The Chinese and U.S. Kabuki Corona Dance of Death by Larry C Johnson

Sorry to mix metaphors and cultural traditions. Yes, Kabuki is Japanese in origin but the Kabuki dance now playing out between Beijing and Washington is an apt description of the political posturing each side is performing. Apart from the complaints from both Chinese leaders and U.S. politicians in which each side blames the other for the outbreak and spread of Corona, there is a curious mix of posturing and actions that are sending mixed messages and clouding the simple, horrible truth--the global spread of Corona 19 was a deliberate, conscious act by the Chinese Communist government to weaken the West, especially the United States. But there is another part of the story that has received little attention from the media and most pundits--the US Government, with DOJ leading the charge, is going after some very intriguing Chinese intelligence operatives.

More about that later, let's focus first on the growing body of evidence that the launch of Corona from Wuhan was not the result of eating rotten bats or an accident at the level 4 bio lab in Wuhan. Instead of recruiting fanatics to wear suicide bomb belts, the Chinese Government appears to had chosen to infect its own citizens and send them out to major population centers in the West. It was a conscious plan to infect and weaken the West.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that China chafed under the Western world's support for student protesters in Hong Kong and Donald Trump's aggressive campaign to punish China for unfair trade practices. It is no mere coincidence that the emergence of the virus in Wuhan barely spread into other parts of China. Beijing and Shanghai dwarf New York City in terms of populating size and concentration, yet the Chinese urban behemoths escaped unscathed. Not so New York and other major western countries, such as Italy, the UK and Spain--all have experienced major disruptions and pain as a result of the virus bomb set off in those nations. 

If you have not seen the following two videos they are worth your time and consideration:

There were some fascinating developments in December and January in Boston involving Chinese nationals and a U.S. citizen who got paid a lot of money to help China advance in the field of nano biology.

Let's start with Zaosong Zheng. Here is the DOJ press release:

Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.

Biological research? What kind? What would you say if I told you that at least one of the vials contained Corona 19? Would that change your mind? The complaint against Zaosong Zheng contains some tantalizing clues. Take a look at the FBI Agent who swore out the affidavit--Special Agent Karen D Spice. She has worked as a hazardous materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) forensic evidence specialist for the FBI since 2006.

The FBI is not telling the full story. Here's the official party line--the U.S. Government just happened to discover the vials. Lucky coincidence, huh?

On Monday, December 9, 2019, CBP Agriculture Specialists assigned to Boston Logan International Airport identified ZHENG, a researcher who was scheduled to depart Boston bound for Beijing, China on Hainan Airlines (HU) flight 482, as a high risk for possibly exporting undeclared biological material. 

As a result, CBP officers went to the Hainan bag room where they were able to locate two checked bags in ZHENG’s name. The checked bags were physically examined. The examination resulted in the discovery of twenty one (21) vials wrapped in a plastic bag and concealed in a sock. The vials were visually inspected and appeared to contain a brown liquid with both typed and handwritten descriptions and notes. Based upon my experience and training and discussions with agents working on this matter, these vials contained what appeared to be biological materials that were not properly declared or packaged for transportation in a commercial aircraft.

The decision to take a close look at Zheng was not just because a CBP officer had a hunch. It is highly likely that Zheng had been under surveillance, probably including electronic surveillance of his communications. This was not just an accidental discovery.

The same DOJ Press Release also focuses on Yanqinq Ye. According to the DOJ:

Ye is a Lieutenant of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the armed forces of the People’s Republic of China and member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On her J-1 visa application, Ye falsely identified herself as a “student” and lied about her ongoing military service at the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), a top military academy directed by the CCP.

In other words, a military spy for China. And Logan Airport once again is espionage central:

On April 20, 2019, federal officers interviewed Ye at Boston’s Logan International Airport. During the interview, it is alleged that Ye falsely claimed that she had minimal contact with two NUDT professors who were high-ranking PLA officers. However, a search of Ye’s electronic devices demonstrated that at the direction of one NUDT professor, who was a PLA Colonel, Ye had accessed U.S. military websites, researched U.S. military projects and compiled information for the PLA on two U.S. scientists with expertise in robotics and computer science. Furthermore, a review of a WeChat conversation revealed that Ye and the other PLA official from NUDT were collaborating on a research paper about a risk assessment model designed to decipher data for military applications. During the interview, Ye admitted that she held the rank of Lieutenant in the PLA and admitted she was a member of the CCP.

Ask yourself again, "Why did federal officers decide to interview Ye?" Just a spur of the moment hunch? Not likely. I believe this shows there is a pretty substantial counter intelligence operation by the FBI going after Chinese targets.

The star of the DOJ press release is an American citizen, Dr. Charles Lieber of Harvard University. Robert Willman has written a fine piece here at SST and I encourage you to read it if you missed it the first go round. What I find striking about the Lieber case is that his indictment focuses on activities between 2010 and 2015. Nothing recent. But the revelations of the vast amounts of money he was collecting from the Chinese ($600,000 a year) is jaw dropping.

Like it or not we are a war with China. China is not our friend. It is an adversary keen on destroying America's place as the world's economic leader. It is not just a Corona attack. The Chinese Government is invested heavily in helping the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels produce and distribute synthetic narcotics, such as fentanyl, in the United States. China remains the world leader in product counterfeiting, which covers products from the most mundane consumer items to our most sophisticated technologies. The Chinese also have been in the forefront of using straw buyers to purchase luxury automobiles, such as Mercedes and BMW, in the United States and then ship them covertly to China to be sold on lots owned by relatives of Senior Chinese Government officials. 

China is engaged in a massive criminal and intelligence war on our country. I suppose the one silver lining of the Corona virus is that it has awakened many previously somnambulist Americans to this threat. Will we do anything or will we quietly march into the graveyard of history?

Comments

[J]

CCP PLA Lt. Yanqing-Ye

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/counterintelligence/yanqing-ye

[Eric Newhill]

Interesting, Larry. The story has been kept fairly well locked down. I never heard of it before.

The real virus in this story is the ideology of socialism. I note that socialist agitprop personalities are amazing up and salivating over the destruction of capitalism under the guise of covid concern trolling. Some of these personalities are in our own government (Obama holdovers, mostly). I suppose the Chinese are playing the long game here.

[Terence Gore]

An image of Maddonna at 2019 Eurovison finals is shocking. Hell of a coincidence.

https://www.google.com/search?q=madonna+2109+eurovision+finals&sxsrf=ALeKk03I0M-R5a5geHxAWlKamsayDQPbqw:1586777073918&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjei9CepeXoAhU5KDQIHRwMBTMQ_AUoAnoECBMQBA&biw=1031&bih=544&dpr=1.25#imgrc=qkudb0VQIpRR4M

"During the Eurovision Finale in May of 2019, a corona-wearing Madonna is surrounded by gas masked, zombie like dancers as she sang, “Not everyone can come into the future / Not everyone that’s here is gonna last.” At the end, they all fall over backward, out of sight, so that only the 61-year-old sex symbol remains, with rapper Quavo."

https://www.unz.com/ldinh/coronavirus-bondage/

[Keith Harbaugh]

All good points. As to how this has affected the U.S. military, the NYT has given a detailed look at what happened on the TR, CVN-71 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/coronavirus-roosevelt-carrier-crozier.html
Note that prior to docking there were, supposedly, no cases of coronavirus in Danang. I can't help but think of the following possibility.
No doubt there are numerous people in Vietnam who lost a parent to the naval aircraft, A-4s, etc., that flew off the aircraft carriers that were stationed at Yankee and Dixie stations. Would it not be natural for some of them to seek vengeance against the USN for its earlier acts? We certainly have well-documented acts of vengeance against those who supported the Czarist dynasty in Russia. Look at how the whole family of Czar Nicholas was brutally murdered. (I know of no parallels to that foul act in European history, however there is a parallel in Hebrew history, that of the family of Athalia.)

[CK]

Oh if only more of the US population got its infotainment from really attractive but obviously serious brunette talking heads we all would be so much better infotained. But we don't so we aren't.
So it is war but a new type; slow, inefficient at killing fighting age people but very good at loading fear into older people. How do you recommend that the US respond to this war?
And just as an aside, if you overlay a map of the current corona attributed deaths on a map of US sanctuary cities, you get an amazingly tight fit.

[Godfree Roberts]

Here's a mirror image of your hypothesis:

Covid Type A, the parent phenotype of Types B and C, did not originate in China. It originated in the USA and is by far the predominant strain here. See "Coronavirus Has THREE Distinct Strains, According to Study; US Suffering From Original Variation." https://www.techtimes.com/articles/248721/20200410/coronavirus-has-three-distinct-strains-according-to-study-us-suffering-from-original-variation.htm

The US has been using bioweapons on China since 1951 and on Cuba since the 70s. The effect has been to make both countries' public health systems better than America's, as their life expectancy advantage demonstrates.

Naturally, China would like to stop the attacks and, last year, an opportunity presented itself.

There are Chinese researchers in every biolab in the USA and last Fall some noticed a novel Coronavirus epidemic, caused by what we now know as Type A Covid-19, and reported it to the CCDC in Beijing. The CCDC asked for DNA profiles and tissue samples.

The DNA profiles were easy to send, but the FBI was on the case and caught at least two Chinese smuggling samples out, but two others escaped the FBI's airport dragnet. I suspect that, since the plot would have taken at least a year to hatch, a patriotic Chinese in the chain of custody learned how the US planned to use it as a weapon.

The CCDC alerted its national network of 70,000 pathogen reporters and, when the fake US Army team brought the more-deadly Type B to Wuhan, Beijing sprung the trap. A reader, Valerie Van Kerckhove, an Industrial engineer in biochemistry, experienced in pharmacovigilance and molecular biology, alerted me:

"I actually find the response by the Chinese government to be extremely interesting. It seems like it’s overblowing the matter on purpose. Considering the low number of cases (compared to China’s population) and low death rates, it feels like the Chinese government is overblowing fears on purpose, with maps filled with dark areas and shutting down everything everywhere (and this is during China’s most important holiday season).I suspect it’s practicing for when a Really serious disease breaks out, the sort with people dying like flies. So I find all this fuss quite interesting. We’ve been warned about a potential superbug outbreak for years, and now we can see how the response will look like. No doubt the Chinese government is busy taking notes on what it could have done better."

From the POV of excess deaths, Covid-19 is just a blip, but China really went to town on it and staged the greatest civil defense drill in human history and talked it up so much that it became a global topic of conversation and remains so.

So the civil defense drill worked, they have the lowest death rate in the world, they have identified the three Covid strains, their sequence and locations of appearance, and they're starting to put the heat on the US to fess up to a coverup... or else China will do it for them.

I suspect we're watching an American PR stunt go horribly wrong. Donald Trump, if he even knew about it, should have heeded his own words, “People say you don’t like China. No, I love them. But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. And we can’t sustain ourselves with that. It’s like, take the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and have them play your high school football team.”

[turcopolier]

KH

Never heard of the "Dixie" station. Interesting.

[turcopolier]

Godfree Roberts

" The US has been using bioweapons on China since 1951 and on Cuba since the 70s." Do you have any proof of that?

[Fred]

"Like it or not we are a war with China."

I hope the word gets out to the states whose universities have decided that Chinese money gives prioritization to their students while ours are shunted off the SJW lala land or wait listed, plus coereced into financial bondage for prestige degress. Trump should revoke all chinese student visas. I believe he has emergency powers previously stated.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-declaring-national-emergency-concerning-novel-coronavirus-disease-covid-19-outbreak/

There are plenty of governors have been on the Chinese money grab list for some time. Pompeo spoke about it earier in the year. Sundance wrote about it a few days ago and linked to a video of Pompeo's remarks. https://youtu.be/g1BbswU3i10

Eric,

Scott Adams and his puffery around "voluntary" health reporting aps and location tracking. I'm sure that's going to be rolled out to 20 million "undocumented" aliens first, or are they immune from Covid panic? Check your LinkedIn news feed to see what the other "influencers" are doing.

Keith, two words with great symbolic meaning: Jane Fonda.

[EEngineer]

When you step back from the origins of the disease and just look at how CV-19 propagates it's difficult to tell just how bad things are vs how they would have been without the panic. Then I wonder if there is actually a parallel control population somewhere. How about the homeless population? In the US it's huge, has poor hygiene, nutrition, medical care, and lives outside the official economy. No lock-down there. In short it's an invisible world of untouchables. If the virus is anything like as nasty as some tout it to be one would expect it to rip through that population like a buzz saw. So anyone know?

[turcopolier]

All

I may write a front page post on this when more info is available, but right now it seems likely (WAG) that CODIV-19 was at least partially developed in US university labs partially funded by Chinese government front groups with the on scene assistance of Chinese graduate students and the paid cooperation of US academics.

[A. Pols]

It seems that a non discriminating rapidly disseminating viral illness is a rather poor choice for a bio-weapon. The second video with the grave and somber tone of the announcer seems propagandistic with the coda of suggesting suing China.Accounts of the 1918 flu epidemic are filled with all kinds of similar finger pointing. I'm not a fan of conspiracy based thinking and I'm already reading all kinds of nutty stuff on FB and other social media platforms. Viruses are truly a bane and they're so slippery they're almost magical in the way they end up everywhere. It seems to me that it's better to focus on preventive and curative measures, medical, social, and economic, rather than engage in futile "analysis" trying to find a human perpetrator. Nature engages in all manner of nasty perpetrations on humanity all by itself thanks to its endless bag of tricks with viruses, bacteria, protozoans, and even nasty bits of work like prions. As for the human (political) fumbling in China (and everywhere else), it's standard fare when societies are caught with their pants down and leadership gets singled out in retrospect for blame. It's hard to control events when events are in control.

[Eric Newhill]

Fred,
Adams is a blowhard. I know what techno-socialism-matrix- brave-new-world developments are happening in healthcare; or at least healthcare is the excuse - and the virus is making the excuse an easier sell. I'm working on a project right now that involves all of that. I'll tell you about it sometime (perhaps on a mutual friends FB).

[turcopolier]

A. Pols

Not a "conspiracy." No, a Chinese government operation. Do you believe such operations by various governments exist? From personal experience I KNOW they do. Do you have any connections to China?

[Deap]

They need to take a close look at the recently hired CIO for the massive CalPERS public employee pension fund. He was a Chinese military agent before becoming a naturalized US citizen and "Wall Street investor".

He recently pushed for a dangerous investment move that insured the pension fund would no longer be covered should there be a sudden market downturn. And then, what do you know there was a sudden down turn and the pension fund lost one billion dollars do to his decision.

Already the pension fund is over-promised, only 70% funded and devouring local governmental budgets with hugely increasing payment demands. On its own this public pension fund is a disaster in the making right now. Now it just got a lot worse after this new Chinese CIO took over.

Coincidence is not causation, but something is starting to look like Peking Duck when the dots are connected. Worth further investigation.

[Harper]

Let's take this one step further. Assuming that Larry is correct, what is a proper US response? This is not an instance where the US can retaliate in kind. US and China have an economic version of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and any selective decoupling will require finding alternative supply chains that have no national security vulnerabilities or rebuilding our dismantled industrial base on new high tech foundations (I personally favor the second option). Do we let allied intelligence services know about the evidence? Does the Trump Administration go public and create domestic pandemonium? I don't think either of these options are viable any more than direct retaliation. These are food for thought.

[Christian J Chuba]

I wouldn't use the uneven spread in China as evidence that they did a Kamikaze attack on us (another inappropriate cultural metaphor). The spread in the U.S. was also extremely uneven. The first cases appeared on the West Coast but Washington / CA have < 10% of our cases while NY/NJ still have over 50%.

In a Kamikaze attack you only risk one pilot, China risked more than that including their global reputation. Doing so would mean that their entire strategy hinged on our incompetence as they gave us a good solid month to respond. As cynical as I am I wouldn't touch that bet. China notified WHO on 12/31 and by 1/24 human to human transmission, w/5,000 probable cases, WHO rated global outbreak HIGH and recommended temperature screening. By then China put Wuhan in full lockdown, if that is not showing your cards then what is?
Had we reacted as aggressively as Japan/S.Korea w/a 14 day isolation and contact tracing screening for all arrivals from infected countries and temperature screening on everyone else in Feb. then we would be laughing at them. Trump's selective travel ban was a good start but insufficient. Instead we held Mardis Gras.

I cannot think of a single good reason why we did not start aggressive containment measures after 1/24. Did I sound the alarm? No. I just read the WHO situation reports recently but I would hope that there is some arm of the U.S. govt that does so. The first three are sufficient.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports

[A. Pols]

I do not have any direct connections to China. I have a brother in law who does and he's been there a lot recently, so he tells me things, but it doesn't make me an expert. My comment was not intended as exculpatory for China or anyone, only as a note about human tendencies and failings in such situations and that rumors fly. And yes, I do agree with what you say about your personal experiences....

[Deap]

From "Institutional Investor" April 2020 re: former Chinese military officer and now CalPERS CIO Ben Meng to disinvest protection against market downturn for CalPERS funds - he too urges "going long". Chinese do have a different concept of time - they measure in millennia; we measure in minutes.

"....The California Public Employees’ Retirement System ended its program to protect against stock-market crashes shortly before it likely would have paid off, the fund confirmed Thursday.

“We terminated explicit tail-risk hedging options strategies because of their high cost, lack of scalability, and the fact that there are better alternatives available to CalPERS,” Ben Meng, chief investment officer for the nation’s largest public pension fund, told Institutional Investor in a statement.

The timing may be painful, but Meng stands by the decision.

“At times like this, we need to strongly resist ‘resulting bias’ — looking at recent results and then using those results to judge the merits of a decision,” Meng cautioned. “We are a long-term investor. For the size and complexity of our portfolio, we need to think differently.”......"

[turcopolier]

A. Pols

IMO losing a few thousand people in the course of an op designed to ruin us would be acceptable to the CCP. Look at their history.

[Christian J Chuba]

A more concise way to make my point. It's an extremely risky way to get back at us. I kind of figured they would send us a few batches of bad pet food first but what do I know?

[JJackson]

All
It is very sad to see how far SST has sunk in its adoption of this conspiracy theory. Lots of smoke and no fire. The US did not develop SARS-1 or SARS-2 or MERS neither did China. Nature did. Is there anyone here who can read sequence data? It seems not. Why did SST apply critical thinking and logic re Syrian chemical weapons attacks and the Skripals but have now completely lost the plot?
China has not escaped, any more than we have, this is going to be a problem for the next couple of years as it continues to wax and wain as we relax and reimpose containment measures.
I will be very interested to see what is in those vials, my money says they are DNA related to his cancer research and has nothing to do with SARS-2's RNA or any other virus.

[Laura Wilson]

I don't think you are giving nature and human stupidity enough credit.

[Fred]

Deap,

That looks like it was intentional sabatoge of CalPERS. Perhaps somebody in the MSM should as Governor Newsome about it.

Corporate America should start looking at their own Chinese influenced research. We had more than one Chinese national 'graduate student' working on 3D printing for manufacturing and associated econometric modeling here recently. Over the objections of some the company's entire databank including all sales and price history for the past two decades to the individual part level was presented to MIT's researchers. Plenty of foreign companies in competition with our firm would pay dearly for a piece of that data. I have little doubt the CCP has it.

Christian Chuba,

"I cannot think of a single good reason why we did not start aggressive containment measures after 1/24."
Perhaps you were too busy to see the House usings its time on Impeachment in December or the Senate having to hold an impeachment trial in January. Then there was Pelosi's "no ban act" that would have prevented Trump's Chinese travel ban from being implemented. Followed by her public statements about it being okay to go down to Chinatown. Sentiments echoed by the Socialist De Blasio in NYC. China risks a US response only if their finanical and political influence within the MSM and the Democratic Party is challenged effectively within the US.

Harper,

"Do we let allied intelligence services know about the evidence?" Does that include the ones who pushed the Russia collusion crime on us? Yes, let them see it all but don't trust them a damn bit to do anything about it. I believe the correct response would be a declaration of war. Sieze their assets, repudiate all debt held by them, expel all thier citizens here, cancel all visas and greencards. See if the CCP wants to start shooting with somthing other than viruses and fentynol, the later of which has already killed a hundreds of thousands of Americans.

[JerseyJeffersonian]

Well, well, what a surprise. The Communist Party of China might have obfuscated, dissimulated, and unthinkably, lied about what they knew and when they knew it about CoVID-19? This included gagging a world level expert in emerging diseases. This also might include the nasty case of another Chinese doctor, alarmed at what he suspected was happening who tried to get out the word, then subsequently disappeared, and later was reported to be dead. 

But, of course, the NIH (yes, that National Institute of Health) was funding research at the two Chinese facilities mentioned in this article, undoubtedly because China, despite all their current propaganda, is the point of origin of dangerous flus/respiratory diseases. But a Rutgers authority suspects that, instead of working at the maximally-secure level of 4, this bat research was being conducted at level 2, far less safe for preventing accidental releases. Given the widely-known Chinese tendency to cut corners, and perpetrate frauds, and then to lie about everything, one wonders where the oversight from the NIH went, no?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-government-gave-3-7million-grant-Wuhan-lab-experimented-coronavirus-source-bats.html

This link is from the Daily Mail, which unfortunately is visually cluttered, and infested with pop-up ads. Just x out the ads, and soldier on; their sourcing is often very good, and they don't pull punches. Read it all the way through. If the Chinese indeed knew the genetic sequencing for the virus by early January, only to withhold this information vital to the development of screening tests, and potential vaccines from other nations and research/pharmaceutical organizations, well, things are going to get bad for them.

And just for shits & giggles, here is another link to something that might prove eye-opening. This concerns a section of an address to a meeting of this nation's governors by SoS Pompeo. I don't care much for Pompeo, but his having been previously head of the CIA, and thus having been in a position to learn of this information, makes it of substantially more interest. 

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/12/the-list-interesting-and-quietly-overlooked-remarks-by-secretary-pompeo/#more-188956

This post has been updated to include the referenced CCP list/grading of the governors. It covers only a bit more than 30 out of 50. Our own Gov. Murphy is not on the list. The speech does go into some of the possible approaches to the state governments, and I have to say these are classic espionage penetration/recruiting techniques. Hmm. It has become crystal clear that similar activities with US universities and technological entities have led to massive infiltratration by Chinese wolves in sheep's clothing, and for analagous reasons; i.e., greed for full price tuition, and pecuniary gain for corporations having overridden prudence about security of high-level intellectual content and technological/engineering processes. Ya know, maybe if the FBI & the CIA were more interested in counterintelligence than in subverting the President and the national election that put him there, we might be better off. Just a crazy idea, I know.

I am sure that President Putin is taking all of this in as he considers how he should structure his dealings with the Chinese going forward. After all, Russia shares a long border, and increasing ties with these less than trustworthy "partners". But here in the USA (and with our yapping poodles in Europe) it was Russia this, Russia that, slap some sanctions on them, and here we are today with positive relations again with Russia difficult to see. Stupid beyond comprehension, and this idiocy has driven Russia and China closer, something that may not have happened were it not for listening to NeoCons in the case of Russia, and NeoLiberals in the case of China.