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Because deliberately releasing a virus that is so infectious that it will cause a global pandemic and will inevitably hit your own country is a bloody stupid th

Because deliberately releasing a virus that is so infectious that it will cause a global pandemic and will inevitably hit your own country is a bloody stupid thing to do. Everyone loses, unless you already have a vaccine that you can sell. And if you are trying to insinuate that it might have been the Chinese that released it, it becomes even more bloody stupid, because you would obviously never release it on your own soil right outside your own biolab which would immediately be under suspicion of being the source. You'd release it at NY Grand Central Station or the Atlanta International, and no one will be able to figure out what happened.

friend_and_foe 4y ago
Its not a stupid thing to do when: 1) You're facing a demographic crisis due to your aging population and your next closest rival has a population of which half are under 30, 2) the virus primarily kills the elderly, 3) your approach to increasing influence and power is to increase your relative position and your relative position is decreasing after decades of increasing, and 4) you can cause an economic crisis for your rivals when they shut public life, and consequently their economies, down, and thus increase your relative position in the world. I won't comment on any western motivations for going along with it.
cc101 4y ago
I believe that you have missed the potential significance of Xi's use of massive authoritarian control. Not using vaccines could have been a test to see whether his control would give him a critical advantage over other countries lacking his control. Were a weapon so powerful that the rest of the world could not control it with vaccines, China might come out the most powerful country in the world. If so, then he has learned that the strategy would not work. Regarding your other arguments, Xi controls what the rest of the world knows about China. He could hide whatever he wanted to. You seem to be implying that I am "bloody stupid." You are wrong.

friend_and_foe 4y ago

Its not a stupid thing to do when: 1) You're facing a demographic crisis due to your aging population and your next closest rival has a population of which half are under 30, 2) the virus primarily kills the elderly, 3) your approach to increasing influence and power is to increase your relative position and your relative position is decreasing after decades of increasing, and 4) you can cause an economic crisis for your rivals when they shut public life, and consequently their economies, down, and thus increase your relative position in the world. I won't comment on any western motivations for going along with it.

cc101 4y ago

I believe that you have missed the potential significance of Xi's use of massive authoritarian control. Not using vaccines could have been a test to see whether his control would give him a critical advantage over other countries lacking his control. Were a weapon so powerful that the rest of the world could not control it with vaccines, China might come out the most powerful country in the world. If so, then he has learned that the strategy would not work. Regarding your other arguments, Xi controls what the rest of the world knows about China. He could hide whatever he wanted to. You seem to be implying that I am "bloody stupid." You are wrong.