WHAT IS CHINA UP TO?

The Peoples’ Republic of China (China) is an important player on the international geopolitical scene, and in the opinion of some, its communist government poses as much of a threat to peace and democracy as does Russia. But with the Russian invasion of Ukraine dominating the media for the last three months, it is easy to forget about the potential problems posed by this large Asian country of over a billion people. Therefore, it will be a useful reminder to consider what has been going on lately in Beijing.

When China hosted the Winter Olympic Games in February 2022, it was a critically important event for China. After months of poor press concerning such varied problems as the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong, the imprisonment and genocide of Uyghur nationals in the State of Xinjiang, and above all Chinese culpability over the worldwide Coronavirus, the Chinese government badly needed this prestige event of staging the Winter Olympics. They would welcome anything which could shine some good light on their Communist regime and would deflect any negative reports which were being made. And there were plenty of these. In addition to the above, the Chinese had been blamed for the worst world pandemic since the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918-1920, and as if that were not bad enough, only a few months prior, their international reputation was still in the gutter as World Health Organisation (WHO) investigators were being denied access into the Wuhan laboratories where the pandemic was widely suspected to have begun. Without such access, could anyone, even the WHO experts, determine what had originally caused it?