2020-04-29

First devastating societal blow in Late-Modernity (4)

Part 2.  Timeline of the Chinese answers to the outbreak of ‘Covid-19’


The fact that the COVID-19 epidemic broke out in Wuhan does not imply that the virus originated in Wuhan. In matter of fact the origin of COVID-19 is still unknown. Calling it “China virus” or “Wuhan virus” is thus dishonest to say the least. It reflects a will, by those who use such terms, to manipulate peoples’ minds and glue in the collective unconscious a narrative that satisfies their ideological interests.



But more importantly propagandizing such appellations as the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus” is annihilating the possibility of a future successful communication, to the population of this earth, of the conclusion that the scientific community will eventually reach about the reality of what happened. This kind of “consent engineering”, about the scapegoating of another country in order to hide one’s incompetence, is simply inadmissible.


As shown in Part 1 there is no evidence out there that the Chinese government attempted to cover up COVID-19 as is portrayed in most Western mainstream media. Because of this Western propaganda the timeline of China’s answers in the initial days of the epidemic will remain a necessary part of the debates that will continue to rage in the weeks and months ahead. This timeline is our link to the facts. It is what keeps us grounded into reality.



2.1. Timeline

 

     1.   ??  :  patient-zero :   the scientific community is searching. i 

      2.  2019-12-01:  a patient, with a viral pneumonia with an unknown cause, was hospitalized at Jinyintan Hospital. Later on this patient was declared to be the earliest known case of Covid-19. The patient did not have any exposure to Huanan Seafood Market. ii

     3. 2020-12-21: Wuhan doctors notice a case of, what will appear in the next few days, the first of a“cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause”   iii

     4. 2020-12-27:  Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, informed China’s health authorities that a pneumonia with an unknown cause was starting to spread.  iv

     5. 2020-12-29: Zhang Jixian’s hospital admitted four individuals with a pneumonia of unknown cause. All four had worked in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. The hospital reported this occurrence to the local CDC, which ordered staff to initiate a field investigation with a retrospective search for pneumonia patients potentially linked to the market. Additional patients were found linked to the market, and on December 30, health authorities from Hubei Province reported this to China’s CDC.  v

     6. 2019-12-30:
           6.1. Wuhan health commission notifies hospitals of a “pneumonia of unclear cause” and orders them to report any related information
           6.2. Dr. Ai Fen, a top director at Wuhan Central Hospital, posts info on her private WeChat account about the new virus.  Li Wenliang receives the message and re-sends it to his own private Wechat group informing his colleagues about an outbreak of SARS that infected 7 patients.  vi

    7. 2019-12-31:  China’s CDC reports, that a pneumonia of unknown cause had been detected in Wuhan, to the WHO Country Office in China. Chinese scientists thus faced two challenges:  – isolate the pathogen causing the disease in order to sequence its genome and  – determine if there is human-to-human transmission

     8. 2020-01-01:  the Huanan seafood market is being closed down

    9. 2020-01-02:   laboratory tests confirm 41 patients have contracted the same pneumonia of unknown cause. (see point 3 of the timeline here above)

     10. 2020-01-03:
           10.1. the Chinese CDC informs the director of the US CDC about the outbreak of a pneumonia of unknown cause
           10.2. Dr Li is summoned by officers from Zhongnanlu Police Station of Wuhan and make him sign a document whereby he recognizes his "misdemeanor". Dr. Li never was punished nor imprisoned. See Part 1. 3. China muzzles its people: The case of Dr. Li Wenliang. 

     11.  2020-01-07:
           11.1. the Chinese health authorities identified a new corona-virus as the cause of the outbreak of the pneumonia
           11.2. Mr. Xi Jinping becomes personally involved in the response to the virus outbreak. We learn this from a speech he gave on February 03

     12.  2020-01-09:
            12.1. China open sources its mapping of the coronavirus genome to the world  vii
          12.2. China reports first death linked to Covid-19. A 61-year-old male in Wuhan with several underlying medical conditions.

   13. 2020-01-13: China’s open sourced mapping of the corona-virus genome permits a test and test protocol to be developed in Germany

    14.  2020-01-14: WHO announces that Chinese authorities have seen "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel corona-virus. Nonetheless the possibility of wider human-to-human transmission should not be regarded as ‘surprising’ given the similarity of the new virus to the earlier SARS" .  viii

   15. 2020-01-17: China’s open sourced mapping of the corona-virus genome permits the WHO to adopt its refined version of test and test protocol which is then adopted by many countries but not the US which will only allow, laboratories and hospitals to conduct their own Covid-19 tests, on February 29th …

    16.  2020-01-20:
        16.1. Zhong Nanshan, a top Chinese doctor who is helping to coordinate the coronavirus response, announces that the virus is transmissible from people to people. By January 20, a total of 224 confirmed COVID-19 cases had been reported, 198 of which were in Wuhan City.
           16.2. first case is announced in South Korea

    17.  2010-01-21:
        17.1. China’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission –  the country’s top political body responsible for law and order – runs a commentary on its ‘Chang An Jian’ account that reads
           “Anyone who puts the face of politicians before the interests of the people will be the sinner of a millennium to the party and the people ”
          17.2. US CDC announces first case in US

    18. 2020-01-22: Chinese authorities suspend all rail, air, and road links from and to Wuhan including foreign links.

   19. 2020-01-23:  seen the increase to 500 confirmed cases and 17 deaths the central Government puts Wuhan and 3 other cities on lock-down and residents were forbidden to leave their homes. The world is shocked by the enormity of the decision. Immediately Western countries unleash a flow of propaganda attacking China for authoritarianism. But, oh irony, Western leaders fail to grasp that this lock-down was needed to answer a very severe health crisis and later they’ll accuse China for having failed to inform them of the severity of this health crisis.

    20.  2020-01-24:
           20.1. start of the Lunar New Year holiday in China. For more than a week people have been traveling around the country to be with their relatives on that day.
           20.2. the lock-down in Hubei is expanded to cover 36 million people and social distancing is being implemented around the country.
       20.3. start of the building of temporary hospitals in Wuhan to accommodate an overflow of patients

    21. 2020-01-29:  Peter Navarro addressed a memo stating that the present “lack of protection elevates the risk of the corona-virus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans”. He estimated that such a pandemic could kill half-a-million people and deliver a $5.7 trillion hit to the economy.

   22. 2020-01-30:  WHO declares a Public Health Emergency of International Concern

      23. 2020-02-07:


    24. 2020-02-13:  firing of party chief of Hubei province and the party chief of Wuhan. Mr. Ying Yong becomes the new party chief of Hubei.

    25. 2020-02-24: Trump tweets “The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. CDC & WHO have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

    26. 2020-03-01:  the Chinese Journal of Infectious Diseases (Shanghai Medical Association) pre-publishes the “Expert Consensus on Comprehensive Treatment of Coronavirus in Shanghai 2019.”

    27. 2020-03-07: the cases multiplying in the US, after having lauded Xi and China’s handling of the virus, Trump starts to call Covid-19 the “China virus”  ix

   28. 2020-03-18: the First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine at Zhejiang University in China,  launches the “Handbook of COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment” co-written by doctors and medical experts working at that hospital and published by Alibaba

   29. 2020-03-19: Wuhan Public Security Bureau announces that the deputy head, of the Zhongnanlu Police Station, Yang Li would be given a demerit and police officer Hu Guifang a warning – both took part in Dr. Li Wenliang's questioning on 2019-12-30.

    30. 2020-03-26: by this date China had sent emergency assistance to fight the pandemic to 89 countries among which 28 were in Asia, 16 in Europe, 26 in Africa, nine in the Americas, and 10 in the South Pacific. Such medical supplies mainly included testing kits, masks, protective suits, thermometer guns, and ventilators. China also invited officials and experts from more than 100 countries to a video conference on Covid-19, while President Xi conducted 26 telephone conversations with 22 foreign leaders.

    31. 2020-04-08: Wuhan and Hubei Province are opening up signaling that the first wave attack by the virus has largely been put to rest.








2.2. debunking Western propaganda


Mr. Allen in “Hidden Harmonies” sums up my thoughts :
“   No amount of re-writing history will change the objective reality that China faced an entirely new virus, had to do all the discovery from scratch, and still had the fastest and most aggressive response. And nothing will change how the entire western world, despite having all the homework done for them, still failed to react until thousands or tens of thousands of cases emerged.  “ x

The actions summarized in the timeline here above put to shame the answers of Western nations xi : Italy only applied a national lock-down after 12,462 cases had been confirmed with 827 deaths.

The U.K. government first ignored the virus and talked about building a “herd immunity” but after the publication of ‘report 9’ by Imperial College Londonxii it abruptly changes its policy. In the meantime the virus was spreading.

The U.S. had a first confirmed case of COVID-19 on January 20 but the Federal Government did nothing else than to close the borders to anyone coming from China. After cities and states across the nation began shutting down around mid-March Trump and his entourage finally accepted to pass the baton to the scientists. Nearly 2 months had been lost during which the virus was spreading unopposed while the anti-China propaganda had free reign.

What everybody has observed about the actions of Western countries is the following :
  1. before the curves started to go exponential on the graphs visualizing the confirmed cases and the number of deaths the politicians had little patience for the opinions of scientists.
  2. When the curves became exponential, and study after study indicated that their countries would soon be overwhelmed with many thousands of deaths, the politicians panicked and like Johnson and Trump they finally passed the baton to the scientists. 
  3.  As a consequence of this general state of Western political irresponsibility much time has been wasted that the virus exploited to spread around. 
  4. Everyone understands that things could have been very different if the politicians had followed the recommendations of the scientific community (WHO and national health authorities). That’s why Trump’s attacks on the WHO appear so outlandish to the people of this earth.
  5.  The Western political world will have to accept its responsibility for this debacle and lessons will have to be drawn that have to be applied more generally ...to our answers against the side-effects of Modernity. But the anti-China propaganda is side-stepping this necessity from the minds of the Western political world… This is simply outrageous !

It is interesting to note here that politicians panicked, not because statistical exponential curves, but because the idea that ulterior legal sanctions would eventually take away their freedoms after the pandemic passes xiii. Politicians are not particularly impressed by sanctions at the ballot box. They know that there will always be a parachute landing them in a comfortable place. What they really fear is the possibility to be called by an international or national tribunal of sorts that would find them in dereliction of duty for having resisted the advice of the scientific community. Such a possibility confronted the minds, not only of the political class but of society at large, after the publication of reports 9 and 11 by Imperial College London. This is when Boris Johnson’s approach took a 180 degrees turn that was followed by Donald trump. The only ones who did not change track were Shinzo Abe of Japan and Stefan Löfven of Sweden and the jury is still out on their wisdom

On the 16th of March Imperial College London summarized its ‘report 9/ concerning the impact of ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’ (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand and mentioned the following xiv:
“ Two fundamental strategies are possible: (a) mitigation, which focuses on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread – reducing peak healthcare demand while protecting those most at risk of severe disease from infection, and (b) suppression, which aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely. 
Each policy has major challenges. We find that that optimal mitigation policies (combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease) might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half. However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems being overwhelmed many times over. For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option. 
We show that in the UK and US context, suppression will minimally require a combination of social distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their family members. This may need to be supplemented by school and university closures, though it should be recognized that such closures may have negative impacts on health systems due to increased absenteeism. The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) – given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed. We show that intermittent social distancing – triggered by trends in disease surveillance – may allow interventions to be relaxed temporarily in relative short time windows, but measures will need to be reintroduced if or when case numbers rebound.  
Last, while experience in China and now South Korea show that suppression is possible in the short term, it remains to be seen whether it is possible long-term, and whether the social and economic costs of the interventions adopted thus far can be reduced.  “

On the 24th of March 2020 Imperial College London summarized its ‘report 11’ without any ambiguity and concluded that China had incontrovertibly controlled the spread of the virus xv :
“ In response to the fast-growing epidemic, China imposed strict social distancing in Wuhan on 23 January 2020 followed closely by similar measures in other provinces. At the peak of the outbreak in China (early February), there were between 2,000 and 4,000 new confirmed cases per day. For the first time since the outbreak began there have been no new confirmed cases caused by local transmission in China reported for five consecutive days up to 23 March 2020.  
This is an indication that the social distancing measures enacted in China have led to control of COVID-19 in China. … Policies implemented to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in China and the exiting strategies that followed can inform decision making processes for countries once containment is achieved ...the situation in China and South Korea in the coming weeks will help to inform this strategy further. “

This closes the discussion about remedies and relegates Western propaganda, about China’s approach to the pandemic, to the garbage-bin of history. But Western media and politicians’ have learned to cover up the reality with the mask of propaganda in order to lock their societies’ into a state of permanent madness where truth is whatever the powers that be say.

No laws to restrain the farmers then the powers that be can do whatever they want.

The following titles depict the sheer ugliness of the nature of the disinformation that propaganda has stuffed in Western minds :

The citizens of the US, and some European satellites, are swallowing the cool-aid without questioning and are thus mentally ready to be led to the slaughterhouse sometime in the not too distant future.

But for most of the citizens of this earth, not only is reality debunking Western propaganda but more importantly, the full merit of the declarations, by the health experts under the WHO banner, are now recognized without any ambiguity :
“ In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history. … Much of the global community is not yet ready, in mindset and materially, to implement the measures that have been employed to contain COVID-19 in China. 
These are the only measures that are currently proven to interrupt or minimize transmission chains in humans. Fundamental to these measures is extremely proactive surveillance to immediately detect cases, very rapid diagnosis and immediate case isolation, rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts, and an exceptionally high degree of population understanding and acceptance of these measures. 
The time gained by rigorously applying COVID-19 containment measures must be used more effectively to urgently enhance global readiness and rapidly develop the specific tools that are needed to ultimately stop this virus“.xvi

In the face of such expert views the citizens of this earth were flabbergasted watching the spread of propaganda madness in the minds of Western citizens. Western authorities wasted 2 months to act before the virus reached their shores. And their actions to protect their populations were then so clumsy that their citizens started to openly despise them. Anti-China propaganda will never be sufficient to erase the despising.







2.3. the origin of the virus


As the moment of this writing scientists have not succeeded to pinpoint the origin of the corona-virus but the web is filled with stories. Most are pure fantasy but a few have a semblance of validity. Here follows a sketch about the most promising among these stories and I’ll then conclude this part 2 by giving an overview of the perception from the  side of China’s authorities.








2.3.1. “ Virus leaked from Wuhan's Institute of Virology “

 

 The first articles, about the Wuhan's Institute of Virology, that gained traction on the web originated right after the Chinese authorities put Wuhan on lock-down. These articles were pushed by IndiaGreatGamexvii as early as January 26th 2020.

ZeroEdge xviii then spread the texts and videos of IndiaGreatGame far and wide around the web. And within a short few weeks the Alt-Right opinion leaders on the web were made to believe as hard as rock that the Virus was leaked from Wuhan's Institute of Virology, a top level-4 bio-hazard lab, which was studying "the world's most dangerous pathogens”.

Gradually ZeroEdge started to aggregate the most sordid propaganda stories that were imputing the responsibility for this viral outbreak on China. Many of these stories did even not mention an author. After publication of one such author-less articles, that focused on Dr. Peng Zhou a Ph.D. and researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and leader of ‘the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group’, ZeroEdge mischievously concluded :
“  Something tells us, if anyone wants to find out what really caused the corona-virus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China and around the globe, they should probably pay Dr. Peng a visit . Or at least start with an email: Dr Peng can be reached at …“ xix

ZeroEdge added Dr Peng’s email and cell phone number at the end of this article and was then permanently suspended from Twitter for reason of ‘doxxing’ Dr Peng. xx







2.3.2. “ Virus’ origin not in Wuhan China “ 

 

The narrative about the “Wuhan Institute of Virology” gradually faded. It would be awakened later on by the Trump administration propaganda campaign that I describe in Part 1. 1. White House orchestrated propaganda campaign. In the meantime a new narrative was slowly emerging that grew organically stronger along the following lines :

1.  2020-01-27: “The Unz Review” penned an article that turned the tablesxxi. The finger pointing at China was suddenly turned back toward the US.

2.  2020-01-30: Three successive articles in “global Research” xxii then pointed at TV appearances by Japanese and Taiwanese scientists xxiii who argued that the virus did not originate in Wuhan China but in the US. Larry Romanoff the author of these articles then informed his readers, in a further article titled “COVID-19: All Truth Has Three Stages ”xxiv, that he had been contacted by the US embassy in Beijing and some leading US print media for an interview but that he refused to meet them. This April 26th I discover that 2 of Romanoff’s initial articles + the “COVID-19: All Truth Has Three Stages” have been withdrawn from “Global research”. Romanoff was always a prolific writer but his last piece in English on Global Research dates from March 12, 2020. One month and a half without any article for such a prolific writer. What happened to Larry ?

3.  2020-02-21: In the meantime a scientific study published in China Xiv  xxv concluded that :
“ Phyloepidemiologic analyses indicated the SARS-CoV-2 source at the Hua Nan market should be imported from other places. The crowded market boosted SARS-CoV-2 rapid circulations in the market and spread it to the whole city starting in early December 2019. “
This article gives credence to the thesis that, if the virus first spread in Wuhan, this does absolutely not imply that the virus originated in Wuhan. China’s top respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan had already said no less as early as January 27th :
“Though the COVID-19 was first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated from China” 

4.  In early March information originating in the US started to spread the meme that US soldiers brought the virus to Wuhan (accidentally or not). That meme was best summarized on YouTube by “Marine 1063” in the following terms xxvi :
“ 1. The facts :
  • 300 American military personnel stayed at the Wuhan Oriental Hotel during the World Military Games in Wuhan
  • 172 American athletes won ZERO events, picking up 5 bronze and 3 silver
  • 5 Americans soldiers were so sick they had to be hospitalized and evacuated back to the US where they later died
  • 42 staff at the Wuhan Oriental Hotel formed the first cluster of Covid19 where it spread out to their families and friends
  • 7 people who worked at the Huanan Seafood Market and had contact with staff at the Wuhan Oriental came down with Covid19 and spread it to people who came to the market"
   2. the information, emerging from multiple sources and nations, is converging and gives us a clear story-line about the origins of COVID-19 :
  • The virus came out of the viral lab at Fort Detrick, USA, and infected large numbers of Americans. They were diagnosed as "flu" victims.
  • The pathogen was carried to China by a female US army cyclist participating in last October's World Military Games in Wuhan.
  • COVID then spread throughout China and on to different countries.
  • Other strains of the virus likely traveled from the US directly to different nations, such as Italy and Japan (whose patient zero had no contact with Chinese).  "

Trump and his cohort have doubled down on their "China virus" story-line. And with Sinophobia in full swing, MSM are totally compliant with the desire to criminalize the Commies in Beijing. Among ordinary Americans, "China = bad" is an easy sell.

US politicos and media are working overtime to inflame domestic and world opinion in that direction. They could then demand "debt relief" (China's holdings of US Treasuries) or even freeze Chinese assets in the US.

5.  On march 25th Scott Ritter penned an article titled “The Staggering Collapse of U.S. Intelligence on the Corona-virus” that was published by “Global Research”. Being a respected analyst, who was an arm inspector before the start of the Irak war in 2003, his words draw attention. The argument that resonates in Ritter’s text goes as follows :
“  While a great deal of attention has been paid to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan, which sells live poultry, fish, and several kinds of wild animals to the public, a detailed investigation by the Joint Field Epidemiology Investigation Team, a specialized task force working under the auspices of the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CCDC), found that the COVID-19 epidemic did not originate by animal-to-human transmission in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as originally believed, but rather human-to-human transmission totally unrelated to the operation of the market. 
Moreover, by analyzing the characteristic of some 27 genomes of the COVID-19 virus provided by the Chinese and published by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GSAID), research scientists were able to determine that the “most recent common ancestor” for the coronavirus could be dated back to as early as October 1, 2019. 
The importance of this date as it relates to the NCMI is that in mid-October 2019 a delegation of 300 U.S. military athletes arrived in Wuhan to participate in the 2019 Military World games. China has suggested that these personnel might have introduced the coronavirus infection to Wuhan, citing their own research that suggests that the virus was introduced into China from elsewhere, and Japanese and Taiwanese studies that point to the U.S. as the likely source of the virus.   
The CDC has recently acknowledged, during a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on March 11, that its biosurveillance program has uncovered evidence that Americans who had previously died to what had been originally diagnosed as influenza have, through post-mortem testing, been found to have actually have perished from the coronavirus. Normally, the details obtained from this kind of biosurveillance would be widely shared to better understand the scope and potential spread of the infection, as well as to better pin down the source and timing of the infections. 
However, the initial meetings regarding a national-level coronavirus response conducted under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, where intelligence gathered as a result of any such biosurveillance activity would logically be discussed, were all treated as classified events, under orders from the National Security Council.  This lack of transparency on the part of the Trump administration only fuels speculation about the reasons for meetings normally conducted in the open suddenly being classified, as well as precisely what information is being hidden from the public.“

6. Finally, and perhaps, the most interesting bit of information of all is given by “Israeli television Channel 12 news” that was reported by The Times of Israel in the following terms :
“ US intelligence agencies alerted Israel to the corona-virus outbreak in China already in November, Israeli television reported Thursday. 
According to Channel 12 news, the US intelligence community became aware of the emerging disease in Wuhan in the second week of that month and drew up a classified document.“ xxvii
But “where then were the patients” ?

Chinese doctors have later inferred that a first Covid-19 patient visited a hospital on the 17th of November 2019xxviii and another one on the 1st of December. Four other patients appeared on December 21st. But this does not make an epidemic. The signs of the outbreak of an epidemic appeared only in the last days of December and first days of January.

The question that immediately arises is how could US intelligence agencies have ‘divined’ that an epidemic would break out in Wuhan a month and a half after they announced the news to Israelis ?  I only see one possible explanation within the limits of the information at our disposal. The US knew that an epidemic would break out roughly a month later because they had imported an “an A strain corona-virus” load in China during the month of October… and that A strain then mutated into a “B strain corona-virus” which became by far the most common strain in China.

It is important to remember that the discourse about a US origin of the virus originated in the US and was made popular by US Alt-media. But what is really most intriguing is the US official reaction.

Why does the mentioning by a Chinese official of the thesis developed by these US sources merit such a harsh reaction by US officialdom ?  Why is it presented as a conspiracy theory and why is the US government not answering the questions asked by its citizens ? xxix Refusing to answer the questions of their citizens entertains indeed the suspicion that the US administration has something to hide !

The fact of the matter is that the narrative of a US origin of the virus is now firmly anchoring in the minds of the people of this earth xxx. Could this explain the following US actions ?
  1. a unified “all government propaganda campaign” initiated by the Trump administration  xxxi
  2.  the virulence of Pompeo’s words at the G7  xxxii
  3. various cases have been engaged against china for reparation of damages xxxiii but they do not cite any valid arguments. These court cases are mostly intended to increase the volume of anti-China noise in the media
  4. the“Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act” xxxiv is a piece of legislation that goes counter to decades of US foreign policy decisions indicating that US authorities suddenly want to provoke China’s ire
  5. talk of cutting Huawei from Taiwan’s ‘Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’ (TSMC) chip foundries  xxxv

By all accounts the US militant approach appears primarily wanting to deflect the public’s attention from its government’s catastrophic handling of the Corona-virus. But the virulence of its militancy could also indicate that it wants to deflect the public’s attention from the various accusations addressing its possible direct responsibility in introducing the virus in Wuhan China.


Having said all that the fact of the matter is that the information at our disposal is rudimentary, not always verified by the facts, and as such it does not warrant a firm conclusion. But this information surely begs further inquiry to verify if there is something real, or not, behind the words knitting these stories.









2.3.3. How do things stand in the eyes of the Chinese authorities ?

 

The Chinese governance system is largely driven by science. There is certainly a lingering suspicion that the corona-virus was a biological attack originating outside the national borders. But the authorities are waiting for the conclusions of scientists to see if this suspicion is warranted.

In the meantime the Chinese authorities are very busy and their attention is entirely focused on the following :
  1. Containing the virus is their top priority
  2. Opening the economy is their second priority
  3. Chinese political tradition imposes a moral code of conduct that includes the obligation to help friendly countries in times of need. China is now devoting resources and man-power to satisfy that moral obligation. But the West interprets, the fact that China is trying to satisfy a moral obligation, as being China wanting to mark some points in the geo-political arena against the US. This kind of constant misunderstanding of China by the west dates since their early encounter. For a long time China did not know how to react to the West’s duplicitous and aggressive attitudes. But this last streak of Western madness has united the views of both the leadership and the citizens in the certainty that nothing will stop them from accomplishing the rejuvenation of their nation. So what is a certainty is that the constant misunderstanding of China by the West, going forward, will not help their relations.
  4. Countering Western propaganda is the last worry of the Chinese. They are registering the madness coming out of the West and they are rightfully angry at the debauchery of dishonesty. But they will not be trapped in a tit for tat. They are quietly strategizing. They know that time is on their side and that a wu wei move applied at the most propitious time ...will deal the “coup de grace”  to Western hegemony that will reset the governance-world.

But what could be the nature of such a wu wei move ?

Since the early origin of their centralized institutions some 5000 YA the Chinese have focused on supplying their families with the necessities of life. When their system of governance was having a firm mandate from heaven it focused nearly exclusively on ensuring this kind of an outcome for the nation. When their system of governance was not able to ensure, this kind of an outcome for the nation, it lost its mandate from heaven and the dynasty was toppled and replaced by a new one xxxvi. The leaders of the Chinese communist dynasty are firmly aware of this reality. That’s why party and state officials are said to be “at the service of the people” and the fight against corruption is meant to ensure that the people are served well.

In light of this tradition we can state unequivocally that the Chinese citizenry, in its very large majority, considers that the present dynasty, the communist system of governance xxxvii, is gratified today with a firm mandate from heaven. And this firm mandate from heaven, in the actual geo-political circumstances, means that the governance system has necessarily drawn an unwavering vision about the future in which the Chinese citizens are seen wholeheartedly rooting for their nation along the decades to come.

So the Chinese answer to the West’s present aggressiveness will unmistakably be maximizing the impact of a wu wei move of transformation that is anchored in Traditional Chinese Culture which is the core worldview about life and reality that is shared by all Chinese.

From another angle we observe that the corona-virus will leave Western economies in a state of advanced distress xxxviii that, I’m convinced, will act as a catalyst invigorating the internal adaptation of the Chinese nation to its new context. What I mean by this is that historically it has been observed that China’s internal economy reaches maximum strength when its citizens are given the most propitious conditions to engage in local entrepreneurial ventures. And history furthermore indicates that it is in this particular setting that the Chinese nation is driven to help near and far-away friendly neighbors. But, history also shows that when the nation’s economy is hurting, trying to privilege the help of neighbors weakens it further.

This implies that in the coming years and decades the Chinese system will try to maximize the following outcomes in the economy :
  1. The citizens’ energy will be let loose and the system of governance will facilitate the emergence and development of local entrepreneurial ventures that satisfy regional needs
  2. State owned enterprises will concentrate on the strategic needs of the nation in the fields of finance, technology and the supply of raw materials and energy.
  3. State institutions will strive to offer the most favorable context to maximizes the outcome of 1 and 2. By such a favorable context I mean the internal context of the country (infrastructure + superstructure) and peace with the outside world (foreign relations and the military). The Chinese infrastructure is already very advanced but it will be expanded further into faster communication networks, quantum protected information exchanges, at a distance health, education, and shopping services and smart cities that maximize the automation of transportation, the security of the citizens and their environmental well-being. In term of superstructure the country will continue to strengthen the citizens’ bonds with their national roots. This means that the Traditional Chinese Culture that goes back, past the institutional centralization, into animism will be revitalized and adapted to contemporary needs which will definitely boost societal cohesion at even higher levels. 
  4. State institutions will also guarantee a maximum openness of the country to the outside. But this openness will be variable. I mean that friendly countries will be systematically favored over unfriendly countries. The golden days of the New Silk Road will furthermore be delayed somewhat while the country adapts to its new contextual setting. And the whole New Silk Road project will furthermore be restructured in line with the lessons that were gleaned during the initial testing phase.

China’s present contextual setting is characterized by the following determinant factors :
  • high corporate debt levels
  • high local governments debt levels
  • low quality management skills at the local level
  • near term public health uncertainty
  • Chinese public governance needs an adjustment to answers the weaknesses that were revealed during the corona-virus outbreak. The legal framework has to be made transparent for all to know and it must be adapted in the following fields :
  1.  the mechanisms of power transmission at the top level of state and party institutions must be rendered more fluid and transparent so that society as a whole is avoided the anxiety of the passing baton to a younger generation. This anxiety weakens societal cohesion. 
  2. the mechanisms of exam selection must be extended to all intermediary state management positions and after having acquired a few years of experience urban managers must, as a principle, be dispatched for a few years to manage rural local level institutions
  3. the mechanisms of corruption control, of all state agents, must be written in law
  4. the division of tasks between state owned enterprises and private enterprises must be clarified and be made transparent
  • there is also a need for institutionalizing popular consultation mechanisms to ensure that political decision making in the future is always informed by the opinions of the different segments of the population
  • geo-political chaos must be managed and a new international payment mechanism is needed to replace the US dollar

In such a context the wisest move for China is to address and resolve each of these friction points while simultaneously addressing the need to localize all necessary technologies so that its supply chains are never again blackmailed by outside ruffian actors.

The recent blackmail and extortion acts by the US administration have made crystal clear that the Chinese nation needs first and foremost to ensure its self-sufficient in the following domains :
  • food production and feeding its populations
  • scientific and technological knowledge
  • the supply chains of parts, components, and assemblies
  • the safe supply of energy and other resources from friendly nations abroad

In no case does this mean that China isolates itself. China’s future development is necessarily bound to the development of all nations on earth. And the goals, laid out in the New Silk Roads project, are definitely the best architecture of such an interconnected future. But the priorities of the New Silk Roads would gain immensely by affirming more transparently its execution and implementation. Such a transparency is necessary to gain the enthusiasm of the participating nations and their enthusiasm for the cause is what will ultimately guarantee the success of the project.

In other words an ideal wu wei move, in the present circumstances, is to build up China’s economic and institutional strength while ignoring the West and privileging relations with friendlier state actors. After the Corona reset is over the West will have landed itself in the dust and it will find itself in a position of client instead of its past position of hegemonic commander.

__________


Notes :

1   Note that the Chinese government says that finding the original patient is the role of scientists and not the role of politicians or propagandists.


2.  In "Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China".    
“27 (66%) of these 41 patients had been exposed to Huanan seafood market.  All 41 patients had pneumonia with abnormal findings on chest CT.  The median age of the patients was 49 years. The symptom onset date of the first identified patient was Dec 1, 2019  “


3.    In CCDC Weekly Weekly Reports: Volume (2). 2020-01-24 / No. 4  “Notes from the Field: A Novel Coronavirus Genome Identified in a Cluster of Pneumonia Cases — Wuhan, China 2019−2020”.

4.   GlobalTimes wrote the following about Zhang Jixian :

“ On December 26, Zhang Jixian, the director of respiratory and critical care at Hubei Provincial Hospital, noticed that four patients in her unit who sought treatment for suspected pneumonia — an elderly couple, their son and someone who had come in from a seafood market — all had similar and unusual CT images, which led her to believe they were suffering from something else. The next day, Zhang — who played a crucial role in combating the 2003 SARS outbreak — reported it to the head of her hospital. Within the next two days, the information was passed on to the provincial Centers for Disease Control, which then initiated full scale research into the hospital.
All of this took place before Dr. Li shared those screenshots in his WeChat group. Zhang wasn’t punished for her efforts — she was given an award by the regional government. “

5.   In CCDC Weekly Weekly Reports: Volume (2). 2020-01-24 / No. 5. “Notes from the Field: An Outbreak of NCIP (2019-nCoV) Infection in China — Wuhan, Hubei Province, 2019−2020”

6.   Here is how Davide Mastracci relates the story of Dr. Li Wenliang in the Canadian publication “Passage” :

“ Doctor Li Wenliang was an ophthalmologist, not an epidemiologist. He initially misidentified the novel coronavirus as evidence of a SARS outbreak. He shared that claim, along with patients’ medical records, in a WeChat group on December 30 with a few colleagues, not to any hospitals or public health organizations. Li was not arrested or imprisoned. He was called in to a police station on January 3, after a screenshot from his WeChat group leaked and caused panic. At the station, he was reprimanded for falsely claiming there was a SARS outbreak, asked to sign a document pledging not to continue spreading the misinformation and then was free to leave. Unfortunately, it’s true that Li did die on February 7 from COVID-19, which he reportedly got from treating one of his patients who had been infected.  “
And here is the NYT’s interview of Dr. Li before his passing “He Warned of Coronavirus. Here’s What He Told Us Before He Died”.

7.   GISAID (www.gisaid.org) under the accession number EPI_ISL_402119, EPI_ISL_ 402020 and EPI_ISL_402121.


8.   “ Wuhan virus has limited human-to-human transmission but could spread wider: WHO “ The Straits Times via Reuters, Xinhua. 2020-01-14.


9.   As stated in “Fact vs fiction: Timeline of a coronavirus war of words between Beijing and Washington”
“ the narrative then shifted; Trump started to accuse China of lacking transparency and withholding information on the pathogen. By early March, he was calling the corona-virus a “Chinese virus.”

10.   How China Covered up the Coronavirus Crisis


11.   Here is a very good article by Allen Yu, published by The Saker Blog on March 24, that summarizes the failures of Western nations  “ Will COVID-19 be known as “the Chinese Virus” or “the Trump Virus”? “.


12.   Report 9 - Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand


13.   See “ Pandémie et carences de l’État : les voies judiciaires pour en demander raison “ by Régis de Castelnau in “Vu du droit “ 2020-03-27.
“ In the face of the dramatic crisis that our country is going through, and in the face of the evidence of the deficiency, the flippancy and the irresponsibility that have characterized and still characterize the action of the governors and senior officials, it is essential to clarify today what legal avenues will be open to victims and citizens to ask for reason. “

14.   “Report 9: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand “


15.   “Report 11: Evidence of initial success for China exiting COVID-19 social distancing policy after achieving containment “


16.   Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)


17.   Some videos and texts by greatgameindia.com :
   
18.   Some of the early posts of ZeroEdge’s propaganda campaign :
   
19.   Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic? 

   
20.   ZeroHedge banned from Twitter over coronavirus bioweapon claims

   
21.   Was the 2020 Wuhan Coronavirus an Engineered Biological Attack on China by America for Geopolitical Advantage?

   
22.    3 articles in “Global research” penned by Larry Romanoff :
   
23.   Scientists from two pro-Western countries argue that the virus did not originate in China but in the US :
   
24. “COVID-19: All Truth Has Three Stages” Global Research by Larry Romanoff. As of April 26th this article disappeared from Global research.  I stored it on Pocket

   
25. “Decoding evolution and transmissions of novel pneumonia coronavirus using the whole genomic data”.  Yu, Wen-Bin,Tang, Guang-Da,Zhang, Li,Corlett, Richard T. (2020).
   
26.   Benassi Infected US teammates Before Wuhan, China

   
27.  “US alerted Israel, NATO to disease outbreak in China in November — TV report “ in The Times Of Israel by TOI staff. 2020-04-17.

   
28.   “ China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case traced back to November 17 “ SCMP by Josephine Ma . 2020-03-13.
“The first case of someone in China suffering from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, can be traced back to November 17, according to government data seen by the South China Morning Post. “

29.   “Chinese Official Pushes Conspiracy Theory U.S. Spread Virus” Bloomberg. by Jason Scott and Iain Marlow. 2020-03-13.


30.   SARS-US, MERS-US, COVID-US; the World Deserves Answers (Facing US Bio-Warfare: An open letter to President Trump from the people of the world) by Larry Romanoff in Veterans Today. April 02, 2020.


31.   White House initiated propaganda campaign


32.   Pompeo’s focus on blaming China for coronavirus derails joint G-7 statement
“ Der Spiegel lamented that the coronavirus is “destroying the last remnants of the existing world order,” noting the “great frustration” in Berlin and Paris over Washington’s unilateralism. “

33.   China has to compensate the world


34.   Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act


35.   Proposed U.S. rule change forces Huawei to make a shift in chip production


36.   The “Chinese centralized institutions” were translated by Western scholars as being imperial. But their true nature was never comparable to the empires of the Tri-Continental-Area at the intersection between Europe, Africa, and Asia. To avoid the confusion originating in such a Western concept, covering the reality of a very specific institutional setup, I think that our understanding of the Chinese institutional setup would gain immensely if we abandoned the reference to this concept of empire. In the absence of a better concept I use momentarily the terms “Chinese centralized institutions”.


37.   The “Chinese communist system of governance” relates to a few thousand years of theory about the practice of managing a society. No other country has indeed  inherited a written historical sum of the knowledge, about societal management, that its ancestors accumulated over the millennia. This sum of knowledge is at the core of the Chinese communist system of governance. They could as well do without the word communist were it not for the fact that the reform led by Deng Xiao Ping was rooted in the knowledge about “the reason that is at work within capital” that the communist party inherited from Marx. This Marxist knowledge inheritance is what drove the success of the country’s opening and its further economic reforms. Abandoning the roots of 40 years of successive economic reforms is not an option.


38.   Following the Corona-Virus health crisis forecasts are filling the media that announce a Western collapse of sort and a China or Asian boom. Here are some of the more incisive ones :
"… the US National Debt has reached $24.5 trillion while at the same time the US Total Debt now hovers above $77 trillion.
When we take into consideration $144.6 trillion in US Unfunded Liabilities, $20.4 trillion in Social Security Liability, and $31.6 trillion in Medicare liability, the nation lingers on the precipice a total collapse."
“  In 2019, we observed that the Future of Asia is now, and we still anticipate a strong long-term growth trajectory in the region. By 2040, Asia is expected to represent 40 percent of global consumption and 52 percent of GDP. We  may look back on this pandemic as the tipping point when the Asian Century truly began.
This is certainly the year that will challenge every assumption we held in the past. Structural change will inevitably follow a major world shock like this. The decisions leaders make today will not only influence how quickly organizations and nations emerge from the current crisis but also define how they adapt to the next normal. “


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