ILLUSTRATIVE IMAGE: asiatimes.com
Written by Pepe Escobar; Originally appeared on asiatimes.com
Among the myriad, earth-shattering geopolitical effects of coronavirus, one is already graphically evident. China has re-positioned itself. For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the US as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference during the peak of the fight against coronavirus.
Beijing is carefully, incrementally shaping the narrative that, from the beginning of the coronovirus attack, the leadership knew it was under a hybrid war attack. Xi’s terminology is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a “people’s war” had to be launched.
Moreover, he described the virus as a demon or devil. Xi is a Confucianist. Unlike some other ancient Chinese thinkers, Confucius was loath to discuss supernatural forces and judgment in the afterlife. However, in a Chinese cultural context, devil means “white devils” or “foreign devils”: guailo in Mandarin, gweilo in Cantonese. This was Xi delivering a powerful statement in code.
When Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, voiced in an incandescent tweet the possibility that “it might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan” – the first blast to this effect to come from a top official – Beijing was sending up a trial balloon signaliing that the gloves were finally off. Zhao Lijian made a direct connection with the Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019, which included a delegation of 300 US military.
He directly quoted US CDC director Robert Redfield who, when asked last week whether some deaths by coronavirus had been discovered posthumously in the US, replied that “some cases have actually been diagnosed this way in the US today.”
Zhao’s explosive conclusion is that Covid-19 was already in effect in the US before being identified in Wuhan – due to the by now fully documented inability of US to test and verify differences compared with the flu.
Adding all that to the fact that coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the variety that infected Wuhan, Chinese media are now openly asking questions and drawing a connection with the shutting down in August last year of the “unsafe” military bioweapon lab at Fort Detrick, the Military Games, and the Wuhan epidemic. Some of these questions had been asked – with no response – inside the US itself.
Extra questions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on October 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly virus – which happened to be coronavirus. This magnificent coincidence happened one month before the outbreak in Wuhan.
Event 201 was sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hopkins Foundation and the UN. The World Military Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day.
Irrespective of its origin, which is still not conclusively established, as much as Trump tweets about the “Chinese virus,” Covid-19 already poses immensely serious questions about biopolitics (where’s Foucault when we need him?) and bio-terror.
The working hypothesis of coronavirus as a very powerful but not Armageddon-provoking bio-weapon unveils it as a perfect vehicle for widespread social control – on a global scale.
Cuba rises as a biotech power
Just as a fully masked Xi visiting the Wuhan frontline last week was a graphic demonstration to the whole planet that China, with immense sacrifice, is winning the “people‘s war” against Covid-19, Russia, in a Sun Tzu move on Riyadh whose end result was a much cheaper barrel of oil, helped for all practical purposes to kick-start the inevitable recovery of the Chinese economy. This is how a strategic partnership works.
The chessboard is changing at breakneck speed. Once Beijing identified coronavirus as a bio-weapon attack the “people’s war” was launched with the full force of the state. Methodically. On a “whatever it takes” basis. Now we are entering a new stage, which will be used by Beijing to substantially recalibrate the interaction with the West, and under very different frameworks when it comes to the US and the EU.
Soft power is paramount. Beijing sent an Air China flight to Italy carrying 2,300 big boxes full of masks bearing the script, “We are waves from the same sea, leaves from the same tree, flowers from the same garden.” China also sent a hefty humanitarian package to Iran, significantly aboard eight flights from Mahan Air – an airline under illegal, unilateral Trump administration sanctions.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic could not have been more explicit: “The only country that can help us is China. By now, you all understood that European solidarity does not exist. That was a fairy tale on paper.”
Under harsh sanctions and demonized since forever, Cuba is still able to perform breakthroughs – even on biotechnology. The anti-viral Heberon – or Interferon Alpha 2b – a therapeutic, not a vaccine, has been used with great success in the treatment of coronavirus. A joint venture in China is producing an inhalable version, and at least 15 nations are already interested in importing the therapeutic.
Now compare all of the above with the Trump administration offering $1 billion to poach German scientists working at biotech firm Curevac, based in Thuringia, on an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, to have it as a vaccine “only for the United States.”
Social engineering psy-op?
Sandro Mezzadra, co-author with Brett Neilson of the seminal The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism, is already trying to conceptualize where we stand now in terms of fighting Covid-19.
We are facing a choice between a Malthusian strand – inspired by social Darwinism – “led by the Johnson-Trump-Bolsonaro axis” and, on the other side, a strand pointing to the “requalification of public health as a fundamental tool,” exemplified by China, South Korea and Italy. There are key lessons to be learned from South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
The stark option, Mezzadra notes, is between a “natural population selection,” with thousands of dead, and “defending society” by employing “variable degrees of authoritarianism and social control.” It’s easy to imagine who stands to benefit from this social re-engineering, a 21st century remix of Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.
Amid so much doom and gloom, count on Italy to offer us Tiepolo-style shades of light. Italy chose the Wuhan option, with immensely serious consequences for its already fragile economy. Quarantined Italians remarkably reacted by singing on their balconies: a true act of metaphysical revolt.
Not to mention the poetic justice of the actual St. Corona (“crown” in Latin) being buried in the city of Anzu since the 9th century. St. Corona was a Christian killed under Marcus Aurelius in 165 AD, and has been for centuries one of the patron saints of pandemics.
Not even trillions of dollars raining from the sky by an act of divine Fed mercy were able to cure Covid-19. G-7 “leaders” had to resort to a videoconference to realize how clueless they are – even as China’s fight against coronavirus gave the West a head start of several weeks.
Shanghai-based Dr. Zhang Wenhong, one of China’s top infectious disease experts, whose analyses have been spot on so far, now says China has emerged from the darkest days in the “people’s war” against Covid-19. But he does not think this will be over by summer. Now extrapolate what he’s saying to the Western world.
It’s not even spring yet, and we already know it takes a virus to mercilessly shatter the Goddess of the Market. Last Friday, Goldman Sachs told no fewer than 1,500 corporations that there was no systemic risk. That was false.
New York banking sources told me the truth: systemic risk became way more severe in 2020 than in 1979, 1987 or 2008 because of the hugely heightened danger that the $1.5 quadrillion derivative market would collapse.
As the sources put it, history had never before seen anything like the Fed’s intervention via its little understood elimination of commercial bank reserve requirements, unleashing a potential unlimited expansion of credit to prevent a derivative implosion stemming from a total commodity and stock market collapse of all stocks around the world.
Those bankers thought it would work, but as we know by now all the sound and fury signified nothing. The ghost of a derivative implosion – in this case not caused by the previous possibility, the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz – remains.
We are still barely starting to understand the consequences of Covid-19 for the future of neoliberal turbo-capitalism. What’s certain is that the whole global economy has been hit by an insidious, literally invisible circuit breaker. This may be just a “coincidence.” Or this may be, as some are boldly arguing, part of a possible, massive psy-op creating the perfect geopolitlcal and social engineering environment for full-spectrum dominance.
Additionally, along the hard slog down the road, with immense, inbuilt human and economic sacrifice, with or without a reboot of the world-system, a more pressing question remains: will imperial elites still choose to keep waging full-spectrum-dominance hybrid war against China?
To be honest the Chinese culturally, morally and humanely are far superior to the degenerate Americunt and Zionist cowards. Despite being the victim of the worst bio-warfare attack in modern history, the Chinese turned the tables on the Americunt criminals and had the decency and honor to support their allies like Iran in the middle of tackling the virus themselves and even sent planeloads to medicines and medical personnel to help Italy a NATO member.What did the mean nasty degenerate Americunt arseholes do? buy guns, hoard toilet paper and impose more sanctions on Iran, China and Russia. Americunts are lower than even cockroaches and totally selfish morons.
Only two things rise in this crisis……….Death……….and Dollar……….for the last twenty years i listen about the US economy collapse, the sad reality, you can defeat the US Army……….but not the Dollar!!!!!!
Just wait and see, the dollar collapse is coming and may take some time. When this bio-warfare is over, there will be a changed world. A totally new order is coming.
I am waiting for 30 years…………perhaps is the “Hundred Years War”…
There is paradigm shift taking place and it does take decades. The last such mega change was the theft of North America, Africa, Australia and perverted age of colonialism. China has changed the world economic and geo-strategic order in barely 40 years and will now become more assertive after the Americunts tried to subvert its economy by bio-warfare.
I usually agree with you on everything, but I don’t think we are near a dollar collapse yet. As long as the US still maintain a military dominance over the world, and the countries that can challenge it are unwilling/afraid to take a chance, then dollar hegemony will continue.
central banks have all been reducing dollar holdings, treasuries in the past 15 years–no longer the preferred reserve currency…the dollar is fake–not backed by gold, the US has printed billions in the pst 2 months in order to prevent their collapse—boeing is so pathetic uncompetitive that they require a huge govt bailout in order to prevent bankruptcy—amerikans r so incompetent that they r unable to produce their own public transport—it is produced in Brazil, France, Austria, Germany, Italy…they do produce burgers—so defiled w hormones and steroids —having no taste they require condiments to disguise the tastelessness
Yes….the dollar is a bubble……but…..USA-China problems, the dollar rise, pandemic, the dollar rise, i live in South America, here the dollar is not a currency……….is God!!!!!
The rise of the dollar during a financial crisis doesn’t mean you have a strong economy …. it means that investors are in a liquidity crisis and need cash and nations are loading up with USD to facilitate trade. It’s a response to a crisis at a time when the USD is still the worlds reserve currency not a sign of the worlds faith in the US economy.
We are three weeks into an unprecedented financial crisis, equities are falling at the fastest rate in history. You just threw $2T at the markets in an effort to right the ship and the effect lasted ONE DAY. The 2008 financial crisis took 18 months to reach this state and QE actually worked.
You have a consumer driven economy and half the consumers in the country are sitting home with no income and will likely be in that situation for months. Demand is going to collapse
You got out of the last depression by using the manufacturing capacity built during the war to rebuild the world and supply them with oil at a time when every developed nation on earth had their economies shattered by WW2. Today China is the worlds manufacturing superpower. The world is not ravaged by war today. You are going to need huge capital expenditures to compete with China on manufacturing at a time when capital is evaporating, GDP is falling off a cliff and debt:GDP ratio is exploding.
You want investment advice …. buy seeds and plant a garden.
You’re right. These days I make a lot of money thanks to the dollar.
I do not know where the idea stems from that gold as actual or gold backed paper currency means a stable economy, and especially the idea it was anti- inflationary, history shows no matter the object used it is still barter based. As examples gold did not save one life during the Black Death; during US largest gold booms in California and Alaska the price of commodities and staples rose nationwide some 10x, and the workers had very little currency of silver or gold, while the Sovereign wealth and that of even less than 1% of population left behind the 99% worse off than discoveries. The powers that be setting of value of silver ounce to gold ounce left majority of Europes and other peoples with a devalued silver coinage. Very little gold passed through peoples hands, damn little, even when Spain and Portugal were stealing hundreds of tons from Americas the poor soon seen inflation slam them and slam them hard as actual numbers of impoverished increased. The real culprit is not the Sovereign wealth of US treasury but the Federal Reserve which is made up of Multiple foreign banks, it was made illegal for US Treasury to join the Fed Reserve. The other culprit is Corporate Identity, which at one time had to have permission from sovereign states and were at inception only for limited, gov contractural, specific categories and time frames, limiting their abilities to replace established government authority. In US founding years a “Capitalist” was a dirty word, as it meant any person or singular persons were using Federal Treasury for own gain and not the people as a whole. It is patently obvious that Capitalism today is but of the same character as back then. In US banking since Fed Reserve was established drasticly changed from the old European banking systems, where a banks lending power came from its depositors, and in U S banking makes more profits as Trump calls it, The Art of the Deal, narranging not small loans but large and very. large for paperwork fees, driving up all cost to investors home owners and consumers. The products you purchase have an interest rate paid by Corporations, not CEOs, on top of production cost, use other peoples money not their own. Here is an idea, stop kissing your governments behind and letting tell you how to live or invest for retirement, take charge, stop borrowing to purchase even basic necessessities, being made to have direct deposits ( captured funds in national emergencies and allowed to be leveraged as an asset by them, and instead of 401 k where you pay for corporate devaluations, (How does money disappear it doesn’t, it shifts, and use means of roths and pay property gains tax, where even your share loses you can recoup portion as a tax deduction of loss values. Best bet is to do as the only real entrepeneures left, of drugs and prostitutes, most honest money makers out there, never let gov know what you have, they are not your friends. At one time the internet let tens of millions access to wealth building, as to tax, well that was left up to oneself.
When the world public becomes aware of the lengths neocons have gone to support their crumbling facade of world dominance, good luck with the full-spectrum dominance thing. All gov’ts know that fighting one’s own people on one’s own soil is a mugs game in which nobody wins.
The world needs to hang on to its sanity for a little longer until neocon dinosaurs die out and their warped visions wither on the vine. Ensuring their reserve currency sinks, cutting off their extortion payments, will go some way to starving out these lumbering destroyers with the brain size of a reptile.
China’s fundamental state policy of opening-up has not changed and will not change. Foreign media organizations and journalists who cover stories in accordance with laws and regulations are always welcome in China, and will get continued assistance from our side. What we reject is ideological bias against China, fake news made in the name of press freedom, and breaches of ethics in journalism. We call on foreign media outlets and journalists to play a positive role in advancing the mutual understanding between China and the rest of the world.
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1757162.shtml
Pepe Escobar is correct, Beijing and Washington are on a collision course. Scientists seem to know so little about Covid-19; yet governments are trying to enlist it for hegemonic motives. Added to pestilence we will get world war. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/ https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d843b92814b3f0c755369d1c8febcab531be6f268ed76d2c59895dbfe3748df8.jpg