Charles Burton, Associate Professor of Political Science in Brock University’s Faculty of Social Sciences, wrote a piece recently published in The Globe and Mail that advocated for Canada to carefully examine its economic relationship with China.

Burton writes:

“Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government acknowledged that the numbers it originally cited for coronavirus deaths in Wuhan had been under-reported by 50 per cent. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the virus’s rapid spread had contributed to undercounting, and insisted this was not a cover-up: ‘We’ll never allow any concealment.’

 This assertion is certainly belied by foreign intelligence briefings. As Steve Tsang of the China Institute at the University of London put it, ‘The statistics have been changed most probably because the old figures were so ridiculous that even the Communist Party Propaganda Department knows it was unsustainable. Hence, a revision to a level less incredible, but one that will still present the Party under Xi as having done a vastly better job than Western democratic governments.’

Moreover, an earlier absurd statement by Mr. Zhao — that COVID-19 may have been brought to China by U.S. participants in last October’s controversial World Military Games held in Wuhan — suggests that China’s leaders likely know something they desperately want to hide about the origins and spread of this pandemic, and are panicking by disseminating ludicrous propaganda.”

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