Today, during a press conference, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that China will be donating 1,000 ventilators to the state of New York. New York has been absolutely ravaged by the coronavirus over the past couple of weeks. The ventilators were scheduled to arrive at JFK International some time later today (April 4, 2020). Since the pandemic began threatening the entire globe, China seems to be attempting to interject itself as the leader in assisting with global response to a crisis. All while the US is frantically trying to flatten an outbreak that originated within China’s communist border.

During Cuomo’s press conference he stated, “We finally got some good news today, the Chinese government helped facilitate a donation of 1,000 ventilators that will arrive in JFK today.” The fact that this is good news shows the current state of desperation the state of New York is currently in.

The donated ventilators are coming from multiple Chinese foundations. The donation itself has been facilitated by Ambassador Huang Ping.

To be clear the donations are coming from the country of China NOT the Chinese government. Some industry titans such as Jack Ma and Joe Tsai are responsible for the donation. NOT the communist government of China.

Cuomo stated, “This is a big deal, and it’s going to make a significant difference for us.” China has, apparently, somewhat stabilized since the original outbreak and government cover up it originally experienced. Now that things appear to be stable in China again, they are making a hard push to take over the position as the global leader in helping countries deal with a virus that broke out in their country, but have still yet to take responsibility for.

China is taking advantage of a situation they are responsible for by extending help to countries (typically America’s favorite thing to do) in a way that they can be viewed as saviors to these struggling countries. By providing ventilators, masks and other medical supplies to these countries they are attempting to play global power politics and it is working… for now.

Rush Doshi stated, “This could be the first major global crisis in decades without meaningful U.S. leadership and with significant Chinese leadership.” Doshi is the director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Brookings Institution in Washington. A month ago Axios reported that the Chinese government is floating the idea of having a “Beijing-led global health organization that would rival the [World Health Organization].”

Dr. Yangyang Cheng a research associate at Cornell has gone on record to say that ““The Chinese government has been trying to project Chinese state power beyond its borders and establish China as a global leader, not dissimilar to what the U.S. government has been doing for the better part of a century, and the distribution of medical aid is part of this mission.”

During this pandemic China has provided aid to Greece, Japan, Italy, Iraq, Serbia, Spain and Peru. All of this done in an attempt to align itself as a responsible world power that is a leader during a global crisis.

All of this is “cute”, but let’s not forget the multiple reports of faulty and contaminated equipment and tests that China sent to these countries. Italy and Greece both reported that not only were the ventilators they received contaminated with coronavirus but also the mask and COVID-19 test kits that China had sent them were as well.