As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the world, some countries are finding themselves in a difficult situation.
Low on supplies or money, traditional American allies like Spain, Italy, France and Japan have had to turn to China for help.
“China creates the poison and sells the solution to it,” foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang told Fox News.
China has used its money, medical equipment and teams of doctors and nurses in a high-stakes campaign to show the world that while the United States scrambles to contain the novel coronavirus within its borders, China is busy moving in on some of America’s closest allies.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” Dimitar Bechev, a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, wrote. “There is no better illustration that the medical supplies and crews of doctors China has been supplying to Italy and other European countries battling COVID-19. Beijing does carry a large share of the blame for the global pandemic… but now it seeks to shape the narrative of the crisis unfolding before our eyes.”
China has also been floating the idea that it has donated all of the medical supplies out of concern for the world. That’s not the case, Chang said.
“A lot of the stuff that China claims has been donated has not been donate,” he said. “It’s been sold.”
China has come through for several countries but, in some, it has fallen short of expectations.
In Spain, for example, Health Minister Salvador Illa announced Wednesday that the country had bought $467 million in medical supplies from China, including 950 ventilators, 5.5 million testing kits, 11 million gloves and more than half a billion protective face masks.
Soon after receiving the supplies, the Spanish government announced plans to return 9,000 “quick result” test kits to China, El Pais reported, because they were deemed substandard, specifically the sensibility of the test was around 30 percent, when it should be higher than 80 percent. – READ MORE
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