The Chinese communists are afraid. You might not guess it from the invertebrate and borderline anti-national corporate media parroting Chinese state propaganda, but they are. Beijing is shaken. Their dream of dominating the globe eventually, with the slow overstretch and collapse of the Pax Americana, was considered a matter of destiny.

Then suddenly, it all was shaken. A combination of incompetence, criminal negligence, and totalitarian suppression of a new devastating virus originating from the raw meat and wet markets of interior China let it rage through the globe.

The world’s first postmodern global pandemic, preventable but not prevented, has so far already caused the deaths of more than 13,000 people, torched all the major power centers, decimated the service sector, pushed the global economy to the brink of an unprecedented recession, devastated the stock market, closed the borders of all the great powers, ended global cooperation on vaccines, and rocked the boat of globalisation in ways unthinkable since the peak days of the autarkic 1930s. If this is the hegemonic order of the future superpower, then civilization is doomed.

Some of the bravest men and women have been the Chinese doctors and nurses on the frontlines of this virus, who were bravely raising alarm, often at the cost of their lives, and suppressed by the most totalitarian and evil great power in the planet. Many media outlets are trying to hush it, but the people are not idiots. As David Marcus wrote, 55 percent of Americans support President Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and that includes his saber-rattling against Beijing.

And Beijing is afraid. You can feel that in their intersectional tweets, which are indistinguishable from any random western op-ed in Vice or BuzzFeed or CNN, or the tweets of Alyssa Milano or Jenny Yang. The Chinese state isn’t a race, it’s a regime, and it is not racist to point out that they torched the globe.

Everything from the deaths, to the recession, to the job losses and economic calamity is directly attributable to Beijing. Normal people comprehend that, so it’s obvious that a section of media and celebrities are deliberately engaging in divisive, unpatriotic rhetoric at a time of global crisis, the closest we have come to a total societal stress-test since the Second World War.

You can see the Chinese state is afraid, as their diplomats are spreading conspiratorial think-tank reports on how it was the U.S. Army that spread the virus in a Chinese wet market. You can see they are afraid in their strained expression in otherwise emotionless faces as they spread conspiratorial nonsense, as they desperately argue that globalisation will be destroyed if medical supplies are brought back from China to the United States again, similar to a few American think tank heads.

What you’re observing is the final cry to reshape the narrative by a significant group of people whose dominant foreign policy worldview of the last quarter-century is collapsing as we speak. This comes after “China lied, people died” was trending on Twitter, despite the desperate attempts of corporate Western media to hide Chinese culpability. The New York Times argument that China bought the West time was a paraphrase of a Xinhua propaganda headline. The public can see through the nonsense.

The Atlantic Staff Writer Anne Applebaum argued that China is the new superpower after it sent aid to Italy while Trump closed borders. Time magazine columnist Ian Bremmer argued the same. The elite media continuously harp on these themes.

It’s clear, however, that closing borders was a wise decision ahead of the curve, and was immediately followed by the same decisions in the European Union, India, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. How does it feel to parrot Chinese state propaganda? Very similar to the Euro-left in the 1970s parroting Soviets, I’d imagine. You either don’t realize that you’re a moron, played by the Soviets, or you think it is for the greater good. And this time, there are so many of them.

The reality, however, is that China sold the masks to Italy, profiteering from the global catastrophe they orchestrated. It wasn’t aid. This, after they threatened to stop all medical supplies to the West. They are afraid because they feel a parallel to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which hardened everyone’s resolve and awakened a sleeping giant.

The crisis could have been averted. The thousands of deaths, the millions of job losses, the trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money lost to a recession, could all have been averted if essential medical supplies were in the hands of individual states, or the supply chains were diverse and not in the hands of the world’s potential totalitarian hegemon.

No one would have wanted the supply of medical respiratory tools in the hands of the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Free trade neither means monopoly nor suicide. There were scientific papers from 2006, written by Chinese academics, that warned such a pandemic could arise from wet markets in China. There were articles in 2017 demonstrating the barbarism in excruciating details. All of this was preventable.

Now everyone can now see the alternate reality of a future Chinese hegemony. It’s a communist great power, with medieval practices in parts of the country, which allows preventable pandemics, negligent of its responsibilities, that coaxes, cajoles, and coerces to continue a trading system that monopolizes its stronghold on the planet, aided by useful idiots in our corporate media.

The Chinese state is afraid that everyone can see through that alternate reality. The mask of quiet confidence is ripped to shreds. And Ivan Drago realized that he feels pain as well.