China Mocks Joe Biden for 'No Federal Solution' to Pandemic: Did Election Promises Mean Anything?
China’s state-run Global Times propaganda newspaper mocked President Joe Biden for abandoning his campaign promise to end the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and instead declaring on Monday that “no federal solution” to the problem exists.
“Did American politicians’ promises during the US presidential elections mean anything at all?” the Timesasked, concluding that Biden’s failure as a president proves American democracy as a political system is “dubious.” The Times did not similarly conclude that China’s failure to contain the initial outbreak of Chinese coronavirus in Wuhan – nor its ongoing, record-setting outbreak in the 13-million-resident metropolis of Xi’an – should result in political consequences for dictator Xi Jinping or call into question Chinese communism.
As a presidential candidate last year, Biden promised to “shut down the virus.” Upon assuming the office, Biden told Americans that they would have to wear sanitary masks for only 100 days before his plan would result in the eradication of the Chinese coronavirus, a promise he failed to keep given the White House continues to demand that Americans cover their faces in public.
On Monday, shortly before leaving on a beach retreat in Delaware, Biden told governors in a video conference meeting there was “no federal solution” to the pandemic
“This gets solved at a state level,” he added, putting pressure on governors to act to contain the spread of the omicron variant of Chinese coronavirus, currently dominant in the United States.
The abdication of responsibility and refusal to answer questions has become a pattern for Biden, who has yet to mark one year in office. In a similar instance in August, Biden abruptly refused to answer questions on the Afghan war two days before the August 31 date that he had arbitrarily set to withdraw American troops.
“I’m not gonna answer on Afghanistan now,” he asserted shortly after the Taliban took over Kabul and became the de facto government of Afghanistan, a direct result of Biden breaking an agreement with the terrorist group and extending the war beyond May 1.
“It is beyond people’s imagination that the president of a superpower lacks a unified, federal-level guideline in the [Chinese coronavirus] fight,” the Global Times declared on Monday. The Chinese propaganda outlet noted that “many American people taunted his words” and that voters had not forgotten that he had both promised to end the pandemic and condemned President Donald Trump’s handling of the situation.
“People previously thought that anyone would do a better job than former US president Donald Trump in fighting the epidemic,” a Communist Party-approved “expert” told the Times. “But to be honest, Biden has not made remarkable moves at the federal level apart from encouraging people to get vaccinated and wear masks. US states are working independently and the federal government has not made efforts to keep them unified.”
The propaganda outlet pointedly noted that Trump, not Biden, led the federal effort to develop vaccine products against the Chinese coronavirus and that no significant medical developments have occurred under Biden’s leadership.
“Biden has not made any practical moves, which is retrogression,” the outlet concluded.
The Global Times also appeared to float the idea that Biden should resign from office due to his failure to contain the pandemic.
“‘Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America,’ Biden said so during his final presidential debate with Trump in October 2020,” the newspaper noted. “However … [t]he death toll during each of the parties’ is comparable. How can Biden explain this, and who should be held responsible for the deaths of these innocent people?”
The Times concluded, as it often does regardless of the topic discussed by its articles, that the American free political system is “dubious,” based exclusively on Biden’s incompetence.
Elsewhere in the pages of China’s most belligerent English-language outlet, the Global Timesadmitted that China is facing one of the worst outbreaks of Chinese coronavirus since the pandemic began in Wuhan in late 2019. The Chinese government claims a mere 200 coronavirus cases were confirmed on Monday, but that number is the largest the regime has admitted to since at least April 2020. Cases are peaking as China prepares to welcome athletes and world leaders for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, threatening to turn the Games into a super-spreader event. Prior to cases peaking, China banned local officials from leaving the Beijing neighborhoods scheduled to host the Olympics this month out of fear of the negative optics of politicians leaving as the ceremonies begin.
Last week, the Communist Party locked down Xi’an, a regional capital that is home to 13 million people.
“The outbreak in Xi’an has spread to many cities across China, including Dongguan, South China’s Guangdong Province and Beijing, where the 2022 Winter Olympics will begin on February 4,” the Global Times noted on Tuesday. “Although this [Chinese coronavirus] outbreak has increased the prevention pressure for China, Chinese health experts noted that China will ensure a safe international sports event since it can draw on lessons learned from previous experience in quelling local outbreaks.”
The Times did not elaborate on this “previous experience.” China’s management of the virus in Wuhan, however, was notoriously among the worst in the world. With knowledge of an infectious respiratory disease spreading in the city, Wuhan officials allowed 5 million people to leave the area for the Lunar New Year holiday, spreading the virus globally. Wuhan also hosted an indoor banquet for 130,000 people, many of them elderly and more vulnerable to severe coronavirus cases, in late January 2020.
Chinese state media reports do not indicate that Xi, the chairman of the Communist Party, is doing anything to respond to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The Global Times did not mention him engaging in any work regarding the current outbreaks in reports on Tuesday. The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, also featured no content on Tuesday elaborating on any work Xi is doing personally to combat the crisis.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency ran a feature on Monday on Xi’s involvement in space exploration.
“Xi may have his feet firmly on the ground, but he has his eyes on the stars,” the agency declared. The feature did not mention the Xi’an coronavirus crisis.
