When it comes to the current state of the global community, it would be hard to argue with the assessment that China was in the hot seat.
The world is in the midst of its first widespread pandemic in a century, and evidence of a Chinese coverup continues to pile up this week. On Wednesday, Fox News reported that their sources were told that the virus leaked from a virology laboratory three miles from the Wuhan wet market, where China had stated the virus jumped from bats to humans.
Then, as the virus devastated much of the countryside, the data that China provided to the rest of the world was largely bogus and unhelpful, allowing an unsuspecting planet to be blindsided by COVID-19.
One would think that the ill-tempered spotlight Beijing is sweating under would be reason enough for China to start behaving.
Spoiler alert: It’s not.
China might be secretly conducting nuclear tests with very low explosive power despite Beijing’s assertions that it is strictly adhering to an international accord banning all nuclear tests, according to a new arms-control report to be made public by the State Department.
The coming report doesn’t present proof that China is violating its promise to uphold the agreement, but it cites an array of activities that “raise concerns” that Beijing might not be complying with the “zero-yield” nuclear-weapons testing ban.
The concerns stem from the high tempo of activity at China’s Lop Nur test site, extensive excavations at the site, and Beijing’s purported use of special chambers to contain explosions.
Another factor feeding U.S. suspicions is the interruption in past years of data transmissions from monitoring stations on Chinese territory that are designed to detect radioactive emissions and seismic tremors.
Given the current state of the weakened world, this could simply be a bit of posturing by a nation who is increasingly being blamed for the pandemic predicament as a whole. They could be feeling the heat on the back of their necks, and they’re reaching for that trigger to remind us all that they can squeeze off a round in a hurry.
Let’s hope, for the sake of the world at large, that it never comes to that.
