Cardinal Raymond Burke said Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic raises “serious questions” about international dependence on communist China.
“The role of the People’s Republic of China in the whole international health crisis raises many serious questions,” wrote Cardinal Burke, the former head of the Vatican’s highest court. “While we as Christians love the Chinese people and want for them what is for their good, we cannot fail to recognize that their government is the embodiment of atheistic materialism or communism.”
The Chinese government “has no respect for God and for His Law,” the cardinal noted. “The President of China, Xi Jinping, has made it abundantly clear that the only acceptable religion in China is China. His government is based on the idolatry of the nation, and a number of its laws and practices are in open violation of the most fundamental precepts of the divine law written upon the heart of every man and woman.”
Chinese communism “is an evil form of government which, for instance, practices forced abortions and openly violates the religious freedom of the people,” Burke declared. “It is only right to ask what ethical principles have governed the involvement of the Chinese government in the coronavirus COVID-19 international health crisis.”
Along with being by the far the largest nation still ruled by an atheistic Marxist regime, China is also accountable to the world for its role in the spread of the coronavirus, the cardinal suggested, while also alluding to questionable ties between China and the World Health Organization (W.H.O.).
Noting that “it is only right to ask what has been and what is the involvement of national and international public health organizations with the Chinese government in the matter of the virus which has threatened many lives and the very stability of sovereign nations,” he also raised “the serious question of individuals with many billions of dollars at their disposal, who regularly and powerfully sustain an anti-life and anti-family agenda and who are publicly involved in the crisis and exercise a heavy influence on public opinion regarding it.”
“As citizens of a nation, it is our duty to ask these questions and to pursue steadfastly honest answers to them,” he said.
The cardinal also questioned the growing economic dependence of many nations on China and the questions this raises for the future, especially with China’s aggressive Belt and Road initiative.
“The present crisis has also made clear how dependent many nations are on the People’s Republic of China,” Burke said. “Companies which for decades produced the necessary goods of a nation within the nation now produce those goods in China in the interest of economic gain.”
“How many of the goods we use daily bear the label: ‘Made in China’?” he asked. “The present crisis must lead us to ask why, in our nations, we ourselves are not producing what is necessary for the healthy and strong life of the people of the nation.”
“These are complex questions which are made all the more urgent by the fact that many nations are, in fact, dependent upon the People’s Republic of China, a government which fully and radically espouses atheistic materialism,” he concluded.