The world can no longer ignore the dishonesty of the Chinese communist regime. Michael Auslin writes:
When President Trump publicly called into question China’s COVID-19 death rate claims at a recent White House press conference, the chart he pointed to had an asterisk next to China’s name. Thanks to Beijing’s lack of transparency during the pandemic, and subsequent coverup, skepticism over its official statements is now the norm. While seemingly trivial, the asterisk is the powerful symbol of a new era, in which distrust is perhaps the salient feature of the world’s relations with China.
Americans are familiar with the asterisk from professional sports. Since Major League Baseball decided to put an asterisk next to Roger Maris’s name after he broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record in 1961 (as Maris had 162 games to hit his record-breaking 61 home runs, compared to 154 games when Ruth hit 60 in 1927), it has become the custom to append it to anything where the truth is not what it seems.
Now it’s China that is earning the asterisk. Because the CCP assured the World Health Organization that COVID-19 could not be transmitted between humans*, the world was unprepared for the spread of the virus and was plunged into its worst crisis since World War II.
[Michael Auslin, “The World Puts An * Next to China,” Spectator USA, April 29]
