Beijing Took Advantage of Pandemic to Interfere With US Election: China Expert

The Chinese regime capitalized on the global spread of the CCP virus to destabilize the United States—and ultimately impact the presidential election—according to Robert Spalding, author of the book “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept.”

“We are in 2020, in the midst of a people’s war waged by the Chinese Communist Party around the world to essentially destroy liberalism,” Spalding, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, told The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” program on Nov. 10.

In early January, the regime found itself with its “back against the wall,” having signed the phase one U.S.–China trade deal that would have forced it to modify its economy. That, in turn, would result in rising unemployment domestically, Spalding said.

But as the outbreak in Wuhan erupted, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) realized that they could “take this crisis and turn it into an opportunity,” he said, noting that the Chinese word for “crisis” consists of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.”

So the regime enabled the global spread of the virus by allowing international air travel while shutting down domestic travel, Spalding said. It also amassed and hoarded medical supplies from around the world, causing a global shortage.

It then ran a multi-faceted information campaign to cover up its role in causing the pandemic, while trumpeting its handling of the outbreak. For example, it pressured the World Health Organization to downplay the risk of human-to-human transmission in the early stages; ran disinformation campaigns alleging the virus originated from the United States and Europe; and deployed social media campaigns to encourage lockdowns similar to those in China, along with the idea that the United States and other countries weren’t doing a good job in handling the pandemic—a narrative that gained significant traction before the election.

“So when you add all of these things together, the actions by the Chinese Communist Party deliberately impacted the U.S. election,” Spalding said.

The impact of the CCP’s actions was evident in the introduction of massive mail-in voting due to the pandemic, he added.

Spalding noted that some “digital machines that are used for voting have either some bit of software or hardware that comes from China, maybe both.”

“This has been noted in study after study, that we have a challenge with both mail-in ballots and digital machinery, particularly that have components from China,” he said.

Motivations

The Chinese regime “wants a future where the world is dominated by authoritarian regimes,” he said. To achieve this, the Party leadership realized decades ago that it needed to “attach [itself] to the United States” to acquire the trade, talent, and, most importantly, capital to grow its economy.

“So what do they do? They basically make a deal with the United States, that leads to [entry into] the [World Trade Organization] in 2001, which leads to the destruction of the working class in America,” Spalding said.

“What the Chinese Communist Party wants in America is essentially this idea of a partnership between the corporate side of the United States and both political parties that enable profits for the wealthy and suppress the interests of the working class.”

The Trump administration, under the 2017 National Security Strategy, took a stand against the CCP’s actions. “It understands what has been going on, and then it begins to fix the problem,” Spalding said.

Fast forward to January 2020, Chinese leader Xi Jinping seized the opportunity from the pandemic to respond to the challenges posed by the Trump administration.

“Why did we have massive mail-in ballots? Because of the coronavirus. Why do we have the coronavirus? Because of the Chinese Communist Party. Why do they have this opportunity? Because we brought them into the WTO, because we welcome them into the community of nations. It all comes together.”

Secretive Organization

Spalding said most journalists, and even the intelligence community, are hesitant to share the same warning about the CCP, “because what they are looking for—it is a product of our own reality—is a paper trail ... that there is evidence that shows direct involvement of a bad actor in some event.”

“But what you learned from watching movies like mafia movies and Al Capone, these organizations, but particularly like the Chinese Communist Party, are some of the most secretive organizations in the world. They don’t telegraph what they’re doing,” he said.

“The only time that you find out what’s going on behind the curtain is when you have a major, major crisis in the country.”

For instance, in 2013, when Xi came to power amid intense factional infighting, an internal Party communique “Document No. 9“ was leaked. Last year, as the regime faced intensifying pressure from the Trump administration, the ”Xinjiang papers“ documenting the CCP’s mass detention of Uyghur Muslims were released to the media.