‘China should pay the money,’ a political science professor says.
The lawsuit against China over its role in the COVID-19 pandemic brought by Missouri’s attorney general opened the floodgates for other states to join in, according to political expert Mark Thomas.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh ruled on March 7 that Missouri prevailed in its lawsuit, ordering China to pay nearly $24.5 billion in damages for covering up the pandemic and hoarding personal protective equipment.
It was “a very just decision,” said Thomas, assistant professor of political science at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
“China should pay the money,” he told The Epoch Times. “Missouri’s lawsuit opens the door for other states to follow.”
Missouri launched its legal action against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in April 2020, accusing it of causing and worsening the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the initial complaint was dismissed, the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit later remanded Count IV—concerning CCP’s alleged hoarding of medical supplies during the pandemic—for a default hearing under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) in January 2025.
The defendants include the People’s Republic of China, the CCP, the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, the Ministry of Emergency Management of the People’s Republic of China, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Government of Hubei Province, the People’s Government of Wuhan City, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“This is a landmark victory for Missouri and the United States in the fight to hold China accountable for unleashing COVID-19 on the world,” plaintiff Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said after the ruling.
Missouri’s Case Under Antitrust Law
Regarding early doubts about whether China could claim immunity under FSIA, Thomas said: “The court overruled that, and I think it’s a wise decision, given how much China hid about the virus, and considering how long they knew about it.”
Court documents reveal that China was aware of COVID-19 as early as September 2019 and denied its contagiousness until January 2020. The Eighth Circuit found that Count IV of Missouri’s complaint—alleging that China “hoarded personal-protective equipment while the rest of the world was in the dark about the disease”—fell under the FSIA’s commercial activity exception.
The court pointed to claims that the Chinese regime “hoarded masks and then sold lower-quality equipment in the United States” and “took over factories that made masks on behalf of American companies, which essentially halted the export of high-quality masks to the United States.” This, the ruling states, amounted to “classic anticompetitive behavior, except on a country-wide scale.”
The court concluded that China violated U.S. antitrust law and lacked FSIA immunity.
Thomas described Missouri’s use of antitrust law as a “wise decision.”
Judge Limbaugh rendered the decision by default after Chinese officials did not appear to plead their side of the case.
Collecting the Damages
The judgment holds the defendants jointly liable for nearly $24.5 billion, plus post-judgment interest.
“We intend to seize Chinese assets in Missouri, including farmland, to recover every penny,” Bailey said in a statement.
“China’s refusal to appear in court does not mean that they can escape responsibility for causing untold suffering and economic disaster.”
Thomas believes China is unlikely to appeal within the United States since it skipped the Missouri hearing. However, he said, “China could appeal it to the International Court of Arbitration in Sweden, so it could be dragged out.”
He endorsed Bailey’s plan to seize Chinese assets in the state. China’s total investment in the United States is estimated at $201 billion, according to the China Global Investment Tracker.
“They’ve purchased significant amounts of farmland, real estate, electronics, transport, lumber industry, consumer products and services,” Thomas said. “About 6 percent of that is government-owned or government-related. So the Chinese government is about 6 percent of that $201 billion.
According to Thomas, most of that investment is in California, Texas, Illinois, Kentucky, and New York.
“Missouri ranks in the middle; they have more than $1 billion, but less than $10 billion—numbers aren’t specifically available,” he said.
As an expert in counterterrorism and counterespionage, Thomas raised concerns about the CCP’s covert activities in the United States.
“Let’s seize the property, pay back Missouri, pay Missouri some of the liability, the money that they got in this suit. And we also then limit Chinese access to the bases,” he said.
He cited economic and security benefits, noting that farmland near military or nuclear bases could be used for surveillance. “There’s both economic reason and strategic reason to act,” he said.
Thomas also suggested the United States could leverage the ruling to address broader issues, such as human rights and trade imbalances.
“We could sanction Chinese investors and not let their dollars get repaid, not let their dollars get repatriated back to China,“ he said. ”We can just freeze the currency flows.
“We could freeze investment not just here in [the] U.S. but around the world by just stopping off the dollar flow through the U.S. [like] we’ve done with Russia already [back in the Cold War]. We could do the same thing with China.”
A Precedent for Other States
Thomas urged other states to follow Missouri’s lead.
“The Missouri case opened the door, opened the floodgates for other states to join in,” he said. “The court has set a precedent, so it‘d be smart for other states to say, ’Hey, we were also impacted by this.’ It should be a very short proceedings.”
He pointed out that states with significant Chinese investments—such as New York, California, and Texas—could gain substantial assets through property seizures.
Thomas said that multiple lawsuits would strengthen U.S. leverage in negotiations with China on trade, human rights, espionage, and technology transfer. “It does give us a bargaining chip on issues that we want to fix,” he added.
He also believes the federal government should back Missouri’s efforts to collect the damages, though he acknowledged the complexity of U.S.–China relations.
Beyond economics, Thomas said Missouri’s victory “sets a good precedent for other countries to follow” to hold the CCP accountable for its role in the pandemic.