As the new year dawned, no one imagined the phenomenon coming into being. COVID-19 is an enemy so powerful it has tethered the free world to intergenerational debt, laid waste to dreams of open society, killed tens of thousands in Europe and the US, forced millions out of jobs, grounded planes, locked borders and shuttered people inside their homes. At the end of last year, the chief threats to freedom in the world were the expansionist ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party and ongoing Islamist militancy. At home, we were contending with the most protracted bushfire season in living memory. Consumer confidence was down, but the government was on track to pay down debt — a key measure of its electoral success. We rang in the new year with hope. By last month the nation was in shock.
COVID-19 arrived with a whimper. It all began in Wuhan. The city is an engine room for globalisation. Its people provide cheap labour to manufacture goods demanded by developed and developing nations alike. China is so vital to global manufacturing that the West cannot produce the most basic medical supplies it needs and must import them. Within weeks of being cut off from China, Australia had run short. Personal protective equipment including face masks and disposable gloves were snapped up by a fearful public and greedy pandemic profiteers. Nine News reported that in Adelaide, for example, a man had amassed 5400 toilet rolls and after being banned from advertising them online, he tried to sell them to a grocer. Despite assurances that governments would secure supply, major supermarkets are still short on essential products. Australia cannot support itself at a time of crisis.
China is the world’s largest export economy and the Observatory of Economic Complexity reported that in 2017 it exported $US2.41 trillion ($3.8 trillion). In the same period, it imported $1.54 trillion. The rise of the information age is the story of its economic miracle. Major exports include electrical machinery such as broadcasting and computer equipment. It is also the world’s leading exporter of toilet paper. According to the OEC, it is a $24.4bn global export trade. China exports $2.84bn of the product followed by Germany ($2.78bn) and Japan ($1.67bn). The top importer is the US.
China dominates global trade by providing goods at a price unionised industries cannot. Australia is so used to tapping the vein of cheap Chinese manufacturing that the nation went into shock when COVID-19 interrupted trade. Despite predictions that the health and economic effects of the pandemic will change the globalised world order, it may well not. Shortly after the Chinese Communist Party lifted restrictions in Wuhan, a plane from the city landed at Sydney Airport. The plane was carrying medical supplies, according to the Department of Home Affairs. We are as reliant as ever on China.
The only discernible benefit of COVID-19 is its tactless exposure of our key vulnerabilities. Australia’s lack of fuel reserves, our reliance on China for critical supplies and our poorly developed military assets render the nation vulnerable to hostile powers. Our key ally, the US, is buckling under the devastating human and economic toll wrought by the coronavirus. Europe is badly afflicted. At the time of writing, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had just left an intensive care unit after being treated for the coronavirus.
The free world is vulnerable on several fronts. If our illiberal enemies did not know it before COVID-19, they surely do now. The virus that originated in China spread throughout the West as the CCP suppressed critical information about its origins and effects. The United Nations, charged with human rights and international solidarity, watched on as Western countries fell vulnerable to disease and economic devastation. The World Health Organisation praised the communist state for transparency despite the cover-up. Last week, a group of Republicans introduced a resolution calling for the US to withhold funding from the WHO until its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, steps down. They cited tweets from Tedros in January stating the coronavirus did not transmit between people and, as a consequence, there was no need for Western countries to introduce stronger border security measures. On both counts, the WHO advice was fatally wrong.
Earlier this year, Tedros told a Munich security conference that China had helped the world fight COVID-19 at a great cost to itself. He lashed out at critics, saying, “too much has been written and said about my praise for China”. When Tedros stops praising the CCP, we will stop writing about it. He could begin by telling the truth about the role the party played in covering up the origins of COVID-19 and silencing whistleblowers.
Last month, Tedros joined UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to launch a $2bn global humanitarian response plan. The plan is to direct funding to non-Western states even as Europe, the US and Australia face decades of debt and critical medical shortages. UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Mark Lowcock defended the decision, saying the UN’s vulnerable states were most in need.
The UN and WHO have failed to support the West at a time of crisis. The World Economic Forum has also given the CCP some relatively favourable coverage given its role in cultivating political conditions that allowed COVID-19 to spread from a Chinese virus to a global pandemic. It has suggested that China could increase its global influence in the wake of devastation. WEF digital editor John Letzing wrote late last month: “China may have won a certain amount of bragging rights” for its COVID-19 response and could assume a global leadership role.
Despite the outbreak of Sinophilia among globalists, the CCP has strained international relations further by shipping faulty medical supplies to countries already ravaged by COVID-19. Spain reported faulty virus test kits and sent them back. The Netherlands has recalled 600,000 face masks from China after finding they had defective filters. The ABC reported that Australian border forces had seized about 800,000 goods from China that were sold as personal protective products.
Nations will rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic. But the free world’s illiberal enemies are betting economic ruin will lay waste to the West. The path we choose to recovery will decide the future of liberty. We cannot afford to be complacent.
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