The Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic has the world struggling to grapple with the greatest crisis it has faced in decades. As countries are being overrun by the pandemic, large parts of the world have enforced a lockdown to prevent the further spreading of the virus. But even as countries are working hard to prevent a catastrophe due to the Coronavirus, China is up to its usual tricks again. After silencing whistleblowers and attempting to cover up the pandemic which has resulted in the calamity that the entire world faces today, China is now resorting to what can only be described as daylight robbery and theft.
A Chinese Government-backed Fortune 500 company has raided in bulk Australia’s supplies of masks, hand sanitiser, antibacterial wipes and essential medical supplies and shipped them back to China, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported. The Greenland Group, a real estate giant, has practically drained Australian medical supplies which were to be used in fighting the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic. Three million surgical masks, seven lakh hazmat suits, five lakh pairs of gloves and bulk supplies of sanitizer and wipes were bought up in Australia and other countries where Greenland operates and whisked off.
The entire exercise occurred over January and February. The staff of the company was instructed to halt their regular work and stock essential medical supplies so that the could be shipped off to China. “Basically all employees, the majority of whom are Chinese, were asked to source whatever medical supplies they could,” one company insider was quoted as saying. The accounts department, contract managers, the human resources team and even receptionists were part of the daylight robbery. “There were numerous requests from the HR manager and even our direct reporting line [which] prioritised the assisting of the company in gathering these supplies over other work activities,” a source told the SMH.
A whistleblower from the company told SMH that it was a worldwide effort not limited to Australia alone. The supplies were sourced even from Canada, Turkey and other countries. Meanwhile, the Greenland Group confirmed the scoop in a statement to the newspaper. The company claimed that it “felt compelled … to assist in efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus, which had caused a shortage of crucial medical supplies in China.” Greenland Australia supported the initiative “by arranging for medical supplies to be dispatched to China, which at that time, was the epicentre of the outbreak,” the statement said.
Sherwood Luo, the managing director of Greenland Australia, even posted photographs of this occurring on social media. As per the newspaper, on February 13 he posted on WeChat “#CombatCoronavirus, Greenland Australia is Taking Action. The second batch of non-contact forehead thermometers will soon take off to China! Coronavirus situation is serious, Chinese people, local and overseas, are trying their best, fighting together to combat the virus.”
Meanwhile, China is supplying Wuhan Coronavirus test kits to countries that do not work. The 5.5 million rapid test kits that were bought by Spain recently have been found to be wanting. As per El Pais, the widely circulated Spanish daily, several microbiology laboratories of large hospitals in the country have confirmed that they do not work as they should. “They do not detect the positive cases as expected,” a source who participated in the tests said on the condition of anonymity. One of the microbiologists who has analyzed the Chinese test stated, “With that value, it does not make sense to use these tests.”
Similar results have emerged from Czech Republic. It was reported by Czech news site Expats.cz that as much as 80% of the much-touted traunch of Wuhan Covid-19 rapid test kits “donated” by China were faulty, forcing healthcare workers in the country to rely on conventional laboratory tests. While China tried to give the impression that it had ‘donated’ the test kits, in reality it was bought and paid for by the Czech government.
According to Pavla Svrcinova, hygienist for the Moravian-Silesian Region, the region will continue to rely on conventional laboratory testing. “We checked them at the University Hospital in Ostrava, but unfortunately the error rate was quite high. So now we are waiting for the results of further testing across the country, and we are considering using them only with people reach the end of their quarantine and have never tested positive, because it works with antibodies,” she said. “We tested those who searched for a sampling point. Fortunately, we were so farsighted that samples were immediately compared with traditional tests, and that just proved the error rate of the [Chinese rapid] tests,” she added.
Meanwhile, China has upped the ante with regards to its military movement. Times of India reported on the 24th of March that India is keeping a close watch on the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) amid reports that China has deployed underwater drones apart from hydrographic survey and oceanic research ships in the region. China also conducted an anti-submarine drill in the South China Sea this month, apparently in response to patrols by U.S. warships. “Training for war preparedness will not be stopped even in the middle of the COVID-19 epidemic,” Chinese state-controlled Global Times said on March 25 following an aircraft carrier-based exercise in the region. China has continued to assert its presence in the South China Sea in the wake of the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis by deploying maritime militia around disputed islands and reefs in the Spratly island chain, according to vessel tracking data and satellite imagery reviewed by Radio Free Asia.
While the Chinese government is engaging in dubious propaganda in an obvious attempt to shift blame for its disastrous handling of the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak, it has engaged in atrocious behaviour by seeking defective test kits to affected countries and draining others of necessary medical supplies. Simultaneously, China has also ramped up its military exercises in the disputed South China Sea region as the world grapples to combat a crisis of China’s making. Meanwhile, the Chinese regime is accusing everyone who called the virus ‘Wuhan Coronavirus’ or ‘Chinese Virus’ of being racist.
