https://globalnews.ca/news/6858818/coro ... -shortage/In mid-January, Chinese consulates in Canada and worldwide issued an urgent call. China was concerned that the new coronavirus raging in Wuhan was so deadly and infectious that its nurses and doctors would run out of safety supplies.
It needed personal protective equipment (PPE).
In just six weeks, China imported 2.5 billion pieces of epidemic safety equipment, including over two billion safety masks, Chinese government data shows.
And this raises big concerns on a number of fronts, say critics, including Conservative MP Erin O’Toole.
China was evidently hiding the extent of a pandemic that endangered the world while covertly securing PPE at low prices. This “surreptitious” operation left “the world naked with no supply of PPE,” Jorge Guajardo, Mexico’s former ambassador to Beijing, told Global News.
The result: starting in March, after COVID-19 had circled the globe, countries that provided masks to China in January and February were forced to compete for China’s supply.
By late January, sources in manufacturing and military circles were warning western governments that China seemed to be covertly seizing global PPE supply, O’Toole and Guajardo said.
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An investigation by Global News examines the troubling methods and underground actors used by Beijing to quietly corner the world’s supply of PPE in a state-level operation.
China used diplomatic channels, state-owned businesses and Chinese diaspora community associations that are thought to be increasingly under the influence of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s powerful United Front Work Department (UFWD).
And through clandestine United Front networks run out of Chinese consulates in cities from Vancouver to Toronto to New York to Melbourne to Tokyo, the Communist Party urged millions of “overseas Chinese” to bulk-buy N95 masks in order to ship “back batches of scarce supplies for the motherland.”
As troubling as China’s methods were, the operation looks even worse under a magnifying glass because some organizations seemingly involved in the United Front’s efforts in Canada include members that have previously been monitored or investigated by the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), according to RCMP and CSIS sources.
China’s PPE import operation was portrayed by its state media as a warlike effort. And it was a dramatic success.
According to a U.S. congressional report released in April, from Jan. 24 to Feb. 29, China ramped up its production of masks and slapped export restrictions on China-based foreign companies such as Canadian mask maker Medicom and U.S. mask maker 3M.
At the same time, China imported 2.02 billion safety masks, according to Beijing’s March 2020 customs records.
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The requests occurred around Jan. 14 and 15, when Chinese officials received confidential instructions from Xi, and all regions were warned to “prepare for and respond to a pandemic,” according to leaked documents cited in an Associated Press investigation. Hospital staff were ordered to don protective gear.
Guajardo, Mexico’s former ambassador to Beijing, told Global News that by Jan. 23, when China locked down Wuhan, he had recognized Beijing was involved in massive PPE imports.
Guajardo, who now works in a Washington, D.C., consultancy, said in mid-January, he was contacted by a source in Mexican supply chain logistics.
He said he completed some checks in the United States and judged PPE stock was vanishing from retail locations through “under the radar” methods.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, they are buying all the N95 supply in the world,’” Guajardo told Global News.
He was so convinced that he sent an ominous tweet on Jan. 27 forecasting an impending shortage of PPE in North America.
In March, the masks sold to China in January and February were being sold back to Mexico at 20 to 30 times the price, according to Guajardo.
And the Washington Post and CNN reported in April that PPE is sometimes costing more than 1,000 percent the prices seen in early January.
“This pandemic got complicated because of China’s coverup at the start,” Guajardo said. “And now it is further complicated by China leaving the world naked with no supply of PPE.
This is a long article but well worth the read. For those who think we should just sit back and let China walk all over us I give you the middle finger.