Actually, I disagree. I go by the rule that almost everyone tries to do what they personally believe really is the right thing to do. In this case, Xi Jinping really, truly thought they were doing what is necessary to stop the pandemic from ravaging their greatly-urbanized population...and, as I pointed out in the article, even the worst estimates of their COVID death rate is less than one-third that of America's. What's more, as soon as they had the results - in January of 2020, IIRC - they had already sequenced the genome of COVID and had released it to the world's scientific community for free. Those are not the actions of a government being a tyranny just for the sake of tyranny.

Moreover, to give them credit, while their vaccine SinoVac is not nearly as effective as our mRNA vaccines, it is moderately effective...and that's what all my family in the Philippines received. I've got over 100 family members there, and the only one who passed during the pandemic was my mother-in-law who was almost 90 years old and had already suffered a stroke.

BUT where they went wrong was - as with so much else in China - they allowed their national pride to get in the way. Their pride would not allow them to use our vaccines, just as their pride has convinced them that Big Brother always knows what is best for the people. That same pride also will not allow them to *not* do what they think is necessary to take Taiwan.

Pride can carry a person - or a nation - very far...but it can also be the Achilles' Heel, the vulnerable point that allows a deadly poison to bring the journey to an end.