Politicized U.S. Intelligence Polluted the World

On October 29, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a declassified version of its report on the origins of the novel coronavirus.

It continues to imply the Chinese Government or a Wuhan lab is hiding something and not cooperating, while vilifying the World Health Organization (WHO) for telling the truth from the very beginning at that fateful first press conference.

The most exasperating aspect of the U.S. intelligence agency’s report is how it claims they have “gaps in their knowledge,” yet at the same time, completely ignore the evidence presented by the United States’ own National Institutes of Health (NIH) study, indicating that the virus was circulating in their own country before it was circulating in China. The study found that American citizens were carrying COVID-19 antibodies in early December 2019, suggesting the virus was circulating in the U.S. long before it was identified in Wuhan.

The report released by the ODNI also fails to include the crystal clear testimony of former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, stating that COVID-19 cases existed earlier still, circulating undetected within the U.S.

Then President Donald Trump once praised China for giving the world many weeks’ notice, allowing them to respond to the emerging pandemic, only to go on and waste that precious time. Then, realizing the devastation of their own mistakes, the U.S. Government suddenly flipped their public relations messaging in mid-March to blame China instead of accepting responsibility, as distraction and coverup for their own failures and incompetence. This has led to the COVID-19-related deaths of what will end up being around 1 million Americans by the time the pandemic subsides.

What’s more important is that the credibility of the U.S. intelligence department is now in doubt. Their history of obvious deception from the Gulf of Tonkin, through to a fake vial of powder claiming weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to then slaughter innumerable innocent Iraqi families. Can we trust their multi-agency assessment on the origins of COVID-19 while they cooperate with the National Endowment for Democracy to provide the organization and funding to engage in violent separatist rioting in Hong Kong? Am I supposed to believe that Uygur labor in Xinjiang’s cotton fields and tomato farms is “forced labor” or “slavery” when countless reports have already come out debunking such preposterous accusations?

As a recent interview by CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out, most Americans fear they are “living in crazy land.” As a satisfied China expat who left the U.S. 22 years ago, I can’t avoid noticing the reality of China, which is a positive one, while these anti-China Western pundits want very much to convince me otherwise. What positive reality am I referring to when it comes to China? How about we begin with the rise of a country whose top priority is keeping its people healthy, raising hundreds of millions out of poverty instead of creating poverty, a country which has distributed over a billion COVID-19 vaccines worldwide instead of letting its citizens suffer and die, a country whose doctors were in fact the first in the world to take the time to identify this unknown coronavirus and share its genome sequence with the rest of the world when an outbreak hit its city of Wuhan.

These days, as the chaotic geopolitical landscape continues to come undone, creating greater and greater anxiety amongst the citizens of the world, I find myself waking up each day glad to know that the U.S.-led Western hegemony is falling apart at the seams while China is steadily rising up as the new largest, safe, stable, successful and capable country on the planet.

This global geopolitical shift means an end to 70 years of U.S. warmongering hegemony. It means more of a focus on China’s common prosperity to bring more equality to ordinary citizens, to avoid the damages of corrupt wealthy capitalism gone wild, plus no more Western-led sanctions and wars and covert military operations with their accompanying massacre of innocent people with no accountability.

The author is a senior fellow with the Center for China & Globalization.