Categories: Opinion

Circumstantial evidence suggests China is culpable

<p style="font-weight: 400;">Was the novel coronavirus engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China? As yet, the answer is not in the affirmative, for there is no clinching proof to support this but circumstantial evidence suggests that the Chinese were up to some mischief.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">On November 12, 2015, the reputed science magazine <em>Nature</em> posted an article, which said, “An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus—one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome)—has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.”</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">In this article, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was quoted as saying that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” he says. Was it a prophesy?</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Therefore, it is indubitable that the Chinese did create a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus. The danger of carrying out this research was also known, evident from Wain-Hobson’s fear, if not prophesy.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">The Americans were cognizant of the danger, so they, in October 2014, “imposed a moratorium on federal funding of such research on the viruses that cause SARS, influenza and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome, a deadly disease caused by a virus that sporadically jumps from camels to people).”</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">The Chinese, however, have a different approach altogether because they have a grand objective: world domination. And just like Adolf Hitler, they reveal goals. In a 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare, two People’s Liberation Army colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui argued that China should not fight a stronger like the US with conventional military means; so, it should take recourse to non-military means.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">The two colonels went on to describe the “means and methods used to fight a non-military war, some of which already exist and some of which may exist in the future. Such means and methods include psychological warfare (spreading rumors to intimidate the enemy and break down his will); smuggling warfare (throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order); media warfare (manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along); drug warfare (obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries); network warfare (venturing out in secret and concealing one's identity in a type of warfare that is virtually impossible to guard against); technological warfare (creating monopolies by setting standards independently); fabrication warfare (presenting a counterfeit appearance of real strength before the eyes of the enemy); resources warfare (grabbing riches by plundering stores of resources); economic aid warfare (bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret); cultural warfare (leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views); and international law warfare (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations), etc.”</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">The military officers went on to assert: “manmade earthquakes, tsunamis, weather disasters, or subsonic wave and new biological and chemical weapons all constitute new concept weapons.”</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Notice the comprehensiveness of the list and the perversity of the Chinese mind: manmade earthquakes, tsunamis, weather disasters, or subsonic wave. Various forms of warfare they have been waging against India for decades: psychological warfare, smuggling warfare, media warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, economic aid warfare.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Also notice the authors’ approval of biological warfare. Nowhere in the book are there any traces of moral compunctions, philosophical doubts, or even pragmatic considerations (Do we really gain by destroying or subduing others?) about making warfare so wide-ranging and in effect annihilative.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Therefore, the Chinese had the desire to use biological warfare; they had the capability, as evident from the 2015 <em>Nature</em> article; they lacked any scruples.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">A key term in criminal investigation is ‘motive, means, and opportunity.’ The Chinese had all. It is like a violent man with a gun caught on CCTV near the house of his enemy. The enemy has been shot dead; nobody else has been found in or around the house. Whodunit?</p>.

Ravi Kapoor

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