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In recent days we have seen again shocking images of the totalitarian confinements practiced by the Communist Party of China on its population. Videos circulating on social media show people committing suicide, pets sacrificed in garbage bags, and security agents dressed in white like Stormtroopers from Star Wars, violently attacking the citizens of Shanghai.
All this, despite the fact that according to the authorities most of the cases are asymptomatic and only three deaths have been reported in the last few days. It should also be noted that this number of deaths were the first ones admitted by the Chinese regime since 2020, and they occurred in elderly people between 89 and 91 years of age, with previous medical conditions.
Over the last few years we have seen China publish surreal Covid numbers. According to the authorities, there was practically no contagion and for months no one died from the virus. Their factories and companies were operating normally, selling their goods to the world, and they even showed videos of large music festivals attended by thousands of people in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus originated.
When analyzing the economic figures corresponding to the pandemic years, it is clear that China was the most favored nation in the world by the confinements and restrictions imposed in the West, due to the Asian virus. During the year 2020, the peak of the pandemic, China’s economy grew by 2.3%, while the American economy declined by 3.5%. In fact, during that period, the Asian giant was the only major economy with positive numbers worldwide, and the following year (2021), when the restrictions began to be lifted, China had a growth of 8.1%, while its main trading competitor grew by 5.7%.
For decades, most Western nations, in an attempt to cut costs, have been fostering a trade relationship of absolute dependence on China. Due to the lack of human rights and the practice of anachronistic labor conditions, even under accusations of slavery in certain regions, China has been able to forge a processing industry of all kinds of raw materials at very low prices, with which no Western nation could compete, and this was accentuated during the pandemic.
Today, social media are once again being flooded with hundreds of videos showing China’s disregard for citizens’ freedoms and the most basic human rights, and even journalists from Western media, such as Wenao Ma of Voice of America News, have reported that this information has been distributed almost by mistake on Weibo, the Chinese Twitter, alleging that they were not taken out of circulation as quickly as it is usually done.
“Netizens in China, for just a few hours, got to unleash their wrath on the Chinese government for how they handled the Covid crisis in Shanghai and other social issues,” wrote the VOA journalist.
The truth is that these information leak mistakes do not happen by chance in China’s sophisticated state surveillance system. It is clear that the Chinese Communist Party wants these images to be spread around the world, for people to see what is happening in Shanghai for the alleged purpose of “combating the terrible Covid,” and for terrified citizens to once again be conditioned into totalitarian confinement to be at the mercy of the Chinese economy.
In China they are literally killing pets, using robots to keep humans confined, and starving citizens to death with the intention of creating alarmism in the rest of the world. This is anything but a health issue, it is absolutely political, as the virus figures presented by the communist authorities bear no relation to the horrendous totalitarian scenes we see coming out of China today.
The world would be making a grave mistake if it once again falls into China’s game and begins to succumb to its media terrorism. Science has shown that the confinements have not really had any noticeable positive effect in combating the virus, and all they achieved was to ruin countries economically.
If any Western leader succumbs again to the temptation to lock up their citizens, voters should begin to see them as a Chinese agent, rather than a bureaucrat concerned about the health of their citizens.
Emmanuel Rincón is a lawyer, writer, novelist and essayist. He has won several international literary awards. He is Editor-at-large at El American // Emmanuel Rincón es abogado, escritor, novelista y ensayista. Ganador de diversos premios literarios internacionales. Es editor-at-large en El American