It’s astounding that anyone would look at the past two years of illiberal and ineffective lockdowns, forced masking, mandatory vaccinations, and their extraordinary social and economic toll, and conclude that what we really need is for nations to yield more control to a bunch of unelected technocrats in the World Health Organization (WHO).
After the virus may have been juiced up in a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lab, the unprecedented and pernicious “public health” measures adopted by Beijing in response were promptly and enthusiastically disseminated by the WHO, then implemented by complicit governments throughout the world.
Yet throwing national sovereignty to the wind and granting more power to the WHO — and to the WHO’s power-hungry puppetmasters in the CCP — is precisely what the Biden administration had in mind when in January it cooked up a scheme to overhaul the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR).
Biden’s Plan to Hand the WHO More Power
The stated goal of these amendments, submitted by Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Loyce Pace and under consideration this week by the 75th World Health Assembly, is to “strengthen the ability of the WHO and Member States to prevent, detect, and respond to future public health emergencies of international concern.” Crucially, unlike the adoption of the concurrently proposed Pandemic Treaty, which would require a two-thirds majority followed by ratification according to each state’s national law, amendment of the existing IHR only requires a simple majority vote.
Among the more disturbing IHR amendments proposed is the unchecked and arbitrary power granted to the director-general. That official, under Articles 11 and 12, would be able to unilaterally determine a “potential or actual” public health emergency, even where an event “has not been determined to meet the criteria for a public health emergency of international concern.” Equally distressing is the removal of the requirement for the WHO to seek consent from and engage in consultation with an affected State Party in assessing, monitoring, and responding to a perceived public health emergency.
There would also be an onus on the affected State Party to show cause within 48 hours if it rejects the WHO’s offer of assistance. Such guidance would include the assessment of the efficacy of “control measures” already in place and the deployment of “international teams of experts for on-site assistance.” Perhaps most chilling is the establishment of a “Compliance Committee” to effectively bully an affected State Party into cooperating with public health recommendations and enlist the support of other State Parties in getting the job done.
Playing into China’s Power-Grab
One of the behind-the-scenes winners of this U.S.-authored power grab for the Geneva globalists would be the CCP. An emboldened WHO would pave the way for Beijing’s Health Silk Road (HSR), an emerging third phase of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
China first announced its ambitious intercontinental trade and infrastructure strategy in 2013 and expanded it in 2015 to encompass public health solutions. The IHR amendments would facilitate a public health emergency industry that China will be strategically and geographically well-positioned to exploit.
We know that China stands to gain from this slippery deal because they’ve indicated as much. China has relied on its BRI as a major vehicle for creating and reorienting networks of trade and commerce, using soft power diplomacy to expand its sphere of political and economic influence. Most BRI projects rely on building materials, workers, and finance from China.
Well before Covid-19 emerged, the CCP was already adapting this debt-for-leverage strategy to the global health marketplace. Now, with an estimated one-fifth of its BRI projects “seriously affected” because of the lockdowns, China is relying on its network of railways, ports, highways, oil and gas pipelines, telecommunications, and other infrastructure to position itself as a major player in global health governance and security.
Since 2012, China has signed memoranda of understanding and held regional forums with Asian, European, and Arab League nations. China’s health cooperation in Africa has been most significant, consisting of the provision of medical supplies and training programs, the construction of hospitals, and support for combating infectious diseases. From 2012 to 2014, China deployed a 1,200-strong medical team to West Africa after the WHO declared Ebola a public health emergency.
How China Gave Us Covid and then Pretended to Help Fight It
Yet it was Covid that gave China its competitive edge, hurling its biotech and pharmaceutical industries into the spotlight. Beijing lost no time magnanimously offering countries assistance in fighting a disease that it had manufactured and exported around the world. Medical teams, testing kits, respirators, and personal protective equipment were sent to Italy, France, and Spain and eventually to more than 58 countries throughout the world.
President Xi Jinping himself was touting the HSR in conversations with his French and Italian counterparts in the early stages of the pandemic. Regional alliances representing central, south, and southeast Asian countries issued statements pledging to collaborate with China on its HSR in an effort to combat Covid.
In March 2020, Chinese companies began developing a Covid vaccine, and at the end of the year the first of three vaccines was approved for general use. By June 2021, China had reportedly delivered more than 350 million doses to more than 80 countries. Despite often high vaccination rates, new waves of infection persisted in many of these regions.
A particularly concerning aspect of the HSR is its convergence with another rhetorical extension of the BRI: the Digital Silk Road. The same artificial intelligence technologies used in China to oppress religious and ethnic minorities and political dissidents are now being employed around the world to forecast outbreaks, detect and monitor infected persons, track quarantine violators, and implement vaccine passports.
Pre-Covid, China’s $150 billion industry exporting surveillance hardware and software gave democracy lovers goosebumps about tech-enabled authoritarianism. Now, these very technologies have been smoothly rebranded as public health tool kits. Meanwhile, the WHO is totally on board with Xi’s master plan.
WHO Is Doing China’s Bidding on its ‘Belt and Road’
In 2017, both parties signed a memorandum of understanding to ramp up “health cooperation under the framework” of the BRI. During a meeting with then Director-General Margaret Chan, Xi welcomed the WHO’s “active participation in the construction of the Belt and Road, and of a ‘healthy’ Silk Road.”
Current Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated this in 2017 when he urged China to boost its health care contribution through the BRI. Later that year in Beijing, at a Chinese government-hosted seminar entitled the “Belt and Road Forum on Health Cooperation: Toward a Health Silk Road,” Tedros lauded Xi’s proposal for a Health Silk Road as “visionary.” Immediately after, China pledged an additional $20 million to the WHO for pandemic control along the Silk Road.
Earlier this week, Tedros revealed just how “universal” the health coverage scheme he shares with Xi is. He warned that Covid is “not over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.” Tedros’ beef appears to be that testing is down and vaccination rates are not high enough. Put simply, people around the world are moving on and the WHO is not prepared to relinquish control. Hence Tedros’ demand for “a stronger and sustainably financed WHO at the center of the global health security architecture.”
The Biden administration evidently agrees that what the world needs is a CCP-compromised WHO with sharper teeth and more skin in the game. A behemoth supranational biosecurity state will be lucrative for the Chinese state enterprises on whose shoulders the task of cleaning up the endless spills will happily rest. It will also be a soft power win for China, playing into Xi’s “community of common destiny for mankind” narrative.
But it’s not good news for the working and middle-class plebs whose tax dollars inevitably fund the self-promoters in Geneva, in return for a mixed basket of surveillance, lockdowns, mandates, and whatever other goodies the WHO has in store for us when the oft-threatened next pandemic arrives at our door.
Source: The Federalist
