The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that a large group of prominent American foreign policy experts, including former high-ranking White House officials from both parties, is petitioning the Trump administration to work more closely with China to stem the coronavirus epidemic.  Among the signees were Susan Rice and Stephen Hadley, national security advisers under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively.

Friday's statement read: "No effort against the coronavirus — whether to save American lives at home or combat the disease abroad — will be successful without some degree of cooperation between the United States and China."  While on the surface level, this is true, not only do these so-called experts seem to have forgotten that the U.S. aided the Chinese in containing the spread of the coronavirus, but they are refusing to admit that China has lied about the spread of the virus and apparently continues to cover up its animalistic actions.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), determined to recast the country as a global leader that has conquered the COVD-19 pandemic, has been claiming that the nation's death rates are decreasing in the city of Wuhan.  The problem, residents say, is that the numbers do not add up.

The New York Post reported last week that massive deliveries of urns in Wuhan have raised fresh skepticism of China's coronavirus reporting.  As families in Wuhan began picking up the cremated ashes of those who have died from the virus this week, photos began circulating on social media, with local media outlets showing vast numbers of urns at Wuhan funeral homes.  China has thus far reported 3,326 coronavirus-related deaths, with most taking place in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global pandemic.  But one funeral home received two shipments of 5,000 urns over the course of two days. 

Another "funeral hall" in Wuchang (another Wuhan neighborhood) had announced that from March 23, it would distribute 500 per day, up to Qingming.  This means around 6,500 urns throughout this period.  Wuhan has seven funeral parlors.  If it is calculated that each of them will distribute urns at the same rate as the one in Wuchang, it adds up to an estimated 45,500 urns for the city of Wuhan alone.

Despite China's exclusion of people without symptoms from its official count of confirmed coronavirus cases, which continues to raise eyebrows over whether its outbreak has truly come under control, local authorities in Wuhan — the city where the virus first emerged — defended their practice of not counting such cases after local magazine Caixin reported that the city was still finding asymptomatic cases daily.

According to China's data, and also the Johns Hopkins interactive global spread tracker, China currently has 82,490 confirmed cases of COVID-19.  Some British scientists, however, said the Chinese communist government is downplaying numbers of those infected and that the outbreak in their country is likely "15 to 40 times" higher than the released statistics.

We know how the CCP lied over its claim in December 2019 that the coronavirus was under control, simultaneously silencing doctors such as the late Li Wenliang — the whistleblower who tried to raise the alarm about the coronavirus outbreak.  Apparently, General Secretary Xi Jinping is continuing to suppress and have whistleblowers eliminated.

According to 60 Minutes, Australia, Chinese whistleblowing Wuhan doctor Ai Fen, who claimed that Beijing had prevented her from warning the world about COVID-19, has mysteriously disappeared.  Wuhan hospital officials punished Fen after she posted test results of a patient who was suffering from a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)–like coronavirus on WeChat before COVID-19 was declared.  That image went viral in China.

She began speaking out against the CCP, beginning with an interview that Chinese censors relentlessly suppressed.  Ai's interview in early March was a courageous indictment of Communist Party leadership for concealing the epidemic, and especially for denying that the Wuhan virus could be transmitted between humans — the World Health Organization had initially assented to the CCP conclusion, despite the suspicions of other outside health experts.  She said physicians in Wuhan knew the virus could pass between humans weeks before the CCP admitted it to the world, and she blamed herself for failing to speak out despite orders to keep quiet.

This is not the first time that the Chinese government has come under criticism for withholding coronavirus information from the international community.  Not to be pessimistic, but so long as China continues to get just a slap on the wrist, if that, it will not be the last.  On April 1, Bloomberg reported that U.S. intelligence found evidence that China underreported the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths.  The report followed months of reports from anti-communist and human rights publications like the Epoch Times and Radio Free Asia.

Perhaps it would serve Susan Rice and Stephen Hadley, in addition to their associates who come off as if China is now transparent and insist that the Trump administration should cooperate with the Xi regime, to heed the recent words of Cardinal Charles Bo, archbishop of Yangon (Burma), who stated: "Through its inhumane and irresponsible handling of the coronavirus, the CCP has proven what many previously thought: that it is a threat to the world.  China as a country is a great and ancient civilization that has contributed so much to the world throughout history, but this regime is responsible, through its criminal negligence and repression, for the pandemic sweeping through our streets today."