China’s dramatic change in its COVID policies could have detrimental consequences for the world’s population: we may face the prospect of a new wave of the virus that will have a huge impact on public health, three years after the start of the pandemic. The Chinese government seems to have “the Midas touch” backwards when it comes to COVID-19: everything it touches turns into a disaster.
To this day, China has not revealed the origin of the pandemic, after denying epidemiologists critical information that could have weakened the outbreak in late 2019 and early 2020. China still information from the censors about the origin of COVID in Wuhan and has not recognized misinform the World Health Organization (WHO) on the respiratory transmission of the virus, falsehoods spread by the WHO.
The Chinese government does not publish accurate statistics on the pandemic, the vaccine produced, and the efficacy of other vaccines developed in the West. absurdly underestimates the number of Chinese suffering from COVID, as well as those who have died from it. The lack of medical and epidemiological professionalism exercised by the Chinese government is done to protect the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government, but allows the spread of the virus.
china recently invested its “zero covid” policy, and the Chinese can travel more freely around the country at a time when many often travel home to be with family: the spring Festival or the Lunar New Year, the main holiday of the Chinese calendar. These individuals can spread old and new variants of the virus that evolved among isolated people.
China has also lifted its travel ban and is relaxing foreign travel policies to attract foreign tourism to China. Tourists coming to China will no longer have to quarantine and receive a negative COVID test before they can move freely. Therefore, any variant of the virus found in China will certainly spread to the rest of the world, as it did in 2020.
There is no doubt that the CCP and Chinese President Xi Jinping chose to mislead the world about the origin of the pandemic and its effects in order to preserve their hold on the Chinese people. His actions resulted in a pandemic that has killed millions around the world and destroyed the health and well-being of many more people, but have so far escaped accountability.
Now, once again, the Chinese government is about to fail the Chinese people and put the world population at risk. The United States must take the lead in preventing the spread of the virus. The Biden administration should ask the CCP to take responsibility for preventing another wave of COVID, including by providing accurate information about the origin of the virus and data on current conditions in China. The CCP is unlikely to go along with such a demand, but putting it on notice means that other governments could take legal action against Chinese companies and global investments to compensate for the millions killed and injured as a result of the CCP’s negligence.
The Biden administration must also ensure that the WHO functions as intended, and not as a involuntary agent of the CCP. The WHO leadership must urgently engage in the fight to dispel the next wave, but it must not repeat its mistakes. Travel to and from China must be hampered to avoid accelerating the spread. Japan has taken steps to require visitors to and from China to get tested for COVID, a decision that should be replicated globally. Quarantine protocols must also be reintroduced.
Before China goes a COVID supernova again, the world must use what it has learned about how to stop the spread of the virus. We need US leadership to combat the virus, as we cannot fully trust the WHO given the deceitful nature of the CCP. What is particularly alarming is that the world does not seem to be worried yet, as if we have learned nothing from three years of pandemic.
Jianli Yang, a former political prisoner of China and a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre, is the founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China and the author ofFor Us Living: A Journey To Shine Light On The Truth.”
Bradley A. Thayer is director of China policy at the Security Policy Center and co-author of “Understanding the threat from China.”
