The Leadership Issue !

China's threat to impose an impossible tariff on Australian barley imports has become a reality, despite 120 nations in the World Health Assembly backing that enquiry into the origin of the Coronavirus.  Faced with that sort of opposition, Chins has reluctantly agreed to back the resolution to avoid being isolated.

China's opposition to any sort of investigation into the origin of COVID-19 is suspicious.   It originated in China and quickly spread to the world.  There is no doubt that Chinese inaction in imposing a lockdown allowed it to escape and the end result is the virus throwing a spanner into the regulated world pattern of trade.  The need for isolation threw million of people out of work across the world and that could be to China's advantage.

There is no doubt that we are facing a recession.  Spare a thought to all those loans the Chinese have been splashing around to developing countries and which are geared to repayments.  In the event of repayment shortfalls, other options are " negotiable ", and that often resolves into Chinese access to ports or commerce bases in other parts of the world.

There is no doubt that China intends to dominate world trade and its philosophy is to steal trade secrets from other countries.  A lot of world renowned companies have been weakened by this recession and a China flush with money from its export successes is poised to take advantage of the opportunities offering.

During the Korean war, China backed North Korea and Chairman Mao was reckless with Chinese casualties by ordering numerous suicide charges.  Some may wonder if the Chinese that died in this Coronavirus pandemic were sacrificed to create a world recession that would enable China to make advances by weakening western economies.

The lure of China as the workshop of the world caused many manufacturers to move to China and the price of access was revelation of trade secrets.  Basically, we shared our knowledge and trained their workforce and China is using the universities of the west to create the knowledge revolution that is making China the source of new technology.  It is our universities that are expanding Chinese minds and which made the west the entity that powered the world.

This Coronavirus may be a natural phenomenon, but the inability of the west to reach consensus on trade issues favours China.   Our Treasury depletion to shelter workers in this coming recession will weaken our recovery and allow further Chinese industrial intrusion.  We will be subjected to the Chinese maxim of " divide and conquer ".

This situation is maximised by the lack of a western world leader.   The post of " Leader of the free world " seems to be vacant.  We await the emergence from the shadows of a man or a woman who will claim that title  !