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

[turcopolier]

TTG

"Your assertion that one of those vials being smuggled out of that Boston medical center contained covid-19 would implicate that medical center as the developer of the virus" Yes. What better cover for partial research for creation of the virus than research for benign purposes? Why are you defending these scoundrels?

[The Twisted Genius]

pl,

Right now it is just Larry's assertion that the smuggled vials had anything to do with covid-19. Nothing more. Only reports I've seen identified the vials as biological material for cancer research. Zheng is most certainly a recruited Chinese agent stealing US intellectual property. He's also a cancer researcher, not a virologist. I'm not defending them. I listed several areas of Chinese operations against the US in my previous comment. I just see no evidence of a deliberate operation against the US in the emergence of covid-19, just breathless assertions.

[J]

The shutting down by China of their wholly owned U.S. subsidiary Smithfield pork, which is the world's largest pork producer, is a direct retaliation against POTUS Trump's stabilization of oil prices.

[TonyL]

A question to the experts. Especially JJackson.

We (US) have all 5 strains of the COVID-19 virus, and other countries each has only a specific strain or 2 specific strains? what does that mean to virologists or infectuous disease experts? does that mean the COVID-19 virus came from the US?

[Seamus Padraig]

@ EEngineer | 13 April 2020 at 11:08 AM

Then I wonder if there is actually a parallel control population somewhere.

Here are three: Sweden, Iceland and Belarus. None of them are under lockdown. So far, they seem to be doing fine.

[Amir]

What is your take on this, almost a decade and a half old, Federation of American Scientist’s report on risk of contagious diseases and how to prepare for it: https://fas.org/irp/nic/2025.pdf
China suppressed them too?!

[anon]

I keep saying it but no one listens.The unions on the docks must block the containers from china.

GO SLOW SAID MO.do not unload them.do not unload them.Only direct action will work.

[walrus]

There is a dangerous assumption involved in this thread that needs to be repudiated right now; that is the preposterous idea that the Chinese would need to steal virus IP from Harvard or elsewhere in the U.S. in order to create C19. That is the underlying assumption beneath the even more preposterous assumption that C19 is a Chinese manufactured bio weapon.

This idea is rooted in the usual and stupid, idea that the little yellow men are too stupid to develop such technology themselves, so we fall back on the comfortable idea that they must have stolen the technology from us. This is a much more satisfying position than admitting that the Chinese might be equal or (shudder) better than us in some scientific fields.

To put it another way, the logic of this thread is akin to the WWII crap that the japanese zero was a copy of american aircraft or that german pilots were flying their aircraft because the japanese were short sighted.

We need to understand that if the Chinese wanted to develop and release a bio weapon, they would have done a damn sight better than C19. They are smart, bright, intelligent and capable. The idea that they would need to steal something from Harvard in order to screw us over is the ultimate, stupid, useless, bit of intellectual conceit I have ever seen on SST. Larry, sorry to be blunt but give it a rest.

On a related note, President Trump and his task force give masterful press conferences every night. Watch them.

[Artemesia]

re: Fred, and the universities & governors's "Chinese money grab."

My spouse (EE) and I were at Carnegie Mellon U. when Iranians made up the largest population of foreign nationals in US universities; when our son was at CMU the majority of his classmates in Computer Engineering were extravagantly wealthy Arabs. Today, it's Chinese. (One major difference between the 1960 - 1970s/era of the Iranians and today is that the CMU campus now has several major buildings named for Jewish-identified donors. I'm not aware of the same pattern of Iranian-identified (or Arab or Chinese) buildings and institutions on US campuses as exists today wrt to Jewish identified buildings on college campuses.)

--
re: Larry Johnson's core argument: How do you account for the major attacks on Italy and Iran? Same strain of COVID or different? Some other entity, cough cough USA and Israel, taking advantage of China's war on USA ??

[Morongobill]

Actually Calpers dropped 67 billion dollars in Q1 2020.

[turcopolier]

artemesia

collateral damage.

[turcopolier]

walrus

Be advised that your comment is an ad hominem attack on LJ and me. You know that I do not allow bullying here.

[Eric Newhill]

TonyL,

I think it just means that viruses mutate; nothing more.

The US is a large country geographically and in population. We have a lot of travel and immigration into the country (btw, immigrants, even from China, are still arriving here under a chain immigration loophole in the travel ban). It makes perfect sense that all strains of the virus would find their way here and that different strains would be predominant in different regions of the country, due to different travel and immigration patterns.

Another aside is that the CDC and virologists don't know as much about this as they pretend to. The death toll, hospital admissions, etc are all estimates. The CDC is fairly clear about this if you take the time to read their methodology notes. In fact, the CDC has "covid like" symptoms for emergency room visits going back to Oct 1, 2019; and not a small volume (about 1/3 of what they are listing as covid like ER visits for last week). Was the virus here in Oct? I don't think so. Rather, there have always been "flues" that resemble covid-19 and that kill people. All of the figures that are scaring people are estimates based on models and shoddy definitions. It's not like every admission, death, ER visit is defined by an actual test for covid and of those that are tested and are positive, there is no mention of other viruses that were in the patients' systems (e.g. known flues of the type that killed an estimated 60K Americans in the 2017'2018 flu season -- where was the great fear then?).No. If the symptoms resemble CV then it is counted as caused by CV. Which brings us back to Oct. 1, 2019. There's something else out there that causes CV like symptoms.

Which brings me to another point, the Chinese would not have been successful with this op without the complicity of the US new media. Whether that's by accident or design or a little of both may never be known.

[turcopolier]

walrus

Why do the Chinese put so much money into American research facilities and universities? Altruism?

[Jack]

Walrus,

The Chinese people are smart, enterprising and hard-working like many people around the world. China is in the strong economic position precisely because our business and political leadership for financial reasons chose to dismantle our industrial base and transfer them along with our technology and capital to China. Of course the CCP also stole anything and everything that wasn’t nailed down. I used to be on the board of a company started by a first generation immigrant Chinese tech entrepreneur. His tales of the repression, mass surveillance and authoritarianism of the CCP can become our dystopian future if we continue to allow the infiltration of the CCP by unfortunately buying our elites. The Chinese who have the skills and capital are fleeing when given an opportunity. Many to your country and New Zealand.

The Wuhan virus whether it was man-made or natural, came to the rest of the world’s population centers from China. The CCP did not contain it nor permitted access to foreign medical researchers to determine what it was that infected large numbers of people. Why is it that SARS, Asian flu and now the Wuhan virus originated from China? What’s going on there? The rest of the world should recognize the danger of the CCP and take action to destroy the totalitarian regime that’s ruling China with an iron fist.

[Fred]

Eric,

The MSM daily deathcount doesn't seem to be working its magic like it did on day one. Now we're getting the virus count to see if that will stretch things out a few more days. An ever increasing portion of 330,000,000 million Americans are starting to wonder just what is going on that their lives are being financially and emotionally destroyed to save NYC, Detroit, N'rleans and a few other hot spots and, though Dr. Fausti is trying his best, lots of people are seeing "co-morbidity" looks like the biggest risk factor with age and dense urbanization coming in second and third. They are even starting to ask how many Americans die every year and from what. What does that work out to per day, 7,000-8,000? Some hospitals would have been over burdened due to this in a half dozen places looks like a reality; the response looks like a politically driven, unnecessary economy killer that will have negative repurcussions for years to come, with, as you point out, the complicity of the news media. It does allow some politicians here and abroad to take advantage of the circumstances.

Pitch,

Glad to see you back after a decade long hiatus. I'm looking forward to some thoughtful commentary!

[JJackson]

pl
"to researchers in the field, the Chinese appeared utterly sincere." Not a joke. While there may be great animosity between governments the virologist, epidemiologists and clinicians co-operate and talk all the time. There has been continuous dialogue between close friends who have worked together for years. Experts in their fields just discuss their work and findings all the time and have done so from the first spike in pneumonia cases of unknown origin in Wuhan and are doing so now regarding what is, or is not working, in terms of treatment.

[JJackson]

TonyL

There is only one SARS-2 virus there are some genetic changes, which is normal in any RNA virus, but very little and no obvious host adaption to date. Corona viruses have an enormous 30k NT genome which makes them unstable so they have one level of error checking to compensate. This makes it far more stable than flu (also a single strand RNA virus but without any error checking).
The link will show you a view of the phylogenic tree and you will see I have set it up to show N American sequences in red. If you hover the mouse over any given dot it will show you exactly where they are from - US sequences are all over the tree. https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?branchLabel=aa&d=tree,entropy&p=full&r=country

[anon]

Makes no difference who was working on what.The viruses came from bats.That means they have existed a long time.maybe millions of years.Look at it from the other side.Ask why do such deadly entities exist.Who created them.What are there purposes.Why does venom from a snake kill.Why do bats have a ready reservoir of viruses that they pass down from century to century.Why are they immune to these viruses.What are they protecting.

[walrus]

Col. Lang, I apologise for my comment to you and Larry my only excuse is that I am deeply concerned about the underlying assumption of this thread - that the Chinese are too dumb to bio engineer a virus themselves and have to resort to stealing IP from Harvard to do it. The Chinese are very smart and capable people and it is potentially lethal to the United States to keep underestimating them.

To answer your question about China’s investment in American research, it’s not about how smart we are, they are not here because we are the greatest scientists in the world, it’s because of our depth of high quality capabilities in virtually all scientific fields and the scientists we attract from the rest of the world. That and simple Chinese racism make us the preferred target for developing their own scientific capabilities.

To put that another way, they are not here because they think we are great scientists, that is a dangerous conceit. They are here because this is the most convenient location to vacuum up new technology. They do that, as the Japanese did in the 50’s and 60’s, to save time and effort in building their own industry base.

[J]

Bio-espionage by China is not only against U.S., our neighbor Canada has been one of China's targets as well. Within the past year Canadian authorities have had to eject a Chinese Espionage couple and espionage research students.

[turcopolier]

Walrus

OUR point is that the CCP is waging a broad spectrum war against the US in which using our research abilities is and has been one of many fields of battle. You, actually are making our point. Neither of us think nor have thought that there is anything inferior about the Chinese. That is an accusation of racism that is intolerable. The Chinese state and the CCP are our enemy just as the Soviets once were, but, at least the Soviets were not racists in their efforts to screw us to the wall. In this struggle, the Europeans are desirable but incidental "collateral damage" from the Chinese POV. BTW LJ has a source that he cannot disclose in re the contents of the Chinese scholars bag.

[turcopolier]

JJackson To people like me and my Chinese equivalents, people like you are usable BECAUSE you are sincere. That is the joke.

[turcopolier]

anon

"The viruses came from bats." How do you know that? Are you in the Beijing office of "anon?"

[Harvey]

I think until now this idea of the Wuhan lab involvement has been suppressed by not only the msm but also blogs and such. Sites such as Naked Capitalism banned people who brought up the possible theory that this virus escaped from the Wuhan facility in an accident.
But maybe the msm and their fellow travellers can't ignore the connections and Wuhan implications anymore.