China, Part 2:
China has been shipping the ingredients needed to manufacture fentanyl to Mexico, where the drug is then manufactured and distributed. There is a fentanyl epidemic in the United States. One could imagine that, by getting Americans hooked on this drug, the U.S. would not have the time or the resources to keep track of Beijing’s shenanigans.
China is persecuting religious sects within its sphere of influence. Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists have been tortured and/or imprisoned for practicing their faith. The practitioners of falungong continue to be targeted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) simply because they conduct aerobic exercises in public (very subversive, don’t you know?). The CCP wants the major religions to re-write their sacred texts in order to reflect the Party’s authority over all things sacred and profane.
China has installed military bases in its client countries in order to protect its economic interests there. One such is Cuba. This is akin to flipping the bird to the United States and raising the specter of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
China has been buying up land in various countries, including the United States. The majority of the purchases involve farm land. One could imagine that the CCP wants to get a foot-hold in those nations which won’t allow military bases by installing “economic bases” from which to influence and ultimately control the national economy.
The most egregious thing China has ever done, however, was to cover up its role in the COVID-19 pandemic. When the lab leak in Wuhan was discovered, Beijing quickly put the City under quarantine, seized all of the lab notes, and threatened the researchers with imprisonment if they dared to talk about what had happened. What the CCP did not do was to prevent its citizens from traveling to other countries. That’s how the virus spread so quickly.
China had the gall to blame the United States for COVID -19. Actually, there was plenty of blame to go around, from the funding of the research to the manufacture of worthless vaccines to the rejection of reliable drugs already on the market-place to the name-calling and the disinformation by various American entities.
This house of cards is slowly, but surely, falling apart, but the CCP continues to keep its collective feet in cement and refuse to co-operate with foreign scientists, least of all foreign governments!.
Rumors of war abound in the U.S. of A. (and quite possibly in China as well). Both nations have rattled their sabers frequently in the form of war games in the western Pacific Ocean (not very “pacific,” eh?). War with China, in The Chas’ estimation, is a lose-lose proposition. America has a slight technological edge, but China has the greater man-power. Any war between the two would be one of attrition, similar to the stalemate in Afghanistan, unless someone pushes the panic button and launches nuclear weapons. Then, the whole world loses.
FYI: The Chas has a file folder full of ideas for future novels. Two of those files deal with war with China. One posits the presence of Chinese troops in the plains of North America; they are countered by a rag-tag, multi-ethnic guerrilla army. The other posits an elite, multi-ethnic group of specially-trained commandos who harry Chinese troops behind the lines.
One would hope that both scenarios remain in the realm of fiction.
Just a thought.