Unrestricted Warfare and the Quest for Global Hegemony

Introduction

The Chinese virus which is scientifically called COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease-2019) originated in the city of Wuhan, China in late 2019 and has spread Worldwide. The deadly virus has contaminated most of the countries of the World but surprisingly, it did not reach the adjoining cities of China i.e. Beijing and Shanghai. Officially, no one knows the exact genesis of the Chinese virus but it is a fact that COVID-19 really is the “Chinese virus”. It seems that the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government led by President Xi Jinping must be aware of the root of this virus. Europe and America is the worst victim of this Chinese virus. To date, America has the highest confirmed cases and death toll crossed 22,000, with more than five times the number of cases reported in China. India and some other countries are also the victims of this virus. There is an urgent need to explore the reasons and strategies of China, on which China has ruined the World.

“Unrestricted Warfare” is a book written by Colonels Qiao Liang & Colonel Wang Xiangsui of Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) in 1999. The book tells about a strategy regarding how to defeat a militarily superior state i.e. the United States of America. The strategy of ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ is relevant in the context of the Chinese virus pandemic. The strategy is based on the assumption that “militarily weak nations might take in order to successfully attack a super-power like the United States in many ways. The traditional mentality that offensive action is limited to military action is no longer adequate given the range of contemporary threats because it is very costly affairs in the sense of money and manpower.” Instead, Col. Liang and Xiangsui suggest that “there are various alternatives of direct military confrontation, like economic warfare, attacks on digital infrastructure and networks, and terrorism including bioterrorism.” The ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ also describes that “a weak state can incapacitate a far more powerful enemy by applying pressure to their economic and political systems.”

Exploring and analysing each of these considerations with remarkable insight and clarity, China has applied the strategy of ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ through a virus to destroy American global hegemony. It is a well-established fact that America is militarily more powerful than China. China cannot defeat America through direct military confrontation. For breaking this American military superiority, the strategy tells that, “The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.” China has adopted this strategy to take economic leverage to leave America behind. This is not a manual for achieving an overnight victory. Rather, it is a recipe for a slow but inexorable assault on an enemy’s institutions, often without the enemy’s knowledge that it is even being attacked. China is executing its long-term conspiracy to rule the world through its virus.

The Chinese government and Communist Party most likely knew of the devastating potential of the virus but attempted to concealed facts from the World community. The rest of the World was unaware of the authentic origin of the virus, but the general information given by China is that “the disease seems to have first spread at a so-called wet market in Wuhan where live animals were kept in unsanitary conditions and sold for human consumption.” Amongst different theories, the most dominant is that the genesis of the virus has some linkages with a biological weapon. Independent Chinese media outlet Caixin Global revealed that “Chinese laboratories had in fact identified a mystery virus – later identified as COVID-19 to be a highly infectious new pathogen by late December 2019. But they were ordered to stop further testing, destroy samples, and suppress the news to the fullest extent possible.”

Japan Forward English Newspaper on 25th March 2020 writes that “the regional health official in Wuhan City, the epicenter of the pandemic, demanded the destruction of the lab samples, which established the cause of unexplained viral pneumonia since January 1, 2020. China didn’t acknowledge that there was human-to-human transmission until more than three weeks later.” China has been focusing on biological warfare and the integration of biotechnology with information technology in its military doctrine for the last few years.

According to various sources, “the first confirmed case of COVID-19 infection was reported in the first week of December 2019. However, doctors in Wuhan, and throughout China, were ordered: “not to disclose any information about the disease to the public.” It is only after the first case of Coronavirus in Japan on January 15, 2020, raised the possibility of human-to-human transmission, and videos of people dropping dead on Wuhan streets went viral, that Chinese authorities admitted to the human-to-human transmission of the virus on January 23, 2020. Doctors like Li Wenliang, who spoke about such a disease and that it could lead to an epidemic, were disciplined for making public statements. He later died of the disease or killed by the Communist Party of China, no one knows. There are severe clampdown, complete media censorship, and huge propaganda machinery at work by the Chinese government for not to disclose the reality of the virus.

The strong possibility is that the Chinese virus could be a bioweapon because in an interview Dr. Francis Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Act, has given a detailed statement admitting that “the 2019 Wuhan Coronavirus is an offensive biological warfare weapon with DNA-genetic engineering’ that the World Health Organization (WHO) already knows about it.”

Chinese authorities have prevented all external institutions including WHO to travel Wuhan. Meanwhile, they were permitted to Chinese to travel from Wuhan to all over China and across the world. According to a report published by The New York Times on 22 March, “at least 175,000 people left Wuhan on 1 January 2020. The departures from Wuhan accelerated over the next three weeks. About 7 million people left in January, before travel was restricted.” The New York Times also writes that “about 85 percent of infected travellers went undetected.” It is also to note that in the month of January thousands of Chinese people visited Wuhan from the different parts of the World for the celebration of Chinese New Year festivities. This is just what the virus needed – thousands of people jostling together – to spread like wildfire. After the celebration, they then went back to Europe, the US and other parts of the world where they reside. As a result, the numbers of those infected in such places have spread the virus in their respective country.

China spent decades utilizing globalization to slowly take control of the world’s trading system, dominate key industries and markets, build a global media and internet presence, and deployed people around the World. Therefore, China used all these platforms for the proliferation of the Chinese virus. These activated persons have come into contact with a larger number of people and infected them.

China has not suspended the travel even after locked down across the World and committed serious negligence. Highlighting the Chinese negligence, Katsuji Nakazawa, Senior Staff writer for Nikkei, Japan in his report dated March 19 states, “the Chinese government locked down Wuhan on January 23, 2020, halting all public transportation going in and out of the city. The following day an order was issued suspending group travel within China. But in a blunder that would have far-reaching consequences, China did not issue an order suspending group travel to foreign countries until three days later.” China successfully infected most of the countries including Europe and the United States of America, without informing them and was able to implement the strategy of Unrestricted Warfare.

China has exported the virus to the world and now pretending to be the well-wisher of some counties by sending medical aids for economic interest. The global economy is ruined, but all business areas and financial hubs of China are safe. The global share market tumbled, but the virus has hardly had any impact on the Chinese stock market. China by different conspiracies has damaged the World’s economy and survived its economy. At the same time, China is directing its efforts and dedicating significant resources towards reshaping their own industries. Understanding Beijing’s approach of unrestricted warfare is key to understanding the inherently dangerous moves that are being made against America. Their goal is not just to join the ranks of American hi-tech economy, but to replace them completely by driving entire U.S. industries out of business.

Strategically, China has also started to implement the strategy of ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ by resuming operations in the South China Sea because the American military is busy in the handling of an outbreak of China virus in her aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.

China virus in the name of COVID-19 is a strategy of ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ that has used to destroy American global hegemony. In this process, China has also ruined Europe and other parts of the World. It is a fact that China cannot defeat America militarily, so it has used this strategy to get economic leverage to leave the Americans behind.

China is responsible for this pandemic and is held accountable for ravaging the World because if China could have much earlier, ‘truthfully’ informed to the World about the exact nature of the virus and thus helped in saving thousands of precious lives across the globe. China has created one of the greatest threats to humankind.

In order to safeguard the World economic system, the virus affected Countries have to change the way and work collectively and isolate China from the International community. The International community must unite against China so that the undue advantage of the weakened dispositions of the affected countries will not be enjoyed by China. This crisis is an opportunity for International bodies to revive the trust in them and take action against China.

(The author holds a doctoral degree from South Asian Division, SIS, JNU and presently working as Assistant Professor Political Science and International Relations, Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida, UP)