asmPolitics-381 [Communist China & United Front in Canada]

VANCOUVER—When Rukiye Turdush took the stage at Ontario’s McMaster University in February, she had a “gut feeling” about an audience member who arrived early to set up his computer and phone.

But she continued with her talk on the Chinese state’s oppression and mass internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghur people in Xinjiang.

Suddenly another man opened a back door of the lecture hall and shouted “La ji!” which means “garbage” in Mandarin, then quickly left. Still, Turdush continued.

During the question-and-answer period, when Turdush asked the young man she had noticed at the beginning of the lecture if he had any questions, he responded with an angry outburst. He told her she shouldn’t speak at the university and shouted “F--- you” as he stalked out of the lecture hall.

Turdush, who is a Canadian citizen of Uyghur descent, later learned that someone had shared a video recording of her talk on a WeChat group for the university’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA).

The leaked screenshots that a concerned student gave her also showed members writing that they had contacted the Chinese embassy about the event. The postings said the embassy told them to find out whether university officials attended the talk and whether Chinese nationals were involved in organizing the talk.

The Chinese consulate in Ottawa denied it had anything to do with the actions, but said in a statement that they “strongly support the just and patriotic actions of Chinese students.”

After the Washington Post and Canadian media outlets reported on the case, the McMaster student union voted to strip the school’s CSSA of its official club status.

But Turdush recently told Star Vancouver that no government or university official has contacted her to verify possible collusion between the students and Chinese government representatives.

“I thought that if I spoke with media, the government would take actions to deal with the Chinese government extending their influence to suppress freedom of speech here in Canada,” she said.

“This is United Front work. I’ve called for an investigation ... but I’ve heard nothing.”

Rukiye Turdush held a talk at McMaster University on the Chinese state's oppression and mass internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghur people in Xinjiang. One audience member filmed it and she later learned that someone had shared a video recording of her talk on a WeChat group for the university's Chinese Students and Scholars Association. The leaked screenshots that a concerned student gave her also showed members writing that they had contacted the Chinese embassy about the event. 

Last month, Global News reported that Richard Lee, an MLA in B.C. at the time, was detained by Chinese authorities in Shanghai in 2015; the officials searched his Canadian government-issued cellphone. Lee received no assistance from the federal government, he alleged.

The Chinese Communist Party’s shadowy United Front Work Department sounds like the stuff of spy novels, but the UFWD is an official agency that is lavishly well-resourced with agents numbering in at least the tens of thousands. In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over an expansion of the department that included adding 40,000 staff, according to a research paper from Gerry Groot, an instructor at Australia’s University of Adelaide.

The United Front is “clearly active in Canada” as well as in many places around the world, but many have never heard of it and the lack of a co-ordinated government response “leaves Canadians vulnerable,” said Human Rights Watch China director Sophie Richardson, who also told Star Vancouver she has spoken with Canadian officials about these concerns.

Last week, Canadian opposition parties banded together to force the creation of a special committee on Canada-China relations tasked with investigating national security issues, diplomatic ties, economic issues and consular affairs.

How long has the United Front been around?

Modern-day United Front activities have roots in imperial China, when emperors started to see the overseas Chinese diaspora as potential assets, and made moves to co-opt foreigners, according to a book by New Zealand academic Anne Marie-Brady.

Chairman Mao Zedong introduced his idea of Leninist “united front work” in a Party journal in 1939, during the 22-year civil war between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party. Mao wrote: “The Party is the heroic warrior wielding the two magic weapons, the united front and the armed struggle, to storm and shatter the enemy’s positions.” He meant that the CCP should rally as many allies as possible in conjunction to waging military campaigns.

When the Communists won the civil war and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949, much of the population remained unconvinced of socialism’s benefits, with many even fleeing the country in fear. And so the united front work continued. The CCP sent emissaries around the country to meet with local warlords, religious leaders and major ethnic minority groups in order to bolster the party’s legitimacy.

What is the United Front?

United Front officials are responsible for managing relationships with key individuals and non-Communist entities both inside and outside mainland China. The UFWD collaborates closely with propaganda officials and the Ministry of State Security police intelligence agency, according to United Front researchers.

In 1979, under Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s ambitious leadership, the United Front became an official department of the Chinese Communist Party. Its task was to collect information from sources around the world and advance Beijing’s agenda everywhere.

What has the United Front done in Canada?

Aside from the story of Turdush’s harassment, earlier this year online trolls went after a woman of Tibetan descent elected as a student union president at the University of Toronto Scarborough, including starting a petition signed by 11,000 people demanding she step down.

Chemi Lhamo, the president of University of Toronto's Scarborough Campus Student's Union, who is of Tibetan descent, told The Star she was being harassed even before she was elected, with many of the attacks accusing her of being a Tibetan separatist. (Chris Young / The Canadian Press)

• Chemi Lhamo, a 22-year-old neuroscience and psychology major, told The Star she was being harassed even before she was elected, with many of the attacks accusing her of being a Tibetan separatist.

“You’re going to get shot and the bullets are going to be made in China,” one user wrote, while others who taunted her claimed to be her classmates.

Lhamo, a Canadian citizen, said she’s a human rights advocate for all and believes Tibetan independence is up to Tibetans living in China, but often, the attacks against her have had Tibetan separatism accusations rolled into them. The Chinese consulate in Toronto denied having anything to do with the targeting of Lhamo.

But the United Front has also courted Canadian politicians. In 2017, the Globe and Mail reported on a number of Canadian senators and MPs who accepted sponsored travel to China and said two of them, senator Victor Oh and then-MP Geng Tan met with arms of the UFWD while there.

What else has the United Front done abroad?

A report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission by policy analyst Alexander Bowe in 2018 raises concerns about Chinese agents approaching students to infiltrate Chinese dissident groups on University campuses in the U.S. and Australia.

The paper points to one organization directly under the United Front, called the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification, as having 33 chapters in the U.S. and “at least” 200 chapters in 90 countries. Canada has chapters of the organization in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.

Confucius Institutes are one of the efforts highlighted by the paper as a major tool for the UFWD. The institutes are billed as an effort to teach Chinese language, culture and history, but also serve to push the Chinese government’s “preferred” narratives on campuses around the world, Bowe wrote.

“The Confucius Institute program has long-standing and formal ties to the UFWD, as Liu Yandong — a former Chinese vice-premier and Politburo member — was the head of the UFWD when she launched the program in 2004,” he wrote.

Chemi Lhamo, a Tibetan youth leader and Canadian citizen, who was the target of death threats after she ran for student union president in Toronto, had this to say to racialized youth after #Trudeaubrownface photo: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/02/18/china-denies-meddling-in-alleged-online-bullying-of-activists-at-u-of-t-mcmaster.html …

Joanna Chiu 趙淇欣

✔@joannachiu

Even after threats including someone saying they had a “bullet from China” for her because of her Tibetan values, Chemi is using her role as Univ. of Toronto Scarborough president to foster a sense of global community. Not seeing international students as revenue for schools.

21

11:51 AM - Sep 19, 2019

 Have any countries worked to counter this effort?

In Australia, the federal government brought in legislation meant to counter attempts by foreign governments to influence Australian politicians and civil servants.

The Espionage and Foreign Interference Act was brought into the country’s Parliament in 2018. It strengthens existing espionage laws and introduces new offences for foreign interference, according to a summary of the bill by Australia’s Department of Defence.

Prison sentences are now possible for “actions that would previously been considered security incidents or breaches of administrative policy,” reads the summary. “Knowingly” funding or being funded by a foreign intelligence agency is among the offences with a 15-year maximum sentence.

Australian academic Clive Hamilton has sounded the alarm about China’s influence in the country. In a panel hosted by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute a year ago in Ottawa, Hamilton said Canada is equally a target for the UFWD.

He said the legislation essentially makes covert activity on behalf of a foreign power meant to influence Australian government illegal.

“The foreign interference law is designed to counter China’s specific forms of foreign interference, that is, covert, coercive and corrupt forms of influence,” Hamilton told Star Vancouver in an email. “Some UFWD activities certainly come within its scope.”

Canadians are more exposed to “influence” operations than ever before, according to an internal assessment from the country’s electronic spy agency.

A 2018 memo from the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) warned the rise of “web technology” like social media, along with Canadians’ changing habits for consuming media, make the population much more likely to encounter efforts by foreign powers to shape domestic political opinion.

Parliament’s new national security review committee has completed a review of foreign espionage activities in Canada and submitted it to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The classified report detailing their findings is expected to be released early in 2020, once the House of Commons resumes sitting.

With files from Alex Boutilier

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See Joanna Chiu 趙淇欣's other Tweets

asmPolitics-380 [Canada helped Beijing stockpile coronavirus safety supplies]

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Before the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak was declared a global pandemic, Chinese consulates in Canada and around the world asked Chinese nationals to stockpile as much personal protective equipment (PPE) as possible for hospitals in China, according to an investigation by Canada's Global News.

In an article titled "United Front groups in Canada helped Beijing stockpile coronavirus safety supplies," published on Thursday (April 30), investigative reporter Sam Cooper shared his findings with Jorge Guajardo, Mexico's former ambassador to Beijing, and Canadian lawmaker Erin O'Toole.

Guajardo claimed that China had engaged in a "surreptitious" state-level operation to secure global PPE supply at low prices and did so before the deadly virus had made its way to Western countries, in early March. He said a source in the Mexican supply chain had told him in mid-January that factories were receiving large orders to send N95 respirators to China.

According to O'Toole, China had been hoarding face masks and epidemic safety equipment since Jan. 14, back when Beijing claimed there were no cases of human-to-human transmission. However, O'Toole said the Canadian government did not respond to China's acquisition campaign despite it being well-known among military and emergency service circles.

According to Cooper, while Canada was shipping more than 14,500 kilograms of protective clothing, face masks, goggles, and gloves to China, Chinese community organizations and business groups in Canada bought and shipped at least 90,700 kg of medical supplies to China. He added the stockpiling operation was launched by The United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a department in charge of managing potential opposition groups in China and important foreign missions.

Cooper pointed out that China's early suppression of accurate information about the outbreak was the main cause for it becoming a pandemic, a belief shared by international media, including the Associated Press. He said that Beijing's decision to downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus has resulted in millions of individuals infected around the world.

Chinese Communist Party

CCP

medical supplies

hoarding

face mask

PPE

Global News

coronavirus

pandemic

COVID-19

asmPolitics-379 [Chinese netizen versus UNIF]

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Popular U.S. clothing brand UNIF has clashed with a Chinese netizen over Hong Kong's independent status after it referred to the special administrative region as a country on its shopping app.

A Chinese internet user recently shared her confrontation with UNIF on Weibo, pointing out that she had noticed Hong Kong being listed as a country on UNIF's official app while she was online shopping. She said she was upset by the label and decided to reach out to the company's official Instagram account.

The woman demanded that UNIF change Hong Kong's label to "region," emphasizing that the city is not a country. The company's social media team then replied, "To us it is! Taiwan too," adding a smiley face. It also emphasized that UNIF does not follow "what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thinks how the world should think" and proceeded to question the netizen's motive behind "wanting to deny freedoms to the people of Hong Kong."

The team pointed out that since Instagram is banned in China, the Chinese woman should not have been using it if she was really loyal to the CCP. It also urged the netizen to spend more time "fighting for freedom instead of oppression."

Seeing UNIF's response, the woman claimed that she merely pointed out something she deemed as common sense. She then asked other Weibo users to boycott the clothing brand while bashing the American company for its "poor-quality" products, reported New Talk.

According to its website, UNIF was founded in L.A. by designers Eric Espinoza and Christine Lai in 2010. Many international celebrities have praised the company and the outfits it produces, including Korean pop stars Jennie Kim and Lalisa Manoban as well as English model Cara Delevingne.

asmPolitics-378 [COMMUNIST CHINA & THE WUHAN VIRUS]

Twenty-nine years ago, on April 18, 1991, I delivered an informal talk at the Hoover Institution about the People's Republic of China (PRC), which I recently found among my papers. What surprised me in re-reading the talk I had given so long ago is how the views I held then have only been reinforced over the last three decades. Reflecting on the Tiananmen Square Massacre that occurred two years earlier, I wrote:

For many of us working in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing … the brutal ruthlessness of China’s leaders came as no surprise. Many of us had, in fact, anticipated a violent outcome, not necessarily because we were especially perceptive about what was going on in the minds of China’s aging Communist leaders, but because our daily experience in China had predisposed us to expect the worst. We were not ... so easily deluded by the mistaken conceptions of China which have molded public opinion in the West and … have also continued to shape the thinking of American policymakers …

I increasingly perceived a dissonance between the professed nature of our relations with China, the supposed direction of Chinese society, and the abstract iteration of our policy, and the actual experience of living in China and dealing with the Chinese government on a daily basis. The dissonance was strongest when I listened to the effusive comments on China and Sino-U.S. relations by visiting Americans, whether they be politicians, academics, or tourists, and heard the overly upbeat assessments of China’s future and our relations with the country that we generally offered visitors.

We were always acting as if the Chinese were friends, if not allies, but the Chinese certainly did not treat us in the same manner. Whether the issue was PRC missile sales to the Middle East, efforts to begin a dialogue on human rights, or simply reciprocal treatment of PRC and U.S. diplomats, I saw an enormous gap between what the Chinese expected from us and what they were themselves willing to deliver.

I believe most countries around the world shared a starry-eyed vision of China after Deng Xiaoping famously “opened up” China, and it appeared nothing could alter it. There was certainly a temporary pause in many countries’ relations with the PRC following the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but it was clear that even the most liberal Western democracies were eager to get beyond Tiananmen and get back to business as usual with the PRC.

Too Many PRC Misdeeds

There nonetheless continued to be almost too many PRC transgressions of internationally acceptable behavior for the world to track, much less protest: the relentless crackdown on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism; the incarceration of a million or more Uighurs; the suppression of Christian churches and Muslim mosques; the ceaseless arrests of dissidents, human rights lawyers, and authors; the expulsions of foreign reporters and newspapers; ongoing reports of organ harvesting; the gradual erosion of “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong; massive intellectual property theft; huge exports of addictive fentanyl; continuing militarization of the South China Sea (SCS) despite a 2016 International Court decision that PRC claims were unlawful; the intentional sinking of Vietnamese and Philippine fishing boats; the support for nuclear and missile programs in Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea; the shipment of fuel and luxury goods to North Korea in violation of UN resolutions that the PRC had supported; and the seduction of developing countries into “debt traps” in support of the PRC’s “Belt and Road” scheme.

The list goes on and on. Collectively, the world has failed to respond with any effect.

PRC Agents of Influence

The key reason for the world’s unwillingness to act in response to such behavior has been the subjugation of values to perceived interests, whether strategic, economic, or both. Former Secretary of State (1973-77) Henry Kissinger famously typified these incentives when he criticized U.S. sanctions imposed on the PRC in response to the Tiananmen Square Massacre and repeatedly called for the preservation of a “special” Sino-U.S. relationship. To justify the hundreds or more people killed at Tiananmen, Kissinger argued in an editorial on July 30, 1989, that “No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators.”

But as commentator Anthony Lewis pointed out on Dec. 19, 1989, in The New York Times: “So if the Czechoslovak ‘authorities’ had sent tanks against the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Prague's Wenceslas Square last month, the United States should have been understanding. After all, governments must be able to govern. But the lesson of Eastern Europe is the opposite. Tyrannical governments do not have to go on governing. The people, though seemingly powerless, can bring about change. The ideals of democracy and humanity have a power of their own.”

Henry Kissinger’s strategic views almost certainly were reinforced by monetary incentives. After leaving government, Kissinger continued to serve as a loyal supporter and advocate of the appeasing policies toward China he initiated. While few doubt Kissinger’s personal belief in the strategic importance of Sino-U.S. ties, it is also true that the consulting firm he founded, Kissinger Associates, earned many millions of dollars over the years arranging access to senior PRC leaders in Beijing for U.S. corporations. Unfortunately, many other former senior U.S. officials — Democrats and well as Republicans — followed the path Kissinger pioneered as an honored intermediary.

U.S. business leaders also directly sought Beijing’s “friendship” in pursuit of their business interests. A more recent egregious example is former New York City Mayor and billionaire business magnate Michael Bloomberg, who as a Democratic presidential candidate last year argued that Xi Jinping “is not a dictator” and took a very soft line on trade with the PRC. Despite Bloomberg’s apparently liberal leanings, his company — fearful of losing its hugely lucrative financial data business in the PRC — in 2012 suppressed further reports by a Bloomberg News journalist on the wealth of Chinese Communist Party leaders, including Xi Jinping, and their families.

Attitudes toward the PRC have been Changing in the U.S. and Elsewhere

Negative views of China have nonetheless continued to increase among the American public, according to a March 2020 survey by the widely respected Pew Research Center. Two-thirds of Americans polled said they had an unfavorable view of China, the most negative rating for the country since the Center began asking the question in 2005. These unfavorable views have, moreover, consistently exceeded positive views since 2013. It would not be too much of a leap to see this trend as at least partly related to the 2012 ascension of Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and his introduction of even more oppressive domestic policies and more aggressive foreign policies.

According to the Pew survey, Americans saw as “very serious” or “somewhat serious” a range of threats from China: its impact on the global environment (91 percent); its cyberattacks (87 percent); its trade surplus with the U.S. (85 percent); the loss of U.S. jobs to China (84 percent); the country’s growing military power (84 percent); its policies on human rights (82 percent); its growing technological power (78 percent); and PRC-Hong Kong tensions (76 percent). Given such views and the unlikelihood of significant progress on any of these issues, in addition to the devastating spread of the Wuhan virus, American views of the country are unlikely to improve.

Surely a reflection, in part, of such unfavorable public views, but also as a result of the tougher policies of the Trump administration and a rare bipartisan consensus in Congress, Washington has forced the closure of Confucius Institutes at many universities by threatening to withhold Department of Defense funding for research.

Disaffection toward the PRC has more remarkably been evident in other countries as well. As of mid-April, Sweden became the first European country to shut down all of its Confucius Institutes and a Confucius classroom as well. The decision partly stemmed from Beijing’s decision on Feb. 25, 2020, to sentence Swedish national Gui Minhai to ten-years’ imprisonment for publishing books in Hong Kong that had been banned by Beijing. He was accused of "illegally providing intelligence overseas.” Such decisions also reflected an overall distrust in the views the institutes were purveying to Swedish students.

The Wuhan Virus Will Be a Game Changer for Global Attitudes

The principal reason for any reconsideration of policies toward the PRC, however, is of course the Wuhan virus. As of this writing, there have been 3,578,301 identified cases of the pandemic virus and 251,059 deaths recorded worldwide. We are still counting and there is no end in sight. Moreover, there is a consensus — in most democratic countries at least — that, as U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo said on May 3, “The Chinese Communist Party had the opportunity to prevent all of the calamity that has befallen the world” but:

Instead, China behaved like authoritarian regimes do. It attempted to conceal and hide and confuse. It employed the World Health organization as a tool to do the same. These are the kinds of things that have now presented this enormous crisis, an enormous loss of life, and tremendous economic cost all across the globe.”

Blame for the initial cover-up and disinformation about the threat of the disease crystalized for many countries where dissatisfaction with China over multiple bilateral, regional, and global issues already existed. Its monopoly on the production of medicines and health supplies also reinforced already strong doubts about globalization, which has so hugely benefitted China. The PRC’s new breed of “wolf warrior” diplomats and journalists aggressively attacking anyone who criticizes the Chinese government's handling of the crisis only deepened divisions. As early as March 3, the official PRC news service Xinhua published a commentary threatening the United States with an embargo on shipments of medical supplies and a future filled with more diseases:

“If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing a travel ban on the United States, it will also announce strategic control over medical products and ban exports to the United States. Then the United States will be caught in the ocean of new coronaviruses.”

Such language has been a wake-up call. As Republican Senator and former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote in an editorial for the Washington Post on April 23:

“America is awakening to China. The covid-19 pandemic has revealed that, to a great degree, our very health is in Chinese hands; from medicines to masks, we are at Beijing’s mercy ... but China’s stranglehold on pharmaceuticals is only a small sliver of its grand strategy for economic, military and geopolitical domination. The West’s response must extend much further [than remedying our medical dependence] — it will require a unified strategy among free nations to counter China’s trade predation and its corruption of our mutual security.”

Moreover, PRC sales — or “donations” — of defective medical masks, ventilators, and other supplies to countries such as Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Pakistan, have only sown further distrust and dissatisfaction.

It is, therefore, no surprise that the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Australia, and the executive chief of the EU, among others, have called for a full investigation into how the virus got started. In contrast, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the agency would carry out an “after-action” review when the pandemic is over.

In addition, President Trump, other senior U.S. officials, and even the state of Missouri have talked about seeking reparations, as unsuccessful as this is likely to be. Others have talked about, and are writing articles about, what might be legally feasible. Meanwhile, the popular German newspaper Bild published a front-page article on April 15 demanding that the PRC pay Germany €148 billion for damages caused by the Wuhan virus.

On April 17, the former vice president of the Africa Region of the World Bank wrote an editorial in the Washington Post calling on China to write off all of the more than US$140 billion that China’s government, banks, and contractors extended to African countries between 2007 and 2017 as compensation for the severe impact the Wuhan virus was having and would continue to have on Africa.

The PRC Will Face Serious Economic Challenges

While I doubt the PRC will ever pay reparations, it will certainly continue to face serious, if not severe, economic consequences from the pandemic. We know that many countries have now lost confidence in supply chains centered on China, and this will almost certainly lead to a reconsideration of production there. There will also almost certainly be legislation requiring companies producing vital products to leave the country. Japan has already set aside US$2 billion of an economic stimulus package for companies shifting production back to Japan, according to an April 8 Bloomberg report. Since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2016, Taiwan businesses have already increasingly diversified their production capacity in other countries.

South China Morning Post columnist Cary Huang in a May 3 commentary also observed that “One of the more worrying consequences of the coronavirus is that it looks likely to become a catalyst for de-globalization … At the center of this will be the decoupling of the Chinese economy with developed economies and the U.S. in particular. The world’s three largest free economies — the European Union, the United States, and Japan — are all drawing up separate plans to lure their companies out of China … China has been the biggest beneficiary as its economic rise has come hand in hand with globalization.” As a result of de-globalization, China may well become the biggest loser.

In addition to de-globalization, the PRC already bears one of the heaviest debt burdens in the world, and as a result of the pandemic, the dozens of developing countries already heavily indebted to China that are now coping with the pandemic will unlikely be able to meet their debt obligations. The PRC will face the dilemma of wanting to add to its debt burden to stimulate the economy but also the growing problem of finding anyone willing to buy PRC debt at a time when foreign direct investment in the nation will also be dropping.

As the rest of the world struggles with weakening economies, the PRC will increasingly find it difficult to secure customers for its export-driven economy.

Taiwan, the Virus, and the WHO

The World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO’s decision-making body, will hold its annual meeting in Geneva on May 18. It is likely to be an extremely contentious meeting. A key issue will, of course, be the question of Taiwan’s participation. Taiwan took part in the assembly as an observer from 2009 to 2016 but has not been re-invited since President Tsai took office. China also blocked Taiwan’s participation following the SARs outbreak in 2003. The EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the United States have all called for Taiwan to be allowed to join the WHO, while the PRC will oppose even putting Taiwan’s participation on the agenda.

One important factor that will weigh heavily in Taiwan’s favor will be the worldwide acclaim it has earned for its enormously successful management of the pandemic — certainly the best of any developed country in the world. Moreover, its generosity in sharing medical supplies with other countries, its excellent public health system, and its scientific expertise in fighting diseases are widely recognized. In addition, the provably false accusations of racism that WHO Director General Tedros leveled at Taiwan and the concurrent evidence of racist attacks against Africans living and working in the PRC might swing some African votes in Taiwan’s favor.

There may also be a major WHA battle over the demands of many countries for an immediate investigation into the outbreak. The assembly will also have to address Australian Prime Minister Morrison’s call for the establishment of a system of independent WHO inspectors, along the lines of weapons inspectors, with the power to enter a country to carry out immediate investigations when there is evidence of an epidemic.

The PRC will oppose these reasonable proposals. The immediate reaction of its ambassador to Canberra’s call for an investigation was to threaten to boycott Australian products and halt the flow of Chinese students into the country. The PRC had already been accused of blocking and forcing revisions to an internal European Union report stating that China had spread disinformation to absolve itself of guilt for its role in the pandemic’s outbreak.

Such continuing opposition to ascertaining the truth will in itself be a telling reminder that China does not want the truth to be known. It will also reinforce the growing perception worldwide that the PRC is the source of, rather than the solution to, global problems.

William A. Stanton is vice president of National Yang-Ming University. He previously served from August 2017 to July 2019 as a professor at the Center for General Education at National Taiwan University. Dr. Stanton previously worked for four years as the George K.C. Yeh Distinguished Chair Professor and founding director of the Center for Asia Policy at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU). From October 2014 through January 2016, he was also NTHU’s senior vice president for Global Affairs. Dr. Stanton previously served for 34 years as a U.S. diplomat. His final posting was as director of the American Institute in Taiwan (2009-2012).