Now that many states are opening back up, the cable news channels are finally making some time available for non-COVID-19 programming.  A new hour-long documentary premiering this weekend on two Fox cable channels promises to explore a vital topic that is partly inspired by but much broader than the coronavirus panic: America vs. China.

Until recently, when the origins and spread of COVID-19 began to expose Communist China for what it really is — a brutal, lying, authoritarian dictatorship that is potentially the most existential foreign threat to the United States — most Americans were oblivious to the rise of China and how vulnerable we in the U.S. now are.  Many Americans have tended to look the other way as our manufacturing capacity has been hollowed out and shipped to Communist China, as long as cheap products made in that country have been available in Walmarts and everywhere else.  But now the COVID-19 coverage has exposed other serious vulnerabilities including the incredible fact, according to a Commerce Department study, that 97% of the antibiotics we use are manufactured in China.

Not only antibiotics, but surgical masks, ventilators, most other vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs, nutritional supplements, and a plethora of other supplies needed in the medical war against the virus come from China.

Maria Bartiromo on the set of Mornings with Maria.  Photo courtesy of Fox Business Network.

These and other topics will be explored in the new Fox documentary America vs. China, reported by veteran financial journalist and TV program host Maria Bartiromo and set for broadcast on the Fox Business Network (FBN) tonight at 7 P.M. E.T. and tomorrow, Sunday, at 10 P.M. E.T. on the Fox News Channel.  Bartiromo joined the Fox Business Network in 2014 and is FBN's global markets editor.  She anchors a daily program on FBN, Mornings with Maria (6–9 A.M. E.T.), and a Sunday-morning political talk show, Sunday Morning Futures (10–11 A.M. E.T.), on the Fox News Channel.  The latter program has recently featured regular appearances by former political strategist to candidate and president Donald Trump Steve Bannon, whose opinions on China seem to fit nicely into the America vs. China theme.

According to Fox News, America vs. China:

... will provide an in-depth look into China's initial handling of COVID-19 as well as the country's push to become an economic and military superpower.

Pulling from her expansive reporting on the Chinese economy over three decades, the documentary will feature Bartiromo's interviews with top business executives and political leaders, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro, billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, Revolution Chairman Steve Case and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), among others.

The brief program preview video clips provided by Fox Media Relations (featuring Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton here and retired four-star general Jack Keane here) suggest that the documentary will be hard-hitting in its reporting on China's track record and future plans for world hegemony.

The critical importance of this topic was taken note of during an appearance by foreign affairs journalist and the author of The Coming Collapse of China Gordon Chang on Hannity last Tuesday.  According to an article at Fox News by Charles Creitz, "Chang told Hannity Tuesday that the Chinese Communist government is very concerned about the possible exposure of their wrongdoing and incompetence in the handling of the coronavirus."  As Chang said (emphasis added):

[T]hey [the Chinese communist government] know that something really wrong is going to be exposed. ... Their actions have been malicious in terms of deliberately taking actions that would inevitably lead to the spread of the virus outside of China's borders, so this is the crime of the century.

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  He also appears in the media, including recently on BBC World News. Peter's website is http://peter.media.  Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.