The Daily Signal - What You Need to Know About China and Its Hand In Covid-19

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

 Dean Cheng is senior research fellow in the Asian Studies Center and Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He joins me today on The Daily Signal podcast to talk about what caused the coronavirus, China and its handling of COVID-19, China’s coronavirus statistics, and much more! We also cover these stories: Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the top advisers to President Trump on COVID-19 said Wednesday there were signs of hope in America’s fight against the coronavirus.  The President has raised concerns about mail-in-voting amidst the coronavirus pandemic.  Tom Brady - the former New England Patriots Quarterback and new Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB - says he is tired of all the criticism President Trump is receiving right now.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, April 9th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Kate Trinco. Today, we feature an interview from our colleague Rachel Del Judas, who spoke to the Heritage Foundation's Dean Chang about China and COVID-19. They talk about how China has handled the coronavirus, both internally and externally, and externally, and what this means for China's future. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star

rating on Apple Podcast. and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the top advisors to President Trump on COVID-19, said Wednesday that there were signs of hope in America's fight against the coronavirus. Although one of the original models projected 100,000 to 200,000 deaths as we're getting more data and seeing the positive effect of mitigation, those numbers are going to be downgraded, Fauci told Foxxie. news, I don't know exactly what the numbers are going to be, but right now it looks like it's going to be less than the original projection. However, Fauci, the director of the National Institute on

Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stressed that social distancing remains key. We're going to start to see the beginning of a turnaround, so we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategies because there's no doubt that that's having a positive impact, he said. The president has raised concerns about mail-in voting amidst the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump tweeted Wednesday that Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud. And for whatever reason, doesn't work out well for Republicans. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, joined CNN Tuesday and had this to say about mail-in-voting per the hill. It's about our democracy. It's about our democracy

when it's even a physical challenge to vote. So we want to have more resources to vote by mail, more same-day registration, more states sending balance to those who are qualified to vote. President Donald Trump hasn't been shy about his criticism of the World Health Organization and has threatened to stop sending it American dollars. Now, the organization is firing back with its Director General Ted Ross Adiman Gabrius telling reporters, per the Washington Examiner, we will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave. And when there are cracks at national level and global level, that's when the virus succeeds.

For God's sake, we have lost more than 60,000 citizens of the world. Trump tweeted earlier this week, the World Health Organization really blew it, for some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China-centric. We will be giving that a good look. Right now, the U.S. funds nearly 15% of the World Health Organization and China funds under 1%. Tom Brady, the former New England Patriots quarterback and new Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB, says he's tired of all the criticism President Trump is receiving right now. The six-time Super Bowl champion joined the Howard Stern radio show on Wednesday morning and said, per the Washington Examiner, the guy is doing his best to help the country. I'd like to see as

critics try to do better in his position. Next up, we'll have Rachel's interview with Dean Chang about what's going on in China regarding COVID-19. Our top priority at the Daily Signal is to ensure that you have the most accurate information regarding COVID-19. Here's a message from Dr. Deborah Birx, head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, explaining why the administration has extended the number of days to slow the spread from 15 to 30. We extended the 15-day guidance for another 30 days to ensure that every American can stop the spread of this virus. You can see what's happening in each of our communities. We want to make sure that every single metro area and every single rural area continues these guidelines so that we can prevent both the spread of the virus and the fatalities that we're seeing right now in New York City.

You can be part of the solution. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Dean Cheng. He's a senior research fellow in the Asian Studies Center and Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Dean, it's great to have you on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you for having me. Well, it's a pleasure to have you. Can we start off with talking about what your perspective on China is and how it's handled COVID-19? So I think it's very important to recognize that China is a very different challenge to the United States, even before COVID-19.

It is a country that is in the Asian context, which means it's coming from a region that didn't have balance of power politics. which has been a foundation of American policy, pretty much dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. It's a country that doesn't buy into the rule of law, which again is pretty different from our European counterparts. And it is, unlike the Soviet Union and economic powerhouse, that has trading relations with pretty much every other country on the planet, including the United States. So this makes it a very different challenge, a much bigger challenge. And like I said, that's all before we even had the COVID-19 outbreak. Now that we're dealing with this pandemic, we're confronted with the realities. China is integral to the supply chains of many American businesses, of key parts of our economy,

including pharmaceuticals and microchips. But it also has an outsized place with many of our European. allies with Japan. And yet, because it doesn't really believe in rule of law, because it has a very different view of itself, it has engaged in, frankly, suppressing information, if not outright covering it up in many cases, about things that have global impact. And we're seeing this absolutely in the case of COVID-19. Well, given that perspective, Dean, that you shared, how has China's politics specifically as it is a communist nation affected its handling or even lack thereof of coronavirus? I think it's very important to recognize that from the Chinese Communist Party's

perspective, it all comes back to them. So you can look at COVID-19 as a transnational global threat of a disease that was brand new, novel coronavirus. And we can look at COVID-19 as a transnational global threat of a disease that was brand-new, novel coronavirus. and we should cooperate to try and keep it from spreading and to keep it from basically affecting globally. War, in the case of the CCP, you can view this as a Chinese problem first and foremost, one that maybe justifies even limiting information to the Chinese people, which is what we absolutely saw in the case of Dr. Li Wen Nien. Dr. Lee was one of the first people to warn about coronavirus,

He was sending messages up the chain of command back in China. He was a Chinese doctor. And he was ordered to not only rescind his messages, but to publicly say, I'm sorry, I have been panic mongering. There's pretty good evidence that the Chinese government basically was telling even groups like the World Health Organization that it's not person-to-person transmittable in mid-January when we think they may well have known better. And even now, the Chinese government is claiming, the Chinese Communist Party is claiming that there are no new coronavirus cases and no deaths in a country of $1.3 billion the size of a continent. That's some pretty impressive record keeping, but it's very hard to believe.

Well, Dean, that actually leads into my next question. I wanted to ask you about your perspective on China's coronavirus statistics. I know the New York Times had recently reported that intelligence officials have told the White House, weeks that China has vastly underestimated the spread of the coronavirus and its damage that it has done already. And so where do you stand on how they have reported the statistics that they have said that are happening right now and they're in their country? I'm afraid that the most realistic answer is we simply don't know. We don't really have any kind of independent outside assessment of how many people have gotten infected. And

therefore no context replacing any claims of how many people have died. What we do know is that back in January, the Chinese themselves were publicly recalculating how many people had gotten sick because they kept changing the metric of what counted as somebody who had coronavirus. Was it somebody who had the genetic marker for when they did a blood test? That was how they started. Then they said, well, but if you have certain symptoms, because we don't have the ability to do all of these tests just yet.

We're going to count you as a COVID-19 victim. Then they went back to saying, well, maybe we will only count those that have the marker. And now we're finding out that if you were asymptomatic, even if you tested positive, they weren't counting that. So with all of this morass of figures, we really don't have a good sense of how many people got the disease. And then, of course, in China, there's no free press,

There's no truly non-governmental organizations. They just booted out reporters from the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. So we really don't have a good sense of how many people might have died. And there's all sorts of anecdotal evidence and sort of sideways evidence that suggests that the numbers may be substantially higher. But if they are, we don't really have a way of guessing how much higher. Well, something that we're still trying to figure out is what actually caused the coronavirus. I know one area of speculation has been that it possibly was transmitted from animals to humans at a wet market in the Wuhan area. And now that there have been several calls, including from Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Trump's coronavirus task force, for those markets to be closed.

So can you tell us about what the wet markets are and if you think China should, in fact, close them? When Americans go to get meat, they go to the supermarket and it comes nicely wrapped in usually a white styrofoam container with clear cellophane around it. Meat doesn't actually come from that. Meat actually comes from an animal. And in places like China, but also Africa and South America, especially where refrigeration is not always available, you have wet markets. You go to a place where there are live animals, basically waiting to be slaughtered, often right in front of you. And that way you can verify several things. One, that it's fresh.

Two, you got to pick the chicken, the snake, the dog, the bat, in some cases the pig, that you're going to have for dinner. The problem is, of course, that if you are going to kill an animal, there's a whole lot of blood involved. And that blood can spray and can spread. And it can spread onto people who buy it. It can spread onto other animals. It can spread onto meat or other, even vegetables that are often sold alongside. You could wind up with the mixing of animals, both in terms of blood, but also if they are sick. And in relatively close proximity to each other, they may spread sickness to each other.

And that is where a number of flus and viruses have arisen in the past. There's a reason why a lot of past incidences of flu have come out of China is because of this kind of wet market. But again, it's not just China. Ebola back in 2014 to 2016, we think came out of wet markets in Africa where primates may have been slaughtered for food. Well, another controversial idea is that the coronavirus could have been created. in labs near Wuhan. Do you think there's any realistic chance that this occurred? I think we need to break this into two pieces. The first initial set of rumors along these lines was that it may have come out of a bio-weapons laboratory. The problem with that is, as a lot of

doctors and epidemiologists have noted, first off, there's some pretty good genetic mapping of the coronavirus, COVID-19 virus, and the indications are that this almost certainly arose out of more natural sources. This also goes to the wet market issue because they're seeing bits and pieces of bat coronavirus and pangolin coronavirus. If you were trying to develop this as a weapon, you probably would have gotten rid of those bits and pieces. Another part to this is that coronavirus is actually not a great vector. It's related to the common cold. The fatality rate for coronavirus is estimated to be down in the 1% level, although we're not sure. So that makes it pretty unlikely that it was a weaponized item that got out. Now you're hearing rumors that it may have gotten out of

research lab facilities that are also in the Wuhan area. It's certainly possible. It's hard to prove negative. China's lack of transparency only exacerbates this sort of rumor. But is it possible? Sure. Is that where it came from? I would say that there's really no way to know until there's some kind of independent investigation. I'm curious, too, do you think the coronavirus outbreak in China and the Chinese government's handling of it has caused unrest within China? And has it changed politics in the nation at all? And if that's the case, how do you think it has? It has certainly exacerbated domestic dissent. Dr. Lee has become something of a folk hero, a late folk hero. He died, unfortunately. But his efforts clearly were impactful enough that Xi Jinping, China's leader,

has personally rehabilitated him, has said, you know, Lee was martyr, and Lee has served the Chinese people. I think that what we are seeing with regards to Chinese accusations that coronavirus came from abroad. You can't know it came from Wuhan. Maybe it came from the U.S.

Maybe it came from the U.S. military. Reflect a broader Chinese effort to deflect criticism away from the Chinese government and away from the Chinese Communist Party. to make the case of, no, no, no, it wasn't us. We've done everything right. It's they, the foreigners, the outsiders, who did things wrong, maybe even who introduced it. I think that for Xi Jinping, this really is a double whammy of a catastrophe. It occurs in the wake of the U.S.-China trade war, which saw slowing down of the economy and some job losses.

It also comes in the middle of food problems with pork due to African swine fever and growing shortages of vegetables due to an invasive caterpillar species. So absolutely, Xi Jinping has got to be much more worried now about dissent, about possible unrest. if this continues globally with these shutdowns, that means China has no export markets for its trade, and that means unemployment, which more than anything else will lead to a lot of unrest, demonstrations, and anti-government movements. Well, Britain and Spain, among other countries, have accused China of selling them shoddy medical supplies to treat coronavirus.

Do you think China is doing this deliberately, or what do you think is going on here in this particular instance? Given the political sensitivity and the political messaging that China is trying to send with its aid programs, with its medical assistance programs, with the highlighting of the prompt exporting of personal protective equipment and other medical items, I find it very unlikely that this is deliberate. But in some ways, that should be even less comforting. If it was deliberate, it means that the Chinese have a supply of good stuff that they are sending somewhere else. I think what is really disturbing here is that if the stuff they are sending abroad with a political message is shoddy, what does that say about stuff that they're exporting on a regular basis?

In the past, we've had stories about the Chinese drywall in Florida, emitting noxious fumes, about Chinese baby milk powder in China that was adulterated with plastic beads that destroyed babies' kidneys. What this ought to be alerting us to is that China, as part of your state, supply chain raises fundamental quality control issues. And it mattered less if you were going to use masks, you know, on a fairly normal basis. But now that everyone is demanding them and more scrutiny is underway, we're finding out that products made in China are often really poor quality. And that should be raising concerns about what's going into our drugs, into our bridge dirters into airplane parts, etc.

When it comes to the world stage, what is your perspective on how the World Health Organization and their handling of coronavirus has gone down? I know President Trump has called the World Health Organization very China-centric, and I'm curious, do you think the WHO purposely tried to conceal the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan? I'm one of those folks who tends to believe in foolishness rather than navery. So do I think that the WHO deliberately try to suppress information? I'm not sure we have evidence of that. Remember, WHO is reliant on member states, not only for funding, but also for data.

If the Chinese government says to WHO, look, this COVID thing, don't worry about it. It's not transmissible to humans, which is what the WHO said in January. It doesn't necessarily have the resources to independently go and try and confirm that, especially in the early stages of pandemic. What I think is really worrisome here is the likelihood, however, that WHO didn't ask for follow-up access and questions, didn't announce a global travel ban, because it was worried that China would then restrict WHO access to Wuhan, would prevent any follow-up, any kind of on-the-ground inspection. And that makes, well have led WHA to self-censor. And what we do see all the time from China is it really prefers

that organizations, individuals, governments, self-censor, you know, choose not to ask the question rather than for China to come, you know, and say, oh, you asked a question, we're going to punish you. And if that's the case, then W.H.O is definitely being influenced by Beijing in ways that are even more subtle and harder to really sort of put a finger on or identify. Well, Dean, we've seen both TikTok and Zoom, two companies that have been accused of potentially providing information to the Chinese government gain traction during this pandemic. Should we see Americans use of these as a possible national security threat? Well, if you're using Zoom to have a conversation with your friends about your school assignment

or, you know, sort of staff meeting. I'm not sure how dangerous that is. But what we already have indications of is that Zoom apparently accidentally, that's their term, not mine, routed a huge amount of data to China. Now, what this does remind us is that China has not stopped all of its broader activities simply because of COVID-19. It was hacking before, it's hacking now, it's going to hack after. It was stealing data before, it's stealing data now, and it's going to steal data after.

So from a broader perspective, not just national security, but corporate sensitivity, corporate information security, if you're using Zoom and you're using TikTok, you should recognize that your business plans, your marketing plans, your recovery plans for post-COVID-19 are potentially all being channeled to China and from there to your competitors, whether in the shipbuilding, in the microelectronics, in the agriculture fields. Well, Dean, you recently had a piece on Heritage.org talking about that even amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, China's efforts at political warfare remain in full swing. How is this happening?

We are seeing the Chinese trying to influence other countries. through, for example, what we talked about earlier, the medical equipment that they are sending out. They are labeling it as aid, even though in many cases such as Italy, it's actually items that the Italians have purchased. They are describing it as support for countries in medical need. More worrisome is their effort to, again, deflect criticism onto the United States. So it is not an accident that the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokes, person tweeted out the charge that, hey, maybe this came from the U.S. and maybe specifically from the U.S. military. You should recognize. Your listeners should recognize. Twitter is

actually not allowed in China. So the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson by using Twitter to send this message out was using a platform that the Chinese themselves aren't able to access. This was a very deliberate effort to influence global perceptions. And this, this is a very deliberate effort. goes to the larger reality, China is thinking about what the world should look like post-COVID-19, and it is now already undertaking the actions it thinks will be necessary to achieve the world that it wants to create post-COVID-19. That's part of what political warfare is about, shaping and molding perceptions of China and of China's adversaries, and doing so through, you know, media through public opinion, through public statements, through aid, through economic activities.

Well, thanks for that perspective, Dean. I know we touched on this earlier very briefly, but I wanted to ask you further about what kind of propaganda China is putting out right now. I know you mentioned this briefly earlier. At one point, its officials were suggesting in a tweet that the U.S. could have been behind COVID-19. Is that an idea Chinese communists are promoting still within China. Absolutely. So we see in China discussions about the American military going to China for World Military Games, which did occur. And the U.S. team won, I think, something like seven medals, none gold. So the Chinese spin on this is not, you know, wow, the Americans didn't do well. It's the Americans didn't do well because they came here to spread disease. Remember, China has one of the most

censored internets around. So when messages like this keep cropping up in Chinese bulletin boards and Chinese discussion groups and aren't yanked and pulled and suppressed, then they're being given a tacit okay. What's also disturbing is the extent to which Chinese propaganda has been picked up by Western press, not reporting it as propaganda, but repeating it, parodying it. So on the pages of the New York Times op-ed section was a column fairly early on. China bought us time the West

squandered it. I mean, that is literally word for word from the Chinese themselves. And yet, here is the New York Times repeating that kind of accusation and claim. The New York Times also published a letter from Cui Tienkai, the Chinese ambassadors in the United States. I have to

wonder, given that the Chinese have booted New York Times reporters from China. Does, you know, is this somehow some weird form of equal time? And as important, do we think the People's Daily is going to publish any kind of letter from U.S. Ambassador Brandstead? Well, in the midst of all of this, there's been a lot of notable tension between China and Taiwan over COVID-19. Do you think this has long-term implications for Taiwan's place on the world stage? Absolutely. Taiwan has demonstrated a, excellent ability to try and limit COVID-19 without going down a totalitarian path.

They and the South Koreans implement a lot of measures, ranging from widespread testing to social distancing to quarantining early on, and both seem to have been able to get their arms around the problem. Taiwan is not a member of the WHO because of China, because China refuses to allow Taiwan to even sit in often as an observer. It has opposed that. In the wake of COVID-19, especially insofar as it's traced back to China, you should expect to see a lot of countries probably ask the question, why is Taiwan not part of the World Health Organization, even as an observer? Why is it that they can only receive information or provide feedback secondhand by way of a foreign embassy, usually the United States.

This sort of thing is going to raise questions, and that in turn is going to arouse Beijing's ire. Beijing already is extremely angry that Taiwan is trying to provide aid and assistance to countries trying to cope with COVID-19. So I think that this is only going to get worse as we all wade our way through this pandemic. China has made no secret of its desire to be a world power. this is no news to anybody. Do you think that COVID-19 Dean has accelerated or halted China's progress toward that end and how so?

I think that it's going to have both effects. I think for countries that are poorer, China is absolutely going to be a place that has provided aid and assistance when any masks, any doctors, any ventilators are going to be appreciated. I think in places like Europe, which is tearing itself apart over COVID-19,

I think you're going to see some really major divides emerge. Countries that want to work more with China because it's going to be a wonderful business partner, a marketplace, countries that are going to look at China and say, yeah, and the stuff they provide doesn't work. Countries that are going to look at China as a cybersecurity threat. I don't think it's an accident that the Chinese sent a high delegation team to Poland, especially given that Poland said no to Huawei and their 5G networks. I think that the ultimate balance sheet won't be known for a number of years, but I think it will absolutely complicate assessments. Well, Dean, as we finish our discussion, how do you think the Chinese Communist Party

should be held accountable for what has happened with coronavirus? I think that the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party. We need to recognize that they have a long-term plan, that COVID-19 is a hiccup at most along the way, that their reactions in response to it are not being driven by some kind of shared global sense of responsibility that we should all be, you know, that we're all working together to try and overcome this virus, despite Ambassador Tway's letter to that effect. What can we do about it? I think that as a company, assess their future, where should they invest money, where should they open their next plant, that's the kind of thing that should probably be factored in. Do you want to be reliant? Do you want to be

dependent on what is essentially a potential single point of failure and a massive point of failure at that? We also need to be more realistic and therefore our dealings with China, whether it's on the South China Sea, whether it's space, whether it's cyber. And finally, where does China sit in international organizations. The UN Human Rights Commission just ceded China on its body. I mean, talk about if you can't make this sort of thing up. You know, China being a country that is going to review what constitutes human rights violations. That should probably be a consideration, again, about WHO, the International Telecommunications Union, etc. What should China's role really be in such international rule setting and emergency response organizations.

Well, Dean, it's been a pleasure to have you on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you so much for your insight here. We do appreciate it. Thank you for having me, and I hope you and all of our listeners, stay safe. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. We really appreciate your patience while we record remotely during these weeks. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play,

or Spotify, and please leave us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts to give us your feedback. Stay healthy and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Shrinco and Rachel Del Judas. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Fulia Rampersad, Mark Geinie, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.