By Jo Nova
That which must not be spoken
Every news outlet today is saying how good it is that “relations” with China have thawed, like it was just a bad patch of weather, and now the clouds have cleared they’ve allowed us to sell them wine again. But there is a kind of collective amnesia about why relations froze in the first place.
Just to recap, through incompetence or “otherwise” naughty-citizen China leaked a likely lab experiment, lied about it, and destroyed the evidence. They stopped it spreading at home but sent it on planes to infect the rest of the world. Then when Scott Morrison, Australian Prime Minister, dared ask for an investigation in April 2020, within a week China threatened boycotts, and followed up with severe anti-dumping duties on Australian barley. After which the CCP discovered “inconsistencies in labelling” on Australian beef imports, and added bans or tariffs on Australian wine, wheat, wool, sugar, copper, lobsters, timber and grapes. Then they told their importers not to bring in Australian coal, cotton or LNG either. The only industry they didn’t attack was iron ore, probably because they couldn’t get it anywhere else. In toto, the punishment destroyed about $20 billion dollars in trade, and everyone, even CNN, knew this was political retribution and a message to the world.
As Jeffrey Wilson, Foreign Policy, described it in November 2021
“… its massive onslaught against Australia was like nothing before. Whereas China usually sanctions minor products as a warning shot—Norwegian salmon, Taiwanese pineapples—Australia was the first country to be subjected to an economywide assault.”
But perhaps the communist party had nothing to hide?
Not to put a fine point on it, but on January 14th, 2020, China told the world they had “found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission “. A Chinese CDC expert said “If no new patients appear in the next week, it might be over.” They didn’t mention that things were already so bad in Wuhan in December 2019, that even doctors one thousand kilometers away in Taiwan suspected it was spreading human to human. Taiwan demanded answers from the WHO on December 31. The next day, the CCP destroyed all the virus samples, information about them, and related papers. But perhaps it was just an innocent bat-pangolin thing, yeah?
So after four years of pain in order to stand bravely against the bully, what concessions, exactly, did our current leadership win? There’s no investigation, no answers, no apology, no nothing and no reason to think it won’t happen again.
In fact to smooth the wheels, Australia dropped the WTO cases against China for their bad behaviour with barley and wine. But the negotiation geniuses didn’t insist that China drop its WTO case against us (which was instigated two days after the Australian cases). And so it comes to pass that this week China won the WTO steel case against us.
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Lest we forget:
Ten years ago China said it was worried about race based genetic bioweapons — Who, exactly, had a biotech war on their minds? In 2015 Chinese military scientists ominously predicted the Third World War would be fought with biological weapons. Meanwhile the Chinese military were helping out with the Wuhan viral research projects, and if one virus wasn’t enough, they still have another 1,640 other viruses to play with. The multicultural melting pot of stupid ideas is glowing like lava on all sides of the Pacific. The US Defence Department also sent money to the Wuhan lab to counter “Weapons of Mass Destruction” which apparently helped to create one. And the CSIRO, and Australian universities had worked with the Wuhan Virology Lab too (which they forgot to mention for 18 months?)
Meanwhile in related news in the last three years, the Biden family gained $31m in deals with high level CCP operatives. There’s a shadow war in space “every day”. And Net Zero remains a security threat, yet the West claps along.
Lions Photo by Serg Balak on Unsplash