The other day I received a fascinating commentary declaring that the COVID-19 virus all of us are dealing with is a result of a planned attack by China.

Do I believe that? No, I don’t. At least not based on the inadequate evidence to support that assertion that I have seen so far.

But the narrative, which was entitled “China Was Ready” did make some compelling arguments in support of the charge that China was, and is behind this devastating pandemic.

The first assertion was that the Coronavirus has traveled all over the world from Wuhan, but has not made it to Beijing or Shanghai.

“Can anyone explain that?” it asks.

I can’t. But then, I have no way of knowing if that assertion is true. I have not heard of any Coronavirus cases in Beijing or Shanghai, but then the Chinese Communist Party has imposed a media blackout on all reporting on the virus and its impact in China.

If it is true that the virus has been totally contained in central China it makes me wonder how the COVID-19 virus, which began in Washington State, has made it all the way to New York—some 3,000 miles away.

According to the commentary, there are so many questions. For example, why haven’t the Chinese stock markets (Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong) collapsed, while the American and European markets have?

According to a recent report in the Economist Magazine, during the coronavirus outbreak, China now has the world’s best-performing stock markets, while just eight weeks ago they were the worst.

In fact, since the outbreak, China’s financial markets have opened as scheduled and are operating smoothly, which shows that China’s financial system has a strong ability to deal with risks.  On top of that, China bought big in the U.S. and European markets as stock prices have plummeted.

“All roads lead back to China,” the commentary said, insisting that China planned the pandemic. It then presented a list of circumstantial evidence to back up that claim:

• China created a virus for which it already had an antidote.
• It purposely spread the virus for financial gain.
• The Chinese built hospitals within a few days of the outbreak in Wuhan. China was prepared with organized projects, with the ordering of equipment, the hiring of labor, the water and sewage networks, the prefabricated building materials. It all happened very quickly.
• China quickly gained control of the epidemic because it was ready. It was ready and it were never really lost control of the virus.
• China is currently moving back to full production while the rest of the world is at a standstill.

The author urges us to read the 2004 book co-authored by Chinese Major Generals Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui entitled: “Unrestricted War: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America.”

The book, available in Kindle format on Amazon, “has been required reading at West Point,” according to the blurb on its Amazon page.

“The People’s Liberation Army manual for asymmetric warfare details the waging of war, strategically and tactically, using weapons (bio-weapons?) not limited to bullets, bombs, missiles, and artillery shells. The two PLA officers who advocated the strategy set forth in the book argue that modern warfare, in ways not too dissimilar from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, is about impeding the enemy’s ability to wage war and to defend itself against a barrage of attacks against its economy, its civil institutions, its governmental structures, and its actual belief system.

The book contains a recipe for a slow but inexorable assault on an enemy’s institutions, often without the enemy’s knowledge that it is even being attacked. As Sun Tzu once wrote, “If one party is at war with another, and the other party does not realize it is at war, the party who knows it’s at war almost always has the advantage and usually wins.” And this is the strategy set forth in *Unrestricted Warfare,* waging a war on an adversary with methods so covert at first and seemingly so benign that the party being attacked does not realize it is being attacked.

“Readers, therefore, should take this little manual as a dire warning. Complacency cripples. Hubris kills. And blindness without guidance usually leads one into the nearest wall if not hurtling down a flight of stairs. Thus, although this book was written 16 years ago, it should be regarded as the playbook for the destruction of not only the United States, but of western democracies in general.”

Have you wondered why Russia and North Korea are apparently almost totally free of Covid-19?  Perhaps because they are allies of China.

China insists that its initial drastic measures were severe and that Wuhan was locked down in order to contain the spread to other areas. Could it be that China is using an antidote that was already available before COVID-19 was released? And why was Beijing not impacted?

Here’s another interesting point. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan at the peak of the outbreak. He wore only a simple RM-1 face mask to visit those affected areas. As president, shouldn’t Xi have been covered from head to toe in a hazardous materials suit? Was it because he had already been injected with the antidote and there was no need to worry?

Now, it is reported that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who tested positive for the COVID-19 virus some 10 days ago, has been moved into intensive care at St. Thomas Hospital in London.

The commentary insists that “there is no doubt that China is waging biological warfare against the West.”

The author adds that the world will be much different when this COVID-19 pandemic is over. Maybe, he says, this pandemic is just stage one in China’s scheme to take over the world.

Once again, I am not convinced that China is quite this malicious and malevolent. I hope it isn’t, but as I have said in previous posts, China is not our friend. It is an adversary economically, politically, and militarily and we best wake up to that fact before it is too late.