Observers might have asked years ago, as the Financial Times did in 2014, “US v China: is this the new cold war?” Now one China expert is likening the Wuhan virus’s release to an act in a hot one, according to American Thinker.

As the site’s Marion DS Dreyfus reports, “We had a Zoom meeting with China expert Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China, last night and learned that Chang thinks the ‘release’ of the coronavirus into the public sphere was either ‘accidental,’ which he disputes, or deliberate, to gain a march on the U.S., which is out of favor and being degraded and derided by the important media and groups in China.”

Note that this isn’t to say the virus was bioengineered; it’s probably a naturally occurring pathogen. But authorities now believe the virus likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory — perhaps the Wuhan Institute of Virology — where it was used in experimentation.

Dreyfus points out that this “Level 4 Biolab ... failed U.S. inspection as far back as 2018,” and U.S. authorities had long feared that an accidental pathogen release could occur there.

Whatever the case, Chang points out that China is not our friend and that we need to economically distance ourselves from it as we socially distance ourselves from each other. We must stop doing business with Beijing, especially in critical areas such as pharmaceuticals and military hardware, asserts Chang, and we should cease treating the nation favorably.

In reality and as I’ve long believed, one of American history’s greatest foreign policy mistakes was Richard Nixon’s “opening” of China. Napoleon Bonaparte once supposedly said, “China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.” We helped awaken her, and she got rich off our backs. We created a monster, and now Beijing’s malevolence has, pun intended, gone viral.

In fact, the Wuhan virus event “is nothing short of an all-out war,” Dreyfus paraphrases Chang as saying. “Xi knew of, and tried to maximize, our dependency on China to resupply our personal protective equipment and other necessities.”

Elaborating and quoting White House counsel Peter Navarro, Chang also said that before the full virus storm hit America, “Xi made sure to ‘vacuum up all the world’s available PPEs’ — masks, about two billion, as well as gowns, gloves, and the like,” Dreyfus further relates. “As the world’s countries affected turned to obvious sources to secure these PPEs, China charged piratical, extortionate prices up to ten times the cost it had paid for this vital protective gear.”

Of course, China lied profusely, abetted by useful stooges at the World Health Organization (WHO), about the nature and threat of the virus to buy itself time to effect the above scheme.

This also served to sicken the world — and Chang isn’t the only observer theorizing that this actually constituted coldly delivered “biowarfare.” Just consider the Diplomat, which recently explored what could have been Beijing’s thinking.

The “more Beijing cooperated, the less the disease stood to affect other countries,” the site wrote. “This includes countries China sees as a threat to its existence, like the United States. Why should China suffer the effects of a pandemic while others stayed safe — and increased their strength relative to China — based on China’s own costly experience?”

“Such a question is of course inimical to human decency,” the Diplomat continued, writing of what it calls an “unthinkable” calculation. “And yet we must consider that Xi Jinping has produced the greatest program of ethnic cleansing in the world today. He has curtailed freedoms in China severely and is the father of the panopticon state. His incessant military buildup threatens neighbors while using economic and other subversive means to erode the sovereignty of countries around the world.”

Yet that’s just the iceberg’s tip. Beijing has also compelled women to undergo prenatal infanticide, executes more people yearly than the rest of the world combined, forcibly suppresses Christians and other religious minorities, and ghoulishly harvests and sells the organs of political dissidents.

Moreover, as Beijing has projected power abroad, it has succeeded in censoring our movies, bullying our businesses into doing its bidding, and putting Chinese propaganda in our schools.

This has all been enabled, too, by recent U.S. presidents, says Chang; that is, until Donald Trump flipped the script and put the screws to Beijing. (And let’s not forget the other politicians who’ve abetted Chinese interests and gotten rich while doing so, such as presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.)

In fact, even now, during the Chinese-made pandemic, our politicians (usually Democrats) are continuing the dangerous dance with Beijing. Just consider that 43 law-enforcement agencies operating in 22 states are enforcing social-distancing orders by using drones — donated by a Chinese company.

Many are concerned, mind you, that the Chinese have ulterior motives and that the drones may be transferring information back to China (which is par for the nation’s course). Then again, maybe Beijing is just listening to its better angels and is suddenly overcome with a charitable spirit.

That was sarcasm, of course. Beijing’s spirit is better epitomized by the fact that it still honors Mao Tse-tung, history’s most prolific mass murderer (body count: approximately 60 million), and has his picture hung in various places. That alone should be enough to make us wonder why we ever gave Beijing most favored nation status.

After all, would we look so kindly upon Germany if it still honored Hitler?

Image: narvikk/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.