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| Xi Jinping in his best Winnie the Pooh mode Surrounded by “those appalling old wax works“ |
Which to some makes me a China apologist, a Chicom running dog. I’ll have to write something nasty about Beijing soon to balance, something about the egregious Winnie the Xi, perhaps. But for now — putting treatment of Uygurs, Tibetans, corruption and censorship, into a box on one side, to come back to later — I’m posting a couple of links to articles noting recent Chinese successes.
I’ve been meaning to write something about how China did so well handing the virus and have been collecting views from in and outside China. After all, whatever one thinks about the nasty side of the regime, it surely has done well in crunching Covid.
I’ll get to that in due course. But for now, an article yesterday by Zhou Xin, arguing that China has done well in controlling the pandemic (it has) and is rebounding fast (it is), making it a good investment bet.
Buried towards the end is something more worrying to me: reference to Xi Jinping’s comments on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War. By the way, what we in the west know as the “Korean War”, China knows as the “Oppose America, Support Korea” war, 抗美援朝, Kang Mei Yuan Chao. Then again, United Nations forces, led by the US, were also supporting “Korea”… The one that 70 years later has comprehensively trounced its northern namesake in every single area of human endeavour, save for the starving of its people and brutalising of its citizens. North Korea: another tiki torch in the triumph of Socialism! Supported by Beijing! Yay! (Oh dear. I can’t write too long without getting crabby at Beijing).
I’ve been meaning to write something about how China did so well handing the virus and have been collecting views from in and outside China. After all, whatever one thinks about the nasty side of the regime, it surely has done well in crunching Covid.
I’ll get to that in due course. But for now, an article yesterday by Zhou Xin, arguing that China has done well in controlling the pandemic (it has) and is rebounding fast (it is), making it a good investment bet.
Buried towards the end is something more worrying to me: reference to Xi Jinping’s comments on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War. By the way, what we in the west know as the “Korean War”, China knows as the “Oppose America, Support Korea” war, 抗美援朝, Kang Mei Yuan Chao. Then again, United Nations forces, led by the US, were also supporting “Korea”… The one that 70 years later has comprehensively trounced its northern namesake in every single area of human endeavour, save for the starving of its people and brutalising of its citizens. North Korea: another tiki torch in the triumph of Socialism! Supported by Beijing! Yay! (Oh dear. I can’t write too long without getting crabby at Beijing).
Back to the article. Zhou paints Xi’s Korean (“Oppose America”) War comments as defensive, as do other China apologists: Xi is quoted as saying “China will not back off from challenges, from Taiwan to the South China Seas”. But it was Xi who set China on a more aggressive posture the moment he became Chairman of the Party in 2012: on Taiwan, in the South China Sea, in Xinjiang, in Tibet, via his Belt and Road initiative, his “Wolf Diplomacy”, his railing against freedom of speech, democracy and western values. It was Xi who single handedly, by his gross bullying, boosted the anti-Beijing, pro-independence parties in Taiwan. It was likely Xi-inspired meddling that boosted anti-China sentiment in Hong Kong, fanning the protest fires. It strikes me as a bit rich therefore to be talking now about “defence”. What, is this supposed to be counted-attack as self- defence?
All that said, here is another article in the strong Chinese rebound, by Yale faculty member Stephen Roach, contrasting China’s handling of Covid with the US’. That’s my second China positive link, re its Covid control and economic recovery.
On the other side of the ledger: have China’s Covid cases been as low as reported? Not quite. Because until recently China did not. count positive but asymptomatic cases as confirmed cases. Even now, they are listed separately, though we now know that they are contagious. China is the only country in the world to count cases like this and is not in keeping with WHO recommendations, as Josephine Ma explains.
China is the only country in the world to adopt a different definition than that of the World Health Organization, which defines a confirmed case as someone who tested positive.…Data shows that asymptomatic cases comprise a significant percentage of the total positives and such patients spread Covid 19.
