In this pandemic, democratic nations are suffering more than authoritarian regimes purely by choice - complete Wuhan style measures are unacceptable say in Sweden. This asymmetry is going to give a short term boost to China. Long term, my opinion is that western democracies will realize what they’re against - all eggs in a single totalitarian basket - is a bad idea. Manufacturing and reliance on China will change.
It is already changing: https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-04-08/japan...
This is no evidence of this either. You can't believe what authoritarian regimes publish. They also are willing to shoot on site if they want to positive-COVID people. There are estimates that the deathtoll under CCP for COVID is > 10x what's reported, and will probably go up.
i know people who live in china, including those who work in hospitals, and the situation handling there is night and day compared with that found in the u.s.
asking for evidence for a comment that requests evidence themselves and then makes unfounded claims gets downvoted. and you see comments like this everywhere. meanwhile, the u.s. is literally failing on nearly every vector which is very scary.
This is the same article as the OP.
South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Finland, Norway and Malaysia all look to have handled the crisis very well. India is as well - as far as their figures are to be believed. We'll also find out if Japan's handling of the crisis has been effective in the coming weeks.
I'm not really seeing a pattern in democracies handling this badly. Meanwhile while the Chinese figures probably aren't completely made up, it's also extremely doubtful how reliable they are.
I've lived in China and have used Didi.
I don’t think anyone can win this argument with you since you can always claim that the Chinese government favors local companies, so therefore ____ lost.
But at least I can give some counterpoints: Tesla hasn’t lost in China.
It takes some serious mental gymnastics to interpret this in any way other than the obvious one. This isn’t a philosophical discussion about the limitations of empiricism, it’s a tweet that goes out to millions of people from an organization imbued with serious authority.
Or maybe we can agree that there is no such thing as obvious, and different people will necessarily have different interpretations, for better or worse.
It is anti-communication in context as cunningly putting effort into /not/ being clear. If they truly weren't sure a more honest form would be "We have neither confirmed nor denied the possibility of human to human transmission." (Putting aside any biological questions like are there even any crossspecies transmissions which cause propagative symptoms like coughing or sneezing but do not transmit through it.)
Why didn't they say this? Because China seems to have pressured the WHO the entire time, including saying that the borders shouldn't be closed.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/china-coronavirus-who-h...
>And what is the obvious interpretation? Mine is ‘it is preliminary, so results can still change’ and ‘found no clear evidence does not mean evidence will not be found later’.
If that's what they meant, then they should have said so. They didn't. As I said before, this is a major health organization that needs to be clear in its communication, not speak in riddles.
So its implied. They cant confirm anything but they need to refute that its spread through humans
They literally just repeated whatever the CCP said, plenty of information was leaking out of the country through alternate channels, reports about doctor/journalist arrests, and the way the Chinese public was reacting about how serious this virus was. What did they think it was if not human to human transmission? Hundreds of people in multiple cities ate at the same restaurant or tainted meat? People were talking about this virus in China publicly in early January and it was known it was spreading.
First of all they said, when it was clear there was a problem "We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test." (and then Trump and almost everybody else did not want to hear that)
And moreover they said more exactly, some time before the previous item, that "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". So your position is a deformation of their words.
Then the WHO switched gears and complained that the countries were doing too little too late.
They've been almost completely worthless in this crisis.
See also: The whole WHO/Taiwan debacle, which is still ongoing.
The WHO is OK risking the lives of people in Taiwan in order to keep the mainland happy. You would think that the WHO would put the health of people, regardless of where they live, ahead of politics.
If the virus' impact in Puerto Rico was very different than it was in the rest of the United States, the WHO would note it publicly. But Taiwan't situation was actively suppressed by the WHO because of Beijing.
Anyway, the WHO/Taiwan debacle seems to resulted in Taiwan handling this pandemic better than anyone else, considering their proximity to China and the huge amount of trade and travel between them. Taiwan just ignored the WHO and did their own thing, which was the best thing.
Btw only South Korea did "test test test". And that succeded very very much.
China censoring social media chat about the virus[0], tons of talk among experts that China faked their numbers and dates[1], meanwhile the WHO praises 'Chinese Transparency'[2][3], while hinting that the actions of censorship and moderate reporting were the right idea to avoid widespread panic.[4]
I'm not anti-WHO, but it's getting harder to believe that they are working objectively. China did a lot wrong in regards to response, but the WHO seems to want to heap on the praise. It makes one wonder. The weird non-response and hangup regarding Taiwan was just the topping on the cake, and it was entirely irresponsible on the WHOs part.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/chinese-social...
[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/08/8037667...
[2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/28-01-2020-who-china-le...
[3]: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcr...
[4]: https://apnews.com/16cd6173232a01ec04780db3eea4de79?fbclid=I...
Not sure what the solution here is, but it certainly does seem it's everyone for themselves in these situations.
The poor guys at the WHO just want to focus on fighting diseases, and yet everybody is trying to use them for political agendas. If I was that guy I would be inclined to shut down too.
Taiwan is clearly a self governing entity with that is not governed by the CCP. Whatever policy and assistance WHO is giving to CCP does not go to Taiwan. Taiwan has taken a very different approach to coronavirus and the world has a lot to learn from them.
Especially important when they actually are the one handling the issue the best way possible. The way he act is truly abominable. Its like Taiwan is in a separate dimension that didnt exist in this reality, and anything they did didnt happen
The first result I found on Google says the airport was shut down to all departures, along with all public transit. They didn't immediately shut down international driving in private cars, I suppose. https://www.ifn.news/posts/china-shuts-down-wuhan-airport-am...
> at the same time neighbor countries with china tried to block cross boarder movement yet china forced those trade routes to stay open well after Wuhan had entered lockdown
Are you referring to trade of goods? That has been the general approach in most countries even after restricting human travel, as the prevalent thought is that non-living goods don't replicate and shed the virus.
Evidence for this claim? I believe they closed all movement, including international flights.
I'd like someone else to confirm this because I've not heard about this before now.
This makes sense considering that, when the lockdown started, many countries had to discuss with the Chinese government in order to allow special flights to evacuate their citizens.
There were, however, people who already left Wuhan who then left the country.
There were also repatriation flights out of Wuhan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hubei_lockdowns
where is the 48h come from?
Things are so bad that many people are afraid to speak up for China using their own identities. I used to be one of those people who were afraid.
But now I have had enough. I personally experienced the lockdown in China and how distorted the western reporting is. That is why now I am stepping out and letting my voice known.
Edit: The "CCP is China" issue is a great point, and I wish that the distinction between government, nationality, culture, and race could be made a lot clearer (speaking as an American living in the US who is ethnically Chinese). What's personally distressing is how easily the media and politicians here leap from 'China lies and steals,' which is a debatable topic from a political science perspective at least, to 'The Chinese (people) lie and steal,' which is a subjective take on motives. Not sure if that's what you were talking about but wanted to get that out there...
At the time the vast majority of the cases in China were in Wuhan and Hubei, which had been put on lockdown with airports closed, but the rest of the country has much fewer cases.
No country imposed full ban on travels with countries that had the number of cases seen in China outside Wuhan/Hubei.
Whether this was the right or wrong decision to make is another issue.
The same discussion can be had about travellers from Italy just a few weeks later.
At the end of the day it is also down to each country to make its own decision on who to accept.
HN sinks to the gutter every time China pops up as a subject and no discussion is possible, as seen from the reaction to my previous comment.
People here read alternate sources of news, see the videos leaking out on the Internet, they're very savy and know that any reporting that rely on CCP as primary source of info are bird cage liner. The CCP acted in bad faith, and the world suffered for it, and this isn't the first time.
Or are you one of those bigots that can't separate the government from the people? Calling out the CCP has zilch to do with bigotry. Taiwan, HK and Chinese-Americans and diaspora (hence why they got out) aren't the same people and don't endorse the actions of the CCP. Calling out the jailing of journalists, arresting of doctors, and actions like currently rounding up black people in Guangzhou and putting them out in the street. Unless calling out racism by the government authorities is racist? It's as silly as saying calling out British government is calling out all white people, or bigotry towards the Scotish. China is 50+ ethnicities, besides the Han Chinese, so its a dumb argument to say China and race are equivalent, its a border and a government, that's it.
Chinese ex-pats know exactly what's going on there. They still have family there and see what's going on in Chinese social media and what's getting censored.
You can't scream racism and bigotry because someone criticizes a government, that's how we know you're a joke and likely a 50 center.
It's interesting to me that you find this surprising or view it as bad behavior.
It's not surprising in the sense that it fits the definition of a "nation state".
It's surprising because one would think that in XXI century, people understood that global problems require global coordination; competition of selfish actors fails spectacularly in such cases.
Then again, who's ready the first time they do something? This pandemic has made obvious a lot of places where our attempt at globalization doesn't work. I hope our societies will learn from it and do better next time.
I mean, imagine if all of AWS was just a single data centre labeled us-west-1. Imagine something happened to it. This is comparable to how Wuhan shutting down impacted the global supply chains.
(I lack a good web comparison for what happened afterwards - the EU, and recently the US, shutting down, hitting the global supply chains again, this time on the demand side.)
A dependency is something you own (a checked-out copy of). A better comparison is with services. So you may be using a payment gateway in your product, and maybe you need just a single one - but at the very minimum, you should have a plan in place to switch to a different one at a moment's notice. That's reasonable redundancy.
I think I've come up with an analogy for demand-side supply chain issues though. Imagine you have a web service that's constantly under 90% load during normal operations, and that eats almost exactly as much money in the infrastructure costs as it earns. Imagine that service gets mentioned on Hacker News. It almost immediately fails due to increased demand, you can't provision new instances because you don't have enough money in the bank, and then when suddenly the demand drops, you can't afford to keep it on at all.
Only a series of very bad decision would cause the above scenario to happen, and yet it's almost exactly like how supply chains operate in physical space.
Depending on services is where the fragility starts. They're single points of failure, unless you have a plan to quickly switch to an equivalent competitor.
--
[0] - Unless they have a time-limited commercial license. Then they're essentially a service.
We are also not getting there anytime soon.
the majority of the time, the problems you speak of were caused by the big western powers in the first place
(A simple thought experiment: imagine there are 10 equally capable competitors, each needing 2 units of resources to survive, and there are only 10 available globally. Under cooperation, 5 competitors will need to be sacrificed, but 5 will live. Under competition, all 10 will perish, each holding their hard-won single unit of resources.)
Otherwise, this is what peaceful cooperation looks like (I’ll give you this in exchange for that, where obviously the one with more desireable goods or services to trade will survive).
Most cultures have very strong social mores that sanction against hoarding or even general unwillingness to share. It's not THAT beyond the pale. What makes it hard is when society becomes disconnected enough, and community bonds get weak enough that social mores no longer bind behavior.
And from the perspective of the victors, it will be a better result, because winning guaranteed survival, whereas cooperation is essentially a lottery. So anybody who has a better chances to win a conflict than a lottery would choose conflict, if they are deciding solely on utilitarian rather than ethical grounds.
You have bodies like Germany or the US, which function as a federation of states. Looking at Germany and EU, you essentially have states within a state within a sort-of state. You can stack governments recursively, so it's possible and in some ways desirable to have a single one at the top level.
More globalists isn't going to solve globalism.
American politicians answer to their constituants, not the China or India. If it looks like policitians didn't first and foremost prioritize the need of their own citizens who elected them then it's treason.
> competition of selfish actors fails spectacularly in such cases.
The irony, it's the very definition of economic liberalism and what led to the current paradigm, globalism. The pandemic is only global because trade is global and people can easily travel between countries.
So no the solution isn't "a world government", the solution is to take back western industrial force from China.
Today, This is just the bill coming due, this is the real cost of the last 40 years of western industrial policies.
It doesn't mean it's the only path to a global economy.
> The pandemic is only global because trade is global and people can easily travel between countries.
The pandemic wouldn't be anywhere near as severe if there was a coordinated global response.
> the solution is to take back western industrial force from China
For that, you'll have to shut down economic liberalism, because otherwise the forces that caused the move of western industrial force into China will still be present, and will cause it again once the public forgets about the pandemic (i.e. in a year), and beancounters everywhere will be free to optimize the corporate balance sheets once again.
The rest of the world was acting with the (false) information that China, and the WHO, were putting out there - including that there was "no evidence of human-to-human" transmission. So perhaps when you say it's "not China's fault", this is technically true in the sense that it's the fault of the rest of us for taking what were obvious lies at face value.
--
[0] - https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-04-2020-who-timeline...
>By mid-February, it was clear it's going to be a problem for the West.
Which I'm sure is why it took the WHO until March 11th to declare it a Pandemic. This entire timeline reads like a corporate CYA exercise. Which tracks, since it was created yesterday.
Every time the Canadian government was asked why they weren't doing anything more, they would reply that they were following all WHO recommendations and WHO says no border closures.
Of course, it's impossible to tell what would have happened if WHO had recommended border closures but since they didn't, it's all on them.
In a way? Taiwan has less than 350 cases. They didn't wait for the WHO recommendation. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to die because of greed and bureaucratic incompetence.
Giant centralized institutions are not the solution to humanities' ills and dealing and cooperating with corrupt foreign powers isn't either.
Wether it cleanly fits into your political ideology or not, The United States is the most powerful country in the world, and in the coming years as less powerful countries work to stamp this out, we are going to be doing a lot to help them.
As the US goes, so goes the world. The US restricting medical supply exports looks bad on the short term, but it will end up being a net benefit to the planet.
It's not a matter of my ideology. I recognize that the US was the most powerful country in the world before the pandemic, but looking at the news about the US response, I have a feeling it will no longer be once the coronavirus is finally dealt with. Then again, maybe I'm just biased by the disproportionate amount of headlines the US is taking in international media.
I think you need to look at individual US states vs the US as a whole. The federal government doesn't really have authority to do everything that other country's federal governments do. For example its generally accepted that the federal government cannot force every citizen to be in lockdown while the states can.
The lack of a social net and out of control capitalism are also massive issues.
The president was downplaying the virus.
The US doesn't look like the most powerful country in the world, nor as a leader.
Besides, China would need to grow its power a lot to even be able to fit the same tier that US does today. And if they can't or don't want to, then the end result is likely a more decentralized world. Not every era is "Pax ..." - there are long gaps in between the fall of the old empire and the rise of a new one.
People still remember Soviet-style "social harmony" and there's a big allergy for that path.
Rapid growth is not exactly popular too for multiple reasons.
Growth-over-ecology brings bad memories from soviet era
Growth-over-labour-rights brings bad memories from 90s and somewhat soviet era
Rapid change itself brings bad memories from 90s and 00s too
OP was claiming "The US doesn't look like the most powerful country in the world, nor as a leader.". If US doesn't count for him.. I'd say China is 3rd world country compared to US.
In a global crisis, selfish actions help nobody.
This isn't limited to international relations, of course. The federal stockpiles of PPE are nearly depleted [0]. If the virus situation in America worsens, some states will be extremely pissed that the early states got a large chunk of the federal stockpiles, leaving none later on for them. Were the federal government to reserve supplies for states that were affected later, they would face anger from those that are peaking now.
> In a global crisis, selfish actions help nobody.
This is untrue. Keeping supplies does help some people, the ones with whom they are kept. It may hurt others, but it does help people.
I wonder if this is something like a prisoners' dilemma situation. A co-ordinated global response might be the best option, but it would require a sacrifice from each nation. Even if they might benefit in the end, in the days of non-stop media coverage, no government is willing to take the heat for making that sacrifice.
[0]: https://nypost.com/2020/04/09/federal-government-stockpile-o...
Officials are elected to serve the need of their own constituants first and foremost, not foreign interests. There is nothing selfish about that. The American government doesn't have to consult with Canada or Mexico before taking a decision in times of crisis. This is the very core idea behind a representative democracy.
Where politicians failed is with their lack of foresight when it comes to stocking masks and ventilators, they didn't fail because they were "selfish" toward other nations.
You always protect your own citizens first, then once you're in a position of strength, then you help your neighbor. If you're both in a hole, you have to get out of the hole first before you help your friend out, otherwise you're just both going to be in the hole. Put your mask on before assisting other passengers, etc. So many analogies, but this is very basic behavior and expected. Until a country no longer has a shortage themselves, its only when they have an abundance should they give needed supplies away.
What is happening is unfair to some, but the individual governments are doing exactly what they should be doing, valuing their people above all else.
Each nation was able to react differently, and those different responses have provided us the closest thing we have to controlled experiments. Those experiments have allowed us to understand the spread of this disease better.
Imagine if a world government had responded the way China did. That is, lie about the problem until it gets too big then forcibly lock people into their homes. What reason do we have to think that a world government would do anything different?
Turns out, that's the right thing to do. Now almost everyone is doing it to some extent.
Also: after China stopped pretending there's no problem and locked down Wuhan, it immediately coordinated the rest of the country to support the virus control efforts in Hubei. The western equivalent of that would be if the UN ordered isolation of Italy, and then ordered the rest of the EU, the UK and the US to ship food, personnel and PPEs to Italy, all in the space of days.
But UN doesn't have that power, EU doesn't have that power either, so here we are.
> Turns out, that's the right thing to do. Now almost everyone is doing it to some extent.
When I say "forcibly locking people in" I mean welding the doors shut[0]. Last I checked that's not something the rest of us are doing.
> Also: after China stopped pretending there's no problem and locked down Wuhan, it immediately coordinated the rest of the country to support the virus control efforts in Hubei.
Which if they hadn't pretended in the first place, would not have been necessary. So why did they pretend, and why did they stop?
My guess is that the deceit was somehow connected to protecting the Chinese government's legitimacy, and that only once news of the outbreak spread and deceit was untenable did they own up to it.
A world government has every incentive to suppress any information that may challenge it's legitimacy, and no external entities capable of publicizing the truth.
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronav...
Neither the difficulty of planning at that scale, nor the failure modes of a centralized government entity, should be underestimated.
Or like the federal government of the United States. I think we've been having pretty bad luck this year with large and influential organizations, which is a fair counterpoint to a global government proposal.
I am curious what will be considered not fake and genuine support? Damned if they and damned if they don’t. AFAIK Dutch issued a article clarify the mistake they made which nobody seems to care. I don’t think any single nation can or will survive this alone unless they want to serve all connections to the world. So why it is not in China best interests to offer genuine support when they can? Not like a short sighted prick?
"Unsurprisingly, Sweden has received no assistance from China. Instead, one of the country’s hospitals had to secure philanthropic funding to buy Chinese medical gear. Sweden happens to be China’s European bête noire, the result of its support for the imprisoned Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai, who became a Swedish citizen in the 1990s."
"Though an airplane would reach the desperate Spaniards (some 85,000 coronavirus infections, more than 7,000 deaths) much faster, Beijing made sure that the Chinese supplies currently heading for Spain would travel by train along the Belt and Road route, a journey that takes 17 days."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/30/russia-china-coronaviru....
"Some propaganda campaigns are more brazen still. According to recent analysis, 46% of tweets using the hashtag #forzaCinaeItalia, which translates as “come on China and Italy,” were generated by automated bots. For #grazieCina, meaning “Thanks China,” it was 37%. China’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua even posted a video on Twitter of Italians in Rome applauding health workers at noon from their balconies—but dubbed with the Chinese national anthem and claiming, spuriously, they were chanting “Grazie, Cina!”"
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-floods-europe-d...
China is trying the same thing that US did for many decades after WWII - to rally up global support through humanitarian aid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid
The problem is that the whole thing feels fake for 2 reasons (this is my personal opinion):
1) They are an authoritarian state using soft power for a democratic nation (Italy, Netherlands) - there is a real conflict of interest.
2) It is "pull" rather than "push" when it comes to soft power. You cannot muscle your way through it. As a superpower, you need to influence other nations such that those nations "want" to collaborate and be influenced - leading by example, helping them gain foothold after the catastrophy, long term investments in shared interests, etc. You can't buy your way into it.
IMO - China has a branding and goodwill problem :-). You're seeing that in HK. People outside of this propaganda sphere have no trust in the CCP.
Those sources are not being honest because they still present the initial claims as the final truth. No word about later research results that invalidate those claims.
China has now put in stricter export regulations in order to ensure that quality is as expected. But not much mention of that in mainstream western media either.
As for pull rather than push: did the Chinese force aid on countries? No: countries accepted and allowed aid on their own will. In my opinion, this "pull vs push" perception is based on prejudice that China must be pushing something, rather than what is actually happening.
Trouw -- "Als gevolg van de tekorten zijn de criteria voor het gebruik van de mondmaskers verlaagd" (because of the shortages, they lowered the standards for masks, making it easier to purchase the wrong thing) -- https://www.trouw.nl/politiek/ministerie-van-volksgezondheid...
An analysis of the Chinese standards: https://twitter.com/Gpzy4/status/1244437584815828993?s=20 and https://www.igj.nl/actueel/nieuws/2020/03/23/mondmaskers-uit...
Chinese side of the investigation (believe what you will): https://twitter.com/PRCAmbNL/status/1245739420969570304?s=20
China has now introduced export regulations to prevent these incidents from happening again: https://twitter.com/ZichenWanghere/status/124513282016031539...
I won't read LinkedIn btw, that is not a source.
I think you dismiss LinkedIn way too quickly. Hedda Sasburg is a business development consultant specialized in trade with China. I think this counts as expertise w.r.t. what Chinese different products and standards are. Why do you dismiss it so easily?
And okay, how about this then: https://nos.nl/artikel/2329316-afgekeurde-mondkapjes-waren-w...
From the article:
> Maar "de Chinese kwaliteitsstandaard KN95 van de mondmaskers is een medische code", zegt een woordvoerder van de IGJ.
> But "the Chinese standard KN95 means that it's for medical use", said the Dutch ministery of health.
Hedda Sasburg (and not sure why the article doesn't point this out):
> Ik lees dat het KN95 [aka GB2626] mondmaskers zijn; maskers die in China niet zijn bestemd voor medisch gebruik in ziekenhuizen.
> KN95 masks [aka GB2626] are not for medical use.
Note: the Chinese KN95 is not equivalent to the American N95.
Also from the article:
> "De producten stonden beschreven als 'niet-medische maskers' in de douanepapieren"
> The customs paper said that these are non-medical masks.
Even if you don't believe Hedda Sasburg and the Chinese statements, the customs paper seems pretty definitive to me.
The only loose end I still see is why IGJ ruled KN95 to be equivalent to the European EN-149:2001+A1:2009 when even the Chinese don't use them for medical purposes.
Anyway, the issue is now solved. China now sent masks that the Dutch do approve of: https://twitter.com/mjrijn/status/1246154161152045056
They bought up the worlds supply of PPE (over 2 billion masks) and nationalized factories owned by foreign companies (such as 3m) so their masks produced stay internal.
It’s almost as if I cornered the food market and then when people were starving I start selling them food but disguising it as a loving donation. People can see through that
Here [1] is a fine article of an all-American company in Texas that is too nervous to get back into the business of making masks since they lost a ton of money and had to lay off over 100 staff when demand vanished after the last SARS panic.
They still have the equipment and know-how. They just don't trust the market.
Not a single Chinese government official involved in this sad saga.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/15/coronavir...
It's definitely in their interest, because in terms of realpolitik, this is their golden opportunity one-up the US on the world stage, possibly even making Europe more aligned with them than with the States.
At the same time, international demand for other types of goods is dropping off a cliff, so Chinese factories have an even greater incentive to retool and produce PPE. With so many inexperienced manufacturers and such a rush to get to market, quality suffers.
There are also all sorts of unscrupulous middlemen and faudsters who are taking advantage of the crisis to sell non-existent, mislabeled or shoddy supplies. Buyers are desperate to obtain PPE quickly, and are willing to spend enormous amounts to get it, so it's a seller's market and fraud is easy. There's an interesting account of the current situation here: [1].
Allowing foreigners to get defrauded is bad for China's brand, so the government recently (in the last few days) issued new regulations on exports of medical equipment.[2] The regulations should improve quality, but will also make it more difficult to obtain PPE from China. Pick your poison: more PPE with poor quality control, or less PPE with better quality control.
1. https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/03/buying-face-masks-and-o...
2. https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/04/buying-face-masks-and-o...
This is actually a great idea! We should all be finally supporting this.
People have been complaining for the past 20 years of poor quality from China made goods. But, what do they expect?
They want to buy a $1 USD dollar item, and expect it to be as good quality as a $10 USD dollar item.
What kind of moron failed at basic math, that they can't understand this?
By having all China made goods be labeled as: "Made in China", then you mix the crap with the spectacular. It tarnishes the national brand. There needs to be more distinction.
The China government, should now create 2 or 3 classes.
1) High Quality Products, certified by the China Government
2) International Products, certified by foreign companies
3) Low Quality Products, not certified by anyone, so buy it at your own damn risk, and don't blame China for it
This can actually help shift poor products to other countries. Then, the new "Made in OtherCountry" products, can be known as the crap products. Or, every country should probably do this, if they want to avoid being known as a low quality manufacturer.
What is good about that? They are terrified to come to work.
This heroism stuff is just bullshit so we can shame people who refuse to die.
After crisis is over, there will be no financial compensation (overtimes, hazardous environment, no protective equipment).
Every medical worker who goes into the fray to help save people in this pandemic deserves the highest praise. Every medical worker who doesn't on the grounds that it's extremely unsafe deserves understanding - after all, as the EMS mantra goes, the safety of the rescuer takes priority over the rescue; a sick or dead medical practitioner can't help anyone anymore.
Every hospital administrator and every politician who did anything but their absolute best to help ensure a safe working environment for medical workers, and every private company that continued to fleece healthcare, deserve to be called out, shunned and stripped of their possessions. I have doctors in my family, and I worry about their lives every day. Talking with them, I wouldn't blame my Poland's medical staff if they all decided to just pack up and leave. It's an absolute tragedy that medical personnel has to fight an uphill battle just to have a chance of not dying, trying to save people from COVID-19. As much as I can believe the news, it's the same in most of Europe and in the US.
I hope that after the dust settles, there will be a reckoning. That people will finally demand that their governments unbreak their healthcare.
Years back when I was trained as a lifeguard, this point was repeatedly emphasized. The first thing you do when you see somebody who needs help is to review the situation for any environmental hazard that could harm you too. It makes no sense to run up to somebody laying on the ground only to slip on the same puddle and crack your skull too. That would only make the situation worse.
Imagine you rush to help someone and get hurt. Now, you can't help that person AND now there are 2 people that need aid instead of 1. So that 1 ambulance you called out is no longer sufficient.
Unfortunately, it would have to be mandated by fiat for it to happen, because market economy tends to reward people in proportion to the inverse of the value they provide to the society at large.
Mostly true. I'd say true, if by "replace" you mean "replace with someone equally capable of earning business the same amount of money". In this sense, top celebrities get absurdly high payouts because they cannot be easily substituted by someone who can bring in equivalent fanbase (=money).
> so unskilled jobs get rewarded less
Not necessarily. A CRUD app often pays more than medicine, but then again sometimes plumbing or construction work pays more than either.
> There is no chance in hell writing a crud app delivers more value to society than saving one single life.
Depends on an app. A one that helps move medicine around more efficiently, or reduce pollution in a city, effectively saves lives. But I've noticed that building such apps tends to be low on the pay scale. What pays best in this industry is usually something that's a net negative to society, like adtech or gambling.
Of course maybe they should be paid more. I don't really know how much they get paid and how much more they should get paid. I've heard the industry is abusive in some ways, but from what I've heard most of the abuse seems like institutionalized hazing; particularly the sleep deprivation stuff. In those respects, I think it's probably on that industry to clean up their own act. The AMA is a professional association for doctors, by doctors. It seems to me they should be able to do something about the abuse.
They are identical to soldiers. Some healthcare workers are being exposed to Coronavirus and dying.
In fact, we should have similar veteran-like benefits for healthcare workers for their sacrifice during this time. Same with delivery workers - they are the logistics arm of this war.
Allow me to disagree with this one. I see people questioning China's motives on helping other countries, but in my opinion this is a baseless and overly cynical view of things, not truth. People want to buy into the "China has motives" story so much, that they jump on every incident that may imply that.
The Dutch situation is typical. FYI: I am Dutch. Research has shown that mistakes were made on the Dutch side: because of haste and pressure (because supplies are low), and because the buyers didn't fully understand Chinese mask standards, they ordered the wrong thing. China did not intentionally send bad masks, nor was it a manufacturing quality problem.
I see the US social media villanizing China for the most insane things that can be easily disproven. The Dutch at least make an attempt at being objective.
How's that supposed Dutch calm looking when it comes to Italy and fiscal matters these days? I've been following that closely, they've been anything but calm, rational, objective. They're being emotional and subjective, making poor decisions, because it's a very personal subject that is nearby.
The US directly leads the entire military power base of the Western nations, as represented by NATO. And it is the sole backbone to that system. The French and Germans barely have militaries that can project outside of their own borders at this point, and the British are not far behind. China is going the opposite direction, they're a rapidly expanding superpower that is about to project militarily to nearly every corner of the globe, with obvious consequences.
The Netherlands isn't militarily facing off against China in Asia. The US is, every day - and at the eager welcome of numerous nations including Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. The US is the only nation that has directly confronted China and slowed down their annexing of the South China Sea. It won't be the Netherlands that has to make a decision about going to war with China when or if China invades Taiwan to annex them. The Netherlands will barely so much as lift a finger to help; first, they can't do anything because they're weak compared to China; and second they have little real stake in the matter. The US has dozens of allies it is militarily responsible to, countries that count on the US to shield them; the Netherlands has no comparable situation.
The Netherlands has little at stake in the China matter, compared to the US. They're a small trader nation at this point, shielded by larger nations in numerous ways.
So yeah, having dramatically more at stake in every possible way, the US is more charged about the topic than the ... calm and rational Dutch (about a topic they have very little stake in) that don't have to militarily confront China every day.
I also disagree on one thing here: the claim that China is projecting power to the rest of the world, that is trying to conquer the world or becoming an American style militaristic empire. In my opinion this is pure projection (in the psychological sense). China wants to defend themselves from a US invasion or blockade. They are not interested in controlling or occupying other countries, they just want to be able to do business.
What about South China Sea you may ask? They do it in order to deny the US from using that area to blockade them, not to conquer other countries or deny other countries from normal usage. See https://www.quora.com/Why-does-China-want-to-control-almost-...
Note, I am not saying whether this is a good or a just thing. But it certainly is different from how most westerners understand it.
And a country that has dramatically more at stake by permanently looking for fights all around the world should probably be more rational and calm than one that isn't.
Pardon ? The French military is the one that projects the most in Europe.
When outsourcing of production and labour suits, it's ignored for the underlying issues, when those underlying issue come to the surface, the same people who shifted for a shareholder appeasement dividend are just as quick to point the finger in every direction apart form themselves.
That in many forms is how things have played out in resource supply chains, this with margin nibbling away and with that a shift from local sourcing todwards, saving some money short-term are only a disaster away from being seen. Alas even those disasters need to be blatant enough to get noticed and the response and excess transportation of products and true impact/cost upon the environment as bit by bit, gets slower in acknowledgement.
But easy to reduce everything as tribal politics when convenient and carry on paying lip service and then wonder why we are in the state we are in. Of course it is akin to claiming everything is down to aliens and when you look at it like that, it's crazy and ignores the real issue of accountable and responsible buying and selling, something that is hard to account and balance upon the company books and with that, the drive for profit being the goal, bad things happen and until the system truly accounts for such things and the impact - the same mistakes will carry on transpiring and the people blamed for crimes they did not commit and those that commit true crimes are allowed to carry on as the law and rules are so slow in catching up that by the time they do, the problems have shifted.
Maybe why tax havens and the like are still a thing as are many other forms of unfairness that play out in the world today.
But we do live in a society that is more geared towards reactive handling of issues over proactive handling.
Are those Chinese representing private companies, or state companies?
Of course, define "caring". Does any other government, including democratic ones, truly care about people? Debatable. But what I'm saying is that CCP is not the mass-murdering villain that Hacker News makes it out to be.
What about censorship, etc? Yes bad things do happen. Lots of good things also happen. Just like all countries, nothing is perfect. I don't need to remind you of all the human rights violations by the US. The point is: you need to have a more nuanced understanding of the CCP than that of a cartoon villain.
Here are some facts: all coronavirus patients got free treatment, free stays in isolation hotels, all Wuhan residents got free food delivered to their homes. In contrast to what happened here in Europe, the CCP took a strong stance to save as many of their own citizen as they can instead of worrying about economic impact.
You may not believe me. But take a look at these:
"I'm sitting home in Wuhan and eating free vegetables and fish govt sent me and you tell me it hurts my human rights???" -- https://twitter.com/ClaireRChen/status/1241971786062770176?s...
New Wuhan Doctor Speaks Out From Ground Zero -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyUHz62Uan8
American and Canadian, living & studying in China, talk about how it is actually like there -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufxfSJgQuSI
Burma / Myanmar.
EDIT:
https://news.un.org/en/focus/rohingya-refugee-crisis
> I have no doubt that the Rohingya people have always been one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world, without any recognition of the most basic rights starting by the recognition of the right of citizenship by their own country – Myanmar.
> Secretary-General António Guterres in press remarks on his visit to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – 02 July 2018
https://www.un.org/sg/sites/www.un.org.sg/files/atoms/files/...
> [...] This led to the destruction of villages, numerous dead and wounded, and the internal displacement of up to 140,000 people, mostly confined to IDP camps, which persist to the present (and under the most deplorable conditions). [...]
You could further argue that the overreaching mass surveillance outed by Snowden is invasive tracking.
In a way, you could also argue that all the boogeyman-style news in the west is a form of censorship too - it keeps the masses focused on their hatred of communists, Russians, Chinese, Islam (or whoever), so they don't focus so much on real issues at home.
And all this is just in direct response to your comment - it doesn't even touch on racism (very much alive in the US in particular), wars started on false pretenses and/or for profit, the CIA being able to lie to congress, refusing to not use cluster munitions, etc.
I think sometimes we're so focused on the perceived evils of other nations, that we lose sight of the highly dubious things are own nations are involved in. Perhaps that's the point...
India, according to John Oliver.
Of course, bring up India should not normalize the severity of locking people up in camps in China. This is the point: asking for examples of worse behavior is a moot point because camps are bad even if every nation in the world does it. At the same time, camps in China is not necessarily suitable context in all facets of discussion.
When it comes to topics (like whether supplying masks from China makes it a good actor) with too much subjective variables, I personally like to think about issues as independently as possible. Using this logic, PPE from China, whether purchased or donated, is an act of appreciable good gesture; regardless, hard condemnation is a must regarding their abuses.
As for Muslim camps: forced reeducation and deradicalization, yes; concentration/killing/genocide: no. Try these:
Daniel Dumbrill (Canadian living in China) on Uygurs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6grvHceQsQ
Kim Iversen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff4YZBi4UTc
CGTN discussion on Xinjiang situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2yMjbB1q24 (disclaimer: yes this is Chinese state media, believe whatever you want, but I think it's still worth it to have heard this viewpoint)
And then there is also the fact that tens of Muslim countries officially approved of the Xinjiang situation. That's a bit odd, isn't it?
Now let me be clear: I am not claiming it's all roses and sunshine over there. It isn't, there are real problems, and people are indeed forced into things (though not killed), which is not good. But this is a more complex, nuanced situation than "China doesn't like Muslims so they kill them all".
You should know that it's the han way or death for the CCP. I don't understand the point of to your posts. Whataboutism is a poor excuse.
And there you go with the "or death" thing. Forced reeducation and detention, yes. But where is the proof that systematic killing is happening? All the proof of the latter I've seen so far come from US government or US-funded sources with poor research methodology (see for example https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nat...).
And what do you say about the fact that a dozen of Muslim nations officially approve of China's conduct in Xinjiang?
Whataboutism
>And what do you say about the fact that a dozen of Muslim nations officially approve of China's conduct in Xinjiang?
That's completely irrelevant. Do the people being repressed approve because that's all that matters. And for the record they do not approve of their families being raped and basically held captive by CCP employees despite BS CCP propaganda to the contrary.
You seem to say that whataboutism is anything that mentions similar crimes committed by another party, implying that the actions of others are completely irrelevant. No. My criticism is not "China does no bad things". It is "China is not represented in a balanced manner and is not held to the same standards as other countries". Since the discussion is about standards, context absolutely matters.
> That's completely irrelevant. Do the people being repressed approve because that's all that matters [...] their families being raped
There you go with the "families being raped" thing. My point with the aprovals of Muslim countries is: maybe those allegations of rape are false?
Like I said: forced reeducation and deradicalization, yes. Rape/killing/concentration/genocide, no. The Gray Zone articles show that claims of the latter rest on shaky sources that are either circular, or funded by US interests and agendas.
We can debate whether forced reeducation and deradicalization is appropriate. But genocide/rape/murder/etc is false.
Delivered via rubbish trucks.
https://mothership.sg/2020/03/garbage-trucks-wuhan/
> American and Canadian, living & studying in china, talk about how it is actually like there
Actual videos from china
Did you earn your red scarf?
I sometimes find it helpful to replace "HN" with "large statistical distribution" in a sentence. It's usually true and makes things less dismaying.
People have been hounded off this site because of their national origin. I'm sure you'll agree that that's utterly shameful. Unfortunately it's what we end up with when people allow baser instincts to drive their posts.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
This topic has become too politicised by people and organisations with hawkish motives that sane discussion on this has become impossible.
That doesn't align with what's being reported (by other countries as well):
> "Thousands of testing kits and medical masks are below standard or defective, according to authorities in Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands."
> "Dutch officials said that the masks did not fit and that their filters did not work as intended, even though they had a quality certificate,"
It’s neither baseless or overly cynical if you’ve ever lived in China or have just spent enough time observing the CCP’s actions.
If you enumerate all the domestic human rights abuses of the US it doesn't look much better. Internationally, it's much worse. Hell, the US barely has 'democracy'. The chance of your vote _actually_ counting is small, and the two parties are barely better than a strict illusion of choice.
It's nothing more than another red scare. And before people jump down my throat... I don't think the CCP is _good_ either, I would dissolve both governments if it was up to me.
At this point I need to mention this:
The USA has managed to successfully enforce bogus patents of drugs that should be generics in the EU. So instead of producing them at home we import them from India. The ICU I did my rotation on would be impossible to work without drugs produced in India.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/world/coronavirus-equipme...
"Scientists in Africa and Latin America have been told by manufacturers that orders for vital testing kits cannot be filled for months, because the supply chain is in upheaval and almost everything they produce is going to America or Europe."
Not that I can blame the EU because I'm pretty sure it couldn't have done (as in imposed) anything there and it clearly highlights the deficiencies of being somewhere in the middle.
It was a litmus test and it's pretty obvious that we need to take it further rather than competing with each other.
This is bullshit. At least three of those stories have been quietly retracted. Also you're damn right US should be putting itselt first when in crisis.
This has also confirmed the true colors of the media - hypocrites who spent months comparing COVID to the flu and yelling "sinophobia!" For closing the border, before turning on a dime to shit on the president for not being prepared.
>When times are great -> Globalism
>When times are tough -> Isolation and tribalism
When times are great, people become naive and forget that we live in a world with scarce resources and different cultures. When times are tough we are suddenly reminded of the way things actually are, that life is not the utopian vision that some people seem to think.
That doesn't excuse the actions of Republican party members but it does destroy the credibility of the journalistic establishment. Which has devolved into a total cash grabbing, activist joke. And this happened before Trump.
India did allow export for humanitarian purposes (last month).
Given that China seems to force countries to pay for PPE the same countries previously donated to China, you're right for being skeptical.
https://abc14news.com/2020/04/06/china-forces-italy-to-buy-s...
And not a lot different from the century-old pandemic "Spanish Flu". Essentially civilized reciprocity broke down then too.
1) US trying to unsuccessfully hoard supplies, issues with the German testing company
2) China trying to use soft power, but the whole drama feels fake. It is good that they are sending supplies (often faulty and not up to the quality, see dutch story around this) but it doesn't feel genuine.
3) European countries are in-fighting for supplies. Switzerland wants supplies from Germany who is unwilling to supply them. Austria and Germany butt heads.
4) India banning critical medical exports
There are so many stories of how each nation is behaving. Even within the US, states are bidding against each other and the federal government has not shown solid leadership.
When times are grim, humans tend to invoke strong tribal instincts (for e.g. brotherhood that forms between soldiers). If we hypothetically had a more deadly virus than Coronavirus, say with a CFR of 50% and we were unable to stop it, there would be in-fighting between counties and neighborhoods.
There are some good stories too, especially the sacrifice of the healthcare workers, delivery staff and politicians.
When times are great -> Globalism
When times are tough -> Isolation and tribalism