, riots and a contentious presidential race — could stand up to Beijing.

For years, China has bullied and waged a virtual commercial war against Asian democracies such as Japan, South Korea, India and Australia. It has subverted almost all international trading norms.

The Chinese government assumed that Western elites would get rich by being complicit in China’s cheating and would thus help sell out their own countries. They were mostly right on both counts.

As China westernized its economy, it conned gullible Western officials that eventually it planned to become a useful member of the family of nations. In truth, China strategically hoarded cash from its asymmetrical trade surpluses. It planted its functionaries throughout transnational organizations and subverted them. It beefed up its military and planted island bases in international waters. It compromised strategically important nations by investing in their infrastructure through its neo-colonial and imperialist multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative.

China may have been forced by the global epidemic to give up its nice-guy facade. But it has insidiously pivoted from global friend to its new role as overt global villain. If the world had been anxious over the intentions of a suspiciously nice China, it will become downright terrified of an overtly hostile China.

In other words, China is not wasting the disaster of the Wuhan outbreak. It once gained a lot by faking friendliness, but now it seems to think it has no choice but to get even more by being authentically belligerent.

As part of the about-face, China no longer flatters the West in passive-aggressive fashion, but rather shows its disdain for a weak Europe and an increasingly divided U.S.

China’s real message to a fence-sitting world?

While America tears itself apart with endless internal quarreling and media psychodramas, while Europe appeases its enemies and while the rest of Asia stays mute, waiting to see who wins, China is now on the move — without apologies.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of “The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.” Contact via email at author@victorhanson.com.

THE LATEST
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Elite heaven or real hell on Earth?

America needs to recalibrate its priorities to protect the lives and aspirations of all its citizens, regardless of their race and gender.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Ukrainian Verdun

The only thing worse than an armistice with no clear winner or loser is an endless war with more than a million casualties.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The absurd Democrat border con

Still, it remains somewhat unclear why Biden and his Homeland Security chief destroyed what Trump had achieved. Why would they ensure such misery for both American hosts and millions of illegal immigrants?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The hysterical style in American politics

Sometimes real, sometimes hyped crises lead to these contrived left-wing hysterias — such as the Jan. 6, 2021, violent “armed insurrection” or the “fascist” “ultra-MAGA” threat.