https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/124324375891486310...
I think it's been interesting wave. When the cases first started, China got blasted. As it hit the US, Administration political opponents have criticized the US response, but many have gone to the point of praising China's response and forgetting about China's actions in December/January.
China also deserves criticism; its initial response was dysfunctional in some ways (albeit somewhat different ways than the United States dysfunctional response). Fortunately, as you say, it's been blasted in some discussion.
But recognition of ways in which its response has been respectable is less the mark of someone "carrying water" and more part of the process of learning things and having our political institutions learn things.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-08/china-s-g...
https://time.com/5811222/wuhan-coronavirus-death-toll/
etc
Why should any respectable journalist quote their statistics about COVID and conclude how effective their response was without mentioning that they've been known to fabricate statistics? Let alone calling them a 'Global Leader' in response. I've not seen this qualification mentioned once with respect to China's stats on this virus.
I don't see it frequently in writing, but the majority of TV and podcast reporting from news sites has the disclaimer. And there's enough China bad articles out there that I feel like this is implicitly assumed.
Either way, no one trusts Chinese stats, including the Chinese public themselves, and the Chinese government most of all. The ability to collect accurate statistics when there's so many different development levels country-wide simply isn't there. For example, China doesn't use GDP internally, they use LKI, LiKeQiang Index which aggregates a value from measurable indicators like freight cargo volume, electric consumption, bank loans. There's also TSF, Total Social Financing. They can still be gamed, but physically (running empty trains), but much harder to fake via submitting fake excel sheets to central government. Chinese GDP is basically a back of the napkin estimate to appease foreign investors, it's also used to set growth targets instead of reflecting it. Most of the mainstream western reporting on Chinese GDP does not understand this. It's well understood among China watchers. The most comprehensive study on Chinese GDP so far, by CSIS, suggested China was under reporting their GDP.
As for stacked urns in Wuhan, the city is still under quarantine so urns would not be picked up. Also necessary to account for other sources of death. The article quotes 56K cremations in Q4 2019, so a few thousands urns especially as restock doesn't seem atypical. Like LKI, it's an useful oblique indicator, but should be considered in other context. If there's mass death, enough to measurably affect hysterical people in quarantine, it would be on Chinese social media which would leak to China watchers. There's many expats and Chinese people with VPNs, things that affect the public on a mass scale inevitably leaps over the firewall, it's not opaque like politburo politics. People need to stop looking at Chinese numbers and instead extrapolate from oblique indicators. When expats in China talk about things returning to normal, when Chinese diaspora aren't mourning about sick or dead family members en-mass, then you can assume that reflects ground reality.
No one really cared that much because manipulation, risk, and uncertainty is baked into financial equations no matter what the country or government. Now that we're talking about lives, it's harder to dismiss.
It’s a sad mix of propaganda and temporary faith in a shaky globally supply chain.
Fully agreed on that particular point, that is commendable
Now, I suspect you wouldn't agree with that perspective either. But it's definitely not praise for China.
As far as the article to which it links... that's all factual stuff. The PRC absolutely has exported a ton of PPE equipment and assigned a bunch of well-documented medical personnel to hot regions. That's good, as far as it goes. It doesn't say anything about what they're doing inside the PRC, but it absolutely is helpful that they're doing it externally.
And historically, that was always one of the core roles played by America. So in perspective it's sort of notable, no?
You're contracting yourself and just being argumentative. The whole context is their international assistance work, and there is nothing but praise in that article. Meanwhile the article just brushes aside their initial deceit which greatly magnified the problem.
I genuinely thought you were talking about the tweet about the article being the praise. The article was just facts. Facts, to borrow a phrase, don't care about your feelings.
I'm afraid we only see the chinese government's report and data on how the epidemic is spreading within China.
Firstly, exports are hard to lie about. Order something from alibaba yourself, or here’s some graphs: https://www.plex.com/blogs/china-potential-model-for-post-co...
Secondly, Trump would break that news if it were fact. Hiding 10’s of thousands of deaths and 100’s of thousands of very ill is extremely difficult in the modern world when relatives live overseas.
Thirdly, I believe that China can effectively enforce social barriers, restricting the spread of Covid19. It seems reasonable to believe they can control it, even though freer countries struggle.
Of course you can always come up with some conspirational theory, and I keep my eyes open for lies, but common sense says that China is doing OK.
This part is huge. When apartment complexes are already surrounded by walls with a couple gates, it's easier to control flow of people in and out. The infrastructure already in place (yes I know, hardy har har, chinese building walls, ok) actually helps a lot.
We've got family back on mainland who can't get in and out of their apartment complex without getting their temperature taken (both directions) and playing 20 questions with the guards about where they're going.
a) China keeps on exporting,
b) liars are caught and Trump didn't caught the Chinese regime lying,
c) The Chinese regime enforced quarantined effectively.
From these points, only the third has any relation with and impact in the outbreak of covid19 within China.
However, as the virus is reported to have an asymptomatic incubation period that can be as long as 2 to 3 weeks, and as there are reports from within China that show that covid19 can be transmitted at over 4 meters, then, as we have seen in Italy and Spain, the impact of this measure would only start to show with that much of a lag.
I admit I am not an epidemiologist, but claiming that an epidemic was just stopped on it's tracks almost instantly has little to no credibility. For that to be even remotely realistic, there needed to be zero asymptomatic carriers from one day to another.
To add insult to injury, the Chinese government reported that the only new covid19 cases experienced within China came from foreigners who imported the disease.
I'm sure the measures imposed by the Chinese regime has a profound impact on the epidemic, but none of the official reports appear to have any credibility whatsoever. A disease with a 1 to 3 week incubation period does not stop spreading or killing people from one day to the other. What does stop immediately is how you chose to report the data, specially counting the dead.
By the fact that there are already reports of factories throughout the world that kept operating eventhough they were experiencing an outbreak of covid19 within their staff.
And let's be honest: no one places China in the top spots in rankings on safe working conditions and human rights.
Which is why I wrote: Secondly, Trump would break that news if it were fact. Hiding 10’s of thousands of deaths and 100’s of thousands of very ill is extremely difficult in the modern world when relatives live overseas.
I think the majority of people in the US that have observed how they handle it see their approach as overly harsh.