As states begin to emerge from the China Virus shutdowns, focus has rightly turned to putting the economy on track. At the same time there are some who are rightly adding more scrutiny to the actions of the People’s Republic of China.

We’ve discussed the cover-up that turned an outbreak into a pandemic, but what is also emerging is Beijing’s heavy use of disinformation, and some of it is not as clumsy as claims that the United States military released the virus. In fact, according to a Wall Street Journal report, in at least one case, the ChiComs just spread the lies of others; they didn’t originate those lies.

But regardless of whether it originated or merely passed on the disinformation, China intentionally spread fear and panic. Why do that? To understand, one has to look at China’s situation — and to say it’s in a world of hurt understates things. Still, as we noted last week, the Chinese have gained a lot of influence with our media. In a way, they need it.

For starters, there has been a major hit to their reputation as the cover-up becomes more obvious, even to the American Leftmedia. The cover-up has generated bipartisan calls for retaliation. We have discussed some options to make the Butchers of Beijing pay. One of the big things has been a push to bring manufacturing back to America, which is a great way to address a clear vulnerability.

China has sent (and sold) a lot of equipment around the world, but reports indicate that it’s of such poor quality that it’s useless. Canada is just the latest to find this out the hard way.

Investigations will reveal what we ultimately must do — and just how serious China’s culpability for the pandemic and the thousands of American lives lost really is.

That is why Beijing is now desperately peddling disinformation. The ChiComs hope to leverage access to China’s vast market — and for some news outlets, their parent companies crave that access. If China is unhappy with ABC News, it can close its market to Disney. NBC has similar problems if Universal can’t reach China’s market. Even Bloomberg News has been caught compromising its reporting in order to maintain access in China. Meanwhile, leftists still think it’s a problem when One America News is invited to White House press conferences.

While there is no doubt that China aims for a softer policy from the United States, China’s leverage over our media outlets is alarming. With many mainstream outlets already never fair to Patriots, a hostile foreign power influencing news coverage is a massive problem.