RFK Jr.’s distrust of China

Misreading China’s quest for preeminence in a peaceful world

     Robert F. Kennedy Jr. displays a profound distrust of China throughout his 2023 book, The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race (New York: Skyhorse Publishing).  He is suspicious of China’s change of function viral research, and the connection of said research to the Chinese military and the Communist Party of China.  He is suspicious of China’s “infiltration” of the Western world of medical science.  And he is suspicious of American institutions and individuals that have relations with these suspicious activities. 

     Suspicion leads to accusation.  Kennedy accuses China of covering-up the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and of deceiving the world with respect to its intentions in the international arena. 

     My intention in today’s commentary is to try to eliminate suspicions and to point toward the truth with respect to China.  Because, despite RFK Jr.’s stated desire to present himself as a peace candidate in the 2024 elections, his suspicions and accusations with respect to China reflect widely held assumptions and beliefs that constitute a serious threat to world peace.

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China’s change-of-function viral research

     As I observed in my commentary of January 12, 2024, Kennedy conflates change of function research with biological weapons research.  Gain-of-function research seeks to increase the transmissibility and/or the severity of pathogenic microorganisms, with the goal of improving pandemic preparedness, developing vaccines, and developing countermeasures to possible bioweapons terrorist attacks.  Seizing upon the fact that the knowledge attained in gain-of-function research could be used to manufacture biological arms, Kennedy presents gain-of-function research as ipso facto bioweapons research.  Having demonstrated that China is among the world leaders in gain-of-function viral research, China becomes, in Kennedy’s narrative, a world leader in bioweapons research.

     Kennedy shows that U.S. governmental agencies and non-profit corporations are among the major funding sources of China’s gain-of-function viral research.  But this international cooperation does not, in Kennedy’s view, lend a level of legitimacy to the research.  Rather, it is the basis for a broad condemnation of the American actors for their complicity with China’s bioweapons research and for their funneling of money to Chinese scientists for bioweapons development in China.  For RFK Jr., such cooperation with China is a “handshake with the Devil.”

     We ought to keep in mind the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention, which was signed in 1972, went into effect in 1975, and today has 185 nations as signatories.  Article One of the Convention states that the parties to the Convention agree to never develop microbial or other biological agents or toxins “in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes.”  With this language, the Convention permits gain-of-function research for the purposes of pandemic preparation and/or the development of vaccines and bioterrorism counter measures, if the development of new viruses is in small quantities necessary for scientific observation, and not the large quantities that would be involved in manufacturing bioweapons. 

     Kennedy describes Article One of the Biological Weapons Convention as establishing a “loophole,” but here he is indulging in idealism.  It would not be possible to arrive to agreement to refrain from virus development research even for the purposes of disease control, except if there were to be alternative effective methods of disease control.  But in fact, scientific research has been leading to increasing concern with viral pandemics, as a result of the growing evidence of viral spillover from animals to humans, and as a result of the increasing human intrusion into wildlife areas.  Similarly, an agreement to refrain from such virus development research even for purposes of counter-bioterrorism would require a level of global political stability and mutually beneficial cooperation that does not exist.  In fact, the world continues to move in the opposite direction, down the road of imperialist versus anti-imperialist confrontation.

     Accusations against states for violations of the Biological Weapons Convention have been shaped by Cold War politics, and therefore they are not necessarily credible accusations.  During the 1970s, the Soviet Union was accused of operating a sophisticated biological weapons program, because of its research programs in its Ministry of Health with respect to several pathogens and infectious diseases.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, four anti-imperialist states, labeled as rogue states, have been accused of non-compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention, namely Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea.  In 2019, the U.S. State Department included Russia and China in such accusations.  On the other side of the Cold War political claims, Russia has accused the United States of developing biological weapons facilities in Georgia and Ukraine; and Cuba accused the United States of a bioterrorist attack against Cuban agriculture in the form of the introduction of a crop-eating insect via crop-spraying planes in 1996.  The Cold War, in both its pre-1990 and post-1990 manifestations, combined with technical difficulties in verifying compliance, has rendered it politically impossible to develop verification protocols for the Biological Weapons Convention. 

     Until recently, China has not been an actor in this Cold War/bioweapons political drama.  Now, however, China is among the accused, due to China’s development, in cooperation with U.S. agencies, of change-of-function research with respect to SARS; and with the emergence of a Chinese foreign policy of cooperation with all nations, including key anti-imperialist states.  Kennedy’s narrative seizes on these developments.  He treats China’s SARS research program as pretense to cover the development of bioweapons, and he treats China’s declared foreign policy goals as deception.  Kennedy thus puts forth a vision of China as a new threat, as a new major actor in a terrifying bioweapons arms race, the actual existence of which he does not demonstrate. 

     Kennedy treats as sinister the connection of the Chinese military and the Communist Party of China to gain-of-function research in China.  But such connections are reasonable.  Bioterrorism and serious threats to the health of the population are indeed questions of national security, and they are matters of importance for reflection on public policy.  It is normal that these institutions would be connected to viral development research related to pandemic control and defense against bioterrorism.

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China’s cover-up

     Kennedy accuses China of covering-up the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the support of its American partners and sponsors in gain-of-function viral research, and with the support of the World Health Organization.  In my commentary of January 19, 2024, I review the findings of the Joint WHO-China Study on the origins of COVID-19 (“WHO and the origins of COVID-19”).  I point out that the Joint Study was developed on an international institutional base that gives it legitimacy, and that its conclusions are supported with evidence.  Its report maintained that it is likely or very likely that the virus originated in bats and was subsequently transmitted to humans via an unknown intermediate species in late December 2019 in a food and animal market in Wuhan, China.  Kennedy rejects the conclusion of the international group, maintaining that the pandemic originated from an accidental leak from a gain-of-function research lab in Wuhan.  His view is based on speculations found in the report of the Republican minority staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  In my commentary of January 26 (“The Wuhan Cover-Up”), I show that the speculations of the Republican minority staff cannot be reasonably defended, considering the facts as previously discovered and published by the international team.

     Therefore, unless and until further evidence is discovered, there is no reason to not accept the conclusions of the Joint WHO-China international team, unless one’s goal is to disseminate Cold War propaganda against China.

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China’s infiltration of Western science

     Kennedy acknowledges that China has attained ascendancy in biomedical research, aided by the fact that it spends 2.5% of its GDP on scientific research, in contrast to the United States, which spends only 0.3% of its GDP on research.  But in Kennedy’s narrative, this is not reason for congratulations or praise.  Rather, it is viewed as part of a sinister plan, in which China has adopted a strategy of infiltrating and taking control of American institutions in order to weaponize them against America.

     Kennedy here displays an incapacity to look at questions related to technology and society from the vantage point of the colonized.  It can be seen, from the vantage point of the colonized, that modern advances in science and technology are among the positive consequences of European colonial domination of the world, in accordance with a fundamental law of human development, namely, that advances in civilization are a consequence of conquest and domination.    But the colonized have been excluded from the scientific and technological advances that have resulted from their conquest and domination.  From their point of view, the advances of science and technology must somehow be appropriated, so that they can be applied to the development of their economies and societies, overcoming the underdevelopment that is a consequence of their conquest and domination.

     China has an intelligent policy for appropriating and acquiring scientific knowledge.  China does not demand that the West directly apply its knowledge to problems in China, knowing that the West would apply its knowledge in accordance with its interests.  China does not send its youth to the West for their incorporation into Western society and institutions of knowledge, understanding that this would intensify the “brain drain.”  Rather, China sends students to learn in Western research institutions and to bring this knowledge back with them to China.  And it encourages its scientists to conduct investigations in collaboration with Western scientists and institutions.

     In this vein, the question of the transfer of technology ought to be understood from the vantage point of the colonized, who discern that the development of technology in the West has occurred on a foundation of Western colonial domination of the world, and therefore, technological advances should be understood not as the exclusive property of the West but as the common possession of humanity.  The transfer of technology has been a persistent demand of the neocolonized, who view it as a moral obligation of the nations with developed economies. 

     China, therefore, like the other nations of the global South, has a great appreciation for the benefits of Western science, and it admires the scientific achievements of the West.  It wishes to integrate into the highly regarded institutions of Western scientific knowledge, in order to enhance its own knowledge and to gain credibility for its own scientists and research centers.  China seeks prestige and preeminence in the world, earned through its accomplishments and achievements.

     We should appreciate that seeking preeminence is not the same as seeking world domination.  There is nothing sinister about Chinese appreciation of Western knowledge, unless your premise is that China ought to accept the condition of underdevelopment that it possessed at the end of the nineteenth century, as a consequence of Western military intrusion and exploitative economic presence in Asia and the imposition of the “unequal treaties” on China.

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China’s deceptive claim of peace and cooperation

     Kennedy views China’s talk of peaceful cooperation with the nations of the world as a great deception.  Here it should be understood that China’s discourse of a foreign policy of cooperation and mutually beneficial trade is a persistent discourse, expressed repeatedly in a wide variety of international forums in the era of Xi Jinping.

     Is the discourse genuine, or is it a great deception?  Here we must have recourse to the testimony of the leaders of numerous nations, which have learned in experience the dynamics of imperialism and neocolonialism.  They continuously say that China during the past ten years has developed in practice what it proclaims, and it is playing a leading role in forging a new world order based on win-win cooperation.  They find that relations with China are of a different order than relations with the Western imperialist powers, in that China treats them with respect, taking seriously their development needs.  This is the reason that more and more nations are expanding economic relations with China.    

     China seeks to develop mutually beneficial relations with all nations, regardless of ideology.  This includes developing relations with those that are the most decided with respect to an anti-imperialist road in defense of their sovereignty, as well as those countries that continue with imperialist policies.  China condemns the continuation of imperialist policies by certain Western powers as unwise and unsustainable, maintaining that mutually beneficial relations are the foundation for the common prosperity of all and world peace; but it nonetheless maintains economic and diplomatic relations with nations that it considers unwise. 

     In accordance with this perspective, China has developed extensive relations with Bill Gates and Microsoft.  China offers to Microsoft its vast markets and a work force consisting of 1.4 million engineering degree college graduates per year (versus 128,000 in the USA), capable of the creative imagination demanded by the continually changing high-tech communications industry.  Microsoft offers to China a prestigious name capable of attracting the best of China’s engineering talent and a capacity to support technology transfer in accordance with China’s needs.  Kennedy reports, unapprovingly, that eleven of China’s largest municipal governments participate in the screening of Chinese applicants for employment by Microsoft, and that Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing employs nine thousand workers, including scientists, physicians, engineers, and support personnel. 

     Kennedy acknowledges that “Gates’ partnership with China has been a stunning success.”  Microsoft has become a world leader in artificial intelligence patents, and Microsoft Asia “has become an engine for uplifting Chinese global leadership in computer science.”  The Gates Foundation is a major funder of gain-of-function and vaccine research in China and of China’s Thousand Talents program, which sends Chinese youth for study in the United States and Europe. 

     Although condemned by Kennedy as “a golden handshake with the Devil,” the relation of China with Microsoft and the Gates Foundation could be interpreted as illustrating the possibilities for international cooperation in addressing common human needs with respect to health and communication, and in forging mutually beneficial development in science and technology. 

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RFK Jr.’s blindness to worldwide anti-imperialist construction

     Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is blinded by Cold War assumptions and beliefs about China.  He does not see the unfolding anti-imperialist construction in the world, forged by humanity in defense of itself, in which China has emerged as a leading nation. 

     Kennedy assumes, like Western intellectuals and leaders in general, that China is authoritarian.  They do not know of China’s construction of people’s democracy, characterized by a system of direct and indirect elections that establishes the National People’s Congress, which has the authority to elect the head of state and to enact legislation; and by the leadership of the political process by a coalition of parties, headed by the Communist Party of China, which guides but does not by itself decide.  It is a highly democratic system, with full voting rights and ample popular participation, which has demonstrated itself capable of attaining political stability and legitimation. 

     Socialist China has evolved through three stages.  First, the era of Mao, which established national sovereignty, fundamental social transformation, and the foundation for modernization.  Secondly, the era of Deng Xiaoping, which reformed but did not abandon socialism, expanding possibilities for private and foreign capital, guided by the state toward determined development goals.  Thirdly, the era of Xi Jinping, which corrected negative consequences and tendencies of the era of reform, and which has seen the emergence of China as a world economic power and as a leading force in the construction of an alternative world order.

“China models a new type of socialism: The most advanced example of a new socioeconomic formation,” June 10, 2022

“Xi Jinping: The deepening of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” June 17, 2022

“Xi Jinping invokes the Silk Road spirit: Belt and Road cooperation represents the advancing of our times,” October 24, 2023

     The Western-centered capitalist world-economy has brought humanity to a dead end.  China has a better idea.  The West ought not reject her for it.  The West ought to embrace China, without denying its own virtues, contributions, and achievements.

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