China is behaving with imperial arrogance as governments around the world echo the fury of ordinary citizens at Beijing for its lies and cover-ups which (perhaps intentionally) unleashed the Wuhan pandemic on the world. Having grown used to bullying and punishing its own people the instant they step out of line, the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to harass and intimidate everyone from sportspeople to governments.
The Australian government is having none of it.
The federal government has spoken with China’s ambassador over his “threats of economic coercion” if Australia continues to call for an investigation into the coronavirus pandemic, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham says.
Former Labor candidate Evan Hughes responded to the diplomatic bluster: “to China I say this: our people and our producers can weather drought, can survive infernos and can bear a nationally imposed lock down… we can handle a few empty threats from a diminutive career diplomat with a glass jaw”. It’s folly, of course, to pretend that this is just a “career diplomat”. No-one should be under any illusion that the ambassador is anything other than a sock-puppet for communist dictator Xi Xinping.
But the sentiment is correct. As Dale Kerrigan would say, “Tell ‘em to get stuffed”.
Mr Cheng suggested that Beijing would boycott agricultural products and could stop sending tourists and students to Australia if the Morrison government continued calling for an investigation into the outbreak of the pandemic.
Senator Birmingham said the comments were “disappointing” but the government would not take back calls for an investigation.
“This pandemic is causing enormous economic cost here in Australia and around the world as well as a tragic loss of life,” Senator Birmingham said.
“Australia is not going to change our policy position on a major public health issue because of economic coercion or threats of economic coercion,” he said.
Senator Birmingham reaffirmed the government’s calls for an inquiry to ensure a similar pandemic would not happen again.
“Our government is very clear that we have seen enormous loss of life around the world of hundreds of thousands of people and huge economic disruption to billions of lives across the planet,” he said.
Another investigation is allegedly focusing on Chinese scientists at ground zero of the pandemic – and their connections very close to home.
Two Chinese scientists — who Western intelligence agencies are focusing on as part of an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus — studied bats in Australia in research jointly funded by the Australian and Chinese governments.
The Five Eyes intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the US are examining the work of a scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou, as they investigate whether COVID-19 originated from a wet market or whether it may have been released from a laboratory in Wuhan that was studying coronavirus pathogens from bats, The Daily Telegraph reported.
[…] the work is considered highly risky and there have been fears in recent years that any inadvertent leak could cause a pandemic.
The other scientist being looked at is Shi Zhengli, who is the director of the Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Daily Telegraph reports that Dr Zhengli was in Australia as a visiting scientist from February 22 to May 21, 2006, during which time she worked at the CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory.
The evidence is fast mounting that the Chinese virus did not in fact emerge from Wuhan’s wet market – that story appears to have been yet another of China’s lies designed to cover up the alarming truth: the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab. Accidentally, it is presumed.
Although, given the history of the Chinese Communist Party, nothing should be presumed to be too outlandish for these murderous totalitarians.
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