John Moody is the author of "Of Course They Knew, Of Course They…" and "The World We Wish," two fiction books on China and Covid. He is a former senior vice president at Fox News.
Federal Newswire
How did you come to write a fiction book that includes a lot of accurate information about China?
John Moody
I knew I couldn't write a totally fact-based nonfiction book. I didn’t have the access, I wasn't allowed to go to China, [and] I couldn't get any information from Chinese officials. I was basically being shut out and so I resorted to social media.
There are hundreds of English language websites and chat rooms in China. If you know how to get into them and if you're invited in, you can learn an extraordinary amount of stuff from them. Now this happens to be Chinese people who speak English.
So I started looking at these English language websites and English language publications that are available to anybody that wants to research them. I realized that the official narrative from Beijing was a load of bologna.
People in Wuhan, where [Covid] started, knew what had happened. They knew that there had been something wrong going on at the virological institute in Wuhan. It's a seven story building on the edge of town. Everybody knows the virology institute is not very well-run and it's not very well maintained.
[I followed] the chatter going back and forth between people, [who] don't have official titles, they're not high-ranking party members. They're just people that live there and know what's going on in their own town.
Federal Newswire
Can you explain why Italy was so affected by Covid?
John Moody
I was lucky enough to be the Rome Bureau Chief for Time magazine quite a few years ago and that allowed me to travel around one of the most beautiful countries in the world including Northern Italy, Lombardy, and Tuscany. There's a good work ethic and they created some enormously powerful, potent, and profitable products there.
When things got tough in the 1990’s, the government…allowed the sale of some of Italy's trademark properties. They put them up for sale because they needed money. There were Chinese buyers waiting.
When the Chinese come into a country to take over some of your businesses they bring Chinese workers in with them. They send in thousands of workers into the country where they're buying and suddenly that's their workforce.
Around 2019 they had sent people into a place called Prato. Prato is not too far from Florence and it was at one time one of the leading clothing centers in Italy. Prato went from a very proud community that made fine linens and wool goods, excellent menswear, and ladieswear to a town that was dominated by a Chinese immigrant population. Stores then immediately put up Chinese language signs in the windows. Restaurants that had been there for generations became Chinese restaurants.
I think it was a bit of a surprise to the world at large that Northern Italy was the most hard hit. But it's because they don't know about the Chinese invasion of Northern Italy. It took quite a while for the pandemic to reach the southern parts of Italy because it doesn't have a large Chinese immigrant population. The North spread the disease all through Italy and mostly it spread it through its Chinese immigrant population.
Federal Newswire
How should Americans view China today?
John Moody
Unfortunately Americans know breathtakingly little about China.
This is the second largest economy in the world. It is certainly our greatest competitor now both politically and economically. China to its great credit has forced its younger generations and … people of our generation to learn about America much the way the Soviet Union did when that was still in existence.
Kids were required to take courses in American history. I can remember from my time in Moscow there were kids that could recite every American President in order. [They’re doing the] same thing in China and so China knows what buttons to push to get Americans on edge.
So we have to be aware that whenever you get called racist by [the] Chinese Communist Party it's sort of a backhanded compliment. The only answer to that charge is to say “really and how are you treating the Uyghur or minority [communities] in your country?” They don't want to talk about it.
But it's absolutely true that China knows more about the United States than vice versa and it uses it to its political advantage.
Federal Newswire
Did China help shape American opinion on Covid?
John Moody
2020 I think was a year unlike any other. You had this pandemic that nobody knew how to cure, you had the pandemic before the vaccines were available. The … way to perhaps avoid dying from this pandemic was to stay away from everyone.
Don't come close to anybody including your family members, put a mask on so we can't see your face, and you can't make us sick.
It was the most dehumanizing advice for the entire world and once again. The World Health Organization was out there saying mask up, maybe put 2 masks on, maybe 3 masks, that'll be even better, and people just said “well we don't know what else to do so experts–we’ll listen to them.”
That was just one part of what was going on in the United States. You also had this movement called Black Lives Matter that was becoming not just more noteworthy and newsworthy, but more violent and more demanding. We were a little bit worried about going out on the street not just because of the pandemic but because you might get killed.
Then there was the Presidential election of 2020 which makes a Ringling Brothers Clown Circus look more like a symphony orchestra. The pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Presidential election that year really created a framework for fallibility.
We didn't know who to believe, we didn't know what to do. Most of our history is not like that, most of American history has been bold actions. It's been people who have been educated who are ready for a challenge, who believe in America, and its ability to solve almost anything.
In the space of a couple of months or even over a year we lost all of that, we lost our confidence. We lost our belief in the future, in our own political system, our caring for each other. The Chinese from afar were watching all of this and saying the Americans really are weak. Xi Jinping and his cronies began to devise, I think, a master plan for how to take down America. They're doing it right now as we speak.
[Consider] TikTok and whether or not we should ban it in the United States. How does China handle its own social media? It has an amazingly strong agency called the Cyberspace Administration of China. It looks at every single written communication online and they analyze it.
When these chat rooms first started chattering about the pandemic in Wuhan, the Cyberspace Administration of China came out with advice for how editors, which is to say censors, should handle those things.
We argue with each other and yell at Members of Congress for wanting to take away our TikTok. Well, that's a little bit like saying take away our cancer.
Federal Newswire
What should Americans be doing to respond to China?
John Moody
Don't be afraid of being criticized with regard to China [and] specifically stop buying their crap. They sell us so many hundreds of billions of dollars of worthless goods that are meant to be useless in a couple of years. You know there used to be a town in the state of Georgia and it made 80% of the world's socks. That [company] is out of business [since] China now makes 97% of the entire world's socks.
Tell Apple to stop making your stuff in China. Take it to India,the Philippines, any place but China. You are hurting America...
China is coming for us... If they want Taiwan, they're going to take it. They send air balloons over our land and wonder why we're upset about it. When their jets cross the Taiwan strait just to see what the reaction would be, we sit back and say gee I wish you wouldn't do that.
Be a little tougher. Don't be afraid to say what you know is right. That's the way to turn this around.
