The coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread throughout the world, having infected more than 100,000 people and causing the deaths of more than 4,000. Officials in charge of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have rightly received plenty of criticism about how they’ve managed the outbreak, with nearly half a million people calling on WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to resign.

The reason for the WHO’s failure to properly act to contain the outbreak, and its repeated issuing of inaccurate and bad advice, is not merely the result of incompetence. Rather, the malfeasance is the direct result of the CCP deliberately buying out WHO’s leadership, with tragic consequences.

Experts have pinned the virus as starting possibly as early as October, months before the CCP alerted the world about the risks posed by the deadly disease. Rather than addressing the issue, China arrested journalists and doctors who tried to sound the alarm. In addition, the “People’s Republic” blocked information on social media and removed all news stories that attempted to report accurate infection numbers. The end result of this was preventable suffering, as countries were unable to take the urgent action needed to respond.

Yet through all the CCP’s obfuscation and ensigning preventable deaths, the WHO consistently praised the CCP for its “transparency” and “leadership,” saying its actions were “making us safer.” To the incredulity of health professionals around the world when finally alerted to the seriousness of the threat in January, the WHO refused to declare it a public health emergency. It took until February 10 for the WHO to even send an advance party to China.

At the same time WHO representatives gushed in praise of the regime’s response, noting the “Chinese people feel protected.” The WHO continues to lavishly praise China as they continued to downplay the threat of the coronavirus, taking months to classify it finally as a pandemic because that “might spook the world further.”

U.S. Funding Organization That Obeys Red China

Scientists and patients are rightly demanding answers as to why the WHO coddles dictators instead of holding them accountable and acknowledging the seriousness of the threat. The United States is the largest contributor to the WHO’s budget, in 2017 sending the agency half a billion dollars.

Unfortunately, few are willing to accept the cynical truth that the WHO has let funding priorities and the personal ambitions of its leadership get in the way of sound public policy. As with so many things, an understanding can be found by following the money.

China worked “tirelessly behind the scenes” in lobbing to ensure the election of Tedros, who previously served in the government of the Marxist and violently repressive Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. This gruesome movement was responsible for gross human right abuses, such as torture, repression, and electoral fraud. During his tenure as health minister, Tedros was most known to have covered up three cholera outbreaks.

So why did China push so hard for Tedros? The ex-revolutionary’s tenure is merely part of a broader CCP strategy to take over international organizations to “reshape the international system to accommodate its political and economic interests…In service of this strategy, [China] has consistently sought to trade financial incentives for votes, offering bribes and cancelling debt for countries that support them.”

As noted by Assistant to the U.S. President Peter Navarro, the CCP has a “broad strategy to gain control over the 15 specialized agencies of the UN. China already leads four of the UN specialized agencies while no other country leads more than one.” Last week the CCP lost a bid to head the World Intellectual Property Organization, a particularly brazen attempt given China’s position at the forefront of intellectual property theft.

Tedros was the perfect puppet for China, because his Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front was already a patsy for the CCP. Addis Ababa is known as “the city that China built,” with the CCP funding the construction of everything from the metro system to highways and skyscrapers throughout the city, as well as the $200 million headquarters of the African Union.

This degree of Chinese ownership extends throughout the country. When the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway was built, the Export-Import Bank of China backed the project with $3.3 billion in loans, and 400 Chinese investment projects valued at more than $4 billion are already in full operation in the country.

Tedros’s Real Patron: China

Once ushered in as director-general, Tedros quickly repaid China’s support. The first day after his election he expressed support for the Chinese Communist Party’s claim over Taiwan. Not long after, he appointed brutal dictator Robert Mugabe, a China ally, as a “goodwill ambassador” in a move described by diplomats as an obvious “payoff.” This support was quickly reciprocated. China decided to fund a new $80 million World Health Organization “Center for Disease Control” in … Ethiopia.

China has even boasted about its almost-takeover of the WHO. In 2017 alone it signed an agreement with the WHO for its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, co-chaired the China-Africa Health Ministers Conference, and hosted the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation during which the CCP pledged $8.8 billion to developing countries “to improve people’s well-being worldwide.”

The CCP’s near-total takeover of the WHO comes at a sharp human cost, as the world is tragically now realizing. But despite China buying off most WHO officials, the core and plurality of its funding comes from U.S. taxpayers. It’s time for the United States to urgently demand WHO reform before more lives are lost.