Editor’s Note: The following is Part 2 of a five-part series on the Chinese government’s role in the spread and severity of the Wuhan coronavirus, this one covering the long trail leading to the world’s vulnerability to a virus coming out of China. For Part One, click here.

It appears that the Wuhan Virus more than likely started back in November 2019, but if it weren’t for the fact that America has become hopelessly coupled to a communist Chinese government and system, that virus would not have turned into a pandemic that has infested much of our country. The 30 year process by which that happened is the true genesis of the Wuhan virus pandemic.

In 1999 on a radio program hosted by the late Ed Butler on the now defunct WTIX AM in New Orleans, I expressed concern that a communist Chinese company was poised to gain control of both ports at the ends of the Panama Canal.

A considerable amount of controversy ensued from that radio show and, when asked about it, the director of the port of New Orleans quipped, “I think we need to check our paranoia.”

Very few people wanted to believe that Red China could be another adversary in another Cold War like the Soviet Union had been. Nixon had made friends with the Chinese and all of that anti-communist rhetoric was supposed to be behind us.

The port director can be somewhat excused for his remark. After all, the port of New Orleans handles a lot of trade that travels through the Panama Canal and he didn’t want to offend the Chinese, who were about to control a key port on that trade route.

In 1999, few seemed to care that communist China was emerging as a world power.

Today, thanks to the Wuhan virus pandemic, few Americans are unaware of how our everyday lives are unfortunately intertwined with the Red Chinese.

Notice I wrote RED Chinese. There are two reasons for that:

1. Red in this case means communist, not Republican. Make no mistake, the communists are in total control of China today, as they have been since 1949.
2. A distinction needs to be made between the Chinese people—and all ethnic Chinese—and the communists who run the People’s Republic of China. I refer to communist China as Red China and the communists who rule the country as the Red Chinese.

Americans haven’t wanted to face reality but today the communist party in China is larger than the combined communist parties in the Soviet Union and Red China were in 1964. And thanks to 30 years of appeasement and accommodation by our politicians on both sides of the aisle and a disloyal or indifferent globalist business elite, we are faced with a new evil empire that is wealthier beyond Mao’s wildest dreams and armed to the teeth with modern weaponry aimed squarely at us.

A generation ago, under the rule of Deng Xiaoping, communist China began adopting aspects of market economics.

Many Western observers assumed that the incorporation of market economics into China’s political system would result in a freer China with close, warm relations with the U.S., the West and China’s free Asian neighbors.

The reality has been very different. China is not free and China’s relations with the world are often characterized by Chinese imperialism and tension.

We should have known, because we were warned.

Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman explained that economic freedom was a necessary condition for political freedom, but it is not sufficient for political freedom:

Friedman had, at the time, bought into the notion that political freedom would eventually take hold in China in spite of his admonition. But when China began to incorporate market economics into its communist economic system it did not change its communist political rule in any way. Instead, what we got were rich communists.

The communist party of China still rules China. China is best described as an oligarchy, a ruling system in which power lies in the hands of a small group of people. In China, the communist party rules. Within the communist party of China, the real power lies with the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, which is now made up of seven men, led by General Secretary Xi Jinping.

Xi Jinping has almost complete authority over China’s 1.3 billion people.

President Bill Clinton and many on Wall Street sold America on the idea that when China opened its markets to capitalism, liberty would invariably flow in and China would evolve into a free nation that posed no threat to the world.

The opposite has proven to be the case. China has maintained its totalitarian communist political system while it has amassed great wealth. And now, as we have seen with the recent controversy surrounding the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the U.S., China’s wealth has actually enabled the communists to enforce Chinese standards of freedom and liberty on Americans’ freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, internet, social media and tech corporations such as Google, Facebook and Apple seem to prefer the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to our own government.

In case you had any illusions about whether the Red Chinese had softened through capitalism, just take a look at this excerpt from the Chinese national anthem:

Millions of but one heart we run towards the Communist tomorrow! Build our homeland, guard our homeland, and fight gallantly. March on! March on! March on! We, for tens of thousands of generations to come, Hold high the Flag of Mao Zedong, march on!

Many Americans don’t know much, if anything at all, about Mao.  He is the father of communist China and ruled the nation up until his death in 1976. He led the charge to institute communist political repression. He is also the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. He is thought to have been responsible for the deaths of as many as 70 million people through planned starvation, slave labor gulags and outright executions.

Mao is still revered by the communists in China today, particularly Xi Jinping.

The rulers of China haven’t changed as much as some might have us believe. Just last year, Xi Jinping issued this statement regarding pro-liberty demonstrations in Hong Kong:

“Anyone who attempts to split any region from China will perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder.”

If that sounds like something Saddam Hussein would have said, there might be a reason for that. Think about it. It could be that the only difference between Saddam and Xi is that Xi hasn’t had to slaughter anyone in the streets yet—not that the communists are necessarily opposed to such action. Remember Tiananmen Square?

In so many ways the communist oligarchy in Red China is an outlaw regime, a serial violator of international borders, trade agreements, and, of course, human rights.

As long as we keep enriching the Red Chinese by doing huge amounts of business with them, we are complicit in their imperialism, their outlaw trade policies, the oppression of the Chinese people, and a massive arms build up aimed directly at America—the subject of part 3 of this series.