Excargodog

One needn’t ascribe to malice that which may be satisfactorily explained by stupidity.

rickair7777

No. Destroying the US and global economy would destroy much of their own economy as well. Getting caught doing an unprovoked WMD attack against the US would get them nuked, and one thing which we still have them vastly over-matched on is strategic nuclear capability and capacity.

They actually do not aspire to global domination, they aspire to regional domination, and global leadership. They would like to see us knocked off the #1 spot, but a covert WMD attack which would result in the immediate destruction of China as we know it is not in their playbook. They are many things, stupid or suicidal are not among them, same for North Korea (Iran on the other hand does have some folks who wouldn't mind meeting Allah sooner rather than later).

No irony that the lab is there to study the viruses known to originate from the area.

It is at least possible that covid escaped from the lab, it is not possible that it was released intentionally (also almost impossible that it was genetically engineered).

Either way, they apparently withheld information from the world community for too long, and probably bear some responsibility for the scope of the pandemic. They're generally bad people (the CCP), if you want to be mad at them there's plenty of valid justification without making things up.

ShyGuy

That whole thing was Steve Bannon fake news.

BobZ

It is not a world of absolutes. "Destroying "the US would be counterproductive if once global dominance was achieved a nation desired to have the US as a subservient colony.

The Brits didnt 'destroy their colonial holdings. They installed a power structure in their holdings that subjugated the population to benefit the crown.

Your thought process is entirely conventional.

The CCP doesnt want to destroy the US. They want instead to subjugate us. To use us to benefit themselves.

perhaps its only necessary to inflict damage that precipitates a political power change in the colony to a controllable and compromised alternative.

The CCP released this virus. Thru incompetence, negligence, or design. That is a given.

The CCP also by deliberate action enabled the worldwide spread of the virus.

So who eventually is the beneficiary of those realities? The CCP of course.

rickair7777

I'm sure they'd love to, but they don't consider that remotely practical... and they are very practical.

Apples to pomegranates, Brit colonies were colonized by the Brits (at significant expense), and the Brits in all case did provide some value-added (technology, government structure, defense, etc). In the case of the US, it would not be "colonization" it would have to be "invasion". They know that we have the two largest moats in the history of siege warfare, and modern technology has done almost nothing to shrink those moats... Red Dawn was not fiction, it was Fantasy Fiction (it was entertaining).

My thought process on this is shaped by years of formal education and professional pol-mil work experience related to Asia, which has revolved around PRC for years now. We actually take great pains to NOT get caught up in conventional thinking, we won't be fighting the last war on this one anyway.

The senior military leadership in the PAC AOR are actually the people who pushed the USG (for years) to address the issues of PRC ambition and expansion. The USG finally started listening a few years ago.

Where did you get your unconventional thought process, youtube?


They don't want to "subjugate" or "rule" us, they just want us to no longer be in a position to interfere with regional objectives. If they can still sell us stuff, even better but not strictly required.

They will also while slow-boiling the frog... be very careful to not wake the sleeping giant.

Both russia and PRC would love nothing better than a civil war in the US, the russians at least are known to be far more optimistic about the prospects for that (having even published maps of how a post-civil war US would be organized). What foreigners REALLY don't get is that any civil war here would be antifa vs. red-state gun nuts, veterans, militias, national guard and maybe active military forces. One side is fundamentally and hopelessly unskilled and unequipped at military matters and are also cowards by nature. We're letting some of them act up right now (in very select locales) for political reasons, but if they started rampaging through the 'burbs, shooting and burning out families of four, they'd be crushed like bugs in a matter of hours.

Recall that both of our previous civil wars were fought by ESTABLISHED military formations, which simply split and went their separate ways (loyalist vs. patriot, north vs. south). The entire confederate political and military leadership were West Point grads, George Washington was an instrumental military officer (on the side of the Brits) in the French and Indian war. Our current political divides do not line up at all with the fault lines necessary for civil war (or at least not a long one).

You're pretty sure of things which you have absolutely no way of knowing, doesn't do much for your credibility.

The virus *probably* got into circulation naturally via wet markets. It might *possibly* have been accidentally released from a legit research lab. It is almost certainly not engineered. That's a best estimate.

But I do know they didn't release it intentionally, too many reasons they wouldn't. Case in point, since covid BOTH Australia and Japan have taken significant, even dramatic, steps to counter PRC military expansion... two frogs just jumped out of their pot.




What benefit? And how can it justify the very unpredictable risks?

The risks of doing that are...
Virus runs amuck in the PRC, destroying their economy.
Virus runs amuck in the global community, destroying the global economy.
US finds out they did it and nukes them.
Russia finds out they did it and nukes them.
France finds out they did it and nukes them.
The rest of the world finds out and tears down the PRC/CCP (the entire developed world could make short work of that).

Here's all the proof you need:
1) If they were going to do it, they'd already have a vaccine deployed or at least on the shelf.
2) They would most certainly wait for
a) Some sort of suitable distraction crisis in the US and...
b) ANY administration other than Trump... you could not make up a more dangerous US administration to antagonize with an un-provoked WMD attack.

MagooFlew

Dont forget the hygiene and sanitation in China render much of the country a de facto bio-lab.

I wouldn’t give them the credit to pinpoint the right virus and deliberately release it on their own soil the way they did, just to provide a plausible excuse when they could simply export it secretly, then lie and deny.

And if the US had pinpointed them, it would have been exactly the political leverage Trump wanted. Too risky. And they didn’t need to do it.

Unexpected event, botched cover-up, and typical totalitarian response meets the Occam’s Razor test for me anyway.

BobZ

well that reads like something from the bathroom scale school of intel reports.

Glad i passed on the unsolicited employment invitation from the cia.

The CCP has limited regional aspirations? Okay. The 2nd C stands for communist. Last I checked their slogan is not 'workers of the region unite'. Im sure the contemporary intel experts also were confident hitlers aspirations were limited to the sudetenland.

My statement was through incompetence, negligence or deliberate action the CCP released this virus. That covers every vector from biolabs to public health policy to food supply chains.

Virulent pathogens rarely appear as immaculate conceptions. Its far more likely they come within a context of human behavior. and condition. And the CCP provided these incubatory conditions.

Unless you have some fact certainty of this virus point of orgin your guess is just that. A WAG. And even an edumacated WAG....is still a WAG.

What is certain is once human to human transmission was apparent the CCP made deliberate efforts to mitigate the threat. From co-opting the WHO in an effort to obscure reality to posting 'hug a chinese' stations in Italy to dispell fears.

Even our own CDC experts are on record of parroting the CCP and WHO claims that this virus was not of critical concern.

Turns out the CCP was lying. To everyone. Except of course themselves. You will have to excuse me if i do not view a hostile power with strategic WMD, an army nearly 3 million strong, a growing bluewater navy, and a political belief system of world domination as a 'limited' regional threat.

rickair7777

Common misconception, worth an explanation...

They are no longer really communist in several respects, they realized it can't work but they realized that in time to morph their system into a hybrid system (minus central economic planning) which could work. They retain the communist moniker for two reasons:
1) Save Face, you know they can't admit they were wrong all along.
2) Rationale for strong government control, which enables the government to enrich itself. All top officials have corrupt ties to the economy, that's business as usual. If you happen to fall out of favor you get prosecuted, but they're all guilty.

They most certainly do not adhere to the old school communist ideology that they are obligated to expand communism by force to the rest of the world. They are more like organized crime... they want to prey on the community, but they don't want everyone in their community to be part of their organization.


Like I said before any semi-rational risk vs benefit analysis would preclude PRC from intentionally releasing a virus, that concept is frankly ludicrous. Even if they did, they would wait for a US administration which might not nuke them, if nothing else they are patient.

They tried to cover it up to save face and save their economy, simple as that.

Also you could do a lot of reading on the fundamental nature of the relationship between the CCP and their people but I'll sum it up for you: Tenuous at best.

If the CCP presides over some disastrous military adventure, they can easily loose their grip. For example the Chinese have a lot of nationalist pride, their space program is a big deal and that's why they have one, unlike the cold-war space-race they are trying to impress themselves not anyone else. The people strongly favor the re-unifaction of Taiwan... but a failed military adventure would be so humiliating that it could easily get the CCP thrown out of power. So they won't even try that, much less direct attacks against any US territory.

If you had to pick one single reason they oppose the US it's because they cannot afford to fight a conflict in their region (Taiwan, SCS, etc) and lose.

Their long game is to basically hope that we continue our political decay over time and ultimately become too weak and/or dis-interested to interfere in their regional. They are not above helping us along in that direction (espionage, political meddling, etc) but they would not risk a WMD attack. They remember Pearl Harbor too.

BobZ

So the CCP arent Really communists but instead is like organized crime in that they want to prey on us? And as follows others as well i suppose.

I see no material difference between this and my assertion the CCP does not want to destroy us. They instead want to compromise, subjugate and use us to their (economic) benefit.

Communism IS organized crime by another name. And organized crime is rarely content to settle for limited goals when the means and opportunity exist for expansion of the enterprise.

Now imagine the mafia with a 3 million man army. WMDs. A bluewater navy. And an intel gathering agency that has compromised virtually every level of function of a big fat mark called Uncle Sam.

As for the virus. The CCP released this virus in the same way Union Carbide Bhopal released the toxic cloud that killed thousands. They created and perpetuated the incubatory conditions that gave opportunity for incompetence, negligence, deliberate action, or some mix of all of the above to result in the entry of this pathogen to humans.

And then lied about it to the rest of the world.

rickair7777

Compromise and use, sure, Subjugate is waaay too impractical. These people are NOT hitler, they are very realistic and practical.

Sure, but organized crime learned long ago not to engage in open warfare with the FOLA... ultimately that will incense society (global community in this case) to action. Organized crime likes to function on the DL. What's different is that unlike organized crime, the PRC actually has a legally-recognized sovereignty so they are always somewhat safe in their own house, and entitled to possess arms. If they engage in military adventures against their neighbors (they have the capability of inclination to project power far afield), they will quickly be relegated to international rogue/pariah status. They vastly prefer to be considered a member of the global community in good standing.

They might well be culpable in the Bhopal sense, either for accidental release, cover-up, or both. But BP didn't intentionally release the gas.