China’s acquiring influence and winning friends in the U.S.’s back yard. From Addison Graham at realclearwire:
Before COVID-19 raged through Chile in all its lethal power, Jorge Barrios sat in his living room using sanitation wipes to scrub a recently received package. “It’s from China,” he said. “You have to be careful with these things.”
It was February 2020, and although most Chileans had heard of COVID and its ability to kill, they –- like most of the world –- were uncertain of how the “virus from China” would spread. So the then-66-year-old Barrios scrubbed away, hoping to protect himself, his wife, and his grandchildren who lived three doors down but spent more time with their abuelos than at home.
Weeks later, the first confirmed COVID case reached Barrios’ hometown of Arica, Chile. In the months and years that followed, he would be forced to close the bakery he operated from the back of his home, he would see economic devastation take hold in his small nation, and lose over 60,000 of his countrymen.
Barrios quit scrubbing packages, but his suspicions of China only intensified.
During the pandemic, unfavorable views of China coursed throughout Latin America and much of the world as people heard reports of Chinese officials trying to cover up COVID’s outbreak and silence early whistleblowers.
