{"id":1476129,"date":"2022-05-16T05:14:54","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T09:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1476129"},"modified":"2022-05-16T05:14:57","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T09:14:57","slug":"china-paper-dragon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/china-paper-dragon\/","title":{"rendered":"China, Paper Dragon"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">6<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchina-paper-dragon%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1476129&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>As the rest of the world reeled from the COVID pandemic in 2020, it looked like China had things under control. Americans and Europeans sheltered in place, while the Chinese <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-china-53816511\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">enjoyed<\/a> pool parties and weddings. The World Health Organization concluded in a February 2020 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/china-s-aggressive-measures-have-slowed-coronavirus-they-may-not-work-other-countries\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report<\/a>: &#8220;China&#8217;s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic. This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Turns out, China&#8217;s &#8220;bold approach&#8221; wasn\u2019t all it was cracked up to be. For weeks now, the country&#8217;s Communist leaders have imposed lockdowns on some of its largest cities to grapple with a spike in hospitalizations. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/06\/22\/business\/economy\/china-vaccines-covid-outbreak.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">China&#8217;s COVID vaccines<\/a> are far less effective than those developed and produced in America and Europe. Despite state censorship, cell phone\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=usga_TymN7s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">videos<\/a> of average citizens yelling at the authorities have gone viral (so to speak). People don&#8217;t have enough to eat. They are imprisoned in their own apartments. Meanwhile, even the bluest cities in America are lifting mask mandates.<\/p>\n<p>None of this should surprise anyone. On the one hand, China invests a great deal in trying to convince the rest of the world that it should be feared, and its leader, Xi Jinping, has accumulated increasing power.<\/p>\n<p>But the regime has also blundered. Xi this year signed a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/russia-and-china-unveil-a-pact-against-america-and-the-west\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sweeping pact<\/a> with Vladimir Putin on the eve of Russia&#8217;s disastrous invasion of Ukraine. And China is gaining little from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/07\/18\/world\/asia\/china-india-border-conflict.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">picking a fight<\/a> with India in the Himalayan Mountains.<\/p>\n<p>What Xi and his apparats do not understand is that every time they bully a neighbor or con an international organization, they are making a strong argument to weaker states that it is better to align with America than to accept Chinese hegemony. When the rest of the world sees that Beijing cannot control a virus that likely originated from one of the regime&#8217;s biological laboratories, that case gains strength.<\/p>\n<p>None of this is to say that America should not prepare to confront China in the coming years. The Chinese have surpassed us in hypersonic weapons technology. China&#8217;s military buildup is real. But just as the world is now learning through Russia&#8217;s blunders in Ukraine just how incompetent and corrupt the Russian Army is, we should not assume a military untested in battle will be as menacing as Chinese propaganda would have us believe.<\/p>\n<p>Totalitarian regimes look fearsome right until they crumble. Xi&#8217;s is unlikely to be any different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the rest of the world reeled from the COVID pandemic in 2020, it looked like China had things under control. Americans and Europeans sheltered in place, while the Chinese<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":1896233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1476129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1896233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}