In a 1957 speech, China’s revolutionary leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) made an announcement that shocked the world: “I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left.”
Three years earlier, he told India’s prime minister: “If the worst came to the worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist.”
Why is this startling bit of history relevant today? For starters, Mao remains a hero to many Chinese, especially to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) who has called for a revival of Mao thought.
Second, today’s Chinese Communist Party retains the same domestic and world outlook espoused by Mao and his successors during the Korean War, which killed a million Chinese soldiers; the invasions and occupations of Tibet and East Turkestan, now called Xinjiang; the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward that killed 50 million Chinese; “wars of national liberation” in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and Tiananmen Square where thousands of young Chinese were massacred under then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平).
Respect for human life and compassion for human suffering never have been hallmarks of international communism, whether of the Soviet or Chinese variety.
Today’s moral outrages include cultural genocide in Tibet and Xinjiang; Uighur concentration camps; industrial-scale organ harvesting; provocative militarization of the South China Sea; aggression in the East China Sea; and threats to destroy US cities over Taiwan.
Experts on China and national security debate whether the COVID-19 pandemic is “merely” the result of an accidental release of the virus, from either a Wuhan exotic animal wet market or an experimental biomedical laboratory.
However, a more extreme concern has emerged: Was either the initial release of the virus or China’s subsequent handling of the outbreak an intentional act of aggression against the US and the West? Did China deliberately allow the virus to spread within a controlled segment of its own population and then to the world, under the Maoist view that the developed West would suffer infinitely greater damage than China?
Was the Chinese government just egregiously negligent in the beginning, but then discovered there were geopolitical advantages to a plague striking the West just as the worst ostensibly was over in China?
Whether the virus was spread purposely or accidentally, did Xi see the possibility of accomplishing with the virus what his ideological hero Mao only fantasized about through a nuclear exchange: bringing the West to its knees, and at the cost of only one city, rather than half of China’s population?
On the question of motive, there is certainly a plausible explanation for why Beijing would launch such a diabolical scheme.
The US has been decisively winning the trade dispute US President Trump initiated with China last year. Its once-vaunted economy declined while Trump boasted of positive records in all economic areas.
With the stronger economic hand, Trump demanded for the next phase even more fundamental changes in China’s economic system, which would have potentially momentous internal political implications.
Xi cannot have been a happy man under this unprecedented pressure from an administration that Beijing clearly underestimated.
He must have hoped for a way to upset the dynamic that was moving unfavorably against the interests of China’s communist regime (but potentially favorably for the Chinese people).
By chance or by design, the pandemic has shaken the dynamic to its core and stopped the pro-US momentum in its tracks.
Critics have characterized such speculation on Chinese motivation as extremist, over-the-top and even paranoid.
They demand evidence of Chinese intentionality in the tragic events of the past several months. They need to consider a few ominous and incontrovertible facts:
While the virus was spreading in Wuhan in January, Chinese authorities encouraged 100,000 residents and visitors to gather for a massive Lunar New Year banquet. Within two weeks, they were confronted with a veritable pathogenic inferno.
To contain it, the government harshly sealed off the entire city, even welding doors shut to trap residents inside their houses.
Air travel between Wuhan and the rest of China was abruptly terminated to contain the virus, but flights between Wuhan and the rest of the world were allowed to continue and spread the contagion abroad, as Beijing and the WHO opposed Trump’s travel restrictions on China.
The harsh reality is that Beijing’s actions enabled the epidemic in Wuhan, mostly contained it there and in Hubei Province, but then facilitated its spread internationally.
As a result, more than a 217,000 lives have been lost, Western economies have been devastated, governments paralyzed and militaries degraded.
Meanwhile, Beijing points fingers elsewhere and claims the superiority of its system.
Mao would be proud of the virus’ fortuitous outcome for China, all without the use of nuclear weapons.
Xi, his ideological heir, might believe that he has created for himself a get-out-of-jail-free card on potential noncompliance with the trade agreement and aggressive moves on Taiwan, Hong Kong and in the South China and East China seas.
Trump would have to disabuse Xi of that notion, but it would not be easy, given his own propensity to conflate cordial leader-to-leader relations with US’ national security interests. He needs to recall that he made more progress with China — and with North Korea — when he exerted maximum pressure.
China has added to its earlier offenses the incalculable human and economic costs of the pandemic. The instruments of diplomacy and finance, as well as potential remedies under US and international law, offer a range of options to hold China to account.
Chinese, the primary victims of the regime’s incompetence or malevolence, can be enlisted in the effort effectively if they are armed with the instrument of truth from the West.
The painful circumstances the world faces present a unique strategic opportunity and a moral imperative to moderate China’s course and change it for the better.
Trump should seize this chance. Re-elected or not, he would earn a heroic and honorable place in history, just as former US president Ronald Reagan forever will be hailed for the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director in the office of the US secretary of defense. He is a fellow at the Institute for Taiwan-American Studies and a member of the advisory committee of the Global Taiwan Institute.
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