The catastrophe of America's dependence on China

It's hard today to get away from the fact that China plays an enormous role in our economy and, in fact, probably more than most Americans realize.

It may be good for China's economy and plans for their future, but it does not bode well for our country. We are seeing some of the effects of it now with the terrible battle against the coronavirus.

One thing most Americans don't fully realize is that China is NOT a free, democratic country. It is a country run and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Years of literal brainwashing by the American education system has created several generations of people who don't see communism as a danger to their freedoms. To them, it's just another form of government. And these miseducated Americans have no sense of history. Lenin, Stalin, Mao – who are they and what does that have to do with us?

We are finding out.

China and its leaders have lied about the Wuhan virus from the beginning including their sending planeloads of infected people across the world. As the disease has spread, the whole issue of "responsibility" has been twisted by liberals to charges of racism. There are actually jurisdictions in this country consider making it a misdemeanor for anyone to link the virus to China. That's nothing compared to the viciousness of the media toward President Trump if he refers to it that way.

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But there is so much more we have to be worried about. It's long been known that many Chinese "scholars" in our universities are often Chinese military or outright spies who have stolen much technical and other information.

Anyone who cares about religion, especially if they are Catholic, should be worried and angry at how the Chinese are diligently working to destroy the religion and the churches in their country. It is an enigma why Pope Francis has allowed the Chinese Catholic Church to be undermined and virtually destroyed in the mainland without a word about the injustice and cruelty. It makes no sense.

Another aspect of the coronavirus situation is that it has brought to light the enormous role China has in controlling our food supply. We have heard this last week about the number of virus cases among the employees in many of our country's meatpacking plants.

What I didn't know until now is that a good number of those plants are owned and operated by the Chinese government. Smithfield was an American company begun in 1936, but it was bought in 2013 by the WHGroup – the largest total acquisition of a U.S. company by the Chinese.

The $417 billion price tag included some 146,000 acres of farmland, as reported in American Thinker. So in addition to becoming the owner of the world's most advanced animal-processing technology, China is also the world's largest buyer of American farmland.

It should give us second thoughts that a country which clearly has designs on our economy and world influence has such controls over a major part of our food supply – land, animals and production.

Also, consider the fact that the coronavirus has also made it possible for Americans to realize that China also controls critical products and components of our medical system.

Did you know that China makes 95% of our ibuprofen, 91% of hydrocortisone and 80% of our antibiotics? Doesn't that shock you? It does me.

Did you know that they make and control the critical needs we have for personal protective medical equipment – masks, gowns and other medical supplies?

Does it bother you to know that masks recently purchase from China were revealed to be contaminated and had to be destroyed?

That bothers me – a lot. It shows me that the Chinese government cannot be trusted to play by the same "rules" a free, capitalistic country follows.

Yet, over the last decades, our own government – many of our own politicians – have allowed these kinds of situations to exist and get bigger – putting our country, our people and our security at risk. We have allowed the Chinese government to gain strategic control over important parts of our economy, and the result of that could be catastrophic. Some might regard it as treason.

It must stop, and the sooner the better. It has nothing to do with racism. It has to do with common sense and a sense of self-protection.

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