As first reported by the New York Post, China-based U.S. manufacturers of personal protective equipment have told the White House that they are being prevented from exporting their goods outside China.
To make matters worse, media reports suggest that Chinese companies in Australia are telling employees to hoard any protective equipment that they can get their hands on and then bring it to work. From there, the materials are to be shipped back to China.
So why, if China says it has turned the corner on the coronavirus and is now focused on supporting the international community, is President Xi Jinping’s regime still hoarding masks?
I believe the answer is twofold. First, Beijing does not truly know if China has turned the corner on the coronavirus. Second, China wants to maximize the economic and political dividends of any exports it does eventually allow.
All of this forces us to judge even more skeptically China’s claims of having beaten back the coronavirus’s first wave. While Beijing says that new cases of coronavirus infections are down dramatically, the regime’s penchant for deception is one we cannot afford to ignore. Its early response to the outbreak shouldn’t exactly fill us with confidence.
In those December and January days, Beijing first stuck its head in the sand and pretended there wasn’t a problem. Then, it panicked and threw doctors in prison, some of whom later died, for spreading the word that doctors were getting infected with a SARS-like disease. They not only refused to provide the world with coronavirus data but also ordered testing samples destroyed. Then Xi went on waving tours and put more critics into the gulag. Now, Beijing pretends that America is responsible for its global pandemic.
The broader issue here is that China just doesn’t know what’s going to come next. And now, seeing this crisis as the greatest test of his personal leadership narrative at home, Xi wants to hedge against any newly escalating outbreak — a strong possibility, considering Chinese social practices this weekend.
Then, there’s the international diplomacy factor.
We’ve already seen how China seeks to use this global crisis to its own advantage. Chinese state-run media and regime diplomats are trying to present this crisis as one that China is best placed to solve. The regime is now telling the world that it is here to support them, obfuscating its own culpability in allowing a domestic epidemic to become a global pandemic. Hence, China’s provision of limited protective supplies to various nations (if not always supplies that actually work).
This supposed humanitarian strategy from China is not actually humanitarian at all. It’s inherently political. Beijing is attempting to earn goodwill with nations that are suffering. The fact that China continues to hoard so much equipment just as so many nations approach their peak infections is telling. It shows that either Beijing probably hasn’t turned the corner as it claims, or it doesn’t ultimately care about helping others until they’re desperate enough to beg, or perhaps some combination of both.
