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The Economy

Tourism up 16% during holiday: “During the seven-day break, travelers made around 256 million trips to domestic destinations, a year-on-year rise of 15.7 percent from the same period in 2020 when the pandemic had just started.” Read full article →

China Investment Corp. returned 12% on overseas investments in 2020. Set up in 2007 to manage part of China’s $3.2 trillion  foreign exchange reserves it has managed a 10-year rolling average of 6.6%.  Read full article →

China’s "stay-at-home" economy booms over Spring Festival in consumer spending, logistics and box office. Retail and catering sales surged to US $127 billion (+28.7% year-on-year), couriers sent 660 million parcels (+260%) and e-payments through UnionPay bank card processor (US $182.6 billion) and box office sales (US $1.2 billion) broke records. Read full article →

Urban unemployment was 5.6% last year, below the expected 6 percent. China’s cities created 11.86 million new jobs in 2020, he said. Over 90 percent of college graduates found jobs. And 820,000 of them set up their own businesses, a jump of 11 percent from the year before. Read full article →

China added 259 new dollar billionaires last year, more than the rest of the world combined. It now has 1058 billionaires. The US added 69, to reach 696. Six Chinese cities are in the world Top Ten for the billionaires. Beijing is #1, with 145. Also, 66% of the world's self-made women billionaires are Chinese. Read full article →

Trade & IP

Foreign minister Wang Yi returned from Nigeria, DR Congo, Botswana, Tanzania and the Seychelles, then promptly visited Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei. Wang’s speeches while on the road have important indications of how China views the Belt and Road Initiative as it enters its 6th year. Read full article →

China imported $371 billion of integrated circuits in 2020, up 14.8% YoY and more than double that of oil imports. 543.5 billion chips were imported, up 22.1% YoY. Oil imports totaled @200 billion, while IC exports hit $105 billion, up 15% YoY. Read full article →

The Supreme Intellectual Property Court awarded a record $24.6 million damages against Zhonghua Chemical for stealing trade secrets related to vanillin, a flavoring agent. The court also awarded $4.6 million to a Guangzhou company over the theft of technology used to make carbomer gel for cosmetics. Read full article $→

China increased its lead as the world’s top filer of international patents in 2020. China filed 68,720 applications while the US filed 59,230. The rate of increase was 16% YoY increase versus 3% for the US. Huawei Technologies topped the chart for fourth straight year, with 5,464. Read full article →

The State Council announced 18 exemplary developments by SOEs overseas. One is State Grid’s Belo Monte ultra-high voltage (UHV) transmission line project in northern Brazil’s Para state. The 2500km transmission project connects the Belo Monte hydropower plant with Rio de Janeiro and is the world’s longest project of its kind. Read full article →

Technology

The largest online learning platform, Zuoyebang, handles 33 million students simultaneously and has 800 million registered user devices. Its optimized AI algorithm can complete one million searches per minute of its library of over 300 million questions and provide step-by-step explanations, with 97% accuracy. Read full article →

R&D hit 2.4% of GDP in 2020: $377.8 billion, the slowest incremental growth in five years and down from 12.5% in 2019. Read full article →

China cut carbon intensity 19% since 2015. The quantity of carbon dioxide the country produces per unit of GDP beat the official target of 18%, while GDP increased from $10 trillion in 2015 to $15.71 trillion in 2020. Read full article →

Universities added thirty-seven new undergraduate majors, including artificial intelligence, quantum information science, flexible electronics, and cryptography.  Read full article →

SMIC received US government licenses to import equipment for use in mature processes, including making 14-nanometer chipsRead full article →

The PBOC chief scientist said the key advantage of the digital yuan would be its ability to trace cash flow in real time, permitting the better collection of debt and collateral and help solve problems of transparency in corporate financing as well as having potential industrial and supply chain applications. Read full article →

Since being blocked by Google apps, Huawei's AppGallery has attracted over 530 million active monthly users, and 384 billion installs in 2020–an 83% increase YoY. There are 2.3 million registered developers working on mobile applications for AppGallery,  up 77% over 2019. Read full article →

China and Asia-Pacific are forecast to increase their combined share of the worldwide IC market from 63.8% in 2020 to 68.1% in 2025, which represents a CAGR of 9.4% over this time period. Read full article →

The 3rd Annual Berkeley-Tsinghua program on transnational IP litigation reveals an increasingly international IP litigation environment for Chinese companies outside of China and for foreigners in China.  This has implications for how companies and countries engage with China, including the extent of technology decoupling.  Listen to the proceedings here →

Chinese leaders want to raise the retirement age. 18% of China’s population, 250 million people, are over 60. The number of “people of advanced age” is expected to exceed 300 million during the next five-year plan. Read full article → 

Who owns Huawei? How do they exercise ownership? A distinguished legal scholar untangles the company's unconventional ownership structure and lays to bed several popular conspiracy theories.  Read full article →

The PBOC, the UAE Central Bank, the BIS Innovation Hub, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Thailand aim to facilitate real-time cross-border foreign exchange payments on distributed ledger technology. The project will propose solutions to inefficiencies, high cost and complex regulatory compliance in making cross-border fund transfers.  Read full article →

The long-term trend is toward increasing Integrated Circuit (IC) marketshare in China and the Asia-Pacific region. China and Asia-Pacific are forecast to increase their combined share of the worldwide IC market from 63.8% in 2020 to 68.1% in 2025, which represents a CAGR of 9.4% over this time period. Read full article →

The 3rd Annual Berkeley-Tsinghua program on transnational IP litigation reveals an increasingly international IP litigation environment for Chinese companies outside of China and for foreigners in China.  This increasing diversity may have important implications for how companies and countries engage with China, including the extent to which a technology decoupling can occur between China and the world.  Listen to the proceedings here →

Chinese leaders are studying a detailed plan to raise the retirement age says You Jun, VM human resources and social security. 18% of China’s population, 250 million people, are aged 60 or above. The number of “people of advanced age” is expected to exceed 300 million during the next five-year plan that will run through 2025, You said. Read full article →
The Netherlands-based Belt and Road Research Platform produced a new map  that integrates the BRI into China’s international trade patterns: [The article short-changes China's efforts in Africa but is otherwise excellentRead full article →

Health

50% more people in Wuhan died in the first three months of last year than would normally have been expected, mostly due to Covid-19. Wuhan lockded down in January 2020, and eight times more people in Wuhan died of pneumonia between January- March than normal, but the province surrounding Wuhan and in China as a whole were lower than normal. Read full article $→

Turkish trials found China’s Sinovac inoculation to be 83.5% effective against the coronavirus, significantly above Brazilian estimates. The CoronaVac shot was 100% effective in preventing hospitalization, according to the Phase 3 trials. Sinovac will expand annual production to 2 billion doses by June. Read full article $→

China has approved three traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) products for sale to help treat Covid-19, the government's National Medical Products Administration announced on Wednesday. The three products are "lung-clearing and detoxing granules," "dampness-resolving and detoxing granules," and "lung-diffusing and detoxing granules," said the statement. Read full article $→ 

China’s vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccines to more than 45 countries. With just four of China’s many vaccine makers  able to produce 2.6 billion doses this year, most of the world will end up inoculated with China’s humble, traditionally made shots. Read full article $→

Sinopharm's inactivated COVID-19 vaccine showed an efficacy of 73% after two shots in phase III clinical trials. The vaccine was granted conditional approval for mass use together on Thursday. It is the third of such inactivated vaccine candidate that has been given marketing authorization in China. Read full article →

Society

Above: before-and-after retelling of poverty eradication (in Chinese) Watch here → 

The number of expatriates returning to China increased 30% in 2020. China’s “better controlled pandemic”, “more convenient life” and “faster economic recovery from the pandemic” were top reasons. But  22% said the international climate unfavourable to their careers, and 18% said that their host countries had policies unfavorable to Chinese people.  Read full article →

TikTok in China Is Banning Users Who Brag About Their Wealth. Six kinds of content including “flaunting wealth” are now banned on the platform because they promote “unhealthy values.” Read full article →

Chinese National Geography has published a new Field Guide to the Birds of China. You can read about it here, or purchase it from the Hong Kong Birdwatching Society here. The new book is in Chinese only. The best English language guide to the birds of China is by John MacKinnon and Karen Phillipps, and available on Amazon.

Above: a three-petal motif in canopies, skylights and screen perforations, Shanghai's temporary White Upland project, spans 3,300 sq.m. Architect Yu Ting created an "anti-generic" space that could act as "a communal place; a surreal garden where people around this neighbourhood, as well as people from Huzhou, could come to enjoy". Read full article →

Stats, Stats, Stats

Media call a 8% GDP acceleration rates 'growth'. It is not. Growth, above, is calculated by multiplying the expected 2021 acceleration rate–8% for China, 5% for USA–by their GDP in 2020. TUS GDP, after bouncing back, will grow 3.5% through 2030 while China's 30% bigger economy will grow 5% annually after its 8% recovery.
The National Bureau of Statistics dispatched 210,000 census takers across the country to collect data on poverty alleviation. They found that the average income of poor rural populations grew 2.3% faster than the national average for rural regions in 2020, indicating the effectiveness of “targeted poverty alleviation”. Read full article →

The World Bank says the Belt and Road Initiative has the potential of bringing 7.6 million people out of extreme poverty and another 32 million out of medium-level poverty. Read full article →
China’s investment in overseas energy projects in 2020 for the first time saw more money flow into non-fossil projects – of which a large amount supported hydropower – than fossil projects. Read full article →

A large-scale study engineering students in Russia, China, India, and the US showed: "Students at Chinese universities have an extremely high level of skills upon enrollment, but over the course of their university studies, this level decreases in physics, mathematics, and critical thinking at both elite and large universities. Read full article →
China is targeting annual increases of 7% on R&D spending in each of the next 5 years–one percentage point greater than the 6% target for gross domestic product growth this year. China already outspends the USA 4:1 on R&D.  Read full article →

Governance

Confidence in Beijing remains solid. China won the 'Covid war'  in record time; economic growth is back; absolute poverty was eradicated on schedule; the civilization-state is firmly established as a “moderately prosperous society” on time: 100 years after the Party's founding. Since 2000, GDP has grown 11-fold and, and grown from $6 trillion to $15 trillion since 2010. 99 million rural people, 832 counties, and 128,000 rural villages were the last to be extricated from absolute poverty. Read full article → 

China will reduce its energy intensity–the amount of energy it uses to expand its economy–by 3% this year as part of efforts to hit emission reduction targets set earlier, said Premier Li Keqiang. Read full article →

Xi Jinping observed that 1.36 billion people are now covered by basic medical insurance and 1 billion by the basic pension scheme. Next, he said, implement a multilayered pension scheme; Improve social services in rural areas; Extend social security coverage to migrant workers and freelancers; Continue promoting government bulk drug buying programs; and improve the efficiency of medical insurance spending. Read full article →

Congress unveiled a comprehensive plan to upgrade eight priority areas by 2025: rare earth and special materials, robotics, aircraft engines, new energy vehicles, medical equipment and innovative medicine such as vaccines, agricultural machinery, major equipment used in shipbuilding, aviation and high-speed rail, and industrial applications of Beidou global navigation satellite system. Read full article $→

Shanghai is developing five new, smart cities in surrounding areas. By 2025, Jiading, Qingpu, Songjiang, Fengxian and Nanhui will attract 3.6 million permanent residents while their overall GDP will reach $169.6 billion. Read full article →

The State Council will publish a a list of core scientific projects that solicits voluntary help from researchers and develop policy instruments to allocate funding to potentially groundbreaking research projects. Read full article →

China has found a sustainable cure for terrorism without destroying a single nation, while providing a foundation for extending the Belt and Road into the Middle East and beyond, Matthew Ehret writes. Read full article →

Chinese courts adapted quickly and successfully to COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions. Thanks to earlier digitization, most of the infrastructure was already in place.The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) published Provisions on Several Issues Related to the People’s Court’s Handling of Cases Online to solicit public comments. Read full article →

Beijing announced a rural revitalization plan to ensure food security and expand achievements in fight against poverty. Plan aims to increase agricultural self-reliance by creating high-quality arable land (6.67 million ha), securing grain production (650 million tons/year) and developing seeds with advanced technologies, while strengthening grassroots organizations. Read full article →
 
As tax revenues face their first decline (-2.3%) in 44 years, local governments rely on real estate to boost economy and repay debt. State land sales revenue totaled US $1.3 trillion (+16%) in 2020, occupying 55% of total revenue (26% in 2015); several cities relax residency rules (hukou) to attract rural and professional workers and stimulate property market. Read full article →

A draft decision on improving Hong Kong’s electoral system was submitted to the National People’s Congress (NPC) for review: “The electoral system of Hong Kong, including the method for selecting…the Legislative Council…should be in line with the principle of ‘one country, two systems’ and the actual situation of the region.” “It should ensure that ‘patriots govern Hong Kong.’ “The Election Committee will be entrusted with the new function of electing a relatively large share of LegCo members and directly participating in the nomination of all candidates for the LegCo.” Read full article →

Politics

Above: NPC average voting support for legislation 2006-2020.

The NPC's electronic voting technology allows for voter identification, if requested. After one NPC, leaders supposedly confronted Liào Huī 廖晖, the son of a revolutionary cadre, when they discovered he was the delegate that opposed every item on that year’s docket. Read full article →

What happens to public suggestions submitted to the NPC's Two Sessions? More than foreign observers realize, they reflect the collective concerns of Chinese society. They are policy weather vanes for the near future. Records show that the suggestions have made actual impacts and some responses involved a dozen government organs.  Read full article →

The State Council hosted nine press briefings, inviting ministers in charge of banking and insurance regulation, transportation, industry and information technology, science and technology, human resources and social security, commerce, civil affairs, state-owned enterprises, and agriculture and rural affairs, to meet the press. For a summary of their comments, ahead of the Two Sessions, Read full article →

Geopolitics

Lee Camp's hilarious dissection of Adrian Zenz's claims of genocide in Xinjiang

Australia's lucrative international education sector takes hit. 62% say attitudes toward Australian education in China ‘have deteriorated’ since a diplomatic spat started and the number of Chinese students applying for undergraduate study in the UK increased by 21%” Read full article $→

The 3,639 meter Dongshan Tunnel, with an elevation of 4,200m, in the Qilian Mountains, is now connected, cutting 300 miles and five hours off the previous journey. It links Lanzhou, Gansu Province, toYunnan, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Kazakhstan, and South to Vietnam, making it possible, eventually, to travel by train or road from Moscow to Singapore. Read full article $→

CGTN will be able to broadcast in Britain despite being officially banned there, as a result of a ruling by a French regulator. CGTN argued that, under the terms of the European Convention on Transfrontier Television (CETT), it was authorised to broadcast in another European Council member country, allowing it to continue broadcasting in Britain as well. Read full article $→

A US study of 1,000 overseas Chinese loans refutes allegations of "debt-trap diplomacy" and seizure of African assets for unpaid loans. Between 2000-19, China cancelled US $3.4 billion in debt and restructured/refinanced 26 loans; holding 20% of Africa's debt, China's bilateral negotiations offer tailor-made solutions, with 20 countries receiving debt relief in 2020. Read full article →

Japanese multinationals refuse to decouple. Only 7.2% of Japanese companies consider leaving China (vs. 9.2% in 2019), whose unrivaled market size, skilled labor and sophisticated supply chain attract global leaders such as Panasonic. Read full article →

Taiwan’s education ministry has fined prominent chemical engineer Lee Duu-Jong for allegedly managing research projects funded by the Chinese mainland without approval from the island’s authorities. Lee says he was not involved in the projects and was listed as the person in charge without his knowledge. China’s central government has criticized the fine as politically motivated.  Read full article →

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has approved a $304 million loan for an intra-state transmission project in Assam. Build 10 new high voltage grid substations and transmission lines, upgrade 15 existing substations, add transmission lines and existing ground wire to optical power ground wire (OPGW) and to provide technical support. Read full article →

Hugh Steadman has compiled a browsable propaganda anthology. It documents the battle to justify the extraction of enormous sums from Western citizens for their ‘defence’ at the expense of their wellbeing. The secondary aim is the containment and removal of the Chinese one-party, consensual, socialist/capitalist hybrid political system–seen as posing a threat to the western exploitative system. Read full article →

Deputy head of China's embassy in Canberra, Wang Xining: "For a better tomorrow, most people choose to make more friends, but there are always a few who choose to make more enemies. However, those scum who deliberately slander China, destroy China-Australia friendship and damage the well-being of the two peoples will be cast aside by history and their descendants will be ashamed to mention their names". Read full article →

Defense

US Indo-Pacific Command is seeking $4.68 billion in the upcoming fiscal year for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to counter China, “The PDI is structured to enhance budget transparency and oversight while focusing resources on vital military capabilities to deter China”. Read full article $→
 

French Defence Minister Florence Parly revealed that the nuclear attack submarine SNA Emeraude recently conducted a patrol through the South China Sea. “A striking proof of our French Navy’s capacity to deploy far away and for a long time together with our Australian, American and Japanese strategic partners,” she tweeted. Read full article →

US DOD China Task Force Begins Work. In four months it will provide specific, actionable recommendations and milestones to meet the China challenge. The Defense secretary wants an assessment of the best ways to defend the international, rules-based order that has kept great power peace since the end of World War II. Read full article →

China has no plans to forge a military alliance with Russia, the Defence Ministry said Monday. “China-Russia military relations are ... an important supporting force in strategic cooperation between the two countries,” the ministry said. “The two sides adhere to the principle of non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third countries, which differs completely from the military alliance between some countries.” Read full article $→

LONG READS

Chris Devonshire-Ellis

The China Complaints 

Thursday, March 4, 2021

This column has come into existence because of complaints. And many of these complaints have come from 'Here Comes China!' readers and subscribers. Given that most people, when something gets their beef up tend not to follow through, and just accept whatever has upset them as 'just the way it is', receiving complaints is a rare occurrence. Yet complaints there have been, and all have been consistent. I quote as an example:   "I can't rely on the media's clickbait China coverage to tell me what's going on in the country my business depends on".

This column is dedicated to dispersing that and getting some on-the-ground facts into public debate as opposed to the mass politically motivated opinions. First, we should examine why there are complaints. There are a multitude of reasons for this, not least rise of the armchair opinionated, the wild-fire spread of social media, the jumping on bandwagons and the use of media - largely now unchecked - of individuals personal opinions becoming opiates for millions. "Hello!" then to the never-elected political media baron, Rupert Murdoch, a man who can be so right-wing toxic even his son leaves the business. 

Then we have the United States, an autocracy hiding behind a handy veneer of democracy. I guess it was about 1991 that the rise of China and a new Russia looked on the cards, given those countries respective massive populations and mineral wealth. Here we can relate to Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations', a 245-year-old book about global economics, but one whose central tenants still hold true today. Smith, a Scottish economist, determined that the wealth of nations can be established by several set factors, including their extant mineral wealth and commodities, population, extent of agriculture, infrastructure, and education. 

And here, alarm bells began to ring in Washington. China and Russia are in fact, and if allowed to be, really wealthy. The subsequent global political landscape has been influenced by that one point: how can the United States retain its position of global dominance? Everything we have seen since then comes back to this one, uniting point: The United States. Now, I have no problem with the US, it is a fantastic country with marvelous people and at its best is a true global leader and economic dynamo. I have travelled the country extensively and have - over my 30-year China and Asia career - several hundred American clients and friends.       

Yet in doing so, a conundrum arises - I am asked to advise, and increasingly find that my on-the-ground experience is at odds with US official policy. Sanctions imposed on Russia. The US-China Trade War. Recent issues concerning Hong Kong and Xinjiang. The South China Sea. The Belt & Road Initiative. This influence has extended to now include the UK, Australia, Canada, and the European Union, loosely described as 'The West.' Yet elsewhere, from Africa, the Middle-East, South America, most of Asia, Central 
Asia and Russia, there is not such a concern, or least when there is (such as the South China Sea) it is very specific. 

What has occurred then are tangible concerns on one side, and somewhat ill-defined, general all-inclusive concerns on the part of the West. Given that arguably the West is wealthier and better educated, this lack of clarity is surprising, yet not when considered in the context of a 'general policy' of sowing a negative attitude towards countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and anyone else who crosses the paths of US dominance and EU sovereign borders. 

There are of course contradictions that show this : the US sent a warship through the Taiwan Straits in late December. One can imagine the furor should a Chinese warship pass between Hawaii and California, or the North and South islands of New Zealand. The Chinese build overseas Ports in dangerous areas of the world and dock navy vessels there to protect shipping; suddenly the BRI is becoming militarized. Russia annexes Crimea following a popular vote and faces sanctions, Mohammed bin Salman has allegedly arranged the murder of a journalist and evades them. The EU insists on its sovereign laws overview infrastructure build involving a non-EU country yet sends in politicians to Belarus and Ukraine to discuss potential integration. 

I will spare readers a list, while also acknowledging that China, Russia, Iran, and many other states also misbehave. My beef is the continuing bad weather reports concerning China, and other Asian countries. That then sets out the stall for my column. I will explain, often at odds and at completely opposite spectrums to many commentators, why investors and entrepreneurs should be looking at specific opportunities. Next week, I will discuss the reasons why foreign investors should be considering investments into China and the areas where they may flourish. Now you won't see that on SubChina or Sinocidal. See you then! 

Columnist Chris Devonshire-Ellis is the Founding Partner of Dezan Shira & Associates and Publisher of Asia Briefing's magazines, websites and books. He has had a 35 year career assisting foreign investors in China and Asia. Please see: www.dezshira.com and www.asiabriefing.com

Shutdown Knockout


A Tale of Two Lockdowns

Is Life Cheaper in the Occident?

Two weeks after Mr. Trump lost the presidency, thirty-four CDC scientists announced that they had found Covid-19 established in America long before December 2019. Their paper concludes with the spreadsheet, above, whose two interpolated, italicized rows show millions of affected people. This finding is unremarkable. Apart from lamenting them we have always ignored ‘flu and coronavirus outbreaks, which regularly winnow our population and, through the magic of herd immunity, leave the rest of us a little stronger. 

Only once–when Swine Flu struck during the 1976 presidential campaign–did we abandon herd immunity. Gerald Ford funded mass immunization over WHO objections, “No other countries have plans for mass inoculations” The inoculations proved disastrously unsafe and ineffectual, catalyzing Ford’s loss to Carter. 

Four years later, President Reagan ignored the AIDS epidemic and was reelected in a landslide. 

Until recently, health officials were skeptical of vaccines and shutdowns. In 2014, at the height of Africa’s fast-spreading Ebola outbreak, when State governors demanded quarantines for workers returning to the US from afflicted regions, Dr. Anthony Fauci objected. Quarantines, he said, were “unscientific” and “draconian.”  

In March, 2020, three months after the WHO raised the Covid alarm, Dr. Fauci announced, “I can’t imagine shutting down New York or Los Angeles. But the judgement of the Chinese health authorities is that this is going to help contain it. Whether it does or not is open to question because, historically, when you shut things down it doesn’t have a major effect.” 

In April 2020, says former UK Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn, “I remember distinctly going to a meeting at the Cabinet Office, where we got a lecture about herd immunity. The last time I discussed herd immunity was when I worked on a pig farm 40 years ago. It was absurd that actually [you] would build up herd immunity by allowing people to die. And so, while the government was going into eugenic formulas and discussing all this stuff, they were not making adequate preparations.”  

It is doubtful that the US could have made ‘adequate preparations’ in any case, since we distrust our government, the health industry, and the media. Nor could the CDC help much. Born in 1946 as the US Army’s Communicable Disease Center, is still headed by a non-scientist Army officer and, beyond providing surveillance, research, and advice, it fields fewer public health staff than Singapore.

What Did the White House Know and When?

Covid’s doubling time is 56 days, so the CDC probably informed the White House of the Covid outbreak in the Summer of 2019, sixteen months before the presidential election. Presumably acting on Administration instructions, the CDC misleadingly blamed early Covid deaths on vaping

The White House then moved Covid discussions to secure facilities, classified them and released information on a need to know basis, banned Covid testing, issued cease and desist orders to enforce its ban until March 6, 2020, issued ‘Blame China’ memos to embassies worldwide, and began testing after Wuhan ended its lockdown. To forestall a WHO investigation, Trump froze funding and withdrew US membership. As Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton demonstrated, this is normal chicanery in re-election years. 

But the White House did not anticipate that the media–by equating Covid with the Black Death–would force the US, with no Plan B, to abandon herd immunity. Eager to blame China, the media also ignored abundant evidence that the virus was loose in the US, Sweden, Japan, Italy, France, Spain and Brazil in 2019.

Worse, the White House and the media ignored the fact that China has more experience with public health crises than the rest of the world combined. 

According to the National Institutes of Health, back in the 1950s, the PRC eliminated diseases in two years that had been endemic in China for centuries: “The rise in life expectancy [under Mao] ranks among the most rapid, sustained increases in documented global history”. And the media also ignored the fact that, after the 2003 SARS outbreak, China began preparing for another by appointing three teams: 

  1. Prevention and Detection. George Gao, head of the CCDC, established a 70,000-node epidemic detection network that gave physicians one-click access to Beijing.
  2. Response. Ninety-four million Party members planned logistics and cordons sanitaire.
  3. Exit. Liu He, below, observed that pandemics often shift the balance of global power. With a supercomputer and a thousand PhDs, he modeled the scenario that China is currently executing, which will grow its GDP faster this year than ever in its history.

What Did Beijing Know?


Since the Chinese were aware of the CDC’s limitations, did they deliberately panic the US into abandoning our herd immunity policy? A European epidemiologist resident in Beijing at the time alerted me to this possibility (emphasis added): 

I actually find the response by the Chinese government extremely interesting. It seems like it’s overblowing the matter on purpose. Considering the low number of cases (compared to China’s population) and low death rates, it feels like the Chinese government is overblowing fears on purpose, with maps filled with dark areas and shutting down everything everywhere (and this is during China’s most important holiday season).

I suspect it’s practicing for when a really serious disease breaks out, the sort with people dying like flies. So I find all this fuss quite interesting. We’ve been warned about a potential superbug outbreak for years, and now we can see how the response will look like. No doubt the Chinese government is busy taking notes on what it could have done better.

Not to mention, I don’t think most Westerners realize just how big Wuhan is, just how significant Chinese New Year is in terms of people moving around and just how many people go in and out of those wet markets every day. That’s like, tens of thousands of people leaving the wet markets, taking public transport then going home to expose all their visiting relatives, and all those people in turn going to all sorts of crowded areas too. With a high enough contagion rate, we’d easily be at 1 million infected. The fact that we haven’t reached such numbers means that this virus isn’t that bad.

We will never know, of course and, besides, we have more serious matters to consider.  The WHO is on the warpath.
 

Enter the WHO

Last month, on February 9, the WHO announced that there was no Covid-19 in China before December, 2019. 

Given that the CDC showed that the virus was well established in the US before December, this was a momentous finding. Our media studiously ignored it but it poses an equally momentous decision for the White House.

Will Biden give the WHO team the same access China gave them? It is difficult to see how they can refuse. And if he does, the revelation that Trump concealed an outbreak that cost 500,000 lives will wreck his 2024 ambitions–at the cost of further damaging US credibility and prestige. 
 

Timing is Everything.

The Chinese will exit the epidemic in better shape than they entered it. They boosted their civil defense, public health, national cohesion, and civic morale. For scope, speed, agility, sophistication, and geopolitical impact, nothing compares to their accomplishment. And the timing is perfect.

The Party is celebrating its first centenary by ending poverty and giving 98% of their low income people their own homes. We, by contrast, have more hungry children, drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, and incarcerated people than China. MAGA indeed. –Godfree Roberts

Human Rights

US Exceptionalism Again. Will it fly?

by MK Bhadrakumar 

In a statement last Wednesday marking the “return” of the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Secretary of State Antony Blinken disclosed that President Joe Biden’s administration is placing democracy and human rights at the center of American foreign policy. 

But the cat is out of the bag. The US is in relative decline and there is a resource crunch. There is an absence of a positive vision for humanity, as the country struggles with its own demons.

The dramatic events in American society and politics in the recent past badly exposed the country as a sham democracy with an abominable record of racism and appalling inequality where the top 0.1% of the population hold roughly the same share of the country’s wealth as the bottom 90%. 

But the resurrection of American exceptionalism will have no takers, and the US, lacking the capacity and the moral authority to advance a unifying agenda in the international arena, is assembling a toolkit for its diplomacy, with geopolitical objectives. 

The potential of the UN Human Rights Council ought to be directed at the raging Covid-19 pandemic, which has undermined the social and economic foundations of states. The most fundamental human right – the right to life – has been threatened, with the world economic downturn causing a big rise in unemployment and aggravating social insecurity. The development gaps between nations and regions are widening. 

Yet the US is in a category by itself even among the rich countries. Covid-19 deaths per million inhabitants have gone through the roof in the US in comparison with its own allies. The appalling reality is that in the US the death toll from the epidemic has crossed 500,000. 

Ironically, per capita Covid-19 deaths in some of the countries that Blinken berates for deficit in democracy and human rights put the US to shame, including Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and Sri Lanka. And of course China.  

But for Blinken, such a horrific level of deaths among his countrymen isn’t a human-rights issue. Not a single state functionary in the US has been held responsible for such a tragedy of unspeakable proportions.
 

Disrepute and Shame 

Suffice to say, the US is bringing disrepute and shame to the whole Western world by leading them into such a cynical game, strutting around as champions of human rights when according to a recent estimate, more than half of all vaccines against Covid-19 have been reserved for one-seventh of the world’s population. Isn’t that a matter of human rights? 

The UK alone has reportedly secured enough vaccines to give each of its citizens five doses. If orders are met, the European Union and the US could inoculate their populations three times over, while Canada would have enough to do so nine times. It is obscene, Mr Blinken. 

At the same time, competition for diminishing vaccine supplies may lead to price spikes and further friction. Acrimony has erupted among the EU, the UK and AstraZeneca over a shortfall in vaccine production. Meanwhile, in any situation where supplies are scarce and demand rises, it is poorer countries that will suffer most. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was spot on when he said at the UNHRC meeting on February 24, “The pandemic has exacerbated old problems such as racism and xenophobia, as well as discrimination against national and religious minorities. Mass protests in the United States and Europe have exposed these countries’ continuing systemic inequalities, while highlighting the risks of condoning extremist ideologies.” 

It is utter moral bankruptcy that the US and its rich allies in the Western world – the so-called “golden billion” on planet Earth – walk into the UNHRC and start pontificating about human rights and pursue coercive approaches and unlawful methods of intimidation and pressure with narrow and self-serving geopolitical goals.  

Again, aren’t the non-transparent policies of social networking platforms a matter of human rights, too? The US, in particular, undertook commitments to ensure freedom of access to information for all citizens but is now hiding behind corporate policies to avoid delivering on these commitments.

As for the social networking platforms, they have begun brazenly to manipulate public opinion in the developing countries by banning or censoring user content at their own discretion. Now, they are, under US protection, trampling on the human rights of world citizens, aren’t they?  
 

'Human Rights'

The human-rights toolkit is universally applicable and there is not a single country on Earth, including the US, that doesn’t have a problem with democracy and human rights.

Protesters march on the White House, supporting the Black Lives Matter protest — later they would be attacked by the National Guard, to provide a photo op for President Trump. Credit: KUT
Isn’t it a crying shame that an average black American lives six years less than his white countrymen? Don’t black Americans get locked up in jails in much larger numbers than whites? But the United States’ human-rights standards are highly selective – it’s the “white man’s burden.” 

Evidently, the toolkit becomes a potent weapon to stigmatize the United States’ adversaries Russia and China; to pressure small countries that do not conform to US regional policies (such as Sri Lanka, Cuba or Venezuela); or to extract concessions from countries by blackmailing them (such as Saudi Arabia). 

The toolkit has been used to bring about regime change too – that is, overthrow established governments and replace them with client regimes. The best-known examples are Ukraine and Georgia. A recent attempt in Belarus flopped.

A trial project in Russia in recent weeks was simply squashed by the Kremlin. But it is a developing story. The countries in the periphery of Russia are being systematically destabilized and turned into theaters of geopolitical contestation so that the United States’ great adversary will get entrapped in a quagmire. 

The Biden administration is using this toolkit to try to re-establish the United States’ trans-Atlantic leadership, which Europe is no longer comfortable with. Europe is experiencing the hidden charms of “strategic autonomy.”

But the US cannot hope to exercise global hegemony without the Western alliance system backing it, either. In this shadow play, Biden estimates that the human-rights plank stands the best chance of bringing the United States’ Western allies on board under its leadership.

The US return to the UNHRC does not stem from noble intentions. It is primarily due to the worry over China’s increasing influence in the UN body during the US absence in the most recent years. Specifically, China stole a march over the US by bringing the pandemic under control, and it has become an eyesore.

Equally, China’s stance on human rights has growing resonance among the developing countries – that human rights should be relative to the situations of developing countries; that the concept of human rights should be diversified as there is no one-size-fits-all approach for human-rights development; and that countries should not export their own model or use human-rights issues to interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs. 

Indeed, the Western concept of human rights, narrowly focused on freedom of speech or religion and democratic elections, tends to overlook that the basic right for the bulk of humanity is about living and development. The Western countries refuse to accept the fact that there are many roads to development and prosperity for the developing countries, and their path is only one of them and, perhaps, not even the best or the most suitable path. 

Plainly put, human rights are being used as a tool to reinforce and perpetuate the present global order in accordance with Western interests. However, it is a losing battle. A new world order is taking shape with a vastly different global humanitarian agenda, which will inevitably become the mainstream for human society. 
 

What's the Plan?

According to a plan jointly issued last week by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on China’s comprehensive transportation network layout, the country aims to build all over the world 200,000 kilometers of railways, 460,000km of highways, and 25,000km of high-level sea lanes with 27 major coastal ports, 400 civil transportation airports and 80 express hubs by 2035, which will make the country not only a global production center but “a logistics center, trade center, clearing center and financial center, laying a solid foundation for a path to be the world’s economic center,” as an expert put it.

How could the Biden administration possibly counter this latest Chinese challenge?

Unsurprisingly, the US is at its wits’ end in dealing with China’s surge. In 2020, China’s GDP was more than 70% the size of the United States’. The current forecast is that it will surpass the US to be the world’s largest economy by 2028. The US realizes that the economic race is pretty much lost already. 

M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. This article was produced in partnership by Indian Punchline and Globetrotter, which provided it to Asia Times.
 

From Amazon

Few structures have seen as much change throughout their existence as China’s Forbidden City, which has been visited by a who’s who of world history, from Marco Polo to Richard Nixon. This year marks the 600th anniversary of the construction of the palace complex, which is made up of over 900 buildings and served as the center of power during the Ming and Qing dynasties. In honor of this auspicious occasion, a new book offers an immersive look inside the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In Forbidden City (Assouline, $995), Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Ian Johnson explores the history of the grand metropolis and catalogs many of the treasures within its walls. “I’ve been researching aspects of Beijing for the past decade as part of a larger project I’m doing on the city,” says Johnson. “I really started digging into the Forbidden City when a person I greatly respect, the writer Wang Jun, began working there in 2017. Through conversations with him I began to see that this was more than a museum or a tourist attraction, but still a vibrant part of the city.”

To curate the more than 100 photographs, artifacts, and artworks within the books’ pages, Johnson looked for the most representative images, while still incorporating lesser-known aspects of the city. “We were aiming to go beyond the ‘Instagramable’ images that everyone has in mind, while still remembering that this is meant to be comprehensive,” he says. “We want it to appeal to people who’ve never been to China but perhaps are fascinated by it, but also to people who’ve been there and think they know it all—we want to show the hidden corners and aspects of history that might be less familiar.” Here's a sneak peek inside the wonders of the Forbidden City.

The Needham Report


The Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of Facts Concerning Bacteriological Warfare in Korea and China (the ISC report), published at the height of the Korean War, validated claims by North Korea and China that the US had launched bacteriological warfare (biological warfare, BW) attacks against both troops and civilian targets in those two countries over a period of several months in 1952.
   

The most vilified document of the 20th Century.

The report’s release in September, 1952, brought a withering international attack. It was roundly denounced by American and British politicians of the highest rank, ridiculed by four star generals, accused of fraud by celebrated pundits, misquoted by notable scientists, and scorned by a compliant Western press. Charges were made against the quality and truthfulness of its science. Its “unstated” political agenda was denounced. The ethics of interviewing captured US pilots was excoriated and its authors were publicly flayed as communist dupes. The report was red baited in the US halls of Congress and deemed unpatriotic to read, and therefore went unread and deliberately forgotten over the years, which has been the fate of Korean War history in general. In subsequent decades, volumes placed in American university library collections were quietly and permanently removed from circulation.
   
When the rare copy came up for auction, it was discretely purchased and disappeared from public view. This critical 67 year old truth commission document from the Korean War was slipping towards oblivion. For these very reasons, historians and truth seekers should exalt the wondrous rebirth of the ISC Report from near extinction with the publication of this new electronic edition. We welcome the sunshine that re-publication brings to a shadowy and suppressed chapter of American Cold War history. (from the introduction by Thomas Powell) 800 pages.  $9.99. Amazon.

Why China Leads the World:

Talent at the Top, Data in the Middle, Democracy at the Bottom

The first book to explain the three elements of China's success: 
1. Talent at the Top means that China's brightest, most idealistic people are are admitted to politics–a policy unchanged in 2200 years.
2. Data in the Middle means that every policy is implemented, tracked, and optimized based on terabytes of data. The PRC is the world's largest consumer of public surveys.
3. Democracy at the Bottom means that ordinary, honest amateurs assemble twice a year to check the stats and sign off on new legislation. Policies need a minimum of 66% popular support to become law. That's why 95% of Chinese say the country is on the right track.


By the end of this year there will be more hungry children, more poor, homeless, drug addicted, and imprisoned people in America than in China.  Why China Leads the World investigates why the epidemic accelerated the change of global leadership from America to China and examines China’s bigger, steadier economy, its science leadership, stronger military, more powerful allies, and wider international support.
Crammed with charts, footnotes, and lengthy quotes, Why China Leads the World is a profoundly disturbing book that helps readers understand the tectonic shift and adapt to this new era–and even thrive in it.
***
The size of China's displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world. Lee Kuan Yew: The Future of US-China Relations. The Atlantic.  
***
The Coronavirus accelerated the pace of change of global leadership from America to China. There are now more hungry children, more poor, homeless, drug addicted, and imprisoned people in America than in China. 
Suddenly, China's larger, steadier economy, its leadership in science, its stronger military, more powerful allies, and wider international support have handed it a lead that widens every day.  Crammed with direct quotes from its movers and shakers, charts, and footnotes, Why China Leads the World tells a remarkable tale, explains a tectonic shift, and helps you adapt to this new era, and even thrive in it. 
 ***
If we could just be China for one day we could actually authorize the right decisions. Thomas L. Friedman. The New York Times  

300 pages, 27 charts and graphs. $9.99 on Amazon, eBook outlets, and bookstores worldwide.

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