Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Since President Donald Trump’s election, relations between China and the U.S. have been strained.
Trump doesn’t like China much, and, frankly, I don’t either.
In recent years, however, the U.S. has done between $750 billion and $650 billion a year in trade with China. Last year about $450 billion of that was still exports to the U.S.
Does this mean China is our friend? Well, yes and no. Business-to-China relations seem to be good, but U.S.-to-China are as strained as they should be. Their form of what we have called communism — a state-run, state-controlled dictatorship — is opposed in many ways to our way of thinking about government control and personal freedom.
China has managed to maintain government control even as its cities have become burgeoning capitals of well, capitalism. Does communism — share and share alike, except for privileged government apparatchiks — still apply? No. The Chinese are RINOs, Reds in Name Only.
Because of Chinese government control of information, however, we have ample reason to mistrust China’s information about COVID-19. In addition, because the World Health Organization shows as much fear of China as the U.S. Senate shows of Trump, we have reason to mistrust some WHO information about the spread of the virus.
In the scramble to find someone else to blame for the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S., Trump and his slavish minions in the government and right-wing media have now set their sites on China as the reason for all that has gone wrong.
They have gone predictably overboard, enforcing the name “Chinese virus” instead of COVID-19, and taking every opportunity to heap blame on China, and now the WHO.
It started in China, but can we blame the Chinese government? With scant evidence, a theory that the coronavirus broke out of a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, COVID-19's birthplace, is gaining strength through repetition by right-wing media pundits and GOP officialdom.
It is more likely that the virus spread from wild animals sold for meat in a Wuhan marketplace.
Bats, they say. Some Chinese eat bats. They apparently taste like mutton with the texture of chicken.
It is also likely that the Chinese government was and is understating the impact of COVID-19, and that the Chinese government delayed timely announcements — its own and those from WHO — when they might have done the most good.
But Trump has gone overboard on this, too, by refusing to fund the WHO.
That’s the wrong move, because no matter how urgent Trump finds fingerpointing, China, the WHO and the U.S. are learning much that should be shared to fight COVID-19. All suffer loss from the illness and the effects of isolation.
But Trump’s sole focus is his re-election.
Even in that, he makes two tragically wrong assumptions. One is that voters blame him for the virus. They don’t. The other is that the economy alone will decide the election.
His response to the virus might be more influential, especially if the economy opens too soon.
Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: