The 2019 novel coronavirus that has been spreading from Wuhan, China, has developed into a global crisis, another “yellow peril” emanating from China.
The Chinese public is innocent and helpless; the problem is that the nation is ruled by the inhumane Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which stops at nothing to retain its hold on power.
To strengthen its hold, the CCP tells lies, hides facts and ignores human life.
Some say the outbreak was developed by humans.
The CCP initially planned to deceive the world by blaming the outbreak on the consumption of wild animals, but when France revealed that it assisted China in the establishment of the National Biosafety Laboratory in Wuhan, it exposed a possible source of the virus.
The spread of the coronavirus could be a result of attempts to expand China’s biological weapons capability and the opaque operations at the Wuhan lab.
The CCP trumps all and public opinion has no significance.
As the coronavirus began to spread, the CCP wanted to trivialize it and had no intention of handling the outbreak in compliance with the WHO’s infection prevention procedures.
The virus was more contagious than the CCP expected, so the party was forced to reveal the outbreak to the world.
However, Beijing seems to have downplayed the number of cases involved, because the party trumps all, while public opinion is ignored.
Human life has little value for the CCP, while power is everything.
Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang (周先旺) did not give a public briefing on the outbreak until the coronavirus had spread across China and to a number of other nations.
He clearly said that the briefing was delayed because he had to wait for authorization from Beijing.
This process once again proved that, despite the CCP’s claim that it serves the public, it only cares about maintaining its rule.
Since gaining power, the CCP has been China’s master.
Human life has less importance than power, so the CPP regards the death toll as just a number — just like Mao Zedong (毛澤東) looked on the millions of Chinese who died during the decade-long Cultural Revolution.
The party has no feelings and does not believe in acting humanely. It only sees power and benefits, not justice or morality.
Beijing should return to a people-oriented approach and revitalize China through democracy.
Even in the face of this disaster, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has stuck with the CCP’s old ways: spouting empty sound bites, while stressing the importance of “unified leadership, unified command and unified action” within the party.
The implication is that Xi aims to further strengthen China’s one-party rule, making people believe in an authoritarian and incompetent communist government.
However, China has always been unruly under the irrational and inhumane CCP.
The lives of Chinese will never be valued unless the nation focuses on people and implements a system in which the government is for the people.
Otherwise, China’s top-down leadership will continue, keeping the attention of local governments at the top of the hierarchy, while they ignore public opinion and neglect people’s lives.
Chen Chi-nung is principal of Shuili Junior High School in Nantou County.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017