The People’s Republic of Queensland

The dubious conduct of an Australian university with Chinese ties shows the CCP’s long reach abroad.

The entrance to the University of Queensland’s St Lucia Campus in Brisbane, Australia.

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

The University of Queensland is what Australians call a “sandstone university,” something like the American Ivy League in prestige. Queensland consistently appears on lists of the world’s 100 best universities and is widely seen as one of the top three in Australia.

Lately, however, its cozy relationship with China has ignited a firestorm. Questions have been asked in Australia’s Parliament, and stories in the country’s leading newspapers and on its public television network have raked administrators over the coals. A Journal news story offers an overview of the scandal.

During times of war and chaos, someone profits. As the world continues to reel from the coronavirus pandemic, businesses have shuttered, families have lost loved ones, and governments at the federal, state, and local levels have scrambled to provide adequate resources to the public. Meanwhile, after lying to international health organizations and governments around the world, China seeks to repair its public image and capitalize on a pandemic it allowed to wreak havoc on the world.

Beijing is positioned to recover faster than its competitors, including the United States. Why that is contains a lesson for America going forward, if we don’t want to be back in this position again.

In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a plan to expand China’s global footprint in infrastructure projects abroad called the “Belt and Road Initiative.” What followed was a series of projects aimed at connecting over 65 countries with access to financing in excess of $1 trillion. The relationships span the globe, even including ambitions to control the Arctic Circle. The initiative has given China significant access to resources, economic zones, and trade routes. According to the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, from “2000 to 2017, the Chinese government, banks and contractors signed $146 billion in loan commitments to African governments and their state-owned enterprises.” Foreign Policy reports, “Djibouti, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Montenegro … owe more than 45% of their gross domestic products to Beijing over Belt and Road projects.”

And thanks to the Chinese Communist Party’s lack of political or economic competition at home, it has been able to lend money on terms advantageous to Beijing — and only Beijing. Azeem Ibrahim, a professor at the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College, notes, “Beijing is becoming adept at translating outstanding debts into foreign assets.” The Belt and Road program largely relies on low-interest credit facilities collateralized by borrowing countries’ infrastructure or natural resources. Due to the poor credit of the sovereign borrower or low expectation of performance of the asset in question, many call China’s practice a form of “neo-colonialism” or “creditor imperialism” through what’s called “debt-trap diplomacy.” The Institute for Security Studies has gone so far as to call China’s behavior a “predatory system designed to ensnare countries into a straightjacket of debt servitude.”

How this works in practice: Borrowers that are unable to fulfill their loan obligations cede tremendous bargaining leverage to the Chinese when they seek to restructure the debt. If they default, the Chinese government simply seizes control of the asset. For example, the Sri Lankan government entered into a credit deal with the Chinese for a port (which reports indicate was a shaky bet, financially, from the start). When the asset didn’t perform to the terms of the contract, Sri Lanka granted China a 99-year lease on the port, including over 150,000 acres of land surrounding it. Just like that, the Chinese Communist Party gained control over a major waterway of another country.

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Stores and shops have been shuttered. Restaurants and coffee shops no longer serve customers. Schools, universities, sporting arenas…even our museums and theaters…all closed. Even the Vatican City has closed its gates and armed patrols monitor the 20 foot tall walls that protect it!

Streets and roads are now empty for as far as the eye can see. Normally they would be filled with crazed Italian drivers in tiny cars and scooters (the ones that sound like demonic insects) darting here and there, reaching the limits of centrifugal force on our roundabouts. In the piazze of our towns and cities, there are now officially more pigeons than people.

Many of us know someone who has been infected and recovered. Some of us know someone who did not recover…now they are dead. But everyone knows someone who has been affected by this microscopic monster in one way or another.

Sixty million of us are in lockdown…it is like a war zone here. We are being held prisoner in our own homes by an unseen enemy that sneaked in unnoticed…by most of us. As you will read in just a few more minutes, there were those who knew something like this was coming…or at least they should have.

So who is to blame? With all this craziness swirling like a whirlpool at our feet, I just had to find the blame answer. And so I have spent my free time (of which I have a lot in these days) digging and researching. I was literally shocked to discover how this has come to be.

I am not going to bore you with talk of Patient ‘0’ who spread it to Patient ‘1’ and how mathematics efficiently explains the rapid expansion of infection. No…I am going to tell you how (as I see it) the virus came to Italy.

It has everything to do with communists. Allow me to explain.

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The Left’s Politicization of Coronavirus Backfires—Bigly

Bernie Rewrites Cuban History

He lamely concedes that the regime is ‘authoritarian.’ No, it’s totalitarian.

Many Americans were offended by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s recent praise of Fidel Castro. Perhaps gratitude is in order instead. By candidly sharing his opinion of Cuba, Mr. Sanders exposes the depth of his socialist views.

Mr. Sanders’s enthusiastic support for the Socialist Workers Party in the 1980s is well documented, as is his endorsement of Castro and Nicaraguan Sandinista Daniel Ortega, both of whom were Soviet pawns during the Cold War. On CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Feb. 23 we learned that Bernie’s ideology hasn’t changed much since he was advocating for tyranny in his youth.