Politics

China Required Nations To Praise Its Regime Before Receiving Medical Aid

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Anders Hagstrom White House Correspondent
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Chinese state officials have repeatedly urged global leaders to make positive statements about China in return for medical supplies, Axios reported Wednesday.

Nations which have received supplies and praised leader Xi Jinping’s communist regime include Serbia, Italy, Mexico, Poland and others. German newspaper Die Welt Am Sonntag has also reported that Chinese officials approached the country’s leaders with a similar offer.

“What is most striking to me is the extent to which the Chinese government appears to be demanding public displays of gratitude from other countries; this is certainly not in the tradition of the best humanitarian relief efforts,” Elizabeth Economy, director for Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations told the New York Times. (RELATED: Mitch McConnell Restructures Campaign Into Meals Effort For Kentuckians Affected By Coronavirus)

The development comes weeks after much of the aid China provided to western nations proved to be defective. The Netherlands received 1.3 million masks from China, and 600,000 were defective, according to Dutch media. Spain and the Czech Republic also ordered hundreds of thousands of test kits, and 80% of them were reportedly defective.

U.S. media lauded China for “asserting itself as a global leader” by providing aid amid the pandemic in March. It has now become clear that not only was the aid defective, but it also came with strings attached.

Several nations have called for an international investigation into both China and the World Health Organization’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. The U.S. intelligence community concluded in mid-March that the Chinese government had falsified its data on both coronavirus cases and deaths. (RELATED: US Ramps Up Crackdown On China’s Spying Efforts During Coronavirus)

Wuhan, where the virus first broke out, reported roughly 3,500 deaths, but over the course of two days during the crisis, just one of the city’s eight mortuaries received shipments of 5,000 urns to carry ashes of the deceased, according to Shanghaiist.

The mortuary released urns at a rate of 500 per day between March 26 and April 4. Including the city’s seven other mortuaries, this could put the total at roughly 40,000 urns.