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WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s national security adviser accused China on Wednesday (October 21) of trying to steal the West’s COVID-19 vaccine research, calling it an evil rival seeking to monopolize every major industry in the world XXI century.
Trump identifies China as America’s main competitor and has accused the Communist Party of China of profiting from trade and not telling the truth about the novel coronavirus outbreak, which he calls the “plague of China.”
In a 20-minute broadside against China, Robert O’Brien told senior British and American intelligence and military officials that China was a predatory power that repressed its people and had tried to coerce both neighbors and Western powers.
“The CCP is seeking dominance in all domains and sectors … (and) plans to monopolize all major industries for the 21st century,” O’Brien told the Atlantic Future Forum via a video link to the aircraft carrier. Navy HMS Queen Elizabeth.
“More recently, the People’s Republic of China used cyber espionage to target companies developing COVID vaccines and treatments in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, while promoting the need for international cooperation,” O’Brien said.
China, under President Xi Jinping, says the West, and Washington in particular, is in the grip of anti-Chinese hysteria, colonial thinking, and simply anger that China is once again one of the world’s top two economies.
China’s economic and military rise over the past 40 years is considered one of the most important geopolitical events of recent times, along with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, which ended the Cold War.
O’Brien said the West had made concessions to China for decades, including membership in the World Trade Organization, believing it would open up economically and politically, while easing its own barriers against foreign companies.
“Sadly, those are promises that he hasn’t kept to this day,” said the 54-year-old former Los Angeles attorney. “Instead, the CCP leaders doubled down on their totalitarian approach and mercantilist, state-dominated economics.”
In 1979, China had a smaller economy than Italy, but after opening up to foreign investment and introducing market reforms, it has become the world’s second largest economy.
It is now the world leader in a variety of 21st century technologies, such as artificial intelligence, regenerative medicine, and conductive polymers.
China’s response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, O’Brien said, “erased any lingering doubts about its intentions.”
He said that China had co-opted international organizations and forced them to install Chinese telecommunications equipment at its facilities. He accused the Communist Party of blocking foreign companies while subsidizing his own.
He said that China’s flagship international project, the so-called Belt and Road initiative, involved offering impoverished nations “unsustainable loans” to build “white elephant” infrastructure projects using Chinese companies and workers.
“These countries’ dependence on Chinese debt leaves their sovereignty eroded and with no choice but to stick to the party line on UN votes and … other issues,” O’Brien said.
