U.S. Faces Tough ‘Great Game’ Against China in Central Asia and Beyond

Former Soviet republics in the heart of Asia are critical battlegrounds in the struggle with China over global influence.
By Edward Wong

The historic town of Khiva, Uzbekistan, has been revitalized with China’s help.

KHIVA, Uzbekistan — Inside the ancient walls of the Silk Road oasis town of Khiva, China has put down a marker of its geopolitical ambitions. 

A sign promotes a Chinese aid project to renovate a once-crumbling mosque and a faded madrasa.
Outside the town’s northern gate, a billboard-size video screen shows clips of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan meeting with world leaders. 

Xi Jinping features prominently, but there are no shots of President Trump.
That China is advertising its aid efforts so boldly in this remote outpost linking Asia and Europe — where camel caravans once arrived after crossing the Kyzylkum and Karakum Deserts — is the kind of action these days that sets off alarm bells among American officials. 

The Trump administration is trying with greater force to insert itself into the political and economic life of Central Asia to counter China’s presence. 

American officials see the countries in the heart of the continent’s vast, arid steppe as critical battlegrounds in the struggle with China over global influence.
“Whenever we speak to countries around the world, we want to make sure that we’re doing what the people of those countries want,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week at a news conference in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.
The Uzbeks want a “good, balanced relationship,” he said.
“They have long borders,” he added. 

“They sit in a region where China and Russia are both present.”
Leaders of the five Central Asian nations that became independent republics after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 — Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan — are used to walking a regional tightrope. 

The area was contested during the so-called Great Game of the 19th century, when the British and Russian empires competed to establish influence and control.
Now a new game is underway. 

And officials in Central Asia, like many of their counterparts around the world, are hedging their bets when it comes to aligning with Washington or Beijing.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, left, with Xi Jinping last year in Beijing.

“I’d like to once again note that we want to see Central Asia as a region of stable development, prosperity and cooperation,” said Abdulaziz Kamilov, the foreign minister of Uzbekistan. 

“And we would really not like to feel on ourselves unfavorable political consequences in relation to some competition in our region between large powers.”
The State Department released a Central Asia strategy document on Feb. 5 that said the top priority was to “support and strengthen the sovereignty and independence of the Central Asian states” — a reference to warding off the influence of China and Russia.
It is a tough mission for the United States. 

The nations are in China’s and Russia’s backyards, and there have been decades of close interactions among them. 

Xi has made multiple state visits to the countries since he took power in 2012, most recently last year.
The Trump administration has hit major setbacks in its attempts to build a global coalition against projects by the Chinese government and by Chinese companies. 

In fact, Britain said on Jan. 28 that it would not ban technology made by Huawei, a Chinese telecom giant, from its high-speed 5G wireless network, despite intense pressure from American officials.
Mr. Pompeo made London his first stop on a recent six-day trip to Europe and Central Asia, and he said there on Jan. 30 that the Chinese Communist Party was “the central threat of our times.” 

The next day, he spoke about China with leaders in Ukraine.
But words go only so far. 

The Americans fail to present an economical alternative to Huawei. 

And the Trump administration is discovering that its belligerent approach toward allies has a cost when it comes to China strategy. 

Withdrawing from the global Paris climate agreement, starting trade conflicts with friendly governments make those nations less likely to listen to Washington’s entreaties on China.
A recent policy report on China by the Center for a New American Security said “critical areas of U.S. policy remain inconsistent, uncoordinated, underresourced and — to be blunt — uncompetitive and counterproductive to advancing U.S. values and interests.”

Muslims praying at a mosque in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the Central Asian nations, which are predominantly Muslim, to speak out about China’s Uighur concentration camps.

Some analysts say the hawkish talk on China by Mr. Pompeo and other American officials paradoxically could make the United States look weak.
“And that last point is just the core of it for me. A central problem of US foreign policy today, not just in Central Asia, is that it feels increasingly reactive to me — back footed and on defense, not least in the face of Chinese initiatives,” Evan A. Feigenbaum, a deputy assistant secretary of state on Central Asia and South Asia in the George W. Bush administration who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on Twitter.
“To wit, the secretary of state just made the first visit by America’s top diplomat to Central Asia in five years — five! — but spent a hefty chunk of it talking about China,” he wrote.
“The challenge for the US is to get off its reactive back foot and be proactive and on offense.”
The United States did not pursue serious partnerships in Central Asia until after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Pentagon needed regional bases for the war in Afghanistan.
China has taken a different approach.
Beijing says it will help build up the region under what it calls the Silk Road Economic Belt, which is part of the larger Belt and Road Initiative, a blanket term for global infrastructure projects that, according to Beijing, amount to $1 trillion of investment.
The projects are potential debt traps, but many countries have embraced them.
The economic liberalization of Uzbekistan under Mirziyoyev, who took power in 2016 after the death of a longtime dictator, has resulted in greater trade with China.
China is Uzbekistan’s largest trading partner, and trade totaled almost $6.3 billion in 2018, a nearly 50 percent increase from 2017, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.
Chinese goods, including Huawei devices, are everywhere in Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent and other Uzbek cities.

The subway in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital.

Uzbekistan is also committing to being part of rail and road networks that China is building across Central Asia.
Since 2001, China has worked with Central and South Asian nations as well as Russia in a multilateral group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to address security issues.

China’s People’s Liberation Army has gained a new foothold in the region, in the form of a base in Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains.
For at least three years, Chinese troops have quietly kept watch from two dozen buildings and lookout towers near the Tajik-Chinese border and the remote Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan.
The Afghan corridor is a strategic strip of land whose borders were drawn by Britain and Russia during the original Great Game as a buffer zone.
The United States had hundreds of troops at an air base in Uzbekistan that it operated with the Uzbeks.
But it wants to move the relationship well beyond the military.
“We want private investment, American private investment sector, to flow between our two nations,” Mr. Pompeo said.
He added that the United States had committed $100 million to programs in Uzbekistan last year, and that it would give $1 million to help develop financial markets and another $1 million to increase trade and “connectivity” between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
On his trip, Mr. Pompeo also made a demand regarding human rights in China as he met with officials in Tashkent and Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan.
He raised the issue of China’s internment camps that hold one million or more Muslims and urged the Central Asian nations, which are predominantly Muslim, to speak out against the camps.
In Nur-Sultan, he met with Kazakhs who have had family members detained in the camps.

This month in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, Mr. Pompeo met with Kazakhs whose family members have been detained in Chinese camps.

Yet, as in other predominantly Muslim nations, Central Asian leaders have remained silent on this. (Mr. Trump himself has said nothing, and Mr. Pompeo has been accused of hypocrisy by excluding Taiwan, the democratic island that China threatens, from a religious freedom alliance.)
Trump administration policies perceived as anti-Muslim undermine trust in Washington.
On Jan. 31, Mr. Trump added Kyrgyzstan and five other nations, all with substantial Muslim populations, to a list of countries whose citizens are restricted in traveling to the United States.
In an interview in Nur-Sultan, a Kazakh television journalist, Lyazzat Shatayeva, asked Mr. Pompeo, “What do you think that signals to the other countries and other governments in Central Asia on why it happened?”
Mr. Pompeo said Kyrgyzstan must “fix” certain things: “passport issues, visa issues, visa overstays.”
“When the country fixes those things,” he said, “we’ll get them right back in where they can come travel to America.”

Chinese coronavirus: senior US official accuses China of lack of transparency

Top White House official Larry Kudlow questions approach of Politburo as China brings in ‘wartime’ measures in more cities
By Lily Kuo and agencies

A senior White House official has called on Beijing to be more transparent over its handling of the Chinese coronavirus outbreak as Chinese authorities expanded “wartime” measures to limit its spread.
“We are a little disappointed that we haven’t been invited in and we’re a little disappointed in the lack of transparency coming from the Chinese,” said Larry Kudlow, the director of the US National Economic Council.
His comments came after Chinese authorities said they had altered how they count cases, resulting in confusion amid dramatic changes to the reported figures for two days in a row, and dampening hopes that the outbreak may peak later this month.
On Thursday, Hubei officials reported a large spike in cases after including those confirmed by CT scans, not just lab tests.

The revision added 254 deaths to the overall Chinese toll.
Then on Friday, China added 121 new deaths – but also removed 108 fatalities from the total, due to what China’s National Health Commission said were “duplicate statistics”.
In its latest update, the commission reported 121 new deaths and 5,090 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of people infected to more than 64,000 worldwide, with 63,851 of the cases in China.
The death toll stands at 1,383 – with three of those deaths outside of mainland China, one in Hong Kong, one in Japan and one in the Philippines.
The commission did not give further explanation of the double-counted cases on Friday.
“Based on the current trend in confirmed cases, this appears to be a clear indication that the fairly drastic measures Chinese have implemented to date would appear to have been too little, too late,” said Adam Kamradt-Scott, an infectious diseases expert at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

Chinese authorities also announced that 1,716 health workers had been infected as of 11 February. Six had died. 

Officials on Friday, responding to questions about how those cases are counted, said that when asymptomatic patients show symptoms during quarantine they would be included as confirmed.
While public health experts have greeted the change in reporting – in order to capture more cases and get more patients needed treatment – positively, others say it raises more questions about the data. The change in diagnostic criteria has been applied only to Hubei province.
“Is the politburo really being honest with us?” Kudlow asked, referring to communist China’s top leadership body. 

Kudlow said Xi Jinping had assured Donald Trump that Beijing would accept US help, but “they won’t let us”.
“I don’t know what their motives are. I do know that apparently more and more people are suffering over there,” he said.
At a meeting of senior leaders in Beijing on Thursday, officials called for other areas to “adopt quarantine and rescue measures equal to that of Wuhan”, which has been under lockdown for the past three weeks. 

The meeting, chaired by the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, called on Wuhan to speed up classifying and quarantining residents suspected or confirmed of contracting the virus.
In Huanggang, one of the worst-hit areas outside of Wuhan with more than 2,000 cases and at least 59 deaths, authorities issued an emergency measures for 14 days, “fully sealing” all residential areas and banning vehicles, except for those for emergency, medical or official purposes.
Checkpoints would be set up and public security deployed to enforce the measures. 

Local district committees are to organise residents’ food and supplies. 

“All residents must not enter or leave their communities without authorisation,” the notice said.

In Dawu county in central Hubei, home to more than 600,000 people, officials also issued an emergency notice on Thursday afternoon that residential areas and buildings would be sealed and vehicles banned. 

Those who violate the rules “will be detained, according to wartime regulations”. 

“In extraordinary times, extraordinary actions are needed,” the notice said.
In Zhangwan district in Shiyan city, authorities placed similar restrictions and said public security would help enforce the measures. 

Gucheng county and Yunmeng county also implemented the same measures for a period of 14 days.
On Friday, China’s ministry of finance said the country was earmarking 80.5bn yuan (£8.5bn) for fighting the epidemic. 

So far, about half of that has been spent.
Researchers at China National Biotech, a state-owned company, said that human antibodies from survivors had helped patients who were critically ill, prompting calls for recovered patients to donate blood plasma.


Michael Smith
✔@MikeSmithAFR
I have been put under Home quarantine for 14 days after returning to Shanghai. For my neighbours, only 1 person per household is allowed out once a day. Some renters are being denied access to their homes. This is a city increasingly in lockdown. #coronavirus
566
5:35 AM - Feb 14, 2020

The next few weeks are critical for judging whether quarantine measures have worked, and as residents return to work in major cities. 

Officials said this year would not see a “peak” in return journeys after the lunar new year holiday and that all parts of the country should “continue protection and control measures”.
Containing the coronavirus in Wuhan, where the virus emerged in December, is still of “utmost importance” in order to achieve “economic and societal development” this year, officials said.
Outside China, one person died in Japan from the virus on Thursday night. 

Japan’s health ministry said a woman in her 80s living in Kanagawa prefecture, west of Tokyo, had died. 

She had been transferred between hospitals as her condition worsened and she was confirmed to have had the coronavirus after her death.
Her death was the third fatality from the virus outside mainland China.
Meanwhile, the US state department expressed deep concern about North Korea’s vulnerability to the outbreak. 

The statement comes as Pyongyang scrambles to strengthen quarantine and preventive measures.
North Korea has yet to report a case of the virus, but state media reports have hinted that an uncertain number of people have been quarantined after showing symptoms. 

Experts say an epidemic in North Korea could be dire because of its chronic lack of medical supplies and poor healthcare infrastructure.
Passengers on a cruise ship that spent two weeks at sea after being turned away by five countries over coronavirus fears started disembarking in Cambodia on Friday.
The MS Westerdam, carrying 1,455 passengers and 802 crew, docked in the Cambodian port town of Sihanoukville on Thursday. 

What China’s empty Chinese coronavirus hospitals say about its secretive system

Even after declaring a crisis, Beijing was focused more on propaganda than on managing the Chinese virus outbreak 
Emma Graham-Harrison

Flowers and a photo of the whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang at a hospital in Wuhan. 

China’s two new hospitals built in as many weeks were the official face of its fight against the Chinese coronavirus in Wuhan. 

As the city was locked down, authorities promised that thousands of doctors would be on hand to treat 2,600 patients on the facilities’ wards.
Timelapse videos tracked the fast construction of the hospitals, and state media celebrated their opening in early February. 

The only thing missing a week later? Patients.

Four days after its opening, the larger Leishenshan hospital had only 90 patients, on wards designed for 1,600, but was reporting no spare beds, Wuhan city health data, first reported by the Chinese magazine Caixin, showed. 

The other facility, Huoshenshan, had not yet filled its 1,000 beds a week after opening.
Meanwhile, the city was setting up emergency hospitals in exhibition halls and a sports stadium, and medics were still turning ill people away. 

China has the world’s largest army but it has not deployed any field hospitals to Wuhan.
The gulf between the vision of vast new hospitals created and thrown into action within days and the more complicated reality on the ground is a reminder of one of the main challenges for Beijing as it struggles to contain the Chinese coronavirus: its own secretive, authoritarian system of government and its vast censorship and propaganda apparatus.
Communist party apparatus well honed to crush dissent also muffles legitimate warnings. 

A propaganda system designed to support the party and state cannot be relied on for accurate information. 

That is a problem not just for families left bereft by the Chinese coronavirus and businesses destroyed by the sudden shutdown, but for a world trying to assess Beijing’s success in controlling and containing the disease.
“China’s centralised system and lack of freedom of press definitely delay a necessary aggressive early response when it was still possible to contain epidemics at the local level,” said Ho-fung Hung, a professor in political economy at Johns Hopkins University in the US.
Beijing did go public about the Chinese virus faster than during the 2002-3 Sars crisis.

But it has become increasingly clear that the local government was engaged in a concerted attempt to cover up the crisis during the early weeks of the outbreak, which allowed it to fester at a time when it would have been much easier to contain.

Two officials have been fired, Wuhan’s mayor admitted failings in a live interview on national television, and the central government has sent a team to investigate the treatment of the whistleblowing doctor Li Wenliang.
Security forces punished Li, 34, for trying to warn colleagues about the risks of a dangerous new disease at the end of December. 

Just over a month later he became one of the youngest victims of the Chinese coronavirus. 

His death made him a household name and triggered a rare discussion in China about freedom of speech.
In a biting essay that laid the blame for the crisis with Xi Jinping, a dissident intellectual claimed China’s centralisation and culture of silence had played a key role in the spread of the disease.
“It began with the imposition of stern bans on the reporting of factual information that served to embolden deception at every level of government,” Xu Zhangrun wrote in his essay Viral Alarm, When Fury Overcomes Fear, according to a translation by Geremie Barmé on the website ChinaFile.
“It only struck its true stride when bureaucrats throughout the system shrugged off responsibility for the unfolding situation while continuing to seek the approbation of their superiors,” Xu continued. 

“They all blithely stood by as the crucial window of opportunity to deal with the outbreak of the infection snapped shut in their faces.”

A Chinese coronavirus patient is discharged from a field module hospital after recovery in Wuhan. 

Without a free press, elections or much space for civil society, there are few ways for citizens to hold their rulers accountable. 

Instead, local officials answer only to a party hierarchy that puts a premium on stability and economic growth.
Prof Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute, said: “China is not a poor country. But the incentives are not for a health director (for example) to respond to public health crises in Wuhan first and foremost. The incentive is to do what the party wants … and not embarrass the party.”

The cost of trying to curb the Chinese coronavirus when it first emerged – high-profile moves to close the market where it originated, cull and destroy livestock, quarantine and compensate victims, cancel mass festivities for the new year – would have seemed a risky gamble for little reward.
“That might have ended it, or not,” Tsang said. 

“[But] since you stopped the virus from developing, you have nothing to show. You quashed a potential threat that may not have existed.”
Even when the government reversed course and announced a crisis, it appeared to be focused more on propaganda than on managing the disease, he said. 

It could have deployed medics and a field hospital to Wuhan almost overnight rather than building new hospitals.
It is unclear why they chose not to do so. 

But a country setting up field hospitals looks like one in crisis. 

A government expanding hospitals looks like one in control. 

“Ten days is a very long time when you are looking at a public health crisis like that,” Tsang said. 

“But a new hospital built from the ground up, that’s a world record.”

Diggers begin constructing a new 1,000-bed hospital in Wuhan.

Questions about China’s transparency still hang over efforts to manage the disease. 

Scientists are concerned about its spread in areas that have become new hubs of the disease. 

Zhejiang and Guangdong province – both industrial centres – have reported more than 1,000 cases, as has inland Henan province.
That is higher than the number of cases reported in Hubei province when the lockdown of Wuhan was announced in January. 

But with the economy badly strained by the long shutdown, Chinese authorities are urging people to start heading back to work in “orderly” fashion in these areas.
There have also been doubts about the accuracy of the tally of cases, after many families reported struggling to get testing for sick relatives.The test numbers may be accurate, and disease control measures in place elsewhere may be sufficient to control a virus that scientists already understand much better than they did a few weeks ago. 

But if China cannot address the systemic failings that allowed the outbreak to fester originally, it may struggle to control this epidemic, avert the next one and secure the global trust and cooperation needed to fight disease.
“There is no one quick fix to the Chinese system to make it respond better next time,” said Hung. “But if there is one single factor that could increase the government’s responsiveness to this kind of crisis, [it would be] a free press.”

China's Final Viral Solution

Uighurs fear spread of Chinese coronavirus in China's concentration camps
More than 50 cases reported in northeastern colony of East Turkestan, home to persecuted Muslim minority.Muslim men of the Uighur ethnic group leaving the Id Kah Mosque after Friday prayers in Kashgar, East Turkestan

Members of China's Uighur minority living in exile are sounding the alarm over the risk of the Chinese coronavirus spreading in concentration camps inside the country, where NGOs say hundreds of thousands of people have been rounded up by Beijing.
So far, official figures released by Chinese state media give no major cause for concern over the Chinese coronavirus outbreak in the northeast colony of East Turkestan, which is home to the Uighurs, a Muslim minority who speak a Turkic language.
It is far from the epicentre of the outbreak and just 55 cases have been reported in the colony so far. The first patients to fully recover in the region have already left hospital, according to official media.
More than 1,100 people have died in China due to the Chinese coronavirus epidemic although most of the deaths and infections have been in the central Hubei province, whose capital, Wuhan, is the epicentre of the outbreak.
But representatives of the Uighur diaspora warn there is a real reason to fear a rapid spread of Chinese coronavirus in the massive Chinese concentration camps.
The Chinese virus spreads from person to person through droplets disseminated by sneezing or coughing, and confining large groups of people together, possibly without adequate access to germ-killing soap and water, will increase the likelihood of an outbreak.
China has rounded up an estimated one million Uighurs and other mostly-Muslim ethnic minorities in concentration camps, NGOs and experts say, and little is known about the conditions inside them.
"People are starting to panic. Our families are there, dealing with the camps and the Chinese virus, and we do not know if they have enough to eat or if they have masks," said Dilnur Reyhan, a French sociologist of Uighur origin.

Muslim ethnic Uighurs carry a woman who fainted during a protest in Urumqi in China's far west East Turkestan colony on July 7, 2009.

A petition posted on Change.org signed by more than 3,000 people urges the closure of the concentration camps in order to reduce the threat.
There have also been social media hashtag campaigns such as #VirusThreatInThecamps and #WHO2Urumqi to urge the World Health Organization (WHO) to send a delegation to the city of East Turkestan.
"We must not wait until news of hundreds of Chinese coronavirus related deaths in the camps before we react," the petition says.
"As China continues to struggle to contain the Chinese virus in Wuhan, we can easily assume the virus will rapidly spread throughout the camps and affect millions if we don't raise the alarm now."
Regional authorities in East Turkestan did not respond to a query from AFP about measures taken to prevent the spread of the Chinese virus in the camps.
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC), one of several groups representing Uighurs outside China, said it was very concerned "that if measures are not taken to further limit the spread of this Chinese virus, it could rapidly infect large numbers of people" in East Turkestan.
"These people are in a vulnerable and weakened state due to the Chinese government's abuses and mistreatment," said its President Dolkun Isa.
"This has just further compounded the suffering of the Uighur people, as our friends and family are now in even greater danger."
French immunologist Norbert Gualde said it was impossible to say "precisely under what conditions the Uighurs and other detainees are living in Chinese concentration camps".
"There are good reasons to think that their detention is synonymous with imposed promiscuity, stress and fear -- all circumstances that favour the transmission of the Chinese virus between those obliged to remain incarcerated," he said.

People's Republic of Coronavirus

Xi's communist malfeasance and misrule fueled China's coronavirus disaster

By Ben Sasse

The coronavirus outbreak sweeping across China, and now threatening dozens of other countries, including the United States, is not just a natural disaster. 

It is the deadly consequence of the Chinese Communist Party’s malfeasance and misrule. 

And, as has been the case for so much of the CCP’s seven-decade hegemony, the cruel irony is that the people of China are its main victims.

More than 60,000 Chinese people have been diagnosed with Chinese coronavirus since the outbreak began in the city of Wuhan in December — many times the number who contracted SARS in 2002-03 worldwide.
More than 1,370 people have died, and nearly 60 million people are in lockdown. 

In Wuhan and surrounding areas, undersupplied doctors are wearing rain jackets for want of biohazard gear, citizens fear imminent food shortages and local crematoria are working around the clock to dispose of bodies.
It did not have to be this way. 

As The New York Times reported, the first case of coronavirus appeared in early December. 

But Chinese officials did not act for more than a month. 

When a Wuhan doctor, Li Wenliang, tried to warn his medical school classmates that an unfamiliar illness was ravaging Wuhan Central Hospital, he and his classmates were silenced by local authorities, who threatened to punish anyone “spreading rumors" and "disrupting social order.”
Chinese tyrant Xi Jinping in Beijing on Feb. 10, 2020.

By the time authorities finally acknowledged what was happening, a full blown epidemic was underway. 

"At critical turning points,” wrote The Times, “Chinese authorities put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis.”
In an additional tragic turn: Dr. Li contracted coronavirus while treating patients. 

The ophthalmologist died last Friday at the age of 34.
Dr. Li’s courage and commitment to human life made him a hero to the Chinese people and an enemy of the Chinese Communist Party.

'Clean,' 'adaptive,' and 'responsive' are only CCP's lies
Secrecy, denial, and coercion are not bugs in Xi Jinping’s regime. 

They are core features. 

The CCP, concerned first and foremost in its own survival, has had to renegotiate a fragile social contract in recent years, staking its continued right to rule on ensuring that the lives of Chinese citizens are safe, healthy and prosperous.
Xi, the party overlords in Beijing and their apparatchiks in China’s provincial and municipal governments have promised that the Chinese government can be “clean,” or free of corruption. 

They promised to be “adaptive” to crises and changing societywide conditions. 

They promised to be “responsive” to the demands of the citizenry, especially China’s rapidly expanding professional class — its millions of attorneys, journalists, scientists, doctors and more, who are increasingly part of a global exchange, and whose demands for efficient social services (good schools, reliable clinics, etc.) resemble the demands of the Western upper-middle class.
What has happened instead? 

Literal plagues have laid waste to the population. 

Toxic environmental conditions prevail across the country, especially in China’s major cities, where air pollution is so bad that it obscures sunlight.
The government’s efforts to silence increasingly vocal political dissidents and religious minorities have exposed a cross-country network of internment camps, a government-sponsored slave labor industry and a horrifying black market in organ harvesting that serves wealthy party members and their family and friends.
And the government’s attacks on Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status have spurred prolonged, intense protests that have startled party leadership.

Chinese citizens deserve real transparency, accountability
These episodes, and others that have flown under the radar of international news media, have brought sharply into question whether the Chinese system, as it is constituted, can really be “clean,” “adaptive” and “responsive.” 

And rightly so.
When “east, west, south, north and center, the party leads everything,” as the CCP declared in 2017, it cannot simply slough off responsibility for fatal mistakes and grave mismanagement. 

But it also can’t cop to its failures. 

If the tyrants in Beijing acknowledge their mistakes, they chip away at their own right to rule. 

Inevitably, their response is to sweep problems under the rug and demand even greater control over the lives of 1.4 billion Chinese citizens — evermore invasive surveillance, evermore complete submission to CCP ideological propaganda. 

This is a risky game.
There is a better way, of course. 

Real transparency and democratic accountability help to prevent these sorts of nightmares. 

Truly clean, adaptive and responsive government is most likely where information can flow freely, where governments are honest and where the people can hold their leaders responsible — and replace them with genuine alternatives. 

A system that prioritizes and protects the inviolable dignity of its citizens, rather than the perpetuation of its ruling cabal, is the only one where real civic health is possible. Communism is the perfect incubator for the Chinese coronavirus. 

China’s predatory system preys on its own people. 

Trials become tragedies, crises become catastrophes, and the bosses in Beijing exploit their own failures as cover for new and worse abuses.
America and her allies should be clear about what is happening. 

China’s people are sick because the Chinese system is.

Shocking Truth

Sen. Ben Sasse: "Communism is the perfect incubator for Chinese coronavirus outbreak"

By Spencer Neale

Sen. Ben Sasse

Sen. Ben Sasse blamed the Chinese Communist Party's malfeasance and misrule amid the rapidly spreading coronavirus that has killed more than 1,000 people.
The Nebraska Republican, writing for USA Today on Wednesday, said that communism is the perfect incubator for an outbreak to occur and highlighted Chinese whistleblowers who have been punished for sounding the alarm on the illness.
"China’s predatory system preys on its own people," wrote Sen. Sasse.

"Trials become tragedies, crises become catastrophes, and the bosses in Beijing exploit their own failures as cover for new and worse abuses."
In the weeks following the outbreak, China has quarantined more than 50 million of its people as roving cement trucks spray clouds of disinfectant along deserted city streets. 

Reports of crematoriums in Wuhan working "24/7" to process "100s of bodies" have led to claims that the Chinese government is covering up the true scale of the epidemic.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping wore a face mask in one of his first public appearances since the outbreak this week.
"If the tyrants in Beijing acknowledge their mistakes, they chip away at their own right to rule," wrote Sasse. 

"Inevitably, their response is to sweep problems under the rug and demand even greater control over the lives of 1.4 billion Chinese citizens — evermore invasive surveillance, evermore complete submission to CCP ideological propaganda. This is a risky game."Sen. Sasse is one of Congress's most skeptical voices in regards to China. 

He blasted NBA basketball players for backing the country during protests in Hong Kong, and he lashed out against the United Kingdom's potential implementation of China-backed Huawei's 5G internet infrastructure last month, saying Britain was inviting "surveillance state commies" to help build out its future internet.

Made In China Pandemic

Cases Of Chinese Coronavirus Soar On Quarantined Cruise Ship. 218 Now Affected.
By Victoria Forster

44 new cases of Chinese coronavirus have been diagnosed on the quarantined cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, bringing the total number of cases to 218.

Over 200 people have now been diagnosed with Chinese coronavirus on the stricken cruise ship the Diamond Princess, after 44 new cases were announced on Thursday morning Japanese time.
Forty-three of the new cases are passengers, with one being a member of the crew, The Japan Times reported. 

The ship is currently docked in Yokohama port and has been for over a week, with no passengers or crew allowed to leave the ship. 

The only exception to this is people diagnosed with Chinese coronavirus, who are taken to local hospitals for treatment.
All of the Diamond Princess cases are thought to originate from an 80-year old man from Hong Kong who traveled on the ship in late January and was later confirmed to have Chinese coronavirus. 

The quarantine approach adopted by the Japanese authorities has been met with an increasing amount of criticism from Chinese who argue that better measures could be put in place to reduce the chance of those still on board from contracting the virus.

As the number of cases continue to rise, family members of those on board are getting increasingly worried and critical about the quarantine tactics adopted by the Japanese authorities.
However, it was announced on Thursday morning local time that those over 80-years old, or with pre-existing health conditions would be allowed to disembark the ship earlier than the planned February 19th.

The sheer number of people now affected and a conservative estimate of the mortality rate of Chinese coronavirus of 2% means that statistically, it is highly possible that some of the infected people on the cruise ship, will not survive the illness.