Two long-existing realities of doing business with China have, as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, been thrust into the public spotlight. Both should disturb us. One should disturb China as well, having gained Beijing’s attention due to a recent development in the South China Sea.
1. U.S. Dependency
The first reality we should recognize is our heavy dependency upon China for various products.
It is shocking that we currently rely upon that country for about 90% of our pharmaceuticals and vitamins. Obviously, Beijing could easily weaponize our dependency either by disrupting flow or tainting it.
It should be a wake-up call for us as well that for 825 of 5,000 products the U.S. imports, China supplies more than all our other trade partners combined.
Concerning too is our rare earth mineral dependency. These are commonly used in high-tech devices, automotives, clean energy and defense products. In 2017, while China accounted for 81% of global rare earth mineral mining, the U.S. accounted for 0%. Again, this leaves China with an ability to disrupt exports of this strategic mineral at will – an action it has threatened to take before.
Concerns have mounted in the past over electronics imported from China, not only for consumers but also for our military. Additionally, our military depends upon the Chinese for components such as propellant for the Hellfire missile, launched from helicopters and used against terrorist targets today. The manufacture of our night-vision goggles involves a soft white-colored metal known as “lanthanum” – 90% of which comes from China.
A 2013 internal U.S. Army report identified 14 categories of mineral or technology requirements, foreign-sourced back then. It is doubtful much has been done since to alleviate this reliance.
A deep-seated fear our military has long held is Chinese-manufactured microchips might contain a secretly embedded “kill switch” by which an instrument or weapon could cease operating during times of conflict. Our intelligence agencies have already forewarned us that “made in China” mobile phones and network equipment have the capability to spy on Americans. Even fitness monitoring devices have demonstrated such a tracking ability, generating a Defense Department ban on wearing them at certain locations. (China uses cellphone data to track their citizens’ movements to ensure compliance with current virus travel restrictions – a capability our Centers for Disease Control now has as well.)
2. Chinese Workmanship
A second disturbing reality is Chinese workmanship. In assessing it, we need consider two possibilities – workmanship defects made intentionally and those made unintentionally.
An example of an intentional workmanship defect was shared by a Vietnamese veteran of the war with the U.S., reflecting the historical animosity between China and Vietnam.
China and Vietnam share a thousand-plus-year history of confrontation. While the latter broke away from Chinese rule in the 10th century, almost every century since then has been marred by China invading Vietnam. When the U.S. went to war with North Vietnam, China undertook a half-hearted effort to assist Hanoi.
One way China assisted Vietnam was in providing weapons and ammunition. Early on in the conflict, it shipped mortar rounds to its purported ally. However, the Vietnamese soon realized the rounds were unreliable, periodically falling short of the target. Only later was it learned the Chinese had intentionally manufactured them with insufficient powder.
A recent blog exchange involving the CEO of a Chinese company manufacturing forehead thermometers and his workers may be telling that such a Vietnam war era mentality among the Chinese – to intentionally manufacture substandard product for certain buyers – still remains. These bloggers “jokingly” discussed accelerating COVID-19’s spread in the West by fixing thermometers to display a lower temperature.
On the unintentional side of defective product workmanship, China has a less-than-stellar manufacturing history:
In 2007, the U.S. stopped some Chinese seafood imports, contaminated with drugs unapproved for use in fish farming. It was a particularly bad year for China as only half way through it, 60% of all recalls were Chinese-made products.
As of 2015, more than 4,000 U.S. homeowners had complained about metal corrosion caused by Chinese-made drywall, contaminated by high levels of sulfur, resulting in numerous health-related issues.
China is the third-largest pet food importer to the U.S. However, the lack of comprehensive Chinese regulations concerning the safety of pet foods led to the deaths of thousands of animals here. In 2016, more than 5,300 pet food products were recalled as vegetable proteins were contaminated with melamine.
With COVID-19 spreading globally, the world community has desperately needed test kits, masks and ventilators. Philanthropist Elon Musk bought 1,200 ventilators from China to distribute to various hospitals in the U.S. The good news is while China has been selling/donating test kits, masks and equipment to Europe, the bad news is many have proven defective. With the fourth-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world, Spain purchased 640,000 kits, only to discover they failed to detect the virus 70% of the time.
While China may not have been paying much attention to its defective workmanship in the past, it has awoken to the issue due to developments in the South China Sea.
Ever since 2013, and contrary to international law, China has been building man-made islands atop reefs there, effectively serving as stationery aircraft carriers. As has been reported, “the Chinese government has dredged and mostly destroyed ecologically delicate reefs in disputed waters in order to build seven major military bases complete with ports, airstrips and radar and missile installations.”
However, to Beijing’s dismay, it is learning a costly lesson – artificially inseminated South Sea islands do not fare well. Already there are reports bases are collapsing and sinking into the sea – the result of both weather conditions and shoddy workmanship.
Once the COVID-19 crisis passes, hopefully both countries will have learned some costly lessons.
