This is what communists do, and the bigger their global ambitions, the bolder you can expect them to be about it.
If there’s one story China does not want the world hearing, it’s the one we all know is true: China turned the coronavirus loose on the world. It did it through recklessness. It did it through dishonesty. It may or may not have done it with intention, but it all adds up to one of the most egregious series of actions a regime has ever perpetrated.
And when someone endeavors to chronicle all this and tell it to the world, that will not do:
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A Chinese court handed down a four-year jail term on Monday to Zhang Zhan, who reported at the peak of the crisis in the city where the coronavirus first emerged. Her lawyer said Zhang was jailed on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.
The EU called for Zhang’s immediate release, as well as for freedom for jailed human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, and several other detained and convicted human rights defenders and individuals who engaged in reporting in the public interest.
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“According to credible sources, Ms Zhang has been subject to torture and ill-treatment during her detention and her health condition has seriously deteriorated,” an external affairs spokesman for the 27-nation EU said in a statement.
The EU’s public statement is of some use, but it’s unlikely to do much to advance Zhang’s cause. The Chinese don’t really care what the EU says because they don’t perceive it poses much of a threat – either economically or militarily – to China’s interests.
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How much different has it made over the course of decades that people around the world have spoken out about China’s violations of human rights? Not much. Why? Because no one backs up the words with any action. In order to survive, China’s regime needs businesses across the world buying from and selling to the huge Chinese market. Businesses are happy to oblige because they want access to that market, and the Chinese use that desire to leverage much of the world into, if not silence, at least inaction concerning China’s bad behavior.
Donald Trump is ham-handed in his insistence on calling COVID-19 the “China Virus,” and you’ll notice it hasn’t really caught on much beyond, well, Donald Trump. But he’s not wrong. China could have taken effective steps to contain the virus to Wuhan back in January, but it was more interested in obfuscating what had really happened there. And with the World Health Organization and other multinational shills were prepared to back China’s play, why not?
Zhang Zhan’s work of exposing all this is invaluable, and she’s now going to pay a heavy price for doing it.
Maybe if the rest of the world wasn’t so determined to get its hands on China’s economic resources, there would be more real pressure on the Chinese Communist Party to release a person whose only crime is telling the truth. But that’s not the world we live in, which is the primary reason China can pose the threat it does.
