Today's China news-Corvid-19 dominates the headlines
I've not posted for a while as I'm trying to complete my dissertation. It's been about 1 year now since I've completed my research and I'm hopeful that I'll defend and graduate this summer. We'll see. Some days I'm hopeful and somedays I feel overwhelmed and lost in data, news, ethnographic stories and how to balance them all.
In the midst of all the news about XJ and then HK and then Corona Virus, I started collecting China-related news articles and sharing them with a few friends who were politely interested and not following much of the stories on their own. Months on now, I just realized that I should be posting those here as well.
So here is my attempt at a frequent new aggregator--no AI, no algorithm. Just me sharing news that I find important/interesting.
This could be a sick game, no pun intended.
Where did this quote come from, the Chernobyl mini-series or news out of Wuhan?
Now the State tells us the situation here is not dangerous. Have faith, comrades. The State tells us it wants to prevent a panic. Listen well! It's true. But it is my experience that when the people ask questions that are not in their own best interest, they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labor and leave matters of the State to the State. We seal off the city. No one leaves. And cut the phone lines. Contain the spread of misinformation.”
Link to a Live Covid-19 Counter
The economic fallout in SEA will be harsh and long-lasting as many countries are too dependent on China.
China’s food security and Bazil. I don't look at China in LA much, but this piece rings true with what I've read about BRI projects in other places.
This week the PD and GT started running pieces that included bits about Traditional Chinese Medicine in their stories--mostly how it's helpful and scientific (because communism is nothing but scientific, just as the folks that survived Chernobyl). Turns out that TMC is another legacy of Mao, and as such it’s mostly propaganda and nationalism. Surprise surprise.
I am not a China is a military threat believer. Meaning, I don't buy the Thucydides Trap theory that China and the US are destined to clash militarily. But I am quite a proponent of the idea that the amoral Chinese system promoted by Chinese communism and large amounts of Chinese cash (and the size of the Chinese market) will mean that China and Chinese business practices will become an ideological threat. Chinese corruption in LA City Hall is the latest piece on this topic.
Shanghai without people. I was last on the Bund in July, and there was standing room only. I was first there in 1995--and it was more populated then than now, though not 2019-levels full.
The first rule that I learned as I began starting research on China was that when it comes to government numbers in China, everything was a lie or at least a fabrication. As one person told me, "I don't lie, I just make one or two words more beautiful." The second rule is that a CCP/government denial is the best confirmation you can ever hope for. Govt denies Covid-19 patient zero is a lab scientist. But then on the same news day... Chinese scientists in Guangzhou research institute publish a paper that claims origins are from a lab.
Weekend news:
There are 1,700 medical professionals in China that are infected with the virus. And of course, you can't trust Chinese numbers. So then add in the numbers that the govt won't report, the fact that there seems to be a high rate of false negatives AND the fact that the Chinese healthcare system was already overburdened before the virus and now it's completely swamped. There are multiple stories about healthcare professionals who are dying from overwork (not the virus).
What's more, China can't get it's story straight. They changed the counting and the numbers went down for 1 day (turned out to be a supplies issue), then the numbers doubled with new testing, and then the numbers jumped 10-fold in a day! And we still don't know the full detials. Some great reporting (no link) from Caixin (Chinese) about how there were recorded cases in BJ and SH two weeks before big announcements of a "new" epidemic in Wuhan. It's also everywhere in SEA, and many of those countries don't have the medical resources to control it.
Yesterday the US AG filed racketeering charges against Huawei. And today the Pentagon allowed the Comm Dept case to move forward. This is all great news, I think. But it could be all for naught if Trump puts Huawei on the table for negotiations of Phase 2. If there is a compelling case to be made that Huawei is neither a CCP pawn nor a bad tech partner in general, I've not heard it.
As I read all the news about China in Oz, Canada, and the US and live and study corporate culture 24/7--I'm convinced that the China Model as an ideology is MUCH more developed/deployed/advanced than most in the West are willing to accept and already much more influential than we fully understand. I believe that the CCP has realized that multiculturalism and socialism are academic and social tools in the West that they can use. Here is a link to a podcast (SpyCast, by the international spy museum) that just happens to be about Chinese agricultural espionage today--it's a pretty good discussion. I had already ordered the book before I listened to the Podcast, and now I'm even more interested in getting to it (once my dissertation is complete. Interesting little side debate near the end about the Chinese scientist at Los Alamos a couple of years back--the host claiming that he was totally guilty but that the FBI was incompetent, while the guest was saying that it was more racial profiling.
Shower thought: I realized the other day that my entire life is China--my work, my reading, my family, my wife's business, most of my friends, as much as 1/2 of my conversations and media is in Chinese, many of my work trips/vacations, most of my meals! For the first 25 years of my life, I would have never have guessed this possible; the last 25 have been a complete second life.
Censorship and Orwellian controls on campuses outside of China are expanding as both Chinese money becomes China's only remaining effective soft power influence and as China (desperately) tries to control everything Chinese (education, media, ethnicity, history, culture, etc.). This story isn't even nearly as scary as the one last week about the Minn St. student who went back to China and was arrested for things he said on twitter the semester before.
I talk with PRChinese students all the time and they are freaked out as much as the HK and Taiwan students are. They are all scared to comment or debate in class because they all assume that someone will report the discussion back to the CCP representative in the PRC embassy. They are worried about their families and their ability to return to school if they go home. The good news is that Uni's are becoming very aware of this right now and are starting to push back. But the bad news is that Chinese money (from the govt, from research investments, from students) is still very powerful and will become more so if the economy slows down in the US (which it will, btw, as the domestic measures to control Covid 19 start to affect the global economy).
In a related story, Harvard and Yale are being investigated for gifts from China/Chinese companies/organizations. This is going to get MUCH MUCH bigger. China runs hundreds of influence programs backed by the coffers of the govt. They pay, like in the case of the Harvard Physics Prof, piles of cash to many thousands of scholars and business people and politicians around the world for either access or turning a blind eye. For example, The Thousand Talents Program is a public program with a private list of over 2000 academics that the Chinese pay for access to their research--The Physics head at Harvard was part of this and was paid millions over the course of the last decade. How there not a public list of the TTP participants yet?
This story pooped up today too--2 years ago this China watcher in NZ was robbed--only her China-specific info at home and at her office. Her piece on the ideological weapons of the PRC is seminal (links in the twitter thread.
And do you remember the millions of people in HK that were protesting against the PRC all last year? Well, they're still at it. Hundreds of protestors last night still fighting the govt and their appeasement of Beijing in the fight against Covid 19. The HK govt has refused to close the borders and quarantine buildings (for infected mainland visitors) have been firebombed. This guy, a pretty famous China watcher, is claiming that the HK protests will go down historically as one of the great (influential) protests that changed the course of history. I hope so, but I'm betting that HK and the virus combined will not change China much. I'm pretty pessimistic that there will be any national reaction in China unless there are both 10s of thousands of dead bodies in China and a viable new option for stability first.
Here is a speech by Rubio about how American needs to respond to China, I agree with the tone and the conclusion, but I am not sure about his prescriptions. I like that he says that we can not be agnostic about China and just follow the market. I also like that he wants to have national-level goals and coordination again. But our economy has moved on to information and is no longer dependant on manufacturing, to return to such would be, I think the wrong thing to do. I don't like Trump's trade war and focus on manufacturing for this reason. Although I admit that I don't know much about the specifics of the American econ and am glomming onto an idea that makes sense to me. And here is the response by a China watcher/prof. His prescriptions are much more in line with what I've been thinking for a few years now--targeted legislation and actions against specific Chinese individuals, govt bodies and organizations like Huawei, more education in skills and technical training, and I would also add that we need a much better immigration policy.
Non-China story for diversity (well, it is indirectly a China story). Has there been another historical anti-colonial activist that has disappointed more than Suu Kyi in Myanmar? I remember being all excited about democracy and change via her protests in Burma while I was in college. She has turned out to be just another corrupt politician.