90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Chinese Regime Hoards Global Inventory of Medical Supplies, Leading to Growing Shortage Outside China

Chinese Regime Hoards Global Inventory of Medical Supplies, Leading to Growing Shortage Outside China

As the pandemic has spread throughout the world, hospitals have become overwhelmed by CCP virus patients.

N-95 masks, medical protective suits, goggles, surgical gloves, disinfectant, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines, and medical ventilators have become critical supplies to treat patients or protect medical workers from being exposed to the virus.

As many countries deal with escalating outbreaks, evidence has emerged that Chinese authorities have bought up billions of masks, as well as hundreds of tons of other critical medical supplies globally. Meanwhile, China, itself a major manufacturer of such medical supplies, has stopped exporting since January—just as the outbreak in China became severe.

Chinese firms and overseas Chinese organizations are the main means to realize Beijing’s global sourcing, buying up stock from the United States, Europe, Australia, and other countries.

In some instances, Chinese companies negotiated with major international manufacturers and asked them to sell or donate their stocks to China.

Having sold their inventories to China and unable to purchase new products from China, countries around the world are now running low on medical supplies.

Government Actions

Beijing authorities mobilized the Chinese diaspora to help buy up goods. “Keep on buying while sending back to China [medical supplies], and try your best to buy as much as possible,” read one article posted on the official website of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s United Front Work Department, an agency dedicated to spreading the regime’s agenda inside and outside China. In the West, United Front organizations are usually Chinese student unions at colleges and universities, Chinese chambers of commerce, and Chinese associations.

The United Front encouraged all overseas Chinese to follow in the association’s footsteps to buy up all available medical materials and send them back to China.

The article explained that overseas Chinese in the United States, Canada, UK, Argentina, Australia, United Arab Emirates, and Seychelles have already bought up goods in the tons.

Some overseas Chinese organizations in those countries buy from local manufacturers and major wholesalers directly, such as DuPont. Others buy from whatever retailers they can find, according to the article.

The groups then hired Chinese and international shipping companies to transport the goods, such as FedEx and SF Express. The United Front also encouraged Chinese nationals to purchase goods and transport them in their personal luggage when they travel back to China.

China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry also directly instructed nationals to buy up medical supplies.

The Chinese consulate general in Los Angeles issued a notice encouraging donations on its official website on Jan. 26, listing supplies that were urgently needed in China, including:

Professor Richard Wolff blamed capitalism for the failures of the handling of coronavirus in America.

Young American Against Socialism responded by criticizing the American Left for using this ciris to exploit the American Public for political advancement.

While the country’s frontline workers and leaders are working tirelessly to combat the effects of the recent COVID-19 outbreak, a visiting professor at The New School, a university in New York City, has blamed capitalism for the failure in handling the coronavirus outbreak.

In a video published March 31, Richard Wolff, a well-known professor of economics, claims that capitalism is to blame for the “mess" of coronavirus.

“Capitalism is stumbling all over itself. It’s proving it isn’t good for the mass of people. It made a mess of [coronavirus],” Wolff states.

The video was published on YouTube by Democracy At Work, a nonprofit organization founded by Dr. Wolff. The organization “analyzes capitalism critically as a systemic problem” according to its website.

Wolff also argues, in an article titled “Coronavirus: A Capitalist Crisis,” that President Donald Trump’s “blame” for the coronavirus outbreak on anything other than a failed capitalist system is "racist, divisive, and ignorant."
“Trump, his government, and the system he serves need to blame the Corona catastrophe in the United States on something other than U.S. capitalism,” Wolff says, “Official blame targets what Trump calls ‘the Chinese virus.’ Yet such blaming is racist, divisive, and ignorant.”

Wolff has taught economics for decades. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Paris, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Throughout his career, Wolff has earned the distinction as a “Marxian Economist,” supporting ideology Karl Marx wrote about in The Communist Manifesto. Additionally, he is even credited as being one of the “greats of contemporary Marxian political economy.” He’s among 21 economists and professors to be considered a “great” of Marxist ideology.

Wolff did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment in time for publication.

Campus Reform reached out to Young Americans Against Socialism (YAAS) to speak about the implications of this line of thinking from Wolff.

Morgan Zegers, founder and CEO of YAAS, told Campus Reform that using a crisis like the COVID-19 outbreak to “normalize” socialist policies is nothing new for the American Left.

"Socialists love a good crisis. Growing feelings of fear and uncertainty present socialists with the opportunity to normalize their radical policies in the eyes of the general population,” Zegers told Campus Reform, “ Just like many socialist leaders and movements before them, the American left has been quick to seize the opportunity to push their...