Sen. Ted Cruz said this week he introduced legislation that would seek to punish Chinese Communist Party officials who reportedly deceived world health officials and covered up the realities of the coronavirus during its early days in Wuhan, China, late last year.
“As the coronavirus was breaking out in Wuhan, the Chinese Communist Party deliberately silenced those who tried to sound the alarm and provide the world with medical information – just as they do with political speech they find threatening,” Cruz said in a statement when he announced the legislation. “They prioritized propaganda over protecting the health and safety of people around the world – and the consequences have been catastrophic.”
Recommended Stories
Cruz also spoke of the legislation with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum Wednesday.
“You know, China has, has long been the most significant geopolitical threat the United States faces. … And we’ve always viewed it as a human rights offense when they censor and silence free speech,” Cruz said. “We’ve now seen that it’s not just a human rights threat, but it is also a threat to national security and global health when it … comes to this Wuhan outbreak.”
The Republican from Texas is among a growing number of lawmakers and U.S. health officials who have demanded China be held accountable for what they deem to be inaction and dishonesty from one of the world’s largest powers that put millions of lives at risk.
Cruz’s legislation would sanction any Chinese officials “involved in the ongoing suppression of medical experts, journalists, and political dissidents, amid Chinese censorship of its citizens.”
As of Thursday, more than 2 million cases of the coronavirus have been reported in countries around the world, and more than 25,000 people in the U.S. have died from the resulting disease.
Dr. Deborah Birx, a leading member of the White House task force combating the coronavirus, said Wednesday that American lives could have been saved if health officials had better information about the virus earlier during the pandemic.
“You really have to go back and ask yourself, ‘Why wasn’t there this level of transparency when this virus exploded?'” Birx said. “I think people would have prepared differently if they had known the level of transmissibility of this virus.”
President Trump, often critical of China’s response to the outbreak, announced this week he would suspend funding to the World Health Organization to conduct a review of what he says was a botched handling of the now-global pandemic.
Chinese officials have said their critics are scapegoating and politicizing the health emergency based on politics.
“We urge the U.S. to correct its mistake and stop its groundless accusations against China,” Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said last month.
Cruz said a refusal from the Chinese government to take responsibility for the outbreak posed a danger to Americans everywhere.
“Had the Chinese government acted responsibly, the coronavirus outbreak might not have turned into a global pandemic and hundreds of thousands of lives,” Cruz said upon announcing the legislation. “Millions of jobs, and trillions of dollars could have been saved. As we’ve seen over the last several weeks, China’s censorship and suppression are now not only a threat to human rights in China and around the world, they are a direct threat to U.S. national security and our economy.”
