Quarantine workers in protective suits check identity documents as tourists from the Wuhan area walk off of a chartered plane taking them home from Bangkok at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in Wuhan, Hubei Province, on Jan. 31, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP)

Speech by Chinese General Given Two Decades Ago Finds New Relevance Today

By J.R. Nyquist

Commentary

In a secret speech given to high-level Communist Party cadres nearly two decades ago, Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Chi Haotian explained a long-range plan for ensuring a Chinese national renaissance.

He said there were three vital issues that must be grasped. The first was the issue of living space—because China is severely overpopulated and China’s environment is deteriorating. The second issue, therefore, was that the Communist Party must teach the Chinese people to “go out.” By this, Chi meant the conquest of new lands, in which a “second China” could be built by “colonization.” From this, arose the third vital issue: the “issue of America.”

Chi warned his listeners: “This appears to be shocking, but the logic is actually very simple. … [China is] in fundamental conflict with the Western strategic interest.” Therefore, the United States would never allow China to seize other countries to build a second China. The United States stands in China’s way.

Chi explained the problem as follows: “Would the United States allow us to go out to gain new living space? First, if the United States is firm in blocking us, it is hard for us to do anything significant to Taiwan, Vietnam, India, or even Japan, [so] how much more living space can we get? Very trivial! Only countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization.”

“We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons,” the general said. “Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves.”

The answer is found in biological weapons.

“Of course,” he added, “we have not been idle. In the past years, we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind.”

The ruling Chinese Communist Party considers biological weapons to be the most important weapons for accomplishing their goal of “cleaning up America.” Chi credits former Party leader Deng Xiaoping with putting biological weapons ahead of all other weapon systems in the Chinese arsenal: “When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focus instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country.”

It may seem difficult to believe, but Chi considered himself to be a “humanitarian” communist, and therefore admitted to mixed personal feelings on this matter: “I sometimes think how cruel it is for China and the United States to be enemies.”

After all, he noted, the United States helped China in World War II. Chinese people remember that the United States opposed Japanese imperialism. But none of that matters now.

“In the long run,” said Chi, “the relationship of China and the United States is one of a life-and-death struggle.” This tragic situation must be accepted.

According to Chi, “We must not forget that the history of our civilization repeatedly has taught us that one mountain does not allow two tigers to live together.”

China’s overpopulation problem and environmental degradation will eventually result in social collapse and civil war, according to Chi. He estimated that “more than 800 million” Chinese would die in such a collapse. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party has no policy alternative.

Either the United States is “cleaned up” by biological attacks, or China suffers a national catastrophe.

“We must prepare ourselves for two scenarios,” Chi said. “If our biological weapons succeed in the surprise attack, the Chinese people will be able to keep their losses at a minimum in the fight against the United States. If, however, the attack fails and triggers a nuclear retaliation from the United States, China would perhaps suffer a catastrophe in which more than half of its population would perish. That is why we need to be ready with air defense systems for our big and medium-sized cities.”

In his speech, Chi provides us with a key for understanding China’s development strategy.

“Our economic development is all about preparing for the needs of war!” he said.

It’s not about improving the life of Chinese people in the short run. It’s not about building a consumer-oriented capitalist society. “Publicly,” said Chi, “we still emphasize economic development as our center, but in reality, economic development has war as its center!”

The same can be said for China’s intense interest in the biological sciences.

The West has yet to grasp the underlying motive for China’s ready participation in the West’s P4 microbiology labs, where the world’s most deadly microbes are studied (i.e., pathogen lethality level 4 labs). This now bubbles to the surface in the novel coronavirus pandemic that has occurred in Wuhan, at the heart of China, just outside China’s principle P4 virology lab (specializing in deadly viruses).

Not long after delivering his speech, Chi stepped down as defense minister in 2003, the same year as the SARS (coronavirus) outbreak in China. This was also (coincidentally) the same year Beijing decided to build the Wuhan P4 virology lab.

Two data points are worth considering. First, in 2008, Taiwan’s top security official told lawmakers that “Taiwan had intelligence linking the SARS virus to research done in Chinese labs,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Given China’s economic clout and political infiltration of Chinese-language media, it’s not surprising that National Security Bureau Director Tsai Chao-ming was forced to retract his statement, which had none of the usual features of a “gaffe.” Was Tsai forced to retract a statement that was true, since he couldn’t reveal his intelligence sources inside China?

Second, there is China’s alleged role in technology theft in the West, including in biology labs.

In a recent case in Winnipeg, Canada, prominent Chinese virologist Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, along with her husband and an unknown number of her students from China, was removed from the National Microbiology Lab. Qiu’s conduct is being investigated by the RCMP over allegations described by the Public Health Agency of Canada as a possible “policy breach,” Canadian news outlet CBC reported. Qiu had been invited to the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences twice a year for two years. A later CBC report denied claims that there was evidence the Chinese scientists stole coronavirus from the lab.

There are many details about the case that haven’t been made public yet, and scarce details are available. However, the linkages between the Wuhan outbreak and China’s ambitions when it comes to deadly microbes must figure into our calculations.

We must have an investigation of the outbreak in Wuhan. The Chinese must grant the world total transparency. If Chinese officials are innocent, they have nothing to hide. If they are guilty, they will refuse to cooperate.

The real concern here is whether the rest of the world has the courage to demand a real and thorough investigation. We need to be fearless in this demand and not allow “economic interests” to play a coy and dishonest game of denial. We need an honest inquiry, and we need it now.

J.R. Nyquist is a columnist and the author of the books “Origins of the Fourth World War” and “The Fool and His Enemy,” as well as co-author of “The New Tactics of Global War.”

Update: The headline of this article was updated on May 19, 2020, to more accurately reflect the content of the article. The article was also updated to better reflect the writer’s intent and to avoid any misreading that the writer is attempting to answer currently unanswerable questions surrounding the origins of the virus outbreak in Wuhan. —

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.