China's response to Wuhan Virus (aka Covid-19)

Chinese media estimates 500,000 coronavirus cases in Wuhan, quickly deletes news
The New York Times (U.S, May 20th, 2020
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3936718
(Category: Xi, global dictator)

'In China’s Crisis, Xi Sees a Crucible to Strengthen His Rule

China’s leader is using the country’s success — and the criticism against it — to urge the party and the people to weather tough days ahead.

Before an adulatory crowd of university professors and students, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, offered a strikingly bold message about the global coronavirus pandemic. Summoning images of sacrifice from Communist Party lore, he told them that the calamity was ripe with possibility for China.

“Great historical progress always happens after major disasters,” Mr. Xi said during a recent visit to Xi’an Jiaotong University. “Our nation was steeled and grew up through hardship and suffering.”

Mr. Xi, shaped by his years of adversity as a young man, has seized on the pandemic as an opportunity in disguise — a chance to redeem the party after early mistakes let infections slip out of control, and to rally national pride in the face of international ire over those mistakes. And the state propaganda machine is aggressively backing him up, touting his leadership in fighting the pandemic.

Now, Mr. Xi needs to turn his exhortations of resolute unity into action — a theme likely to underpin the National People’s Congress, the annual legislative meeting that opens on Friday after a monthslong delay.

(...)

“If you position yourself as a great helmsman uniquely capable of leading your country, that has a lot of domestic political risk if you fail to handle the job appropriately,” said Carl Minzner, a professor of Chinese law and politics at Fordham University. “That’s a risk for Xi going forward.”

So far, Mr. Xi has largely succeeded in rewriting the narrative in China.

The disarray in other countries, especially the United States, has given him a reprieve from domestic political pressure by allowing officials to highlight China’s lower death toll, despite questions about the accuracy of the numbers.

The Trump administration’s withholding of funds from the World Health Organization handed Mr. Xi a chance to appear munificent when he pledged $2 billion in assistance and promised to make any vaccine widely available.

Mr. Xi has cast himself as the indispensable leader, at the ramparts to defend China against intractable threats. The shift has provoked the party cadre — and by all appearances much of the public — to coalesce around his leadership, whatever misgivings they may have about the bungling of the outbreak.

“If we had frozen time at Feb. 1, this would be very bad for the Chinese leadership,” said Jude Blanchette, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

China’s leaders in the past have often invoked the theme of triumph over adversity, but for Mr. Xi, who turns 67 next month, the idea threads through his own biography.

His father, a famous revolutionary leader, was purged and held in solitary confinement under Mao Zedong. The younger Xi was hounded as a child after his father’s disgrace and later, during the Cultural Revolution, ritually denounced by his own mother and exiled from Beijing to labor in a village for seven years.'

Chinese media estimates 500,000 coronavirus cases in Wuhan, quickly deletes news
Taiwan News (Independant republic of Taiwan), May 19th, 2020
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3936718
(Category: CCP propaganda)

'AIPEI (Taiwan News) — As Wuhan officials had pledged to test all 11 million of the city's residents amid a new outbreak, news surfaced that potentially 500,000 could be found to be infected with Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), before suddenly being deleted, causing even many Chinese netizens to ridicule their government.

Last week, Caixin published the results of a seroepidemiological study carried out in April on 11,000 Wuhan residents, which found that five to six percent of those tested had antibodies for COVID-19. If extrapolated to the city's entire population, this would mean approximately 500,000 of the city's residents have been infected with the disease.

Given that the Chinese government has only reported 50,000 cases in Wuhan, it would mean that 90 percent of cases have not been detected. On May 15, Sina reprinted the article, but it was quickly taken offline along with the Caixin piece.

A Google search of the Sina article's original title "Preliminary evaluation of Wuhan nucleic acid tests: at least 500,000 out of 10 million people infected" (初步評估武漢核酸檢測：1000萬人中，至少有50萬人感染) will result in an error message stating "This article does not exist." However, Google cache versions can still be accessed.

Word soon spread among Chinese netizens that the articles had been taken down and Deutsche Welle cited several netizens on Weibo mocking the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for yet again covering up the real data. One netizen wrote, "openness, transparency, and responsibility," qualities that Xi Jinping (習近平) claimed China had maintained throughout the pandemic during his opening speech at Monday's (May 18) World Health Assembly (WHA).

Another netizen sarcastically wrote, "don't worry, whether it's 500,000 or 1 million, it will be a zero case diagnosis."

Wuhan was locked down from Jan. 23 to April 8, a period spanning over 70 days; however, no new confirmed cases were reported by the government for 36 days until May 9, with five new confirmed cases and 11 asymptomatic cases reported on May 10.

China claims that the total number of confirmed cases of coronavirus nationwide since the start of the outbreak is 82,960, with 4,634 deaths, but the data is considered to be deliberately underestimated by a wide margin. A set of data on coronavirus cases and deaths from the National University of Defense Technology leaked to Foreign Policy revealed that the number of cases in 230 cities across China could actually exceed 640,000.

On May 13, Wuhan authorities claimed that they were going to test all 11 million of the city's residents for the coronavirus within 10 days. However, given the fact that the city's 60 testing centers can only run 100,000 tests per day, the 10-day target for the city has morphed into a target for individual districts, which will implement their testing on different dates.'

Landmark study: Virus didn't come from animals in Wuhan market
NZ Herald (New Zealand), May 17th, 2020
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12332538
(Category: CCP propaganda)

'China's claims that the pandemic emerged from a wild animal market in Wuhan last December have been challenged by a landmark scientific study.

The Mail on Sunday revealed that analysis of the coronavirus by specialist biologists suggests that all available data shows it was taken into the market by someone already carrying the disease.

They say they were "surprised" to find the virus was "already pre-adapted to human transmission", contrasting it to another coronavirus that evolved rapidly as it spread around the planet in a previous epidemic.

The claims come as Beijing thwarts global efforts to establish the source of the virus. The news will fuel concerns over the Communist regime's cover-up since the disease emerged last year in the central Chinese city.

The new research is clear in its finding. "The publicly available genetic data does not point to cross-species transmission of the virus at the market," said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist, and Shing Zhan, an evolutionary biologist.

Their paper insists all routes for "zoonotic" (animal to human) transmission – in this case from bats – must be examined. It says: "The possibility that a non-genetically engineered precursor could have adapted to humans while being studied in a laboratory should be considered."

(...)

Officials closed the market the day after notifying the WHO and sent in teams with strong disinfectants. Samples from animals were taken but, four months later, the results have not been shared with foreign scientists. The actions led to claims that they were deliberately wiping away crucial traces.

"The crime scene was completely gone," said Guan Yi, a University of Hong Kong expert. "How can we solve a case without evidence?"'

Taiwan's success in fighting coronavirus has bolstered its global standing. This has infuriated Beijing
CNN (U.S), May 16th, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/15/asia/china-taiwan-coronavirus-ties-intl-hnk/index.html
(Category: CCP dictatorship)

'Hong Kong (CNN)While many governments struggled to contain the spread of coronavirus, Taiwan appeared to have it largely under control.

In January, the self-ruled, democratic island of 23 million people banned incoming travel from parts of mainland China. Soon after, cruise ships could no longer dock there. By March, domestic face mask production was also increased.

As of Saturday, Taiwan has recorded 440 coronavirus cases and seven deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. By comparison, Australia -- with a population of 25 million -- has reported more than 7,000 infections and 98 deaths.

Eager to share its experiences in fighting Covid-19, Taiwan is now pushing for a greater voice in global health discussions. The United States, Japan and New Zealand have all voiced support for Taiwan to join next week's World Health Assembly -- an annual meeting of World Health Organization (WHO) members.

And this doesn't sit well with Beijing.

China regards the island as part of its territory, and has for years blocked it from taking part in many global institutions, while also refusing to have diplomatic relations with countries that maintain official ties with Taiwan.

Taiwan, which is not a WHO member, joined the WHA as an observer from 2009 to 2016, when the island was governed by the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT). But when the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took office in 2016, ties frayed with Beijing -- and Taipei hasn't joined the WHA since.

"We are an integral link in the global health network," Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen said Thursday on Twitter. "With more access to the WHO, Taiwan would be able to offer more help in the global fight against #COVID19."

The WHO maintains that only member states decide who attends the WHA meeting, and has pushed back on claims that Taiwan is cut out of its coronavirus discussions, pointing to its collaboration with Taiwan's scientists and health officials.

But as the virus gives Taiwan a rare opportunity to boost its international profile, Beijing has accused Taipei of pushing for formal independence -- and stepped up military drills around the island. There have even been some fringe calls within China for the country to use the pandemic as an opportunity to invade Taiwan.'

China is mobilizing its global media machine in the coronavirus war of words
CNN (U.S), May 15th, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/15/media/china-coronavirus-global-media/index.html
(Category: CCP propaganda)

'London (CNN Business)The story of the coronavirus pandemic can be complicated and hard to follow, from how it started to the measures countries have taken to tackle its spread.

But the picture has become even more confused by a torrent of propaganda, unreliable theories and deliberate misinformation being pushed for a variety of reasons.

Increasingly, experts and government officials in the United States and Europe are accusing China — the country first hit by the virus — of stoking that confusion and trying to shape the narrative through its state-run broadcasters and publications, and on social media.

China is trying to push three main messages about the outbreak, according to Rod Wye, an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London and former head of Asia research at the UK Foreign Office.

First, Beijing wants to spread its claims of being successful at controlling the virus, and show off the supplies and medical experts it is sending around the world. Second, it seeks to obscure the origins of the virus. According to Wye, the timeline of the "Chinese narrative begins with the lockdown in Wuhan and the resolute action of the party to control it," not before.

"They are not at all keen on exploring the origins because that shows up real weaknesses in what they did," he told CNN Business.

Third, Wye said, there is an attempt by Chinese officials to "sow confusion" about the way other countries have responded. That's part of an effort, "to undermine the credibility of those who are critiquing China and to strengthen the credibility of the Chinese narrative," he added.

Of course, China is not alone in spreading confusing and conflicting information about the virus. US President Donald Trump has shared dubious medical claims, unverified origin theories, and attacked state governors over coronavirus testing capabilities, comments that have been amplified by the megaphone of sympathetic media outlets such as Fox News.

But Beijing's push on the coronavirus appears to be part of a broader effort in recent years to become more aggressive with its messaging abroad, both through traditional channels such as television networks, and through more targeted use of social media — even on platforms banned in China itself.'

China's president Xi Jinping 'personally asked WHO to hold back information about human-to-human transmission and delayed the global response by four to six WEEKS' at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak
Daily Mail (U.K), citing Der Spiegel (Germany), May 10th, 2020
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8304471/Chinas-president-Xi-Jinping-personally-requested-delay-COVID-19-pandemic-warning.html
(Category: CCP propaganda)



'A bombshell report claims Chinese President Xi Jinping personally asked World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom to 'delay a global warning' about the threat of COVID-19 during a conversation back in January.  

Germany's Der Spiegel published the allegations this weekend, citing intelligence from the country's Federal Intelligence Service, known as the 'Bundesnachrichtendienst' (BND). 

According to the BND: 'On January 21, China's leader Xi Jinping asked WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to hold back information about a human-to-human transmission and to delay a pandemic warning. 

'The BND estimates that China's information policy lost four to six weeks to fight the virus worldwide'.

The WHO released a statement shortly after the publication of the shock claims, calling them 'unfounded and untrue'. '


China cracks down on talk of internal missteps, accountability and even suffering
New York Times (U.S), May 4th, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/world/coronavirus-world-cases-deaths.html
(Category: CCP dictatorship)


'People in Wuhan, China, demanded that the government explain what went wrong early in the epidemic, and even talked of suing for compensation — only to go silent after reportedly being threatened by the police.

News articles about the outbreak and mourning survivors have been censored. Three volunteers involved in Terminus2049, an online project that archived censored articles, went missing and are presumed detained.

Even grieving family members in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, say they are harassed and monitored as they speak out about their losses.

In the first weeks of the outbreak, local officials denied that there was a problem and punished those who tried to raise the alarm. Now, the central government is clamping down hard on any attempt to air those misdeeds and the resulting suffering.

The ruling Communist Party’s official narrative is of China’s heroic success in taming the disease. It does not tolerate any account that detracts from faith in the party, or from its efforts to pump up patriotic fervor.

And as more voices overseas call for China to compensate the rest of the world for the pandemic, the party has cast its domestic critics as tools being used by foreign forces.

China’s rulers have long been wary of public grief, much less calls for accountability. In 2008, after an earthquake in Sichuan Province killed at least 69,000 people, Chinese officials offered hush money to parents whose children had died. Each June, the authorities in Beijing silence family members of protesters who were killed in the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.


Zhang Hai said he believes his father, who died in February, was infected with the coronavirus at a Wuhan hospital, and he wants local officials held responsible.

French epidemic is caused by locally circulating virus strains
New York Times (U.S), May 3rd, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/world/europe/backlash-china-coronavirus.html
(Category: Backlash to CCP propaganda)

'BRUSSELS — Australia has called for an inquiry into the origin of the virus. Germany and Britain are hesitating anew about inviting in the Chinese tech giant Huawei. President Trump has blamed China for the contagion and is seeking to punish it. Some governments want to sue Beijing for damages and reparations.

Across the globe a backlash is building against China for its initial mishandling of the crisis that helped loose the coronavirus on the world, creating a deeply polarizing battle of narratives and setting back China’s ambition to fill the leadership vacuum left by the United States.

China, never receptive to outside criticism and wary of damage to its domestic control and long economic reach, has responded aggressively, combining medical aid to other countries with harsh nationalist rhetoric, and mixing demands for gratitude with economic threats.

(...)

Even before the virus, Beijing displayed a fierce approach to public relations, an aggressive style called “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, named after two ultrapatriotic Chinese films featuring the evil plots and fiery demise of American-led foreign mercenaries.


With clear encouragement from President Xi Jinping and the powerful Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, a younger generation of Chinese diplomats have been proving their loyalty with defiantly nationalist and sometimes threatening messages in the countries where they are based.

“You have a new brand of Chinese diplomats who seem to compete with each other to be more radical and eventually insulting to the country where they happen to be posted,” said François Godement, a senior adviser for Asia at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne. “They’ve gotten into fights with every northern European country with whom they should have an interest, and they’ve alienated every one of them.”

(...)

In the past several weeks, at least seven Chinese ambassadors — to France, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and the African Union — have been summoned by their hosts to answer accusations ranging from spreading misinformation to the “racist mistreatment” of Africans in Guangzhou.

(...)

Just last week, China threatened to withhold medical aid from the Netherlands for changing the name of its representative office in Taiwan to include the word Taipei. And before that, the Chinese Embassy in Berlin sparred publicly with the German newspaper Bild after the tabloid demanded $160 billion in compensation from China for damages to Germany from the virus.

(...)

“From Beijing’s point of view, this contemporary call is a historic echo of the reparations paid after the Boxer Rebellion,” said Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies, referring to the anti-imperialist, anti-Christian and ultranationalist uprising around 1899-1901 in China that ended in defeat, with huge reparations for eight nations over the next decades. “The party’s cultivation of the humiliation narrative makes it politically impossible for Xi to ever agree to pay any reparations.”

Instead, it has been imperative for Mr. Xi to turn the narrative around, steering it from a story of incompetence and failure — including the suppression of early warnings about the virus — into one of victory over the illness, a victory achieved through the unity of the party.

In the latest iteration of the new Chinese narrative, the enemy — the virus — did not even come from China, but from the U.S. military, an unsubstantiated accusation made by China’s combative Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.


Chinese diplomats are encouraged to be combative by Beijing, said Susan Shirk, a China scholar and director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. The promotion of Mr. Zhao to spokesman and his statement about the U.S. Army “signals to everyone in China that this is the official line, so you get this megaphone effect,” she said, adding that it makes any negotiations more difficult.'

French epidemic is caused by locally circulating virus strains
People.cn (Chinese state controlled media), May 3rd, 2020
http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2020-05/03/nw.D110000renmrb_20200503_4-03.htm
(Category: State Propaganda)

Yep, blame the French now...

'The Pasteur Institute of France released a news bulletin on April 28, stating that a “trace analysis of imported and early-transmitted viruses in France” by the Institute showed that the French new coronary pneumonia epidemic was caused by an unknown local source Caused by virus strains. This research result has been published in the pre-published form in the American Biological Papers Archives Network recently.

　　According to the announcement, the Pasteur Institute performed gene sequencing and comparison of 97 French new coronavirus samples collected from January 24 to March 24, and at the same time, 338 viral genes released by the Global Sharing Influenza Data Initiative The sequence was compared and analyzed to establish the virus evolution tree map. Through a comparative study, it was found that the new coronavirus popular in France comes from the clade of a virus that has been circulating in the country.'"

Wuhan shows the world that the end of lockdown is just the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis
CNN (U.S), April 30th, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/29/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-lockdown-analysis-intl-hnk/index.html
(Category: Economy)

'Despite the lifting of most strict lockdown laws, many stores are still shut, restaurants are restricted to takeaway and even when citizens go outside they still wear protective equipment and try to avoid each other.

The mood on the ground is very different to the official statements. At a press conference on April 8, Luo Ping, an epidemic control official in Wuhan said that some sectors of the city were already back to 100% resumption rate.

In a meeting of the Wuhan government on April 25, they promised a "double victory" of success of the epidemic and economic growth.

But even government-controlled media has suggested that plans to get the city back to 100% production by the end of April might be "too optimistic."

During a recent trip to the city, business owners told CNN that they were struggling with zero profits and huge rents and experts said that it might take the city's economy months to recover, if not longer.

"In the short term, of course, there's going to be a recovery," said Larry Hu, economist at Macquarie Capital Limited. "Production will recover first and then consumption, because a lot of people are still reluctant to come out ... but from a long term perspective, from a three-year perspective the virus is still going to hurt the long term growth of Wuhan."

(...)

When CNN returned to the city on April 21, a drive through a commercial street showed more than half the local businesses remain shuttered.

The province's GDP shrank almost 40% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020, according to state news agency Xinhua, with retail sales dropping more than 15% in March alone.

The government has announced it will be letting businesses leasing from state-owned enterprises go rent-free for three months, but for those with private landlords, the weight of rent and no profit is pushing them out of business.

"I opened for two days. No costumers come in to eat, as it was forbidden, and I got only two or three orders from the online delivery platform. The cost of opening was much more than I earn each day, so I closed it again," one restaurant owner told the government-controlled Global Times.

China’s Factories Are Back. Its Consumers Aren’t.
The New York Times (U.S), April 28th, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/business/china-coronavirus-economy.html
(Category: Economy)

'The manufacturing giant is once again turning out steel and cellphones. But job losses and pay cuts have left its people reluctant to spend — a problem the U.S. and Europe may soon face, too.

BEIJING — An unemployed young college graduate has stopped buying new sneakers. A clothing store clerk gave up his gym membership. An events planner, his pay cut by four-fifths, now moonlights as a takeout delivery driver — and can no longer afford to eat out.

China, the world’s second-largest economy and a key driver of the global growth engine, has a big problem with its spenders. Until it can be solved, the country’s growth — and, by extension, the world’s — will be difficult to rekindle.


As the coronavirus outbreak ebbs in China, the country’s companies and officials have made big strides in restarting its economy. Its factories, brought to a standstill when the coronavirus outbreak swept through the country in January, are humming again, and even the air pollution is coming back.

(...)

By some measures, China’s economy is getting back on track. By the end of February, most of its factories and mines had reopened, according to a variety of data, cranking out everything from steel to cellphones at a blistering pace through March. Industrial output rebounded to a near-record level.

Others measures suggest the Chinese economy is still limping. Retail sales, which stayed strong during past crises, plummeted almost one-sixth in March from a year earlier.

Satellite imagery shows that Chinese industrial areas emitted considerably less light this spring than they did a year ago, in a sign that fewer building sites may be floodlit for 24-hour construction and that fewer factories may be operating around the clock.


Even the factory work that has resumed may not be dependable for long. Customers in the United States and Europe also are not buying Chinese-made goods like they once did. Department stores in the United States, for example, have been canceling and postponing orders.'

'They are trying to steal everything.' US coronavirus response hit by foreign hackers
CNN (U.S), April 25th, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/25/politics/us-china-cyberattacks-coronavirus-research/index.html
(Category: Global Criminals)

'Washington (CNN)The Trump administration is pointing the finger at China for attempting to steal coronavirus research as officials are warning they have seen a growing wave of cyberattacks on US government agencies and medical institutions leading the pandemic response by nation states and criminal groups.

Hospitals, research laboratories, health care providers and pharmaceutical companies have all been hit, officials say, and the Department of Health and Human Services - which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- has been struck by a surge of daily strikes, an official with direct knowledge of the attacks said.
"It is safe to say that there are only two places in the world that could hit (the Department of Health and Human Services) the way it's been hit," the official familiar with the attacks told CNN.
The primary culprits for the HHS attacks are Russia and China, the official said, because of the size and scope of the actions. After some hesitance to attribute the wide-ranging attacks across the medical sector to any specific countries -- whether for political reasons or a lack of certainty -- top national security officials have decided to single out China.
The Department of Justice now says they are particularly concerned about attacks by Chinese hackers targeting US hospitals and labs to steal research related to coronavirus.

(...)

Cyber espionage from China against the United States has spiked in the months since the outbreak of the virus. Last month, leading cybersecurity group FireEye reported that Chinese group APT41 has carried out "one of the broadest campaigns by a Chinese cyber espionage actor we have observed in recent years." '

Canada says one million face masks from China failed to meet proper standards, won’t be sent to provinces
Globe & Mail (Canada), April 23rd, 2020
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-says-one-million-face-masks-from-china-failed-to-meet-proper/
(Category: Low Quality)


'The Canadian government says about one million of the face masks it has purchased from China have failed to meet proper standards for health care professionals and will not be distributed to provinces or cities.

Canada is facing competition from countries around the world for protective medical gear right now, the federal Department of Health said, adding that Ottawa is forced at times to purchase vital equipment from unfamiliar suppliers.

“Due to intense global competition for personal protective equipment and medical supplies, countries are engaging with a diverse number of new suppliers and manufacturers to meet the demands of the COVID-19 response effort" said Eric Morrissette, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Canada’s Public Health Agency.

"As a result, the agency is conducting its due diligence on products procured by [Public Services and Procurement], verifying the quality of procured and donated supplies upon receipt,” he said.

The Public Health Agency (PHAC) is screening all medical supplies it’s buying right now, and these masks were supposed to be rated to the KN95 standards for respirators. KN95 is a Chinese rating for respirators that is similar to the N95 rating developed by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The federal Department of Health says KN95 masks are an acceptable alternative to N95 models, but the masks in question did not meet the required filtering standards for N95-type masks, which are rated to capture 95 per cent of tiny particles.

Mr. Morrissette said the government hopes these masks can be repurposed for non-health care workers where the face-covering requirements are not as strict.

“To date, PHAC has identified approximately one million KN95 masks as non-compliant with specifications for health care settings. These items were not distributed to provinces and territories for front-line health care response, and are being subsequently assessed for use in non-health care settings.”

The Department of Health could not immediately answer last night when asked whether Ottawa is going to obtain a refund for the masks in question.


News of the substandard masks Ottawa received is just the latest example of faulty gear purchased by Canadian governments. The City of Toronto announced in early April it was recalling more than 60,000 faulty surgical masks made in China and provided to staff at long-term care facilities, and is investigating whether caregivers were exposed to COVID-19 while wearing the equipment. The masks were distributed and then recalled after reports of ripping and tearing.

Around the world, countries have found themselves coping with defective equipment, including Spain, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Turkey, which reportedly received faulty masks and tests from companies in China, a country with extensive capacity to make such medical supplies.'

With Selective Coronavirus Coverage, China Builds a Culture of Hate
The New York Times (U.S), April 22nd, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/business/china-coronavirus-propaganda.html
(Category: State Propaganda)



'Trevor Noah, the host of “The Daily Show,” has won praise on the Chinese internet for his searing criticism of the Trump administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. So has Jerry Kowal, an American who makes Chinese-language videos chronicling the dire situation in New York.

China’s response to the virus has its own sharp-eyed critics at home, and they have found a vastly different reception. One resident of the virus-struck city of Wuhan who writes under the name Fang Fang documented despair, misery and everyday life in an online diary, and has endured withering attacks on social media. Three citizen journalists who posted videos from Wuhan in the first weeks of the outbreak disappeared and are widely believed to be in government custody.

(...)

A lot of the same miseries happened in China, but those reports were called “rumors” and censored.


For the Communist Party, keeping up a positive image for the Chinese public has long been an important part of maintaining its legitimacy. That facade was broken during the outbreak in late January and February, as dying patients flooded hospitals and medical workers begged for protective gear on social media. Some people started asking why the government suppressed information early on and who should be held accountable.

(...)

Using the West’s transparency and free flow of information, state media outlets chronicled how badly others have managed the crisis. Their message: Those countries should copy China’s model. For good measure, the propaganda machine revved up its attacks on anybody who dared to question the government’s handling of the pandemic.


For many people in China, the push is working. Wielding a mix of lies and partial truths, some young people are waging online attacks against individuals and countries that contradict their belief in China’s superior response.'

China Imposes New Limits as Coronavirus Fears Return
The New York Time (U.S), April 23rd, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/world/asia/china-coronavirus-new-infections.html
(Category: Information Suppression)

'Chinese officials have imposed new limits on movement in some northern parts of the country following a spate of new coronavirus infections, in a sign of how difficult it will be to fully recover from an outbreak that virtually paralyzed the country.

The restrictions imposed over the past week include the city of Harbin, a city of 10 million in northeastern China where a number of new infections have been reported. Other cities in the region have also imposed restrictions, which include preventing outsiders from visiting other neighborhoods and warning residents to stay away from high-risk areas.

The new limits came after the authorities reported dozens of new infections, according to Chinese state media, all of which experts said were linked to the return of Chinese nationals from Russia and the United States. Though the numbers officially disclosed have been modest so far, it is not clear that the spread has been entirely contained.'

China Imposes New Limits as Coronavirus Fears Return
The Daily Mail (U.K), April 22nd, 2020
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8246167/Spain-sends-second-batch-faulty-coronavirus-tests-China.html
(Category: Low Quality)


'Spain has returned coronavirus testing kits ordered from China for the second time, after claiming that the second batch is also faulty. 

They had been sent by Chinese company Shenzhen Bioeasy to replace the first batch of 58,000 kits, which the Spanish government had deemed too inaccurate to be used to diagnose patients. 


Spain's Health Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that they are now seeking a refund from Bioeasy for the entire order of 640,000 testing kits. '

China's disappeared: At least one is dead and the rest haven't been heard from in months, so why isn't the world asking what happened to the brave souls who dared to speak up about the coronavirus outbreak after Beijing lied to the world?
DailyMail (U.K), April 18th, 2020
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8233203/Chinas-disappeared-happened-dared-speak-coronavirus.html
(Category: Information Suppression)

'The fearsome knock on the door came after nightfall. Outside were two men in hazmat suits who told businessman Fang Bin they had come to take him into medical quarantine. But the textile trader, a gangly man in his early 40s, wasn’t ill and the men outside his Wuhan apartment weren’t doctors. They were police officers confronting a menace the Chinese Communist Party had been grappling with as ferociously as the coronavirus itself – ordinary people who bravely expose the truth about the outbreak and refuse to keep quiet.

Mr Fang’s ‘crime’ was to post a video he had filmed of people dying of the virus and the body bags piled up outside a hospital clearly overwhelmed by casualties at a time when China insisted that the virus was under control. It was seen 200,000 times before censors took it down.

When he demanded a search warrant from the officers on the doorstep of his high-rise apartment, they forced their way in and took him away for questioning, ordering him to stop spreading ‘rumours’ about the virus before confiscating his computer. He was later released in the early hours of the morning.

(...)

Now a Mail on Sunday investigation has uncovered a cynical and orchestrated campaign by the Chinese regime to stop the country’s 1.4 billion citizens even discussing the appalling Covid-19 outbreak among themselves. We have discovered that:

• More than 5,100 people were arrested for sharing information in the first weeks of the outbreak
• Dissidents are being labelled as sick so the government can place them in medical quarantine
• Health apps used by tens of millions to show they are clear of coronavirus are being used to monitor people’s movements and further tighten control
• Hundreds of ordinary citizens are being detained and fined over innocuous online messages about hospital queues, mask shortages, and the death of relatives.

The unprecedented crackdown began with reprimands issued to Dr Li Wenliang, 34, and seven other doctors for sending messages to fellow medics on December 30 warning them about the outbreak of a SARS-like illness in Wuhan Central Hospital and advising them to wear protective clothing.

(...)

A day before Dr Li’s death, lawyer Chen Qiushi – whose videos of chaotic scenes in Wuhan hospitals with coronavirus victims lying in corridors were shared with an audience of more than 400,000 YouTube and 250,000 Twitter followers – went missing. His family was told the following day he was being held in medical quarantine at an undisclosed location.


Before his disappearance, Mr Chen realised police were closing in on him and told his followers ominously: ‘As long as I am alive, I will speak about what I have seen and what I have heard. I am not afraid of dying. Why should I be afraid of you, Communist Party?’ He vanished days later.

Three weeks later, Li Zehua, 25 – a reporter with Chinese state TV who went rogue to report on the death toll in Wuhan – live-streamed his own arrest when plain-clothes police officers arrived at his flat. Mr Li made a point of telling viewers he was healthy and well before he was taken away.

Earlier that day Mr Li, who filmed a series of videos showing desperate scenes of communities running low on food in virus-riddled areas of Wuhan, gave viewers a running commentary on how he was chased by police after visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where it has been speculated the outbreak may have been started by a lab leak.


‘I’m sure they want to hold me in isolation,’ he said in a panicked video clip as he sped away from the institute by car. ‘Please help me.’

(...)

China has denied knowledge of the disappearance of the whistle-blowers. The Chinese ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, has been asked twice in TV interviews about the fate of Chen Qiushi, insisting angrily in the second interview in March: ‘I have not heard of this person… I did not know him then, and I do not know him now.’

The only disappeared person China has made any official comment on is billionaire property tycoon Ren Zhiqiang, 69, who vanished in March after calling President Xi Jinping a clown for mishandling the virus outbreak.

Weeks after his arrest, Beijing officials announced that Mr Ren was being detained for ‘serious violations’ of the law and Communist Party regulations – a euphemism for the trumped-up corruption charges used to ensnare any high-ranking critic of the country’s authoritarian leader.

Another critic silenced by China’s leader is law professor Xu Zhangrun, who was put under house arrest in Beijing and had his internet access cut off after writing a searing critique of Xi Jinping’s handling of the crisis which included the prediction: ‘This may well be the last piece I write.’

The stifling of any criticism of the Chinese government’s handling of the outbreak extends to every level of society. Police publicly announced on February 21 they had intervened and penalised people in 5,111 cases of ‘fabricating and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information’ in the first weeks of the crisis alone.

A detailed analysis by CHRD of nearly 897 police cases between January 1 and March 26 shows citizens commonly being given terms of detention ranging from three to ten days, fines of about £50, and reprimands for offences of fabricating or spreading false news and disrupting social order – accusations similar to those levelled at Dr Li.

In most attributed cases, punishments were for messages sent on WeChat – China’s equivalent of WhatsApp – to individuals or small groups of friends.


Many exchanges involved seemingly innocuous messages about the death of relatives, hospitals being overwhelmed, and people being sent home while sick. One man was even detained for suggesting a donation of masks to medical staff. It seems that if 99-year-old NHS fundraiser Captain Tom Moore had been in China rather than Bedfordshire, he would have had his walking frame confiscated and his JustGiving account frozen rather than being hailed a hero.'

Wuhan officials have revised the city's coronavirus death toll up by 50%
CNN, April 17th, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/17/asia/china-wuhan-coronavirus-death-toll-intl-hnk/index.html
(Category: State Propaganda)

1,290 / 2,579 is 50%... exactly... down to the individual. Clear evidence of number fudging.

'(CNN)China has revised its official death toll from the novel coronavirus, raising the number of fatalities attributed to the pandemic by more than a third.

Officials in Wuhan, where the virus was first reported late last year, on Friday added 1,290 coronavirus deaths to the city's toll. They also added 325 confirmed cases to the city tally.
The total number of cases recorded in the city now stands at 50,333, with 3,869 deaths. The previous reported death toll for Wuhan was 2,579 -- so the revised figure marks a 50% increase in the number of deaths in the city from coronavirus.
As of April 17, China's National Health Commission had reported 3,342 deaths nationally, before the revised Wuhan figures were published.

Officials explained that the deaths had initially gone uncounted because in the early stages of the pandemic some people died at home, overwhelmed medics were focused on treating cases rather than reporting deaths and due to a delay in collecting figures from various government and private organizations.

They added that the figures had been revised to show "accountability to history, to the people and the victims," as well as to ensure "open and transparent disclosure of information and data accuracy."

This isn't the first time health authorities in China have changed numbers related to the pandemic. The way cases were counted was changed three times in January and February, leading to widespread confusion over the extent of the crisis in China.
Experts have also previously raised the alarm over China's approach to measuring asymptomatic cases. Some patients who tested positive for the virus but did not show symptoms were not included in official tallies, making comparing China's figures to the rest of the world difficult.'

Hong Kong broadcaster rejects WHO claim that interview with top doctor was ‘distorted’
Hong Kong Free Press, April 16th, 2020
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-04-14/second-covid-19-wave-could-hit-in-november-expert-says-101542631.html
(Category:Disinformation)

'Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK has rejected an allegation that it distorted a video interview with a World Health Organisation (WHO) doctor after he refused to answer questions about Taiwan’s membership status.
(...)
In an emailed response to HKFP on Thursday, a WHO spokesperson accused The Pulse of editing the clip and causing a misrepresentation. They also claimed it was Aylward – not the producers – who took the initiative to call back after the connection was apparently cut.

“RTHK re-shot the interviewer and questions afterwards and edited the interview in a way that created substantial distortion and misrepresentation,” it read.
In response to the allegations – first reported by the Washington Post’s Emily Rauhala – RTHK’s Head of Corporate Communications and Standards Amen Ng told HKFP that they stood by the content of the interview and “strenuously reject any allegations of ‘distortion and misrepresentation.

“None of the shots of the interviewer or her questions were re-filmed after the interview,” the written response read. Ng defended the decision to not release non-transmitted materials to WHO as a standard “in common with news broadcast and media organisations worldwide and to ensure editorial independence.”


She added that it was RTHK who sought to reconnect the call: “We would point out that the inability to hear a repeated question, the encouragement to forget it and move to another question, the inability to hear it a second time, and the lost connection, occurs in one single 18 second UNCUT shot. It is this sequence that drew international attention.”'

Second Covid-19 Wave Could Hit in November, Expert Says
Caixin Global (Chinese financial news outlet), April 16th, 2020
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-04-14/second-covid-19-wave-could-hit-in-november-expert-says-101542631.html
(Category:Information suppression)

'China could see another surge in coronavirus infections starting in November, one of the country’s highest-profile medical experts has said, as low numbers of new cases prompt governments nationwide to get people back to work.

While countries may be able to bring the deadly pandemic under adequate control by autumn, the coming winter may bring a “second wave” of infections in China and elsewhere, said Zhang Wenhong, who heads Shanghai’s Covid-19 clinical expert team and directs the infectious disease department at one of the city’s top hospitals.

Zhang’s comments come as Chinese officials gradually ease quarantine restrictions as part of efforts to revive the country’s economy. The East Asian nation, where the previously unknown virus was first detected last year, has seen numbers of daily new cases fall in recent weeks after recording thousands of Covid-19-related deaths and rolling out unprecedented lockdowns.'

Coronavirus Could End China’s Decades-Long Economic Growth Streak
The New York Times, April 16th, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/coronavirus-china-economy.html
(Category:Economic Impacts)

'SHANGHAI — China’s growth streak has lasted for decades, surviving the crackdown at Tiananmen Square, the global financial crisis and the trade war with the United States. But it might not endure the coronavirus epidemic, making it nearly impossible for the rest of the world to escape a slowdown.

The damage was widespread in the official numbers on Monday, the first significant batch of government data since China’s vast containment efforts brought the country to a standstill. Industrial production, retail sales and investment all posted record double-digit drops for the first two months of the year, compared with the same period in 2019.

The weakness raises the possibility that the entire Chinese economy may have shrunk in the first quarter of this year. It would be the first contraction since 1976, when China was hit by the devastating Tangshan earthquake as well as the tumult from the death of Mao, whose Cultural Revolution threw the economy into disarray for a decade.

(...)

If people can’t be convinced to start spending money again, “the demand shock may spread to East Asia and then to Europe and the U.S. — and the world may face a disaster,” said Cao Heping, a Peking University economist.

(...)

According to official statistics, most factories in China have reopened, after being closed since the lunar new year holiday in January. But they are operating at two-thirds of their capacity.

It’s a two-part problem — a lack of workers and buyers.

Tens of millions of migrants who work in the factories are still stuck in quarantines or in their hometowns. Chinese state media announced triumphantly on Monday that four busloads of workers had been allowed to leave Hubei province, where the outbreak first emanated.


Chinese consumers aren’t buying either. Car dealerships have emptied. In Shanghai, the number of shoppers is still far below normal, from the cheap eateries and budget shops of blue-collar neighborhoods on the city’s southside to the luxury stores of Nanjing Road, the most famous shopping avenue in China.

(...)

Global economists had been wondering whether China would admit that its economy shrank in the first quarter, given the country’s tendency to report predictable and steady growth no matter what happens. But the government data on Monday suggests that China may break with that dubious tradition next month in reporting economic output for the first quarter of this year, allowing for a more accurate look at the troubled economy.


“Most of us are expecting a negative percentage, 2 or 3 percent below zero, or maybe lower,” said Zhu Chaoping, a global markets strategist in the Shanghai office of J.P. Morgan.

(...)

The epidemic now appears to be prompting the government to adjust its economic goals. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has called for eliminating extreme poverty by the end of the year, as well as doubling economic output between 2010 and 2020.

On Monday, the government seemed to give itself some wiggle room. Just 15 minutes before the data was released, the state-run newspaper, China Daily, published a report saying that while extreme poverty would be eradicated this year, the other goal is now to double economic output “by around 2021.”

Economists are uncertain how much growth would be needed for China to achieve the target this year — the usual estimates are somewhere between 5 and 6 percent.


On Monday Fitch Solutions revised down its forecast for China’s economic growth this year to 5.2 percent. Commonwealth Bank of Australia also pushed down its forecast on Monday, to just 4.2 percent.'

New Job Postings Drop by Over a Quarter in First Three Months
Caixin Global (Chinese financial news outlet), April 16th, 2020
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-04-16/new-job-postings-drop-by-over-a-quarter-in-first-three-months-101543568.html
(Category:Economic Impacts)

'The total number of postings across all sectors, decreased by 27% year-on-year in the first three months of the year, according to the report (link in Chinese) from Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, which was based on data gathered from recruitment platform Zhaopin.com.

However, this was an improvement from the period covering January and February, in which total job postings declined by 32.4%. The report said that by the end of March, the number of new jobs being posted daily had almost recovered to 2019 levels.'



China didn’t warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days
Associated Press, April 15th, 2020
https://apnews.com/68a9e1b91de4ffc166acd6012d82c2f9
http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51
(Category:Information suppression)

'President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

Six days.

That delay from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus.

"This is tremendous," said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.” ' 

Civil Aviation Administration: At present, the average daily inbound passengers are two or three thousand
Xinhua News Agency (CCP propaganda news outlet), April 15th, 2020
http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/2020-04/15/c_1125858980.htm
(Google translated)
(Category:Economic Impacts)

'The reporter learned from the Civil Aviation Administration of China on the 15th that since March 29, international passenger flights have been adjusted in accordance with the requirements of the "five one", except for the arrival of 38 flights on the first day of the 29th, subsequent daily inbound flights have not With more than 20 flights, the average daily number of inbound tourists is maintained at two to three thousand.

　　As of April 14th, 14 domestic airlines including Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, 21 foreign airlines including Korean Air, All Nippon Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, etc., a total of 35 Chinese and foreign airlines from Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada and other 29 countries have regular international inbound passenger transport and 250 charter flights, carrying 50,306 inbound passengers. Among them, there were 38 inbound flights on March 29, with 8143 inbound passengers, and the fewest inbound flights on April 4, 7 and 14 with 10 flights, with 2147, 2491 and 2379 inbound passengers respectively .

　　After the diversion of international passenger flights at the Capital Airport on March 20, as of April 14, a total of 127 adjustment flights were implemented. The total number of inbound passengers at the first entry point airport was 28,697. (Reporter Fan Xi)'

Australia takes aim at the World Health Organisation after it supported the reopening of China's wet markets
The Daily Mail (UK), April 13th, 2020
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8214367/Australia-pressures-World-Health-Organisation-backed-reopening-Chinas-wet-markets.html
(Category: State Influence)



'Australia has piled pressure on the World Health Organisation after it backed the reopening of China's wet markets despite them being the likely origin of COVID-19.

The WHO last week claimed China's wet markets could be made to sell safe food with increased hygiene practices and refused to support their closure as they are an important source of food and income.

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke out on Monday to demand transparency in understanding the origin of the disease and protection from the global threat of China's notorious open marketplaces. 

'Australia and the world will be looking to organisations like the WHO to ensure lessons are learned from the devastating coronavirus outbreak,' Mr Morrison told The Australian.

(...)

Both sides of Australian politics have been critical of the WHO's advice, and Labor MP Peter Khalil said wet markets should be closed unless they can be proven safe. 

'Unless they can demonstrate that the regulations, the health and safety measures, are so strict that they can completely cut off the risk factors, they're going to have to shut them down,' he said.


'It's happened with SARS. It's happened with avian influenza. It's happened with COVID-19. Next time it might be an even worse virus.'

Why is the WHO director-general 'sympathetic' to China? 

At the end of Janaury, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom enjoyed a trip to China to rub shoulders with President Xi Jinping.

When he returned, he hailed China for 'transparency' - even though it had covered up the extent of the outbreak by detaining doctors who sought to alert citizens.

Australian professor John Mackenzie, a member of the World Health Organization's emergency committee, called China 'reprehensible' - but Dr Adhanom said China should be 'congratulated' for protecting 'the people of the world'.

He then fawned over the communist leader, telling aides he was 'very impressed and encouraged by the president's detailed knowledge of the outbreak.'  

Since then, Tedros Adhanom has been called a 'China apologist' by various commentators.

Kristine Lee, China analyst at an influential US think-tank said: 'There is a clear narrative coming out of the WHO that panders to Xi Jinping's view about his country's handling of coronavirus.'

But why? Perhaps it goes back to his time as a top Ethiopian politician, wrote journalist Ian Birrell.

He served in senior roles under Meles Zenawi, who ran a brutal dictatorship with close ties to Beijing, which admired the regime's authoritarian model of development.

Intriguingly, Tedros was accused of covering up three outbreaks of cholera during his seven years as health minister, although the claims were dismissed as dirty tactics to try to derail his bid to become the WHO boss.

Shortly after starting his new job with the WHO in 2017, he appointed Robert Mugabe as a 'goodwill ambassador', only to back down after furious protests from human rights groups pointing out the despot had devastated Zimbabwe's health service while wrecking his nation. 


Mugabe, as head of the African Union and a close ally of China, had helped him win the WHO post. Beijing also used its financial muscle to build support among developing nations, with Xi said to see the achievement as a sign of China's growing strength. 

Who is Tedros Adhanom
(Category: State Influence)

"On 18 October 2017, Tedros announced that he had chosen President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to serve as a WHO Goodwill Ambassador to help tackle non-communicable diseases for Africa.[73] He said Zimbabwe was "a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the centre of its policies to provide health care to all". Mugabe's appointment was severely criticised, with WHO member states and international organisations saying that Zimbabwe's healthcare system had in fact gone backwards under his regime, as well as pointing out Mugabe's many human rights abuses. It was also noted that Mugabe himself does not use his own country's health system, instead travelling to Singapore for treatment.[74][75] Observers said Tedros was returning a campaign favour. Mugabe was chair of the African Union when Tedros was endorsed as a sole African Union candidate in a murky process that did not consider qualified alternatives like Michel Sidibé of Mali and Awa Marie Coll-Seck of Senegal.[76] His judgement was widely questioned on social media. The editor-in-chief of Lancet, a prominent medical journal, called Tedros "Dictator-General".[77] After a widespread condemnation, on 22 October 2017 Tedros rescinded Mugabe's goodwill ambassador role.[78][79]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom

Worked for the dictatorship of Meles Zenawi where many of his policies did improve health conditions in Ethiopia.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/a-modern-dictator-why-ethiopias-zenawi-mattered/261412/

Beijing tried to make German officials praise China over coronavirus outbreak – report
AFP via HKFP, April 12th, 2020
https://hongkongfp.com/2020/04/12/beijing-tried-to-make-german-officials-praise-china-over-coronavirus-outbreak-report/

'Chinese representatives tried to influence German government officials to give positive comments about Beijing’s management of the coronavirus outbreak, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper reported Sunday.
(...)
Senior officials and staff at German government ministries were invited “to speak in positive terms about China’s management of the coronavirus,” Die Welt said, citing a confidential foreign ministry document.

The foreign ministry recommended that all German governmental departments reject such approaches, the newspaper added. The ministry has declined to confirm or deny the report.

However a German intelligence source told Die Welt that “Chinese officials are pursuing an intensified information and propaganda policy with regard to the coronavirus”.

Beijing has sought to counter the narrative that the outbreak began in China and highlighted its assistance to Western countries “in order to present the People’s Republic as a trustworthy partner,” Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said.


China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest
The Guardian (U.K), April 11th, 2020
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/11/china-clamping-down-on-coronavirus-research-deleted-pages-suggest?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3UGkJecjNrXKZv3eDAy-P4bD9pESU2XuDMW-T0Orc8SprAAewb9NYGj3k
(Category: Information Suppression)


'China is cracking down on publication of academic research about the origins of the novel coronavirus, in what is likely to be part of a wider attempt to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic, documents published online by Chinese universities appear to show.

Two websites for leading Chinese universities appear to have recently published and then removed pages that reference a new policy requiring academic papers dealing with Covid-19 to undergo extra vetting before they are submitted for publication.

Research on the origins of the virus is particularly sensitive and subject to checks by government officials, the notices posted on the websites of Fudan University and the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) said. Both the deleted pages were accessed from online caches.

Prof Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London, said the Chinese government had a heavy focus on how the evolution and management of the virus is perceived since the early days of the outbreak.


“In terms of priority, controlling the narrative is more important than the public health or the economic fallout,” he said. “It doesn’t mean the economy and public health aren’t important. But the narrative is paramount.”

With the virus having infected more than a million people worldwide and caused heavy casualties particularly across Europe and the US, details about its origin and the first weeks of the pandemic – when there was a cover-up by local officials – may be considered particularly sensitive.

“If these documents are authentic it would suggest the government really wants to control the narrative about the origins of Covid-19 very tightly,” said Tsang of the reports of new regulations.

China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) appears to have published and then deleted new requirements that academic papers dealing with the origins of the virus be approved by China’s ministry of science and technology before publication.

The university’s academic committee was expected to first go through the research “with an emphasis on checking the accuracy of the thesis, as well as whether it is suitable for publication,” the regulation said.

“When the checks have been completed, the school should report to the Ministry of Science and Technology [MOST], and it should only be published after it has [also] been checked by MOST,” it said.


Despite its name, the geosciences university announced elsewhere on its website that it was carrying out coronavirus research.'

Is Beijing covering up a real death toll of tens of thousands? Shocking footage shows Chinese police beating back residents trying to flee epicentre of coronavirus outbreak
The Daily Mail (U.K), April 11th, 2020
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211073/Is-China-covering-death-toll-tens-thousands-Video-shows-police-beating-fleeing-residents.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211073/Is-China-covering-death-toll-tens-thousands-Video-shows-police-beating-fleeing-residents.html#v-1211572352652627073
(Category: State Propaganda)

'A Mail on Sunday investigation has found evidence that Chinese crematoriums kept furnaces burning 24 hours a day in Wuhan
Hospitals were told to discharge patients after President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan on March 10 to effectively declare victory over the virus
Videos emerged on the day the Wuhan lockdown was lifted on Wednesday showing a dead body being moved at night by health workers 
Citizens believe the real death figures are 40 times higher than official figures 

(...)

China has been accused of covering up a horrific coronavirus death toll of tens of thousands of people and unleashing a potential wave of new infections by taking the city at the epicentre of the outbreak out of quarantine to help jump-start its national economy. 

Communist Party officials are suspected of manipulating statistics to hide a cataclysmic body count in Wuhan in Hubei province in a cynical ploy to allow it to sprint ahead of other major economies by getting back to business as vast swathes of the world remain paralysed by the pandemic. 

Incredibly, Beijing claims only 3,336 people have been killed by Covid-19 in China - just over a third of Britain's current total and one 30th of the global toll. 

Chinese officials now report almost zero new infections. Even more astonishingly, China says only 119 people have died in its 25 provinces outside Hubei - many of them the size of European countries - while simultaneously killing more than 102,000 people outside China. 

(...)

A Mail on Sunday investigation drawing on reports from inside China has found disturbing evidence that:

• Crematoriums kept furnaces burning 24 hours a day in Wuhan to dispose of tens of thousands of bodies at the peak of the outbreak in February; 
• Tens of thousands of funeral urns for the cremated remains of victims were delivered when the lockdown ended and relatives were ordered to hold funeral ceremonies quickly and quietly; 
• Hospitals were told to discharge patients after President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan on March 10 to effectively declare victory over the virus; 
• Videos emerged on the day the Wuhan lockdown was lifted on Wednesday showing a dead body being moved at night by health workers in hazardous materials suits and the unconscious body of an apparent victim lying in the street; 
• Rioting has broken out as people from Hubei province are treated 'like lepers', with officials in one province offering cash rewards to trace and detain them; 
• China's own citizens believe the real death figures are ten to 40 times higher than official figures, while a prominent US-based dissident says hundreds of thousands may have died. '

Hong Kong’s Edge Over Singapore Shows Early Social Distancing Works
Bloomberg, April 10th, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-10/hong-kong-edge-over-singapore-shows-early-social-distance-works?fbclid=IwAR1lmPO005Y9ZrLhNRh0I8XiuD1k8F2oymUz5pA_zlwwpnByng_Ct2E71Bg

'ln the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, Singapore and Hong Kong saw similar success with dramatically different approaches. Now, Singapore may be paying the price for a strategy that sought to minimize disruption.

While Hong Kong has recently seen its case tally slow to a couple dozen a day, Singapore’s has surged 180% in the past two weeks with infections popping up in places from pre-schools to migrant worker dormitories. The city-state disclosed a further 198 cases on Friday, bringing the total to 2,108.

After taking a more measured virus-control approach for months, Singapore resorted to some of Hong Kong’s drastic early moves, including school closures and encouraging mask-wearing for all. Now it’s gone even further, banning all social gatherings and closing all businesses except essential services.

(...)

“Hong Kong chose in the very beginning to move toward maximizing protection, but Singapore seemed to be more cautious and focused on minimizing disruption to the economy and society,” said Yanzhong Huang, a professor and director of the Center for Global Health Studies at New Jersey’s Seton Hall University.

Social Distancing

“The second wave of resurgent cases in Singapore has highlighted the differences between the two in terms of their approaches to the outbreak -- and even the slightest difference in approach could matter in explaining the different outcomes,” he said.


Singapore’s government has backed its approach. Lawrence Wong, minister for national development who co-chairs a task force to fight the virus, said at a briefing last week that its policies were a “judgment call” and that residents can become fatigued if social distancing is implemented for too long.

(...)

The key difference was Hong Kong’s social-distancing measures implemented in late January and early February, which included closing schools and government offices -- a move that pressured many private sector companies to similarly work from home.

The early panic that enveloped the city’s population, already on edge from months of pro-democracy protests, went viral in pictures of empty supermarket shelves and supply-hoarding, most notably of toilet paper. Residents scarred by SARS largely chose to wear masks in public spaces.


Singapore took a different approach, leaving schools and government offices open. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong advised that healthy people don’t need to wear masks, in part because it could give a false sense of security while precautions such as washing hands regularly are more effective.

In the early days of the outbreak, this calm approach by Singapore’s leaders won global praise. But the guidance to limit mask-wearing -- then in line with what the World Health Organization suggested -- has since been reconsidered given how infected people with no outward signs of illness can still spread the virus. Singapore now advises that wearing a reusable mask could provide some basic protection.

(...)

“Hong Kong closed schools much earlier, and also Hong Kong people were wearing masks very early on -- these are the two big differences,” said Jeremy Lim, an adjunct associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, who previously worked for the city-state’s health ministry.


“Singapore should have been much stronger with the social distancing requirements,” he added. “We really should have started earlier.”'


Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore: success stories in the fight against Covid-19
Hong Kong Free Press, April 10th, 2020
https://hongkongfp.com/2020/04/10/taiwan-hong-kong-and-singapore-success-stories-in-fight-against-covid-19/

'Amid the gloomy scenarios painted by some media — traditional and social — the world’s policy-makers, as well as individual citizens, should pay close attention to what some governments did to restrain the pandemic, and to examine why in other countries it took such a heavy toll.

(...)

Almost 100 initiatives, mostly from Taiwan’s national government, have included screening Wuhan flights as early as December 31; banning Wuhan residents on January 23; suspending tourist visits to Hubei province on January 25; and barring all Chinese arrivals on February 6.

The Taiwan government merged citizens’ recent international travel records with their digital health-insurance files and allowed doctors and pharmacists access to the information. Stiff fines were applied to quarantine violators.

Singapore took a similarly serious approach, deploying police to track down the contacts of infected residents and using government-issued cellphones to keep tabs on those in quarantine. Three local doctors said recently that “relative normalcy of day-to-day life has been maintained.”


The general approach in all three jurisdictions was a range of aggressive measures based on the view that COVID-19 would spread quickly and widely. This meant testing for infection quickly. Today, testing capacity for COVID-19 in Taiwan has reached 3,400 samples a day.

(...)

By contrast, most other countries opted for delayed containment strategies, hoping the emerging international calamity would prove no worse than SARS in 2002-2004 and Ebola in 2014-2016. Unfortunately, reality proved otherwise. According to Johns Hopkins University, there were by March 23 more than 350,536 confirmed cases and 15,328 deaths worldwide.

Another major need from all governments is transparency, early warnings, and clear, honest and effective communication with the public.

According to the South China Morning Post, government data in China indicates that the first COVID-19 case was identified in November 2019. A University of Southampton (UK) study has concluded that if Beijing had revealed the facts and acted three weeks earlier than it did, the number of cases would have been reduced by 95 percent.

David Matas, a member of the Canadian delegation to the UN conference on the establishment of an International Criminal Court, notes that China is subject as a state party to the Biological Weapons Convention:


“In my view, non-reporting is a form of retention in violation of the Convention. The United States is also a state party to the treaty. If the US found China acted in breach of its obligations deriving from the provisions of the Convention by its delay in reporting the coronavirus, the US could lodge a complaint with the Security Council.'


Chinese media reporter falsely claims being "from Taiwan" to Trump

https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/%E7%89%B9%E6%9C%97%E6%99%AE%E5%86%8D%E5%95%8F%E9%99%B8%E5%AA%92%E8%A8%98%E8%80%85%E5%93%AA%E8%A3%A1%E4%BE%86-%E5%8F%B0%E7%B1%8D%E8%A8%98%E8%80%85%E7%AD%94-%E4%BE%86%E8%87%AA%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3-%E6%83%B9%E4%B8%AD%E5%8F%B0%E7%B6%B2%E6%B0%91%E5%90%8C%E6%99%82%E7%8B%A0%E6%89%B9
The Stand News, April 9th, 2020
(Category: State Propaganda)
(English translation by Google Translate)

'During a White House epidemic briefing, a female Phoenix TV reporter recently asked President Trump during the question that she repeatedly denied that it was Chinese media and emphasized that she was working for Hong Kong. The incident caused heated discussions among netizens. When an Asian reporter asked questions at a briefing today (9th), Trump was also asked where he came from. The reporter replied "I am from Taiwan". In fact, he is a Taiwanese reporter Zhang Jingyi of China Eastern Satellite TV However, his claim that "I am from Taiwan" was simultaneously criticized by netizens who opposed each other in China and Taiwan.


The reporter is Zhang Jingyi, a reporter from the Shanghai Oriental Satellite TV in the White House. He is a Taiwanese. He is a double bachelor of the Department of Journalism and Arabic Studies at Taiwan Political University and a master of international relations at New York University. In 2010, he served as a correspondent for Phoenix Satellite Television in China. The following year he officially became a member of the White House Foreign Correspondent Corps. He was also the first Chinese correspondent to the White House. Later he was elected Vice President of the White House Foreign Correspondent Corps. He joined Oriental TV in 2014 and published the book "The White House Righteousness".'

Epidemic situation in Guangzhou led to racist acts against large number of Africans
April 9th, 2020
https://youtu.be/lj3vWNfRoDE


Chinese coronavirus critic Ren Zhiqiang under investigation, Communist Party disciplinary committee says
SCMP (Hong Kong), April 7th, 2020
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3078858/chinese-critic-ren-zhiqiang-under-investigation-communist-party
(Category: Dictatorship)

'Ren Zhiqiang, the former Chinese property tycoon and outspoken critic of the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, is under investigation for alleged “serious violations of law and discipline”, the Communist Party’s disciplinary watchdog announced.

In a short statement released on Tuesday, the Commission for Discipline Inspection in Beijing said that Ren – a member of China’s ruling Communist Party and a former top executive of state-controlled property developer Huayuan Real Estate Group – was under investigation. 

Friends say that they have lost contact with Ren, 69, since March 12 after an article he wrote criticising the way in which Chinese government responded to the coronavirus outbreak was widely shared online.

In the essay, which does not mention the top leadership by name, Ren was critical not only of the initial cover-up of the virus outbreak, but also of the way in which Beijing is now promoting its success in handling it. Additionally, he was critical of the growth of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s personal power.'

With Selective Coronavirus Coverage, China Builds a Culture of Hate
AMerican Entreprise Institute (U.S), April 7th, 2020
https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/estimating-the-true-number-of-chinas-covid-19-cases/
(Category: State Propaganda)

'China’s COVID-19 figures are not arithmetically sensible. The Communist Party has deliberately made estimation difficult, but, outside of Wuhan city and Hubei province, cases are low by a factor of 100 or more.

In late January, Chinese media provided information about migrant outflow from Wuhan before quarantine. Using a lower number than theirs, then conservative figures for migrants’ infection rate and time in circulation before national lockdown, generates an estimate of 2.9 million cases. 

This is partly due to China’s huge population. That population can also hide COVID-19 among tens of millions of respiratory illnesses. Along with harshly enforced censorship, the population can hide tens of thousands of deaths.'

China’s data reveal a puzzling link between covid-19 cases and political events
The Economist, April 7th, 2020

'Erratic infection numbers raise questions about the accuracy of the country’s statistics

EVER SINCE the new coronavirus started to spread beyond China’s borders, the country’s official tally of infections has served as a grim benchmark for the outbreaks that followed. On March 26th the count in China was surpassed by that in America, now the centre of the pandemic. Since then China’s total, now close to 83,000, has also been overtaken by those of Italy, Spain, Germany and France.


But there is growing suspicion that China’s official statistics on the covid-19 pandemic cannot be trusted. On March 24th China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, came close to admitting that the numbers had been miscounted when he warned officials that “there must be no concealing or under-reporting.” Classified reports to Congress from American intelligence agencies have concluded that the numbers of both cases and deaths from the disease in China are much higher than the official government figures would suggest'

China Created a Fail-Safe System to Track Contagions. It Failed.
The New York Times (U.S), April 17th, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/world/asia/coronavirus-china.html
(Category:PCC inefficiencies)

'The alarm system was ready. Scarred by the SARS epidemic that erupted in 2002, China had created an infectious disease reporting system that officials said was world-class: fast, thorough and, just as important, immune from meddling.

Hospitals could input patients’ details into a computer and instantly notify government health authorities in Beijing, where officers are trained to spot and smother contagious outbreaks before they spread.

It didn’t work.

After doctors in Wuhan began treating clusters of patients stricken with a mysterious pneumonia in December, the reporting was supposed to have been automatic. Instead, hospitals deferred to local health officials who, over a political aversion to sharing bad news, withheld information about cases from the national reporting system — keeping Beijing in the dark and delaying the response.

The central health authorities first learned about the outbreak not from the reporting system but after unknown whistle-blowers leaked two internal documents online.

Even after Beijing got involved, local officials set narrow criteria for confirming cases, leaving out information that could have provided clues that the virus was spreading among humans.

Hospitals were ordered to count only patients with a known connection to the source of the outbreak, the seafood market. Doctors also had to have their cases confirmed by bureaucrats before they were reported to higher-ups.

As the United States, Europe and the rest of the world struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic, China has cast itself as a model, bringing down a raging outbreak to the point where the country has begun to lift the kinds of onerous restrictions on life that are now imposed around the world.

This triumphant narrative obscures the early failures in reporting cases, squandered time that could have been used to slow infections in China before they exploded into a pandemic.'

Notice on Strengthening the Management of Publication of Scientific Papers on New Coronary Pneumonia
Academy of Science and Technology Development, April 5th, 2020
(Google translated, retrieved from cache as it was withdrawn from the site)
(Category:Information suppression)

'Colleges and related units:

According to the requirements of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the actual situation of the school, the management of the papers on the research results of new coronary pneumonia research is now strengthened. The requirements are as follows:

1. Academic papers on the traceability of the new coronavirus must be reviewed by the academic committee of the school before publication, focusing on the authenticity of the paper and whether it is suitable for publication. After the review is passed, the school reports to the Ministry of Science and Technology, which can only be published after the review by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

2, academic research on other new crown of pneumonia , prior to publication must Academic Committee review, review papers focused on academic value and timing of publication. After the review is passed, the academic committee of the school forms a written conclusion, and the corresponding author of the thesis will sign it for future reference.

Contact: Tian Yongchang, Science and Technology Affairs Center, Zhang Yunshu 67885043, mugfzb@126.com'


China’s coronavirus conspiracy: Wuhan residents tell of chilling death toll clue
7News (Australia), March 30h, 2020
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/chinas-coronavirus-conspiracy-wuhan-residents-tell-of-chilling-death-toll-clue-c-771538
(Category: Information Suppression)


'Wuhan residents believe up to 18 times the number of people died in their city from coronavirus than authorities are reporting.

The seven funeral homes serving Wuhan have reportedly been running nonstop recently, prompting one resident to say “anyone with any ability to think” knows officials are lying about the death toll.

China announced 2,535 deaths in Wuhan - the initial epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic - which was locked down for two months.

But some locals believe the number is closer to 50,000.

News website Caixin.com reported that 5,000 urns had been delivered by a supplier to the Hankou Funeral Home in just one day.


“It can’t be right ... because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang told Radio Free Asia.

A resident surnamed Gao said the city’s seven crematoriums should have a capacity of around 2,000 bodies a day if they work around the clock.“Anyone looking at that figure will realise, anyone with any ability to think,” Gao said. “What are they talking about [2,535] people?”


“Seven crematoriums could get through more than that [in a single day].”

Some people estimate 46,800 COVID-19 victims will have been cremated, based on the capacity of the funeral homes.

Buying silence
Residents say city officials have been buying their silence with 3,000 yuan ($685) cash handouts in “funeral allowances” to make sure cremations are completed by the grave-tending festival of Qing Ming on April 5.

“It’s to stop them keening [a traditional expression of grief]; nobody’s allowed to keen after Qing Ming has passed,” Wuhan local Chen Yaohui said.


Another resident, Hu Aizhen, lost his mother to COVID-19 and said nobody in the city believes the official death toll.

“The official number of deaths was 2,500 people ... but before the epidemic began, the city’s crematoriums typically cremated around 220 people a day,” Aizhen said.



“But during the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremating bodies around the clock.” '

Number of Urns may disclose the true number of deaths from  COVID-19 in Wuhan

Radio France International, March 28th, 2020
http://www.rfi.fr/cn/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD/20200328-%E8%B0%81%E6%9D%A5%E7%BB%AD%E5%86%99%E6%AD%A6%E6%B1%89%E6%97%A5%E8%AE%B0?fbclid=IwAR0IMPpQdWHZ-lzg55vos-ERd837yMOcec_fqE5-_xMP2HCb9hP9pCVUDyY
(Google translated)

'According to a report from Caixin.com, on the afternoon of March 26, a large truck was parked at the west entrance of Jingya Hall of Hankou Funeral Home. The car loaded with more than 2,500 urns ordered by the funeral home. The driver revealed that he had already delivered the same number of ashes in the car the day before, and another one would be delivered tomorrow. A dozen funeral staff came to the large truck and moved the ashes to the side hall of Jingya Hall for storage, every 500 There are one stack of boxes and seven stacks on site. Another funeral parlour in Wuhan, Wuchang funeral parlour, also began to distribute new coronal pneumonia deceased caskets from March 23, 500 per day, to be distributed before the Ching Ming Festival. Now the Wuhan Health and Health Commission has explicitly banned Wuhan people from burial and tomb sweeping on the Ching Ming Festival. According to official figures from the National Health and Health Commission, as of March 25, a total of 2531 people died of new coronary pneumonia in Wuhan. You know, there are 8 funeral homes in Wuhan. At the peak of the outbreak, the country also supported a considerable number of mobile funeral homes in Wuhan. They have been operating around the clock for at least a month, so people will naturally ask, How many people died in Wuhan?

Yesterday, a post from the Hankou Funeral Home was circulated on the Internet. The post was like this: "On March 26, Hankou was parked with a long private car and a convoy of volunteers. The entrance security was very strict. The plainclothes police were everywhere. Someone came to stop the mobile phone. Family members waited at the docking point holding their photo, and some walked past me with their urns ... There were many people, very quiet, no crying, no sorrow, so they silently held the ashes Box left ... An aunt cried for a while, and her cry led everyone back ... Everyone looked at her blankly, even embarrassed. "


Beijing twisted my words on coronavirus’s Italian origin, says scientist Giuseppe Remuzzi
The Times (U.K), March 26th, 2020
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beijing-twisted-my-words-on-coronaviruss-italian-origin-says-scientist-giuseppe-remuzzi-6twwhkrvn
(Category:State Propaganda)

'A well-known Italian scientist has said Beijing’s attempts to twist his words to suggest the coronavirus originated in Italy is a textbook example of “propaganda”.

Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, has refuted any suggestion that the virus started in his homeland after comments he made circulated widely in Chinese state media.

In an interview he gave last week, Professor Remuzzi said that local doctors had reported seeing strange symptoms in older people as far back as November.

He told the American news organisation NPR: “It means that the virus was circulating at least in Lombardy before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China.”

(...)

Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, has refuted any suggestion that the virus started in his homeland after comments he made circulated widely in Chinese state media.'

Eighty percent of coronavirus tests ‘donated’ by China to Czechs are faulty
Washington Examiner (U.S), March 25th, 2020
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/80-of-virus-tests-donated-by-china-to-czechs-are-faulty
(Category:State Propaganda)

'Some 80% of coronavirus rapid tests China donated to the Czech Republic as part of the communist country’s global goodwill effort are faulty, according to news reports.

A medical official from the Moravian-Silesian region that borders Slovakia and Poland said the test “error rate was quite high.”

According to the Czech radio site iROZHLAS, regional hygienist Pavla Svrcinova said that the tests give false positive and false negative results. She suggested that the tests only be used on people who are ending their virus-related seclusion and who have never been tested.

A government official, however, dismissed the concerns and said the “wrong methodology” was being used for the tests. “I don't think it's a scandalous revelation that it's not working,” he said.

Another outlet, the Taiwan News, reported that China had “give the impression that the communist regime was donating 150,000 portable, rapid COVID-19 test kits” when in fact they charged some $500,000.

China has been under fire worldwide for hiding and then lying about the coronavirus that started in Wuhan.


They have tried to answer the attacks with donations, offers of help to impacted countries, and a false claim that the United States planted the virus.'

Announces Zero New Cases in Hubei but Bans Hubei People Going to Beijing; Chinese citizens: Only Idiots believe it
Voice of America, March 23rd, 2020
https://www.rti.org.tw/news/view/id/2056676
https://telegra.ph/Announces-Zero-New-Cases-in-Hubei-but-Bans-Hubei-People-Going-to-Beijing-Chinese-citizens-Only-Idiots-believe-it-03-29
(Category:Opinion Piece)

'China reported zero local coronavirus cases for several consecutive days. Not only has it became the subject of official propaganda,it has also beenpraised by Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of WHO, as “an amazing achievement”. The sudden drop to zero is very suspicious. Even Hu XIjin, editor-in-chief of China’s mouthpiece, Global Times, expressed concern. Hu worries that there are still possibilities for new local cases, and he calls for local governments to avoid concealing cases in order to blame-shift.

Shortly after, an article named “The most unforgettable day”, written by a Hubei reporter, went viral. The article revealed that although the official number of new coronavirus cases in Wuhan was zero, there were still diagnosed patients in many places.The author described his personal experience on the 19 March, where he witnessed a diagnosed patient and his family being passed around like a ball, from hospital to hospital. At the same time, there were rumours that Tongji Hospital in Wuhan had over 100 newly diagnosed cases on the same day, but the District Mayor refused to report the cases. On the 22 March, the Wuhan Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters quickly denied the existence of the newly confirmed cases, although doubts remained.

Voice of America also reported that a Wuhan citizen sent them an encrypted message, saying a friend of his appeared to have symptoms of coronavirus reinfection. However, when he arrived at the hospital, the medics said his symptoms were mild and asked him to self-quarantine at home. The Wuhan citizen who requested anonymity, revealed that a family member who worked in the frontline told him that many hospitals were now closed in Wuhan because many patients were found to be potentially infected.When asked for further information, that family member hesitated and just told him not to go outside.

Netizens are very suspicious towards the ‘zeroed’ cases. Voice of America quoted from a Sina.com’s user, who raised supplies for the community during the epidemic: “Speaking as a Wuhan citizen, even the aunties and uncles in my community found it weird that the cases went down to zero”. Another Wuhan citizen, Xu Wu, whose father was diagnosed with coronavirus in February, also commented on the situation: “CCP has been lying to us for decades. Only morons would believe them.”'

Public health does not require tyranny
CNN (U.S), March 21th, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/21/opinions/public-health-does-not-require-tyranny-ghitis/index.html

(Category:Opinion Piece)

'(CNN)As people everywhere struggle to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus -- a pandemic that feels very much like the starting point of a new era -- another contest is unfolding over which political system is better suited to tackle the problem, and which will emerge victorious in its aftermath.

Does the pandemic prove that authoritarianism is better? Can democracy handle the challenge? The questions lie at the heart of a messaging campaign quietly flooding the world, a concerted effort to portray democracy as an inferior system.

The propaganda battle is emanating from China, where the ruling regime appears determined to leverage the pandemic to defend and promote its system of government and raise its global standing when the crisis is over.

An abundance of international media coverage about the troubles with the United States' response has boosted Beijing's propaganda effort. There is no question the US has made many grievous errors, something China's government-controlled media discusses at great length, never mind that Chinese journalists mysteriously disappeared when trying to report on it independently in their own country.

With thinly concealed glee, China's official publications enumerate the failings not only of the US coronavirus control efforts but of the American system of government, arguing that racism, inequality and political divisions in America inevitably have hampered the response.
"The truth is," Beijing's Global Times asserted, the "US system is not nearly as efficient as the Chinese system."


They also take the opportunity to disparage Western criticism of China's horrifying human rights record.

Boosting its campaign, China has been shipping planeloads of aid to affected countries, widely publicizing the effort and seeking to emerge as the great, efficient and magnanimous superpower as it tries to strengthen ties with US allies, whose relations with Washington have grown strained under the current administration.

So far, with the democratic West consumed with fighting Covid-19, Beijing has had the field mostly to itself, making strides with its fabricated narrative that China is simply on a different, higher level when it comes to epidemic control.

But are dictatorships by nature better at dealing with pandemics?

The answer is simply no. While it is true that autocracies have an easier time imposing draconian measures on large populations, it is also undeniable that open societies are better at preventing the emergence of pandemics.

By covering up the magnitude of the outbreak in Wuhan early on, China's repressive practices, in fact, allowed a novel coronavirus to take root in a city, and then a province, and ultimately to spread so fast that it now infects almost every country on Earth. As has been thoroughly documented, Chinese scientists who raised the alarm about the new pathogen infecting patients in Wuhan were detained, harassed and silenced.


Laboratories that identified the virus were ordered to "stop tests, destroy samples, and suppress the news," according to independent Chinese media. The news to the public was supposed to be good; anything that might hurt the regime and its image was unacceptable. When Dr. Li Wenliang tried to spread the word, he was detained for spreading rumors. He died of Covid-19 last month.

It's no coincidence that some of the gravest mistakes in the US response were precisely the result of authoritarian instincts at play, efforts to suppress the truth and manipulate the message. When President Donald Trump spent months telling Americans that there was nothing to worry about, he arguably allowed the virus to spread more freely in the population, making the crisis worse. The epidemiologist who helped end smallpox, Larry Brilliant, called Trump's lies, "the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime." '

Wuhan's virus patient numbers manipulated for Xi visit: local doctor
Kyodo News (Japan), March 19th, 2020
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/b09b868ec468-breaking-news-wuhan-doctor-blows-whistle-on-manipulation-of-virus-patient-numbers.html
(Category:State Propaganda)


'BEIJING - The number of novel coronavirus patients in Wuhan, the epicenter of China's virus outbreak, was manipulated in time for President Xi Jinping's visit last week, a local doctor told Kyodo News Thursday.

A number of symptomatic patients were abruptly released from quarantine early while a portion of testing was suspended, the doctor said.

China's health authorities on Thursday reported no new cases of coronavirus infection in Wuhan, marking the first time for the city to have no instances of local transmission since the viral epidemic began late last year.

But the doctor, who works at a quarantine facility, said the government tally "cannot be trusted."

The number of patients currently undergoing treatment is deliberately being reduced in an effort to show the Xi government's success in combatting the epidemic, he said.

The doctor, in his 40s, whose responsibilities include determining whether a patient is discharged from a hospital expressed strong concerns that if the truth remains hidden from the public, another outbreak could occur.

Guidelines from the National Health Commission stipulate that patients must test negative for the virus twice and be cleared for pneumonia via a computerized tomography scan before being discharged.

But according to the doctor, from around the time of Xi's visit, even though his patients still exhibited signs of pneumonia, the patients were released from quarantine at the discretion of a "specialist" from the epidemic prevention and control authority.

From then on, the criteria for discharging patients became loose, and "a mass release of infected patients began," he said.

Also, patient interviews with those exhibiting symptoms such as fever were simplified, and blood tests to detect antibodies produced during infection were discontinued. As a result, "suspected patients were released back into society," he said.

Xi, on March 10, made his first visit to the central Chinese city of Wuhan since the outbreak began, emphasizing the government's achievements in its epidemic prevention and control efforts.

According to the National Health Commission, nearly 58,000 people have been discharged from hospitals in Hubei Province, where Wuhan is the capital. Beginning in mid-March, the number of new infections in Wuhan has stayed below a dozen patients a day.

Xi says the tide has turned, but people deserve the truth about China’s response
SCMP (Hong Kong), March 14th, 2020
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3075076/coronavirus-xi-says-tide-has-turned-people-deserve-truth-about
March 17th, 2020
(Category:State Propaganda)

'Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, Chinese officials are still keen to resort to the well-worn tactic of merely acknowledging “shortcomings and weak links” in their initial response to the outbreak, and cranking up the propaganda machine to extol the party leadership in a time of crisis.

But the over-the-top propaganda has proved counterproductive and on several occasions triggered a strong backlash on social media, the only avenue for ordinary people to voice their grievances despite tough censorship.

Late last month, when much of China was under lockdown and hundreds of millions of people forced to stay home, propaganda officials announced the launch of a book named A Battle Against Epidemic in Chinese and five other languages. The book was to show the “strength” of the party’s leadership and China’s socialist system in the ongoing fight against the disease, according to a press release read on national prime-time television news.

How they misjudged the national mood. The subsequent torrent of online criticism has apparently forced the publishers to delay the launch of the book.

On March 6, the newly installed party secretary of Wuhan, Wang Zhonglin, made himself a target of ridicule after local media quoted him as proposing a citywide campaign to teach the cooped-up residents to “be grateful” for Xi and the party, and “listen to the party and follow the party”.


The backlash on social media was fast and furious, forcing the authorities to take Wang’s offending remarks offline.

Wang’s misstep was not off the cuff or due to his bad public relations skills. In fact, his blunder reflects the innate thinking and arrogant narrative of China’s bureaucrats – which can be traced back to feudal dynasties – that the people should always feel grateful for whatever the government does or gives despite the propaganda that it is the servant of the people.
Some social media users were right on point when they noted that when a disaster struck, it was the government’s natural responsibility to act and help the affected.

In his visit to Wuhan, Xi lavished praise on the city’s residents, calling them “heroes” and saying that with their sacrifices and devotion, they have demonstrated their strength and the spirit of China. The party and the entire nation should be grateful to them, he said.

Interestingly, Xi called for understanding and tolerance for people who had vented their feelings after being quarantined for a long time. But on the day of his brief visit to a neighbourhood of high-rise buildings in Wuhan, social media posts showed pictures of security officers stationing themselves on the balconies of flats facing the yard Xi walked through to ensure certain residents would not shout anything embarrassing.

Even more interestingly, while the president was in Wuhan, China’s enterprising social media users and ubiquitous online censors engaged in a remarkable game of cat and mouse. The netizens tried to post an article about a Wuhan doctor recounting her horrible experiences of seeing virus-struck patients dropping dead in front of her in the initial cover-up period, but saw their posts in various forms erased quickly by censors.


It later reached a comical level when the online users started to post the article in foreign languages, including Hebrew, or even versions in which words were mixed with emojis, but the censors still managed to quickly block them – and screenshots of those blocked versions circulating on social media have themselves become a form of protest.'


Halting China’s Economy Was Hard. Restarting It Is Harder
The New York Times (U.S), March 12th, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/business/china-coronavirus-economy.html
(Category:Economy)

'SHANGHAI — China is starting to get back to work. More than six weeks after its leaders virtually shut down the world’s second-largest economy to stop a relentless coronavirus outbreak, factories are reopening and offices are starting to fill.

That’s little solace to Zhang Xu. Piles of windshields — some broken, others new and ready to be installed — sit untouched at his car repair shop in a blue-collar neighborhood in Shanghai. One of his two employees is still stuck in a faraway village. But that matters little, because Mr. Zhang has no customers.

“If we don’t get sales, the distributor won’t be able to order more from the factory and the factory won’t be able to produce

Halting China’s Economy Was Hard. Restarting It Is Harder
The New York Times (U.S), March 12th, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/business/china-coronavirus-economy.html
(Category:Economy)

'SHANGHAI — China is starting to get back to work. More than six weeks after its leaders virtually shut down the world’s second-largest economy to stop a relentless coronavirus outbreak, factories are reopening and offices are starting to fill.

That’s little solace to Zhang Xu. Piles of windshields — some broken, others new and ready to be installed — sit untouched at his car repair shop in a blue-collar neighborhood in Shanghai. One of his two employees is still stuck in a faraway village. But that matters little, because Mr. Zhang has no customers.

“If we don’t get sales, the distributor won’t be able to order more from the factory and the factory won’t be able to produce,” Mr. Zhang said.

Stopping the Chinese industrial machine was painful for China and for the world — and restarting it may be even harder. Factories are well short of full capacity. Even the most successfully restarted cities are only halfway back. Tens of millions of laborers cannot get to work.

Even when workers come back, Chinese businesses may find overseas demand slumping for their exports because of worsening coronavirus epidemics in other countries.

Experts warn that Beijing needs to watch for fake restarts: companies that switch on factories to get government subsidies but that produce little or nothing because they lack workers or supplies.


China’s difficulties could hold lessons for other countries looking for answers to the outbreak. Looking for a way to slow the virus without sinking the economy, the United States on Wednesday blocked travelers from Europe, and President Trump has said he wants to get consumers spending more. The Italian government imposed travel restrictions on Monday on the entire country. Other places, like South Korea, have intensified testing and monitoring without trying to shut down their industrial engines.

(...)

But factories in China are running at 50 to 60 percent of capacity, he said, and other measures show even less activity in many places.

(...)

More than 50 million migrant workers have not yet returned to their jobs, according to official data. Some remain in quarantine. Others are stranded in rural areas where bus service has not resumed. Many are not yet needed by employers because consumers and businesses are barely spending.

(...)

Signs of fraud have already emerged, making it harder for officials in Beijing to figure out what is going on around the country. One scam involves businesses that turn on air conditioning and run machinery with no output, said Cao Heping, a Peking University economist. The goal is to burn enough electricity to qualify for restart subsidies.

(...)

Most car dealerships reopened by late February but remain largely empty. Car sales in China dropped 80 percent in February from the same month a year earlier.

(...)

Factory owners face still one more problem: slowing global demand for the goods China makes. The coronavirus outbreak is threatening global growth, which could slow factories just as they restart. “If the demand shock is not addressed fast, then it could become a problem,” said Mr. Cao, of Peking University.

Many workers have not returned to Shanghai. According to official data, large businesses still have less than two-thirds of their workers. Small businesses have less than half.

Gaode, an online mapping and traffic monitoring service, estimated on Wednesday that nearly half of the labor force in big coastal cities was once again commuting to workplaces. In addition, many white-collar workers are working from home.

But in some areas, few are going to work or going shopping. Xu Renzhong, who runs a repair garage a short walk from Ms. Dai’s grilled pancake shop, has no customers — and no mechanics.

“They’re in really rural areas, and the bus lines are shut down,” he said.'

Lights Are On but No One’s Working: How Local Governments Are Faking Coronavirus Recovery
Caixin (China), March 3rd, 2020
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-03-04/lights-are-on-but-no-ones-working-how-local-governments-are-faking-coronavirus-recovery-101524058.html

'Local companies and officials are fraudulently boosting electricity consumption and other metrics in order to meet tough new back-to-work targets as the spread of Covid-19 in China wanes, a Caixin investigation has found.

As new coronavirus cases in China slowed in recent weeks, local governments in less-affected regions pushed companies and factories to return to work, typically by assigning concrete targets to district officials. Company insiders and local civil servants told Caixin that, under pressure to fulfill quotas they could not otherwise meet, they deftly cooked the books.'

Why the CCP needed to declare that China had the Wuhan virus under control
The Standard (Hong Kong), February 21st, 2020
https://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news/section/2/216505/China-bad-loans-could-SOAR-TO-10tn-yuan

'S&P Global warned that China's non-performing loans could reach as high as 10.1 trillion yuan (HK$11.19 trillion) if the coronavirus does not peak in April, while China's new loans in January had surged to a record high of 3.34 trillion yuan and is expected to climb even higher.

This comes as the People's Bank of China cut the benchmark one-year loan prime rate, as widely expected, by 10 basis points to 4.05 percent from 4.15 percent at the previous monthly fixing.

S&P Global predicted China's GDP growth could be as low as 4.4 percent if the epidemic peak does not come until April, which is a worst-case scenario, and some businesses and individuals struggle to repay their debt.

Even in the most likely scenario, in which the virus peaks in March, the NPL could rise to 7.8 trillion yuan, representing 6 percent of banks' total loans, said S&P Global.

"We expect China will loosen NPL recognition standards to help affected businesses and communities, and that it may take years to digest the forbearance," it added.

The PBOC also lowered the five-year LPR by 5 basis points to 4.75 percent, lower than expected.

Meanwhile, the northern Chinese province of Hebei has established a special financing vehicle worth 50 billion yuan to help get the local economy up and running again. Banks in Shanghai have also issued 1.31 billion yuan in cheap loans to 48 key firms, a local government official said.

Consumption will be most heavily impacted by the coronavirus in the first quarter, and the government expects activity to bottom out in March and recover in the second quarter, said the Ministry of Commerce, adding that the government will study rolling out more support measures, including boosting auto sales.

The agricultural, food and industries that involve a long supply chain and are labor-intensive will be heavily impacted if the coronavirus crisis lasts for a long time, said Li Xinggan, Director of the Ministry's Foreign Trade Department.

In other news, more mainland developers issued bonds, with Yuzhou Properties (1628) introducing US$400 million notes due in 2025, at an interest rate of 7.7 percent per annum. Shares of mainland developers overall fell yesterday.

In the currency market, the onshore yuan weakened by 212 basis points to a half-month low of 7.0153 per US dollar as yesterday evening.'

Two powers, two systems, and two responses in coronavirus battle
People's Daily (China state owned), March 12th, 2020
http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0312/c90000-9667640.html

(Category:State Propaganda)

Delirious article from the CCP... Had China shared the true figures, the world would have reacted faster and the crisis would have been averted.

'Two major powers with two different systems on two sides of the Pacific Ocean have seen very different results in their efforts to prevent and control the coronavirus outbreak.

It did not take long for China to get the outbreak under control. Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, reported eight new confirmed cases on Mar. 12, dropping into the single digits for the first time. As the World Health Organization pointed out, 70 percent of the more than 80,000 confirmed cases in China have recovered and been discharged from the hospital, and the outbreak in China may be ending.

(...)

The Chinese government put the lives and health of people first as it sought to prevent and control the outbreak, and being able to bring the whole system together for this purpose is an advantage of the Chinese system. Different countries have different systems and how to respond to an epidemic will be different for each country, but putting ideology or agenda above the lives and health of people is irresponsible.


As the number of coronavirus cases around the world continues to rise, more people might wonder, “How did China stop the virus? What should we do?” According to Dr. Bruce Aylward, the WHO assistant director-general, other countries can replicate China’s counterattack, but it will require speed, money, imagination, and political courage. The different results on the two sides of the Pacific Ocean might also make them wonder why China can pull together the imagination and courage needed to deliver a blow to the virus while the United States struggles to handle the outbreak."

Chinese scientists destroyed proof of virus in December
The Sunday Times (Thailand), March 1st, 2020https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-scientists-destroyed-proof-of-virus-in-december-rz055qjnj

(Category:Information Supression)

'Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news, a Chinese media outlet has revealed.

A regional health official in Wuhan, centre of the outbreak, demanded the destruction of the lab samples that established the cause of unexplained viral pneumonia on January 1. China did not acknowledge there was human-to-human transmission until more than three weeks later.

The detailed revelations by Caixin Global, a respected independent publication, provide the clearest evidence yet of the scale of the cover-up in the crucial early weeks when the opportunity was lost to control the outbreak.

Censors have been rapidly deleting the report from the Chinese internet.'

A New Martyr Puts a Face on China’s Deepening Coronavirus Crisis
The New-York Times, February 7th, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/world/asia/china-coronavirus-doctor-death.html

(Category:Information suppression)

The death of the doctor whose warnings about the coronavirus were silenced has become a potent symbol of Beijing’s failures.

WUHAN, China — More than 700 people have died. Tens of thousands are infected. Millions are living under lockdown, and the government has sought to silence complaints.

'But what provoked an online revolt in China on Friday, the fiercest assault on the censors in almost a decade, began with the death of one man: the doctor who tried to warn others about the coronavirus.

The deluge of mourning and anger at the death of the doctor, Li Wenliang — from the same virus he was reprimanded for mentioning — at times overwhelmed China’s sophisticated censorship and propaganda systems. Many on social media called the doctor a martyr and a hero, and government officials, celebrities and business leaders risked rebuke by the Communist Party to join ordinary citizens in expressing frustration and grief.


“Li Wenliang’s death has become an emotional flash point,” said Wang Yu, a Wuhan man in his 20s, showing the torrent of comments on his phone about Dr. Li in his social media feeds.

(...)

Unable to fully expunge the discussions, Beijing has turned to state media to transform Dr. Li into a loyal soldier aligned with the government’s cause. The tussle over the doctor’s memory and the political implications are reminiscent of what happened after the SARS outbreak, some said in posts that were quickly deleted.

Jiang Yanyong, the retired military doctor who first called attention to widespread undercounting of SARS cases, has been erased from the official record of that time. By contrast, Zhong Nanshan, the doctor who first identified SARS, has been lionized as a faithful servant. When Beijing needed someone to publicly deliver bad news about the coronavirus, it turned to Dr. Zhong.

Dr. Li’s death also showed how online anger can occasionally slosh over the tall censorship walls built to stifle it. China’s censors have not been this overwhelmed since 2011, when anger and embarrassment over a high-speed rail accident in Wenzhou became impossible to scrub. The Wenzhou crash helped spur new policies to more tightly police the internet.


While many of the lives lost in the coronavirus outbreak have been obscured by the numbers, Dr. Li’s death has provided a face and story for the victims of the epidemic and the medical workers struggling to contain it.'

How the coronavirus crisis destroyed the Xi ‘myth’
Asia Times, February 19th, 2020
https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/how-the-coronavirus-crisis-destroyed-the-xi-myth/
(Category:Xi Dictatorship, Information Supression)

'The mantra appears to be ‘if in doubt, blame everyone else and dress it up as an international conspiracy’.

For the state-run media machine, the plot lines have changed to protect Xi and the inner circle of the ruling Communist Party after it was revealed that they knew about the scale of the unfolding disaster two weeks before informing the public.

CGTN, the global arm of Beijing’s propaganda push, set the tone last week in an article entitled Don’t Kick China When It’s Down by influential presenter Liu Xin.


“To imply there’s a connection between the virus and the Chinese nationality or race is wrong and insensitive, at a time when people are dying, and enormous sacrifice is being made,” Liu wrote on China-US Focus, a website for academic discussion.

(...)

Yet transparency issues have bubbled just beneath the surface, triggering anger on social media sites and rattling Xi’s cabinet. In response, Beijing has launched a crackdown on critics who have dared to voice concerns over the handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Academic Xu Zhiyong, the founder of the social campaign New Citizens Movement, was reportedly arrested at the weekend in the southern city of Guangzhou after accusing General Secretary Xi of being “clueless.”

“The virus outbreak shows just how important values like freedom of expression and transparency are – the exact values that Xu has long advocated,” Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.

Another high-profile victim appears to be Xu Zhangrun, a well-respected professor of law at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing.

After publishing an online critique of Xi entitled Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear, he was placed under house arrest by the security forces and barred from using the internet, according to media reports.

“They confined him at home under the pretext that he had to be quarantined after a trip,” a close friend told the London-based newspaper, The Guardian. “He was in fact under de facto house arrest and his movements were restricted.”

A climate of “fear” now exists as China’s central government closes down chatrooms of dissent. Moreover, every aspect of the coronavirus coverage on state-run media has Xi at the center of the message. 

Even so, that has failed to hide the damage which has been inflicted on the country’s political elite, especially after the death of “People’s Martyr” and Wuhan whistleblower Li Wenliang.

“Given that it was China’s prevailing ‘Ministry of Fear’ approach to freedom of information that allowed the virus to silently infect communities, it remains to be seen whether this doubling down will see Xi emerge as China’s savior or a victim of the sunk-cost fallacy – an increasing commitment to ever-diminishing rewards,” Chris Taylor, an associate partner with the Access Asia Group, a risk-management firm based in Singapore, told Asia Times.

(...)

“The most lasting impact will likely be the effects this virus has on China’s politics. Precious weeks were lost as local officials would not assume responsibility lest central authorities subsequently blame them,” he said on the New York-based think tank’s website. 

“This paralysis is a consequence of President Xi’s consolidation of power, which has left provincial officials unable or unwilling to exercise their authority without the central leadership’s blessing. Xi’s signature anti-corruption campaign, arguably more of a political purge, has in many instances replaced capable technocrats with party loyalists.”

How this will play out in the weeks and months ahead is in the realm of clairvoyance.

But academic Yuen Yuen Ang, of the University of Michigan, has peered into her crystal ball and concluded that “Chinese politics and governance will not be the same” after the epidemic has finally been eradicated.

“Xi cannot avoid blame for the backlash against his restrictive domestic policies and assertive actions abroad, which had already begun to undercut support for him even before the epidemic. With the death of Li Wenliang, a doctor who was rebuked by state authorities for warning others about the virus, the failings of Xi’s top-down approach have been laid bare,” she said in a commentary for Project Syndicate.

“The myth that Xi and his supporters have sustained about the virtues of centralized control has been demolished. Li’s parting words, ‘A healthy society should not have only one voice,’ will remain etched in the minds of hundreds of millions of Chinese, who have seen for themselves that censorship can endanger their lives.”'


Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear
China File, February 10th, 2020
https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/viral-alarm-when-fury-overcomes-fear
(Category:Essay)


'In July 2018, the Tsinghua University professor Xu Zhangrun published an unsparing critique of the Chinese Communist Party and its Chairman of Everything, Xi Jinping. Xu warned of the dangers of one-man rule, a sycophantic bureaucracy, putting politics ahead of professionalism and the myriad other problems that the system would encounter if it rejected further reforms. That philippic was one of a cycle of works that Xu wrote during a year in which he alerted his readers to pressing issues related to China’s momentous struggle with modernity, the state of the nation under Xi Jinping and the mixed prospects for its future. Those essays will be published in a collection titled Six Chapters from the 2018 Year of the Dog by Hong Kong City University Press in May this year.

Although he was demoted by Tsinghua University in March 2019 and banned from teaching, writing and publishing, Xu has remained defiant. His latest polemical work—“When Fury Overcomes Fear”—translated below, appeared online on February 4, 2020 as the coronavirus epidemic swept China and infections overseas sparked concern around the world.

(...)

The cause of all of this lies, ultimately, with The Axle [that is, Xi Jinping] and the cabal that surrounds him. It began with the imposition of stern bans on the reporting of accurate information about the virus, which served to embolden deception at every level of government, although it only struck its true stride when bureaucrats throughout the system consciously shrugged off responsibility for the unfolding crisis while continuing to seek the approbation of their superiors. They stood by blithely as the crucial window of opportunity that was available to deal with the outbreak snapped shut in their faces.

Ours is a system in which The Ultimate Arbiter [定於一尊, an imperial-era term used by state media to describe Xi Jinping] monopolizes all effective power. This led to what I would call “organizational discombobulation” that, in turn, has served to enable a dangerous “systemic impotence” at every level. Thereby, a political culture has been nurtured that, in terms of the actual public good, is ethically bankrupt, for it is one that strains to vouchsafe its privatized Party-state, or what they call their “Mountains and Rivers,” while abandoning the people over which it holds sway to suffer the vicissitudes of a cruel fate. It is a system that turns every natural disaster into an even greater man-made catastrophe. The coronavirus epidemic has revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance; the fragile and vacuous heart of the jittering edifice of the state has thereby been shown up as never before.

This viral outbreak, which has been exacerbated by the behavior of the power-holders and turned into a national calamity, is more perilous perhaps than total war itself. Everything is caught up in the struggle—the nation’s ethical fabric, its politics, our society, as well as the economy. Let me say that again: The situation is even more perilous than total war, for it is leaving the nation open to a kind of devastation that even foreign invaders failed to visit upon us in the past. The ancients put it well: “Only thieves nurtured at home can truly despoil a homeland.” Although the Americans may well be trying to undermine our economy, The Axle is beating them to it here at home! Please note: Just as the epidemic was reaching a critical moment, He big-noted himself as being “Personally This” and “Personally That.” [Note: When meeting Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, on January 28, Xi made a point of saying that he was “personally commanding” the response to the outbreak, a statement that was widely derided online.] They were vacuous claims that merely served to highlight His hypocrisy. Such claims excited nationwide outrage and sowed desolation in the hearts of the people.


It is true that the present level of popular fury due to the handling of the epidemic is volcanic; a people thus enraged may, in the end, also cast aside their fear. Herein I offer my analysis of these developments in a broader context. Mindful of the cyclical nature of the political zeitgeist, and with an unswerving eye fixed on what has been unfolding here in China since 2018 [when Xi Jinping was granted limitless tenure and the author published his famous broadside against the Party-state], I have formulated my thoughts under nine headings. Compatriots: I respectfully offer them here for your consideration. (...)'

As Wuhan Virus Spreads, Taiwan Has No Say at WHO
Foreign Policy, January 22nd, 2020
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-coronavirus-wuhan-virus-spreads-taiwan-no-say-who
(Category:Xi Dictatorship, Information Supression)

'On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) is convening an emergency committee of experts to assess whether the coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, constitutes an international crisis. But one of the countries affected, Taiwan, will not be represented.

(...)

But Taiwan is no longer able to attend the World Health Assembly, WHO’s annual policy meeting. China has prevented Taiwan from attending since 2016, after President Tsai Ing-wen was elected for the first time. Since her election, Beijing has stepped up its existing military and economic pressure on Taiwan, viewing Tsai’s pro-sovereignty status as a veil for Taiwanese independence.

Under what other circumstances would 24 million people be excluded from representation in such an important organization? Beijing—and the WHO authorities that bend to its will—is allowing political and diplomatic sensitivities to interfere with the administration of global health and safety.

Beijing relies on a United Nations resolution passed on Oct. 25, 1971, recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate representative of China to the U.N. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has openly thanked WHO for excluding Taiwan, blaming an inaccurate representation of Tsai’s views on Taiwan’s independence.'