As the United States and the rest of the globe grapple with the coronavirus outbreak, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty, a G.O.P. candidate for U.S. Senate in Tennessee, insists holding the communist regime in Mainland China accountable should be a priority going forward, particularly with regards to the economic side of things.
During an interview with Huntsville, AL radio’s “The Jeff Poor Show,” Hagerty stressed this pointing and noted China’s immediate actions had dire consequences for the world.
“[T]hat relationship is critically important,” Hagerty explained. “Holding China accountable for these acts is critically important, and the great disservice China has done not only to its people and to global health and to the global economy by delaying, covering up and destroying evidence. That really slowed down their ability to react, our ability to react in putting this information into the system as they have done. It’s just unforgivable.”
“The answer is clear: They had a responsibility to notify the world immediately when this came up,” he said. “The cover-up has dampened the entire world’s ability to respond to this. You know, they destroyed samples. They suppressed medical professionals who tried to speak out there. They locked down foreign journalists. And they allowed their own people to die. And then to turn around and suggest the United States was responsible for this, to get the W.H.O. into it and get them to parrot their own propaganda — that’s the crime of the century.”
Hagerty’s fellow Tennessean Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has made several proposals regarding China and accountability, including debt forgiveness and bringing back manufacturing to the United States currently in China.
According to Hagerty, that is the right play.
“Senator Blackburn is focused on the economic side of it, and I think rightly so,” he said. “There are a number of things we can do though that’s to continue to stand up to China. Take their efforts to control strategic industries, like the 5G arena, what they’ve done with Huawei. We’ve stood up to them. President Trump saw what they were trying to do and forbade China from inserting their company, their state-controlled company Huawei into the U.S. 5G system.”
As it pertained to Huawei, Hagerty insisted freezing China out of global 5G infrastructure was critical. However, he warned against other Chinese tactics employed to wield influence over nations around the world.
“I served as ambassador to Japan until just recently,” he said. “I worked with the Japanese government to make sure Japan did the same thing. We blocked Huawei from Japan’s infrastructure. That took a lot of effort, but now we have the largest market in the world, which is America, and the third-largest, which is Japan, both blocking Huawei. Now Australia has come along. New Zealand has come along. I think Boris Johnson is seeing the light, and think the U.K. is going to come along. I’m concerned about Europe broadly.”
“But the more the world sees what China has done in this instance, the more they realize we’ve got to stand up to efforts like that,” Hagerty added. “We’ve got to stand up to their Belt and Road Initiative. They’ve used that to control smaller economies that have votes in international bodies. They’ve used it to their advantage to acquire strategic assets just like they did in Sri Lanka when they built a deepwater port and took it over.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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