ICYMI: With Selective Coronavirus Coverage, China Builds a Culture of Hate

2020/04/27 Leave a comment

Of note:

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.

The pandemic unfolded dramatically differently in China from the way it has in the rest of the world — at least, if one believes state-run Chinese media. Chinese news outlets used words like “purgatory” and “apocalypse” to describe the tragic hospital scenes in Italy and Spain. They have run photos of British and American medical workers wearing garbage bags as protective gear.

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.

The death of Li Wenliang, the whistle-blowing doctor in Wuhan, on Feb. 6 galvanized many Chinese people into demanding freedom of speech. Online sentiment became much more skeptical, and many young people openly challenged the party’s message.

Then the United States and other countries bungled their own responses, and China’s propaganda machine saw an opportunity.

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.

These tactics aren’t new. Many Chinese children of my generation read a newspaper column for students called “Socialism Is Good. Capitalism Is Bad.” Each week, it described the wonders of China alongside the hardships of capitalist societies. The lesson: Socialist China takes care of its people, while people in the United States go hungry and the elderly die alone.

Even if the stories were true, they didn’t represent the full picture. Chinese children like me pitied Americans even when almost all of China lived in poverty. How much would we have envied them if we had known that most could eat meat whenever they liked?

Such campaigns became much easier to sell when China’s economy took off, and we could see the country’s progress for ourselves.

Now that mission is getting tougher. Even before the pandemic, China’s economy wasn’t growing the way it once had, and the government has been intruding more and more into everyday life. China’s propaganda machine has ramped up the volume to deliver its message, encompassing all of Chinese official media and the country’s social media platforms.

If that newspaper column existed today, it would be called “China Is Great. Whoever Says Otherwise Is Our Enemy.” And it would be impossible to avoid.

The website of Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Communist Party, added Chinese subtitles to a video from Mr. Noah’s show that featured President Trump and many Fox News personalities, showing how for weeks they played down the risks of the coronavirus.

The subtitled video was widely distributed by Chinese official news outlets. Many of them used the same headline: “Blood is on their hands and they should all be sued!”

The Chinese official media and online commenters loved Mr. Noah even more after Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist, said on his show that the ebbing of cases in China was “very good news.” Global Times subtitled a clip of the praise, which has been viewed nearly 18 million times and liked a quarter of million times on the tabloid’s official account on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform.

“Trevor has the correct value system,” said a comment on a social media article that not only posted the video but translated many angry comments by American viewers. “I love this guy,” another reader commented in English.

“Is he ‘kissing the ass’ of China?” another social media blog postasked rhetorically. “No, he’s just telling the truth.”

Many of the same people praising Mr. Noah have been slinging arrows and rocks at Fang Fang, whose real name is Wang Fang, for telling the truth about China.

Her diary was moderate and personal, and a place where many of us turned for comfort during the darkest hours of China’s epidemic. But after Harper Collins announced plans to publish it in English, tens of thousands of online users descended on her Weibo account, saying she was a traitor for supporting the enemy’s narrative.

In a commentary, Hu Xijin, the Global Times editor, wrote that Fang Fang’s diary would be used by political forces abroad and that the Chinese people might have to “pay the price for Fang Fang’s fame in the West.”

The online backlash has been so severe, Fang Fang wrote on Weibo, that it reminds her of the Cultural Revolution, the decade of political violence and chaos that she saw as a child. The only comfort, she wrote, is that “this type of Cultural Revolution is only conducted in cyberspace.”

More obscure people have also been subjected to hate. A woman in Wuhan who lost her daughter received what she described as a “Fang Fang-scale online attack” after she shared her grief on the internet and questioned whether the tragedy could have been avoided.

One user, who claimed to be a Wuhan resident, too, reprimanded her. “You can only represent the 1 percent who are dead,” the user wrote. “You can’t represent Wuhan. Do not disturb the 99 percent of us who are enjoying life.”

State-run media stands ready to elevate those who reinforce Beijing’s message.

Mr. Kowal, the American video blogger, won millions of views on Bilibili, a video site popular among young Chinese people, for his virus-related content out of New York. His videos also got him a 50-minute live appearance on China Central Television, the state broadcaster, to talk about the field hospital in Central Park and the shortage of personal protective equipment.

But such messages aren’t welcome when they’re about China. Three of Mr. Kowal’s Chinese counterparts, Chen Qiushi, Fang Binand Li Zehua, had tried to do the same thing in Wuhan during the peak of the outbreak. Their videos can’t be found online in China; they were able to upload their videos only to YouTube, which is blocked in the country. All three men have since vanished.

In his last video, which streamed his four-hour standoff with the state police outside his door, Mr. Li, a former CCTV anchor, compared young Chinese people to the protagonist in “The Truman Show,” the Jim Carrey movie in which the title character’s whole life is a lie.

But the lie they are living in is worse, because it is fueled by hatred. A generation of people is learning to hate not only people like Fang Fang but foreigners as well.

After Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, was admitted into intensive care with Covid-19, mocking comments from Weibo users — like “Can I laugh?” — received thousands of likes. When the United States surpassed China as the country with the most confirmed infections, many Chinese commenters gloated, “Congratulations!”

Gauging real sentiment in an authoritarian society is impossible. But the belligerent online environment has made many people uneasy.

Cui Yongyuan, a well-known former talk show host, in a recent article compared the online warriors to the fighters in the anti-foreigner, anti-Christian Boxer Rebellion in 1900.

“There are more and more Boxers online,” he wrote. “The Qing dynasty became the enemy of the world because of the Boxers’ evil behavior. One need not look far for a lesson.”

Source: With Selective Virus Coverage, China Builds a Culture of HateThe state propaganda machine highlights other countries’ mistakes while suppressing China’s, fueling anger toward foreigners and domestic critics.

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Liberal government’s ‘almost humiliating’ posture toward China a missed opportunity: former top diplomat

2020/04/21 Leave a comment

ICYMI. While David Mulroney is the more “hardline” of the two, the fundamental message from Guy Saint-Jacques is the same:

Two former diplomats are warning that the Liberal government’s recent silence on China could reinforce the country’s increasingly belligerent actions on the world stage, amid concerns Chinese officials actively misled the World Health Organization during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

David Mulroney, who served as Canadian ambassador to China in Beijing between 2009 and 2012, said Ottawa’s “almost humiliating” posture toward China in recent weeks was a missed opportunity to acknowledge the country’s shortcomings during the viral outbreak.

China has drawn criticism for providing potentially faulty information to the WHO, particularly in the first weeks of the spread of COVID-19, which in turn left world leaders largely ill-prepared for the virus.

Guy Saint-Jacques, who served as Canada’s envoy to China from 2012 to 2016, said leaders in Canada and elsewhere need to call for a full investigation of the WHO after it uncritically relayed information from Beijing observers claim could be inaccurate.

He also denounced recent “reprehensible” comments by Health Minister Patty Hajdu, who dismissed claims about faulty Chinese reporting as “conspiracy theories” that originated “on the Internet.”

Mulroney said the recent silence by Ottawa is part of a long-standing instinct to gloss over Chinese aggressions, largely due to its tendency to retaliate and its growing economic heft. But an unwillingness to acknowledge even the possibility of Chinese misdeeds could sow public distrust.

“Ottawa can’t seem to shake this tendency to flatter,” he said in an interview with the National Post.

“I’m not suggesting that we need to insult China or provoke a quarrel. We should simply be guided by the facts. And right now the facts argue for the case that China was delinquent, that it wasn’t transparent enough. That’s not a conspiracy theory.”

“When you start acknowledging the truth, then positive and corrective action is possible. As long as you’re in denial, there’s no hope of action that will ameliorate the situation. This is a tremendous missed opportunity and it’s not too late for the government to slowly turn the ship around,” Mulroney said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has batted away repeated questions about the WHO this week, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would withdraw funding from the organization.

Then on Thursday, Trudeau came closer to acknowledging some of the criticisms of China and the WHO, saying “there have been questions asked” about the organization, “but at the same time it is really important that we stay coordinated as we move through this.”

Both former ambassadors said Trump’s threat to immediately pull funding from the WHO would needlessly and dangerously cripple the organization at a critical time.

Saint-Jacques, who acknowledged that Ottawa is in a “delicate” position with regards to China, said world leaders should call for a thorough review of the WHO’s handling of the pandemic once it is under control.

“You have to draw a line,” Saint-Jacques said. “You have to stop such behaviour. You have to acknowledge that if you dealt with this issue with a lot more transparency we would have avoided an international crisis that has led to one of the greatest recessions of our times.”

The Trudeau government has repeatedly been forced to navigate tense relations with China, particularly after Canadian authorities arrested the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies in 2018, at the request of the U.S.

An attempt by Trudeau early in his leadership to forge a free trade deal with the country quickly evaporated, after Chinese officials made it clear that they were disinterested in certain “progressive” elements put forward by Canada, including proposals around environmental policy and gender-based analysis.

“Cabinet did not fully realize what I call the dark side of China,” Saint-Jacques said of the trade mission.

Criticism of the WHO began in earnest on Jan. 14, when Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the organization, tweeted a message nearly identical to that of the Chinese government, saying researchers “have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the coronavirus.

By Jan. 20 Chinese officials finally confirmed that the virus could indeed spread through human contact, and shut down the city of Wuhan, where the virus originated. Another week passed before the WHO declared a public health emergency.

On Feb. 6, weeks after the body had designated a public health emergency, the organization issued a press release calling on countries to avoid imposing travel bans or “medically unnecessary restrictions” against China, saying such moves could “fuel racism” against the country.

Those directives were absorbed by national governments around the world, who were in turn caught off guard by the scope and nature of COVID-19.

The WHO’s director-general has dismissed much of the criticism of his organization as unnecessary “politicization” of the issue, but he has said the virus exposed some shortcomings at the United Nations group.

“No doubt, areas for improvement will be identified and there will be lessons for all of us to learn. But for now, our focus — my focus — is on stopping this virus and saving lives.”

Source: Liberal government’s ‘almost humiliating’ posture toward China a missed opportunity: former top diplomat

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No evidence to back WHO director general’s accusations against Taiwan

2020/04/21 Leave a comment

Likely not the end of this story:

The pattern surrounding the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Beijing party-state’s ongoing influence over it continues. Taiwan, a nation that has shown impressive success in combatting the COVID-19 virus despite its exclusion from WHO, is now accused of racism by the organization’s director general.

WHO Director General Tedros A. Ghebreyesus—an Ethiopian microbiologist and the first African to hold the position—asserted that Taiwan’s government not only launched a cyber campaign against him, but is also the instigator of the racism directed at Africans in general.

In a press briefing on April 6, the director general claimed he had been the victim of racially abusive attacks emanating from Taiwan, and that the country’s foreign ministry had actually stepped up its criticism of him.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wen and the ministry of foreign affairs have denied the charges.

Given the fraught situation between Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) generally, including the latter’s manipulation of WHO policies of Taiwan exclusion over the years—combined with the Beijing government’s serious mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, the evidence appears clearly stacked against Tedros’ claims.

President Tsai and her government provided warnings to the WHO as early as last December, which, if not ignored, as they were, might have saved thousands of lives.

For nearly half a century, the People’s Republic of China has effectively blocked Taiwan from joining the WHO. Despite never having exercised authority over the island, the CCP deems Taiwan part of its territory, and forces international organizations—including the United Nations and its agencies like the WHO—to accept its view.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, one of WHO’s top advisers recently evaded and then abruptly cut off Hong Kong journalist Yvonne Tong’s question on whether WHO would reconsider Taiwan’s status in light of the country’s exemplary performance in curbing the spread of COVID-19.

According to the reputable Foreign Policy Magazine, Beijing succeeded from the first outbreak of the coronavirus in misdirecting the World Health Organization (WHO), which receives comparatively modest funding from it but has somehow become obedient to it on many levels.

WHO’s international experts could not gain access to China until Tedros visited President Xi Jinping in Beijing at the end of January. Before then, WHO uncritically repeated information from party-state authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors. Reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” WHO denied as late as Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.

After China’s pandemic had levelled off, notes the Foreign Policy article, Tedros then praised Beijing’s “success.”

In sharp contrast, Taiwan has been treated as an outcast by the WHO, despite its exemplary performance in the current world crisis.

Almost 100 anti-COVID-19 initiatives from Taiwan’s national government included: screening Wuhan flights as early as Dec. 31; banning Wuhan residents on Jan. 23; suspending Taiwanese visits to Hubei province on Jan. 25; and barring all Chinese arrivals on Feb. 6. These and other measures resulted in only 388 confirmed cases and six deaths as of April 12 in a population of almost 24 million.

The WHO not only ignores Taiwan’s medical expertise, but also its status vis-à-vis China.

During the current pandemic, the organization keeps changing how it refers to Taiwan, going from “Taiwan, China,” to “Taipei” to the newer “Taipei and its environs”. It permitted Beijing to report Taiwan’s coronavirus numbers as part of its own total, instead of reporting Taiwan’s numbers alone—a conflation that created headaches for the smaller nation. Some countries imposed travel restrictions  on Taiwan along with China, despite the former’s small infection rate.

“Taiwan’s selfless medical workers and volunteers can be found around the world. The Taiwanese people do not differentiate by skin colour or language; all of us are brothers and sisters,” Tsai said in response to Tedros’ accusations. “We have never let our inability to join international organizations lessen our support for the international community.” She added that the WHO head was welcome to visit Taiwan and see for himself.

The internationally acknowledged success of Taiwan with the scourge of COVID-19 might lead to a diplomatic opening. Its government has already concluded a bilateral agreement with the United States to send masks, which could lead to drugs and vaccines going to America for clinical trials. Other governments seem likely to follow.

Susan Korah is an Ottawa-based journalist and David Kilgour was secretary of state, Asia-Pacific, 2002-2003, and Africa/Latin America, 1997-2002, in the Chrétien government.

Source: OpinionNo evidence to back WHO director general’s accusations against Taiwan

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COVID-19: China tries to heal its coronavirus-hit image, but plan backfiring in the West

2020/04/16 Leave a comment

Good account:

As China in March became the first major country to recover from the coronavirus outbreak that spread from the central city of Wuhan, its officials kicked off another campaign: to heal its tattered international image.

President Xi Jinping held a flurry of phone calls with world leaders to promise aid. More than 170 Chinese medical experts were dispatched to Europe, Southeast Asia and Africa. State media outlets flooded the Internet with photos of Chinese masks arriving in 100 countries and stories questioning the epidemic’s origins. Ambassadors flooded international newspapers with op-eds hailing the sacrifices Beijing made to buy time for other countries without acknowledging how the outbreak erupted in the first place.

One month later, that campaign has yielded mixed results. In many cases, it has outright backfired.

In Britain, a parliamentary committee on foreign relations urged the government to fight a surge in Chinese disinformation. Officials in Germany and at least one state – Wisconsin – exposed quiet outreach attempts from Chinese officials hoping to persuade them to publicly praise China.

In Spain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, governments announced recalls of Chinese masks and testing kits after large batches were found to be defective, undercutting what China sought to portray as goodwill gestures. In Nigeria, the country’s professional medical association slammed a government decision to invite a team of Chinese doctors, going as far as claiming that they might carry the disease with them.

And on Twitter, Chinese diplomats have not only spread China’s message but gone on the counterattack. They publicly feuded with the Brazilian president’s son and his education minister, who accused Beijing of seeking “world domination” by controlling protective-equipment supplies. They tangled with Iran’s Health Ministry spokesman, who questioned the accuracy of Chinese epidemic data, and lashed out at a Sri Lankan businessman who criticized China’s epidemic response.

The wave of skepticism, sometimes from nations friendly toward China, underscores the size of the challenge facing foreign policymakers in Beijing as they look toward the post-pandemic global landscape. While governments from Washington to Brussels have been faulted for mismanaging the crisis or failing to galvanize an international response, China’s standing has taken a hit precisely at a moment when the country was positioning itself as an up-and-coming leader in world affairs.

“They know when the dust settles and people turn their eye toward whether Beijing was responsible, it’s going to be a very difficult situation,” said Nadège Rolland, a senior fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research, who described China’s globe-spanning, hard-sell campaign in recent weeks as public relations “on steroids.”

“They’re trying to get ahead of that narrative” of blame, Rolland added. “It’s as much out of fear as it is confidence.”

Chinese officials have appeared frustrated by the emerging backlash to what they say is simply altruism. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said this month that China was not using coronavirus diplomacy to burnish its image or extend its influence over countries. Chinese officials have also pledged to immediately crack down on shoddy medical equipment.

“We would like to share China’s good practices and experience with other countries, but we will not turn it into any kind of geopolitical weapon or tool,” Hua said. “Leadership is not gained by boasting or jostling.”

To be certain, many countries with growing investment ties with China, particularly across Southeast Asia, have responded positively. In Serbia, a billboard reading “Thank You, Big Brother Xi” went up in the streets of Belgrade. Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, a member of the Euroskeptic Five Star Movement, uploaded a Facebook video showing him receiving shipments of Chinese medical equipment.

He said the Chinese aid validated his party’s decision to distance itself from the European Union.

“Joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative saved Italian lives,” Di Maio declared, referring to Xi’s signature policy to expand Beijing’s influence through infrastructure and loan programs, in comments widely reported in Chinese state media.

In several African countries, China’s reputation was bolstered by speedy donations made by Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder of Chinese tech behemoth Alibaba.

“China led a master class in modern public diplomacy with its medical donations, leveraging a vast propaganda network that it built in Africa over the past 10 to 15 years,” said Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Africa Project.

China started to lose momentum in the “donation diplomacy” narrative after reports emerged that the quality of the masks may have been suspect, Olander added. But in the early weeks, the Chinese aid was “warmly received by the governing elites,” he said. “People were impressed.”

In many Western countries, it has not been so much China’s medical assistance that has drawn consternation, but rather Beijing’s departure from its traditional diplomacy into the realm of disinformation that had rarely been seen from China before the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan in late 2019.

Last month, when Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian and other diplomats questioned whether the virus was brought to China by U.S. military personnel, it provoked a furious response from Washington. A disinformation watchdog agency of the European Union rejected the Chinese officials’ conspiracy theory.

After Chinese state media widely reported that a renowned Italian researcher had said the coronavirus may have originated in Italy, not Wuhan, the nephrologist Giuseppe Remuzzi spoke to Italian daily il Foglio to correct the record, saying his words had been distorted for propaganda purposes.

Zhiqun Zhu, chair of international relations at Bucknell University and author of the book “China’s New Diplomacy,” said the coronavirus has sharpened a long-standing debate within Chinese diplomatic circles: Should China wage an all-out “discourse” war to beat back critics like Trump administration officials and assert its prerogatives as a world power? Or should it present a more humble, less confrontational face?

“There is no consensus in diplomatic establishment circles,” Zhu said. “Surely some diplomats know that outside, the world blames China, that the propaganda projecting China as its savior is counterproductive. But right now, the leadership also wants to boost nationalism at home.”

Zhu said more traditional-minded Chinese diplomats, including the long-serving ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai, have sought to tamp down the spread of fringe theories and the bureaucracy’s most combative impulses. In a couched essay in the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper this month, another senior official, former vice foreign minister Fu Ying, said Chinese diplomats should uphold “the spirit of humility and tolerance, and adhere to communication, learning, and openness.”

Chinese intellectuals have also worried about their country’s deteriorating image under the current diplomatic tack. A drumbeat has grown from conservative politicians in both the United States and Britain to demand economic reparations from China, although it’s not clear whether such an effort would succeed in international court.

In widely distributed essays, leading economist Hua Sheng warned China against spreading conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus or “gloating” when other countries were still struggling to overcome the pandemic. He urged China to have the courage to conduct an accounting of what went wrong in Wuhan.

“Some people say if we investigate our country’s culpability, we would be giving evidence to outsiders and give them a tool to hurt our national interests,” Hua wrote. “I must say, it’s precisely the opposite.”

Lucrezia Poggetti, a researcher at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, said China’s internal dynamics and the emphasis on saving face for the domestic population meant it was highly unlikely that the government would thoroughly admit fault or show weakness on the international stage.

But even if Chinese diplomats successfully manage the near-term public relations crisis, they might struggle to counter the longer-term trends already set in motion by the pandemic. As an example, Poggetti said, European countries – including France, Germany and Britain – and the United States and Japan are reassessing their dependence on China for critical health and national security-related supplies.

“There will be a reckoning after the pandemic ends,” she said.

Source: COVID-19: China tries to heal its coronavirus-hit image, but plan backfiring in the West

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Cotler: The Chinese Communist Party’s culture of corruption and repression has cost lives around the world

2020/04/16 Leave a comment

Former Justice minister Irwin Cotler  and Judith Abitan on the Chinese government’s responsibility for the spread of COVID-19 and associated repression:

There is authoritative and compelling evidence that if President Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had intervened and reported on its coronavirus outbreak three weeks earlier, transmission of COVID-19 could have been reduced significantly around the world. One study, from the University of Southampton, even suggested transmission could have been reduced by 95 per cent.

For 40 days, Mr. Xi’s CCP concealed, destroyed, falsified and fabricated information about the rampant spread of COVID-19 through its massive state-sanctioned surveillance and suppression of data; misrepresentation of information; silencing and criminalizing of dissent; and the disappearance of whistleblowers – all of which reflect the breadth of criminality and corruption in the party.

In late December 2019, Dr. Ai Fen, director of the emergency department at the Central Hospital of Wuhan, shared the lab results of a patient suffering from “SARS coronavirus” with relevant departments in her hospital and with a former medical school classmate; her information was then disseminated in medical circles. For this, she suffered an “unprecedented and severe rebuke” two days later.

Dr. Ai also detailed efforts to silence her in a story titled, “The one who supplied the whistle,” published in China’s People (Renwu) magazine in March. The article has since been removed – and Dr. Ai has herself recently disappeared.

After Dr. Ai initially shared the information, eight doctors were arrested, including Dr. Li Wenliang, now regarded by many in China as a “hero” and “the awakener.” They were reprimanded for spreading rumours and summoned to sign statements admitting to making false statements that disturbed the public order. Dr. Li died of COVID-19 on Feb. 7, prompting national outrage. The fate of the other seven people remains unknown.

On Jan. 4, Dr. Ho Pak Leung, the president of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Infection, indicated that it was highly probable that COVID-19 spread from human to human and urged the implementation of a strict monitoring system. But for weeks, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission continued to declare that preliminary investigations did not show any clear evidence of human-to-human transmission. On Jan. 14, the WHO reaffirmed China’s statement.

On Jan. 22, the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, even praised the CCP’s handling of the outbreak, commending Mr. Xi and Premier Li Keqiang for their “invaluable” leadership.

On Jan. 23, Chinese authorities announced their first steps to quarantine Wuhan, but by then it was too late. Millions of people had already visited Wuhan and left during the Chinese New Year, and a significant number of Chinese citizens had traveled overseas as asymptomatic carriers.

Yet the CCP continued its crackdown on dissent. On Feb. 23, Ren Zhiqiang, a real-estate tycoon and long-time critic of the CCP, wrote in an essay that he “saw not an emperor standing there exhibiting his ‘new clothes,’ but a clown stripped naked who insisted he continue being emperor.” He spoke of a “crisis of governance” and criticized the strict limits on free speech, which he felt had magnified the COVID-19 epidemic. Mr. Ren has also gone missing, and it was reported only recently that the CCP has opened an investigation against him.

The world would have been more prepared and able to combat COVID-19 were it not for Mr. Xi’s authoritarian regime’s widespread and systematic pattern of sanitizing the massive domestic repression of its people.

The CCP’s 40 days of silence and suppression resulted in Italy – the epicentre of Europe’s COVID-19 pandemic – having a death toll of 12 per cent, more than double that of China’s, followed by Spain with a mortality rate of 10 per cent. At time of writing, the United States – where presidential leadership has been wanting – has become the pandemic’s new epicentre, and there is heightened concern about what could become of dense, developing countries such as India, and countries with large immunosuppressed populations, such as South Africa.

Indeed, as a New York Times editorial reported yesterday, “the global coronavirus crisis is poised to get much much worse… (spreading) through countries ravaged by conflict, through packed refugee camps and detention centers in places like Syria or Bangladesh…,” or deeply packed urban centers in fragile states without health systems.

In South Korea, health workers pioneered using COVID-19 testing centres to collect swabs from more than 15,000 people a day before quarantining the infected immediately thereafter – one of the only precedents and case studies to date for a situation in which the number of infections and deaths have significantly fallen. That had also seemed to be occurring in China in recent weeks, but various intelligence agencies and reports have suggested that Beijing failed to accurately report its data. There have now been reports of a second wave, but also reports of the CCP censoring scientific findings and related publications.

Attention should also be drawn to the CCP’s massive surveillance and suppression of data juxtaposed with its misrepresentation of information. China’s enormous data-collection efforts, through approximately 200 million CCTV cameras, not only precipitated the highest-tech epidemic control ever attempted by the CCP, but also underpinned the seriousness of its repression.

The CCP’s infodemic – in addition to its intense spinning of solidarity on social media and its framing of a “people’s war against the virus” – gave the farcical illusion of a coming-together in China. The extent of the CCP’s self-promotion and its portrayal of Mr. Xi as a hero ready to save the world, all while making Western democracies look grossly incompetent if not responsible for the virus, is as shameful as it is duplicitous.

Simply put, Mr. Xi’s government exacerbated the world’s COVID-19 health and systemic crises, which has paved the way for one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history.

The world is now watching. People in China no longer stand alone. Many are no longer fearful. They have already started publishing first-hand accounts of the CCP’s orchestrated cover-ups and monumental failures, revealing its rotten core.

In defending the struggle for democracy and human rights in China, the international community must stand in solidarity with the people of China in seeking to unmask the CCP’s criminality, corruption and impunity.

The Community of Democracies must undertake the necessary legal initiatives – be it through international tort actions as authorized by Treaty Law, or the utilization of international bodies such as the International Court of Justice – to underpin the courage and commitment of China’s human-rights defenders. This is what justice and accountability is all about.

Source: The Chinese Communist Party’s culture of corruption and repression has cost lives around the world: Irwin Cotler and Judith Abitan

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China’s Coronavirus Battle Is Waning. Its Propaganda Fight Is Not.

2020/04/09 Leave a comment

Not surprising:

For months the Chinese government’s propaganda machine had been fending off criticism of Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, and finally, it seemed to be finding an audience. Voices from the World Health Organization to the Serbian government to the rapper Cardi B hailed China’s approach as decisive and responsible.

But China could not savor the praise for long. In recent days, foreign leaders, even in friendly nations like Iran, have questioned China’s reported infections and deaths. A top European diplomat warned that China’s aid to the continent was a mask for its geopolitical ambitions, while a Brazilian official suggested the pandemic was part of China’s plan to “dominate the world.”

As the pandemic unleashes the worst global crisis in decades, China has been locked in a public relations tug-of-war on the international stage.

China’s critics, including the Trump administration, have blamed the Communist Party’s authoritarian leadership for exacerbating the outbreak by initially trying to conceal it. But China is trying to rewrite its role, leveraging its increasingly sophisticated global propaganda machine to cast itself as the munificent, responsible leader that triumphed where others have stumbled.

What narrative prevails has implications far beyond an international blame game. When the outbreak subsides, governments worldwide will confront crippled economies, unknown death tolls and a profound loss of trust among many of their people. Whether Beijing can step into that void, or is pilloried for it, may determine the fate of its ambitions for global leadership.

“I think that the Chinese remain very fearful about what will happen when we finally all get on top of this virus, and there is going to be an investigation of how it started,” said Bonnie Glaser, the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They’re just trying to repair the damage that was done very early on to China’s reputation.”

The crux of China’s narrative is its numbers. Since late March, the country has consistently reported zero or single-digit new local infections, and on Wednesday, it lifted its lockdown in Wuhan, where the outbreak began. In all, the country has reported nearly 84,000 infections and about 3,300 deaths — a stark contrast to the United States, which has reported more than 399,000 infections, and Spain and Italy, each with more than 135,000.

The numbers prove, China insists, that its response was quick and responsible, and its tactics a model for the rest of the world. During a visit last month to Wuhan, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, said that “daring to fight and daring to win is the Chinese Communist Party’s distinct political character, and our distinct political advantage.”

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China needs more, not fewer, immigrants holders

2020/04/07 Leave a comment

An interesting opinion piece. Like so many calls for increased immigration, primarily based on addressing the aging demographicsd along with attracting talent to support innovation:

China’s latest draft law on granting permanent residency to foreigners has touched a nerve among the public. It has been met with overwhelming disapproval, fanning fears that a “lowered threshold” will lead to an influx of immigrants who will put a strain on resources.

A closer look at the proposed regulation, however, finds the bar for obtaining a Chinese “green card” remains extremely high. For instance, a skilled applicant is required to hold a doctoral degree or a diploma from “an internationally renowned university”, to have at least three years of work experience and have lived in China for a year minimum.

China’s existing green card system, which began in 2004, is more of an obstacle than a channel for foreigners looking to settle in the country. In the past 15 years, only about 10,000 foreigners have obtained permanent residency.

Except for a handful of non-natives like Tesla founder Elon Musk, obtaining the right to reside in China for most professionals is mission impossible. The latest official data shows that China issued 1,500 green cards in 2016. The United States government by comparison provided about a million that same year, including more than 77,000 to people born in China.

As a result, the foreign community in the world’s second largest economy is tiny. It is estimated that China, a country of 1.4 billion people, has just one million foreigners working and living here. The coronavirus may shrink that number further.

Japan has a foreign-born population of 2.2 million, including 320,000 permanent residents, out of a total population of more than 127 million. The US has more than 44 million foreigners, including 13.2 million permanent residency holders, out of a total of over 327 million.

China’s green card system is too protective and turns away overseas talent. Without permanent residence, life can get very frustrating – from schooling to buying a high speed railway ticket.

If it wants to become an innovative country, China has to be more open to foreign talent. Immigrants are often more willing to take risks, work harder and innovate. Skilled migrants have an important role to play in scientific research, education and industrial upgrading. It is no accident that China’s best cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, have the highest presence of foreign residents in the country.

The US, which has the highest proportion of immigrants among developed nations, has had commendable success in this regard. Immigrants are one reason for America’s tech power; in Silicon Valley, the heart of the US technology industry, more than a third of the population are foreign-born.

Although China has temporarily closed its borders to foreigners due to concerns over imported coronavirus cases, it cannot afford to allow these restrictions to impede its long-term growth and prosperity.

The proposed permanent residency threshold should be lowered further. For instance, the investment migration threshold of 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million) proposed in the draft can be lowered to one million yuan, while the education threshold can be lowered from a doctorate to a bachelor’s degree.

At the same time, the Chinese public has a reason to be sceptical about allowing foreigners to settle permanently in China as the government still discriminates against its own citizens in terms of residency.

Where Beijing’s ‘bottom of society’ live

A migrant worker from a rural province is unable to get permanent residency in a big city like Beijing even if he has been working and living in the city for decades. Try persuading him that foreign passport holders can settle permanently while he can’t.

The migration debate, in a nutshell, comes down to whether a nation’s population is viewed as a burden or a resource.

Given that China’s population is ageing rapidly after four decades of rigid birth controls, it has come to a point where it must rethink both its population and immigration policies. China cannot pin its hopes on foreigners to solve labour force shrinkage, but a larger flow of immigrants is desirable, along with encouraging new births.

If China remains unfriendly to new births and immigrants, the country will face an ageing population and its innovative capacity will be crippled – a threat to the country’s aspirations. Therefore, it is in China’s fundamental interest to issue more, instead of fewer, green cards.

Source: China needs more, not fewer, immigrants holders

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WHO’s early coronavirus response raises awkward questions about Beijing relationship

2020/04/04 Leave a comment

Good in-depth article:

In the early afternoon of Jan. 31, the lead World Health Organization representative in Beijing held a video briefing to update diplomats on the spread of a deadly new virus – and to laud China for everything it was doing.

Only a day before, the WHO had declared a “public-health emergency of international concern” over the deadly new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, after an initial outbreak in China’s Hubei province began to spread around the world. The WHO also said no restrictions on travel or trade were necessary.

On the video briefing, the WHO’s top man in China, Gauden Galea, praised the Chinese virus response. Then he went a step further, calling on other countries not to step out of line with the WHO recommendations, a key concern for Beijing, which was furious that countries were beginning to close their borders to Chinese travellers.

Any United Nations member country “will have to scientifically justify” any measure that “goes beyond UN recommendation. This justification will be made public,” Mr. Galea said, according to notes of the meeting made by one of the participants and seen by The Globe and Mail.

It amounted to a warning from the WHO, said the person, whose identity The Globe is not disclosing because the source is not authorized to speak publicly. And it was directly in line with messages from Beijing, which in subsequent days said it “deplored” countries that ignored WHO recommendations and enacted travel bans that, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, “sowed panic among the public” and “gravely disrupted” trade.

Now, with the virus rapidly spreading across Canada, new questions are being asked about the WHO’s relationship with China and whether the organization has sought to curry favour with Beijing – for access or money – in ways that have undermined the reliability of its advice.

In 2003, the WHO vocally criticized Chinese leadership for covering up the initial spread of the virus that caused SARS. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the organization has pointedly refused to denounce China’s concealment of information, even after it became clear that authorities in China had muzzled doctors.

In mid-January, the WHO said it had no evidence of person-to-person transmission of a virus that has subsequently shown a remarkable ability to spread through communities. And the WHO has relied on Chinese official data even when their veracity have been called into doubt – most recently by the U.S. intelligence community, which believes China deliberately manipulated numbers to mask the severity of its COVID-19 toll.

The trustworthiness of the WHO is a particular concern for countries like Canada, where public-health leaders have sought to follow WHO recommendations despite internal warnings about the reliability of information coming from China. On Thursday, Ms. Hua sought to deflect concern, saying, “China has been giving open, transparent and timely updates to the world.” Rather than listen to those accusing China of a cover-up, she said, “we should listen to the WHO.“

But concern about the relationship between the WHO and China has grown more intense as the virus pandemic claims tens of thousands of lives, bringing new attention to early failures in detection and containment. The WHO cannot work in China without Beijing’s support, and the organization has won praise for its more recent advocacy of strong measures to counter COVID-19.

Still, Mr. Galea’s admonition in late January only added to worry that the WHO was prioritizing the interests of China over those of other countries.

The WHO, in a statement, said Mr. Galea in the January briefing “referred to the sovereign right of all countries to take the measures they see fit.” But to some in attendance, his admonition only added to worry that the WHO was prioritizing the interests of China over those of other countries.

“National governments didn’t get warned as urgently as perhaps they could have by World Health officials about the severity and potential for non-containment of the virus,” said Andrew Lakoff, an anthropologist of science and medicine at University of Southern California Dornsife. A key question now is: ”What did the WHO know and why didn’t they earlier and more urgently warn other member states?” he said.

Andrew Cooper, a professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ont., who studies global health governance, is blunt: For WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “his priority is to maintain good relations with China.” Beijing has provided more cash than Washington to the WHO COVID-19 response. But China remains far from the largest contributor to the WHO, giving less than 10 per cent of what the United States provided last year.

Beijing, however, has made concerted efforts to increase its influence at key international organizations, and the WHO missteps on COVID-19 have brought that into striking relief.

The “evident bias” in favour of China at the WHO “matches the weakness of other UN organizations in the face of China’s powerful campaigning,” François Godement, senior adviser for Asia at the Institut Montaigne, wrote in a recent internet post. Once China itself began to act decisively against the virus, the WHO became a valuable clearinghouse for information, he wrote. But a key question for the WHO remains “how to lessen the impact of a relentless authoritarian regime.”

Canada has publicly expressed confidence in the WHO. Canadian Health Minister Patty Hajdu initially said Canada would follow WHO advice to avoid travel bans, saying “there isn’t evidence” for their effectiveness. It was not until March 18 that Canada closed its borders to most foreigners.

On Thursday, Ms. Hajdu said “there is no indication” that China has falsified data about virus infection and death rates, and accused a reporter of “feeding into conspiracy theories” for questioning the accuracy of Chinese data – and the WHO information that relies upon China.

Chinese authorities have themselves admitted that, until recently, their numbers of confirmed cases did not include people without obvious symptoms. Even in China’s tightly controlled media, numerous questions have been raised about the accuracy of China’s numbers, particularly after photos from coronavirus epicentre Wuhan showed large numbers of boxes containing cremated remains.

It’s a question that has been raised at the highest levels in Canada, too.

Beginning in late January, the Prime Minister’s Office received internal warnings questioning the reliability of China’s reporting on the spread of the virus epidemic, according to a person with knowledge of the information shared internally. The Globe is not identifying the person because they are not authorized to make public comments.

Canada had long since lost some of its own ability to independently scrutinize information coming from China. Under David Butler-Jones, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer between 2004 and 2014, the Public Health Agency of Canada stationed a representative in Beijing – a medical doctor with a specialization in public health.

“It’s a way of getting an earlier heads up … so that if something is developing, we can get good intelligence on it early and get ahead of it,” Mr. Butler-Jones said in an interview. But the doctor who occupied that post left Beijing in 2015 and has not been replaced, leaving Canada with no one in such a position in China during the spread of COVID-19.

“For me, it’s frustrating,” Mr. Butler-Jones said. The position was in China “for good reason.”

Still, other sources of information underscored the threat. One was Taiwan, a region still plagued by memories of the Chinese cover-up of the SARS epidemic nearly two decades earlier. Taiwan, shut out of the WHO at the insistence of China, was ill-disposed to believe Beijing’s early assurances on the new coronavirus.

“We don’t trust anything related to new outbreaks from China,” said Chang-Chuan Chan, dean of the college of public health at National Taiwan University.

Taiwan began inspecting passengers arriving from Wuhan on Dec. 31, and sent a technical team to the virus-stricken city on Jan. 13 to 14. The delegation, which also included experts from Hong Kong and Macau, was controlled in what it could see, and denied access to the seafood market that is believed to be at the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak. But the Taiwanese experts came away convinced that “there is already person-to-person transmission,” Prof. Chan said.

This was out of step with the WHO, which issued a tweet on the night the Taiwanese left Wuhan saying “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of COVID-19.

The WHO acted “on the basis of available information,” said spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic, citing a statement from Chinese authorities on Jan. 14 that “there is no evidence to date of a highly contagious virus.”

The close partnership between Beijing and the WHO has continued, with some of the organization’s key leaders showing a striking deference to Chinese priorities, including Bruce Aylward, the Canadian doctor who led a WHO mission to China in February.

He attracted global attention last week when he disconnected a video interview with a Hong Kong journalist after being asked about Taiwan, which Beijing considers its territory. (“The question of Taiwanese membership in WHO is up to WHO member states, not WHO staff,” the organization said in a statement this week. On Thursday, the Hong Kong government said broadcaster RTHK “breached the One-China Principle” with the interview.)

Mr. Aylward’s mission provided another opportunity for co-operation between the WHO and China, which provided 12 of the 25 people on the delegation. Chinese involvement extended to the final edits of the subsequent report, including over which specific language was used.

“There was a bit of wording manipulation, but not the sentiment,” said Dale Fisher, a professor of medicine at the National University of Singapore, and one of the delegates. For example, “we wanted to call it a ‘dangerous’ pathogen, and they felt the word ‘dangerous’ could be linked to bio-terrorism.”

The final report calls COVID-19 “a new pathogen that is highly contagious, can spread quickly, and must be considered capable of causing enormous health, economic and societal impacts.”

The report is effusive toward China, whose virus response it calls “exceptional” and whose people it praises for a deep commitment to “collective action in the face of this common threat.”

All members of the delegation “contributed to the writing, intense discussions and finalization of the report and fully concurred with the final content and language,” said Mr. Jasarevic, the WHO spokesperson. “No major or even minor finding of the mission was not included in the final report.”

Dr. Fisher dismissed criticism that the WHO was too sunny in its report from the mission. ”Everything we saw and everything we learned has completely been replicated elsewhere,” he said, pointing to findings about the ratio of mild, severe and critical cases that have been similar in other countries. “If you’re asking me could it have been any better, my answer is no,” he said.

And it’s not fair to fault the WHO for the failures of other governments to respond, particularly after the severity of the virus became clear in Wuhan, said Bilahari Kausikan, an international affairs specialist who previously served as ambassador-at-large for Singapore.

The United States “wasted time denying that this was a serious issue,” he said. “You can’t blame the WHO for that. You can’t blame the WHO for the Europeans having a terrible, nonchalant attitude toward the whole thing.”

Source: WHO’s early coronavirus response raises awkward questions about Beijing relationship

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China’s COVID-19 disinformation push, aided by Canadian group, raises concerns about next pandemic

2020/03/31 Leave a comment

More on Chinese government disinformation efforts:

It’s safe to say China’s foreign ministry does not often pay much attention to obscure Canadian research organizations run by conspiracy theorists.

But earlier this month the ministry’s spokesman tweeted in English not once but three times about two surprising articles from the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalisation.

“This is so astonishing that it changed many things I used to believe in,” Lijian Zhao wrote to 500,000 followers on a social-media platform his fellow Chinese are banned from using. “Please retweet to let more people know about it.”

The “astonishing” piece suggested that COVID-19 did not originate in Wuhan, China, as Chinese and other scientists have reported, but was brought to Wuhan by American soldiers last November.

This is so astonishing

Despite the dubious source, Zhao tweeted about another article on the institute’s website — a hotbed of 911-deniers and champions of Vladimir Putin’s worldview — and then tweeted “it might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent!”.

Beijing and its media outlets did not stop there. They’ve also suggested recently the virus might have originated in Italy, and that a Wuhan doctor arrested after raising the alarm about the new virus — only to later die from it — was a Communist Party hero, not an inconvenient whistleblower silenced by the state.

Only a couple of months ago, China was pilloried for initially covering up and then underplaying the newly emerging coronavirus.

But as it emerges from a strict lockdown and claims to have snuffed out local transmission of COVID-19, the regime is casting the pandemic in a dramatically new light. It’s one that reflects brightly on the government of President Xi Jinping — and raises worrisome questions about the likelihood of China making changes that might prevent the next pandemic.

“The Chinese Communist Party sees itself as engaged in a global competition over the narrative surrounding COVID-19, its origins and government responses,” says Julian Gewirtz, Harvard-affiliated author of Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists and the Making of Global China.

“The disinformation, the conspiracy theory peddling and the wild and unsubstantiated accusations are prime examples.”

China’s role in the beginnings of the pandemic has, of course, become political fodder in the United States, where President Donald Trump insists on ignoring the medical name of the new disease, calling it the “Chinese virus” instead.

Increased reports of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia in the U.S. have followed. China is a convenient scapegoat now that the U.S. actually has more COVID-19 cases, a soaring death toll and overwhelmed hospitals in some places.

Meanwhile, China has received widespread praise for its eventual, aggressive response to the new virus, imposing a massive quarantine around the epicenter in Wuhan that helped at least slow the virus’s spread elsewhere. Chinese scientists have also been key in isolating the pathogen and mapping out its unique qualities.

The origins of the pandemic are a complex question best left to scientists, said China’s embassy to Canada in an email response to National Post questions.

“People of the world have all witnessed that it is under the leadership of the CPC (Communist Party of China) that the Chinese people achieved independence, freedom and liberation and made enormous progress in national development,” said the mission’s statement. “It is also under the leadership of the CPC that the Chinese nation united as one and speedily fought against COVID-19, buying precious time for the global response.”

The Chinese Communist Party sees itself as engaged in a global competition over the narrative surrounding COVID-19, its origins and government responses

But beyond name-calling by the U.S. and chest-thumping by China, there are clear reasons to look toward Beijing and its part in the expanding crisis, reasons that could determine if the world faces a similar calamity in the near future.

While the precise genesis of the disease is still something of a question mark, the current consensus reflects the conclusions of a group of 34 Chinese researchers, and one Australian, in the journal Lancet late last month.

The coronavirus, like others of its type, seems to have originated in bats, then jumped to live animals sold at a market in Wuhan, the specific culprit likely being an odd beast called a pangolin, and from there to humans, their paper concluded. Microbiologist David Kelvin of Dalhousie University, who has had a longstanding collaboration with researchers in Shantou, China, agrees.

It’s not totally implausible that it might have been circulating in humans earlier somewhere else — like Italy, he said. A “sero-prevalance” study that tested banked blood samples from well before the start of the pandemic might determine if there’s anything to the theory.

But, he said, “the data right now suggest that the origins are Chinese.”

In that regard, COVID-19 has obvious parallels.

The 2003 SARS virus, to which the new virus is closely related, is thought to have originated in bats, then leapt to animals sold at live markets in China’s Guangdong province — probably the civet cat — and on to people.

The H7N9 influenza virus, which has caused a string of relatively small but deadly epidemics in China, likewise moved from bats to wild fowl and then domestic poultry bought live by consumers, Kelvin said.

Wild animal sales were ordered stopped after SARS, then re-emerged. Beijing has now banned trade in live wild animals like the pangolin for food, though apparently not for use in traditional medicine.

Live wild game sales in China and other countries must be ended completely, otherwise “we predict with confidence that COVID-19 will not be the last viral pandemic,” virologist Nathan Wolf and “Guns, Germs and Steel” author Jared Diamond wrote in a recent op-ed article.

Some want a crackdown to go further. Wet markets, generally, even if just selling domestic animals, should be closed, says Kelvin.

Meanwhile, another human factor also seemed key to the spread of COVID-19. As doctors in Wuhan first became aware in December of patients suffering a mystery pneumonia — and infecting health-care workers — some put out the word to colleagues. But then eight of them, including ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, were brought in by police and accused of spreading false rumours. Li died from COVID-19 in February.

When officials publicly acknowledged the emergence of a novel pathogen, they at first played down its seriousness, questioning whether it could be transmitted between humans. A holiday banquet of 40,000 people went ahead in Wuhan on Jan. 13.

The Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto Internet watchdog, later reported that a Chinese live-streaming platform started blocking key words related to the outbreak in late December, with broader censorship following that.

Wuhan was eventually sealed off from the world on Jan. 23, inside a cordon sanitaire of unprecedented scale. Amid the initial suppression, virus carriers had already left the transportation hub in droves. The first Canadian case, a traveller who had visited the city, surfaced Jan. 26.

The emergence of COVID-19 was at first a public-relations disaster for China, an emerging superpower keen to bolster its international influence and prestige.

Then it began trying to change the conversation, and the pandemic’s core facts.

Among the first, startling examples was Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao’s posts earlier this month.

One of the Montreal centre’s articles he tweeted about suggested that American soldiers who visited the World Military Games in Wuhan in December might have brought over the virus. Another suggested they caught the bug from a shuttered U.S. disease lab.

The centre’s website, globalresearch.ca, is replete with such conspiracy theories, including claims that Al Qaeda and the 911 attacks were an American invention, that the U.S. manipulates the weather as a potential weapon of mass destruction and vaccines are “genetic poisons.”

The website earlier came to the attention of the Latvia-based Strategic Communications Centre (StratCom), a NATO-affiliated thinktank, because of its consistent dissemination of articles reflecting Kremlin propaganda. A recent piece suggested NATO was preparing to attack Russia.

Those articles tend to reflect disinformation that was originally spread by Russian operatives. Then, to bolster the legitimacy of the dubious reports in a sort of “information laundering,” the Canadian items are quoted back by Kremlin-controlled media, Janis Sarts, StratCom’s director, said in an interview Friday.

“When Russia needs to refer to a Western source, this is typically the site that is quoted,” he said.

In a similar vein, the site’s articles on COVID-19 quote extensively from the Chinese Communist party’s Global Times, only to be later cited by a Beijing official.

For those not convinced the pandemic originated in the U.S., state-controlled media like the Global Times and CGTN have proffered another suggestion: that it began last November in Italy.

We have not seen the last Li Wenliang

But when Italian newspaper Il Foglio reached the supposed Italian source for one such report, the pharmacology professor told the outlet “it’s propaganda. The virus is from Wuhan. Science has no doubt about that.”

Then there is the reinvention of Li Wenliang’s tragic story. His death triggered an outpouring of public grief and anger at authorities “unlike anything else I can remember,” said Gerwitz.

That was before the regime claimed him as one of its own. Local police were punished for unfairly persecuting him and official organs described him as a loyal party member.

So how does all this bode for the future? If another new virus emerges within its borders, will China be more transparent, allowing public health to quickly and definitively stop the germ before it spreads? Will traditional food commerce be changed for good?

Gerwitz says all countries, and particularly his own, need to be held accountable for how they handled the pandemic, which has killed over 1,000 Americans under a president who also once downplayed its gravity.

As for China, though, he’s not overly optimistic.

Rather than make the necessary changes, Beijing may see the crisis as a reason to intensify even further its surveillance and control of the population.

“We have not seen the last Li Wenliang,” Gerwitz said of the doctor whistleblower. “The question his case raises is whether the next Li Wenliang will even have the opportunity to send that first message.”

Source: China’s COVID-19 disinformation push, aided by Canadian group, raises concerns about next pandemic

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‘They see my blue eyes then jump back’ – China sees a new wave of xenophobia

2020/03/30 Leave a comment

Of note:

Over the past few weeks, as Chinese health officials reported new “imported” coronavirus cases almost every day, foreigners living in the country have noticed a change. They have been turned away from restaurants, shops, gyms and hotels, subjected to further screening, yelled at by locals and avoided in public spaces.

“I’m walking past someone, then they see my blue eyes and jump a foot back,” said Andrew Hoban, 33, who is originally from Ireland and lives in Shanghai.

Experiences range from socially awkward to xenophobic. An American walking with a group of foreigners in a park in Beijing saw a woman grab her child and run the other way. Others have described being called “foreign trash”. A recent online article, under an image of ship stacked with refuse being pushed away from China’s coast, was headlined: “Beware of a second outbreak started by foreign garbage.”

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