After the outbreak of the Wuhan virus, China concealed responsibility and launched propaganda operations around the world. Yet Missouri’s lawsuit, the West’s reconsideration of supply chains, and Japan’s move to bring production back home show that the world has begun to break away from dependence on China.

May 1, 2020
Missouri, a Midwestern state, on the contrary, has filed a claim for damages in federal district court, alleging that China lied to the world and failed to stop the spread of infection.
The following is from “World Interpretation” by Hiroshi Yuasa, guest editorial writer of the Sankei Shimbun, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “World Division after the Pandemic.”
This essay proves that he is one of the genuine journalists.
The emphases in the text other than the headline, and the notes beginning with an asterisk, are mine.
What is presented here this time is something resembling a “resolution” of the Senate of the Wisconsin State Legislature, near the Great Lakes in the United States.
The reason it is an imitation is that it is a skillful English composition by the Chinese authorities.
To put it politely, it is a draft.
To put it plainly, it is a fake.
The resolution says, among other things, that it supports China’s efforts to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus and recommends that the U.S. government cooperate with the World Health Organization, WHO.
Everything in it is the exact opposite of what the Trump administration has been asserting.
It is as if the state senate were praising China and guiding the U.S. government to cooperate with the China-leaning WHO.
This resolution was attached as a draft text to an email from the Chinese Consul General in Chicago to Roger Roth, President of the Wisconsin State Senate.
The sender, the Consul General, had made a blatant request that the state senate pass a “resolution praising China’s response.”
In order to divert attention from responsibility for the outbreak of the Wuhan virus, China is entrusting the rewriting of its evaluation to a third party.
According to Jamil Anderlini, a reporter for the Financial Times of Britain who covered this matter, President Roth was at first half in disbelief, then angry, and finally appalled by this blatant intervention by a foreign power in a local legislature.
Therefore, President Roth is said to have replied to the transmission of the draft resolution as follows.
“Dear Consul General, nuts.”
Financial Times, April 20.
Rewriting both history and evaluation.
China, having failed in its cover-up operation, is trying forcibly to pull back its lost authority, and is instead digging its own grave.
Since there is neither shame nor concern for appearances there, there is no reason to think that what it requested of Wisconsin was not also requested of other states.
Missouri, a Midwestern state, on the contrary, has filed a claim for damages in federal district court, alleging that China lied to the world and failed to stop the spread of infection.
Its propaganda operations aimed at local regions in the United States also seem to be receiving a backlash.
This column, “World Interpretation,” also witnessed the fact that, concerning what it pointed out in the previous April 3 column, the Chinese side rewrote past descriptions and remained unconcerned.
In the previous column, I pointed out that Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, had itself used the common term “Wuhan virus,” which the Chinese leadership dislikes, on its English-language website dated January 22.
I wrote that it was strange for Beijing to have officially conveyed it at first, and then, when U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo later referred to it, to become enraged and call it “racism.”
Toward Japan, the same method is used as when China declares “the revival of militarism,” and political intentions are hidden behind words.
＊Why have the Asahi Shimbun and opposition-party politicians repeatedly used laughable words such as “the revival of militarism” whenever possible to attack the administration? With this essay, readers will understand perfectly＊
However, if China itself had called it the Wuhan virus, the story no longer holds together.
Therefore, after April 3, when this column pointed it out, the headline “Wuhan virus” was deleted from Xinhua’s website.
I was convinced that this is what it means when China rewrites history.
The Chinese Communist Party tends to rely too much on self-serving propaganda warfare and thereby produce the opposite effect.
If it were a “normal country,” it would first express regret for having allowed the virus to spread throughout the world.
Next, it would provide detailed virus-related data to the international community and gain sympathy and respect.
Of course, it would do so with the possibility of a change of government in mind.
Therein lies the tragedy of totalitarianism.
Above all else, it gives priority to preserving the regime and rushes into “cover-up operations” and “external propaganda.”
When the cover-up failed, it responded with threats mixed in, and jumped on the conspiracy theory that the U.S. military had spread the virus.
Then it mobilized embassies and consulates scattered around the world and launched a campaign to exaggerate the superiority of its dictatorial governing system.
Machiavelli, the political thinker of The Prince, who witnessed a great outbreak of plague in sixteenth-century Florence, left the words that an explosive spread of epidemic disease is “the direct result of erroneous rule.”
This time as well, because of the failures of the Xi Jinping administration, the movement to destroy the international supply chain is becoming stronger.
Professor Wang Jisi, a noted political scientist at Peking University, has gone so far as to say that U.S.-China relations have reached their worst level and that economic and technological decoupling between the United States and China is “already irreversible.”
The United States, which depends on China for the majority of its pharmaceutical ingredients, will introduce legislation, with agreement between both Republicans and Democrats, to encourage increased domestic production of pharmaceuticals.
A readiness to accept higher costs.
Europe, which had viewed China only as a huge profit-making market, also experienced unprecedented humiliation from the attitude of China, which spread the virus throughout the world, sent poor-quality medical equipment, and then, far from apologizing, acted as if Europe should be grateful.
Moreover, while Europe was struggling with the pandemic, it realized that Chinese companies had begun acquiring companies in advanced technologies such as semiconductors, and anger surged.
French President Macron listed items that would be shifted from dependence on China to domestic production, and from British ministers came voices calling for a review of the introduction of fifth-generation, 5G, mobile communications networks by Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunications equipment giant.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe went even further.
On March 5, when the postponement of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Japan was decided, he set out to rebuild the supply chain through emergency economic measures.
At the Future Investment Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, he clearly indicated support for companies that would bring production bases for high-value-added products back to Japan, and move other bases to Southeast Asia and elsewhere in order to diversify them.
＊Why has NHK said almost nothing about the fact that, in response to this great disaster, Prime Minister Abe decided upon the correct hundred-year national strategy? The answer lies in the following lines＊
Beijing has received with shock the clear “departure from China” by Japan, the United States, and Europe.
Even before the outbreak of the Wuhan virus, China, burdened with enormous debt and forced into difficult economic management, most feared that Japan, the United States, and Europe would cut off their supply chains.
From U.S. think tanks, there are even voices warning of the “weaponization of pharmaceuticals,” such as China producing medicines with contaminants in the future.
But if many products are to be made in the West, consumers must be prepared to accept higher costs.
Which will you choose?
Chinese-made products that are cheap but whose safety is doubtful, or domestically made products that cost more but are safe?