The first coronavirus death in the United States has taken place. The fatality rate of coronavirus (dubbed COVID-19) in China is 3%; elsewhere, it is 1%. We do not know how those figures will evolve, for how long, or with what consequences.
But the real story of coronavirus is not its statistics: COVID-19 is really only a symptom of a greater disaster. The real story of this virus is that we are living in a world where fundamental security, our literal survival, depends on China, and Beijing is proving itself to be a bad actor.
Whether in allowing China into the World Trade Organization or cooperating on pharmaceutical research, U.S. policymakers have spent two decades insisting that integration will turn Beijing into a “responsible stakeholder.” China has promised the same. As we have learned over and over, and with special danger these past weeks, Beijing has not made good on its promise. Instead, it has weaponized its integration.
China supplies 95% of U.S. ibuprofen imports and 80% of U.S. antibiotics. The drug heparin is made out of pig intestines — China produces 80% of its global supply.
Now, if Beijing decides to dedicate all such supplies to domestic use, or if production stops as China enters pandemic lockdown, the rest of us are out of luck. In fact, it’s already happening: On Feb. 27, the FDA acknowledged the first China-induced key drug shortage. That acknowledgment comes more than 15 years after China’s pharmaceutical cartels shuttered the last American penicillin plan.
What if China simply decides that it doesn’t want to send us penicillin? Or that it will only do so if we agree to its trade deal terms, or let Huawei into our information infrastructure, or stop engaging with Taiwan in one way or another? Beijing did this to Japan with rare earths in 2010 — an episode which, in retrospect, might have served as a cautionary tale.
China doesn’t simply control the bio-economy supply chain. It also controls the coronavirus narrative. We don’t actually know how many cases of coronavirus there have been in China. We don’t know, with any accuracy, how quickly the virus is spreading, or what the mortality rate has actually been: China is silencing and arresting whistleblowers, massaging statistics, and withholding critical information. We do know that Beijing only alerted the international community to the virus on Jan. 20, even though the Chinese Communist Party had known about the epidemic since at least Jan. 7 and had been holding emergency meetings since before Jan. 14. We also know that our epidemiologists are going to have a difficult time getting ahead of coronavirus’s spread without good information: Modeling a disease’s spread requires trustworthy data.
China’s silence amplifies the global crisis. China’s control of the supply chain means that we bear the consequences.
This story does not end with coronavirus and pharmaceuticals. Chinese control over global systems and information extends across domains. It stems from a decades-old Chinese grand strategy to capture networks, standards, and platforms that provide new-type, coercive, global power. This is not the old story of “Made in China” T-shirts and children’s toys. This is not even the story of Made in China 2025, industrial manipulation that hollows out the American economy. This is exponentially bigger. This is China Standards 2035, a deliberate Chinese industrial strategy that converts U.S. dependence into Beijing’s coercive control over U.S. industry.
Chinese state-owned enterprises have won contracts for public transit systems from Boston to Los Angeles. We depend on the goodwill of companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party to move around our cities every day. Subsidized Chinese companies have cannibalized the information systems for precision agriculture. To grow our food, American farmers depend not just on Chinese hardware, but also on data sets controlled by Chinese companies. For the past ten years, a dedicated Chinese national-level industrial plan has been hollowing out U.S. advanced manufacturing equipment capabilities. We rely on China for the machine parts necessary to make cars, planes, tool and die machines, and military equipment.
The Department of the Interior uses Chinese drones for its monitoring programs because Beijing’s DJI, supported by the Shenzhen government, has ensured that there is no affordable alternative. Congress’s security cameras are China-made because Hikvision’s prices, propped up by the Chinese National Key Project for Advanced Core Technology, have decimated the market. And your iPhone’s batteries? Probably made by Desay and Sunwoda, both recipients of Chinese subsidies, and both positioned to dominate the entire spectrum of battery segments.
Coronavirus is a crisis. States, companies, and peoples (including the U.S. and China) should work together to face it. That’s what responsible stakeholders do in times of crisis. But responsible parties also learn from what crises reveal. Beijing’s malpractice vis-a-vis coronavirus should be a wake-up call. So should the web of dependence that the epidemic outlines.
Emily de La Bruyere and Nathan Picarsic are co-founders of Horizon Advisory, a strategy consultancy documenting the military, economic, and technological implications of China’s approach to global competition.
