Seems like a power move to me. Painting a picture for the world of struggling U.S. institutions needing a Chinese billionaire's help to weather a crisis.
I'm not even sure it's incorrect.
I'm not even sure it's incorrect.
But once you realise they're sending them everywhere, it makes it look more like they've ramped production up to stupifying numbers (which is China's speciality afterall), and have realised their value in goodwill is far beyond their dollar value.
(or, yes, propaganda - there's not a lot of real difference between PR, propaganda and goodwill. Ultimately, doing something good because the optics benefit you, is still doing something good.)
There’s no way the leadership has thought out all the angles.
The translation you are looking for is "dick swinging" :)
I have no doubt his intention really is to save lives, but a secondary motive is surely also PR. Perhaps the Chinese state had some role in this, as well. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I could see a possible benign conspiracy like them using Jack as a proxy to distribute these.
If they did it officially, it could be trusted less and the motive would seem more blatant. And Jack of course has enough money to do this himself, but such a big international move might require the approval of the government.
Of course it's PR. It's always PR, probably regardless of what superpower's government is involved. The only difference here is that the Chinese government has more control over and knowledge of what private citizens are doing, so it can be difficult to disentangle private and governmental action.
It's near impossible to disentangle private and government[al] action in China. It's also not a uniquely American way to think about it. Every country uses private proxies where it makes sense in order to project power.
Is what Gates does also "always PR"?
Both of these men could afford to retire to a private island (or chain of islands) and never be heard from again. You think they do what they do primarily for PR reasons?
The problem here is it's so hard to separate private and governmental action in China. Jack Ma may not have even been able to do this without their approval or prodding, possibly. Maybe he did, but there's no good way to know. Most other large countries don't have such powerful and expansive governments.
This is about geopolitics, not philanthropy. I think most philanthropists aren't doing things for PR, and for the ones who are, it's probably a minor, extra motive. But all bets are off when the philanthropist may be an ultra-powerful nation-state.
I'm a massive conspiracy theory skeptic and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to debunk them, but this is just how geopolitics work, have always worked, and will likely still work for centuries or millennia to come. Many actions have multiple motives.
Also, I'm just saying it's a possibility. It's just hard to know since it's so hard to separate government and private activities in such a place.
That's what I'm saying. And this specific way of thinking is focusing on the worst of the motives and treating them as if they were the main motives, the most important motives, the most worthwhile motives to observe and point out, maybe the only motives worth mentioning.
>I have no doubt his intention really is to save lives, but a secondary motive is surely also PR. Perhaps the Chinese state had some role in this, as well. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I could see a possible benign conspiracy like them using Jack as a proxy to distribute these.
I said it was a secondary motive, and that it was a benign conspiracy theory. I only leaned this way due to the fact the outbreak originated in China and because Jack Ma may not have been able to do this without the approval of the government. That means it's fairly likely he either had to request approval, in which case the government may have approved for PR reasons, or it's possible they reached out to him and proposed or demanded it.
Even if it were the Chinese state doing it formally, I'd still say the primary motive is to save lives, even if there were also other motives. Like how the primary motive of the Belt and Road Initiative is to increase trade and uplift poor countries, but there are many other motives, as well. Again, this is the case for all large governments, not just China - the difference here is just the lack of separation between private and governmental action in China, which makes it difficult to tell to what extent this is Jack and to what extent this is the state. If it were somehow proven the state weren't involved in any way, then I would think it was more likely than not that Jack didn't have ulterior motives.
Either way, it's not something I care much about one or way the other. I wasn't the original person to say it was a power move - I just disagreed with the parent poster who suggested it being a global initiative made it less likely to be a power move. No matter his/their motives, it's very good he and/or the Chinese government are doing this.
It is very convenient blaming your adversaries/competitors for your own f..ups. We could've easily shut the borders at first sign and be protected and safe. Have somebody to blame for that hole?
The CPC knew about this virus for over a month before they took any action to contain it. In fact, they arrested people who were sounding the alarm. Xi is claimed to have been steering the ship for weeks before any lockdowns were put into place in Hubei province. The CPC own this global crisis. If it was not for their epic mismanagement, there would not be a pandemic.
You are trying to blame politicos for being who they are. Other governments behaved exactly the same. They knew very well what is coming and still kept flow of goods and people. They are just as guilty in ignoring pandemic.
Sure they did not arrest their people for "spreading panic". But that is human rights issue and is totally separate from the subject. Nobody's saying that China is the beacon of freedoms.
But sure it feels much better when one can ignore their own screw ups and pin the blame on somebody else.
We have evidence that acting earlier was an option, because the party chief of Qianjiang (a city in Hubei) unilaterally decided to do just that. He went against the prevailing wisdom from Beijing and quarantined all coronavirus patients in that city back on January 17 - ten days after Xi Jinping claims he was on top of things and over a week before the party ordered other cities in Hubei (including the epicenter of Wuhan) to lockdown. Qianjiang is now the only city in Hubei that has lifted their lockdown, and infections have been an order of magnitude less than other cities in the province.
And that's only one case that Caixin was allowed to report on. If we had a free press here maybe we'd hear more about the abject failure of party leadership to follow the advice of specialists, but unfortunately we do not.
However, that is beside the point. The point is, this outbreak was grossly mismanaged by the CPC, and now the entire world is suffering. No matter how many lavish gifts wealthy party members bestow upon the rest of the world, it's important that we do not forget how this crisis started and who was responsible for it. Otherwise, how will we learn to avoid the next one?
Here is the divine revelation - it had started in China. How will it help you when it starts in China or elsewhere next time?
And again you've completely ignored the fact that the rest of the world was happily ignoring all dangers and kept borders opened for goods and people without any testing.
As for starting first: I guess we could blame first human for all our problems. Guilty party is found, the case closed shut
Perhaps the propaganda has not been as successful overseas, but here in China it is gaining legs. Having a proud party member donate gifts to foreign countries is very much a part of changing the narrative on this crisis. The government here is allowing the conspiracy theory to spread that the origins of the virus were foreign, and that it was all just a stroke of bad luck that Wuhan got hit first. But - never fear - Xi Jinping rode in to save the day! This is an extremely damaging take on what happened. Whether you support the one-party state or not, it bodes poorly for the future of China to have leaders who cannot accept responsibility for their mistakes.
The CPC had the opportunity to learn from SARS, and it appears they did not. They now have an opportunity to learn from COVID-19, but if the story is twisted in such a way that people only remember the great success of Xi and the great magnanimity of people like Jack Ma, then that will not happen.
I am way more concerned about what is happening in Western hemisphere where I live. All I know is we've allowed major f'ck up all on our own.
Potential Chinese client state
>Italy
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47679760
Italy joins China's New Silk Road project
>Japan
Par East Asia competition and nose thumbing
>SK
Ibid.
>Spain
"Does the EU really mean anything to you in times of crisis?"
It's the usual astute PRC maneuvering.
I'm not saying it's unacceptable, I'm saying that China and the U.S. are direct rivals in a way that China and Europe are not, and that it will appear a certain way to the world, and that the way it appears will be advantageous to the CCP.
Jack Ma doing this is also a political move. I'm sure that part of the motivation is just to help, but it seems clear to me that this is also intended to show that China is in a position to help the US, and the optics of that are that the countries are on equal footing. Remember, China as a country does have a bit of a complex about their status, which is completely understandable considering the rapid changes they have been through. This aid shows that, rather than being a 2nd-class citizen, the country is in a position to help America with something.
That being said, this is a great thing, these are much needed supplies for which there isn't a large domestic manufacturing capacity (as it was offshore). However charitable acts can also have additional political motivations, and that does seem to be a factor here.
When countries from around the world sent urban SAR specialists to Christchurch following the earthquake, was that a signal that, say, Taiwan, thinks they're superior?
When we send our victim identification specialists or rural firefighter volunteers to countries that need them, is that flexing? Or is it just, I dunno, countries helping each other?
You can even ignore how badly the US government has bungled it. The simple reason is that China is the second largest economy in the world and has had more time to deal with and tackle the virus.
The problem is that the US federal government has so thoroughly messed up the situation that this looks really bad. If the US government hadn’t done such a bad job of testing this donation may have maybe added 50% or doubled the number of available tests and it would simply look like a generous donation, rather than also shining light on the embarrassing US response.
That's why when Cuba is struck with a hurricane, they reject American aid [1], despite being a relatively poor country who could obviously benefit from it.
[1]https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=943791...
Is the Gates Foundation an organization devoted to making power moves around the world?
I'm not getting the criteria here. They seem biased.
This is a global adversary, and a global response is required.
Perhaps when we dance this dance again, global health expertise and transparency will be the default from the beginning.
The American are people like you and me. Yes their government needs a lot of work, but people are people and we need to remember that more
I'm not saying it's evil or that we shouldn't accept it, I'm just observing the optics and the fact that there's no way the CCP didn't consider it from this perspective beforehand, regardless of any other motives.
Powerful people have their sphere. They cannot just doing things without staying in their community.
But that's not a novel conclusion, humans are social animals...
So what? Even if it was, no-strings-attached charity is no-strings-attached charity.
Denmark is of course doing well, as are Sweden and Norway.
For whatever reason, the US lacks the ability and/or the capability of responding effectively to this crisis.
The assistance is valuable and should be respected and appreciated accordingly.
And if people in the US feel uncomfortable about what this assistance implies about the US -- well, there will be time to consider why that is so and what can be done about it at a future date.
With complete lack of freedom and privacy, you can achieve a lot. They're doing better than any western country would: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-slowed-coronavirus-lo...
Like:
- censoring alarming posts in social networks for weeks
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/china-censored-cov...
- threatening medical staff with prosecution in case of warning other people on early stages of pandemic
https://qz.com/1798859/chinese-doctors-coronavirus-death-uni...
- flooding internet discussions with crowds of state trolls spreading disinformation
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/fee3ct/chinese_t...
Good news is that now all eyes are on the medical supply chains, and introduction of the medical supply drug act bill, we should see some supply chain move back to US.
Especially since Chinese government has threatened to withhold drug supplies to US https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... and has started a disinformation campaign suggesting US inserted coronavirus in Wuhan, brought up by the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-official-says-us-arm...
If it was purely humanitarian, there would be no press release, but there's nothing wrong with him getting a thumbs up for this.
Most rich guys like to get some 'brownie points' while they give money away, which is fine.
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/wuhan-doctors-sa...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us...
1. CIA created the virus and released the virus in China as a test.
2. (In Chinese there's no word for 'flu', only 'cold', or 'transmissible cold'.) The 'cold' virus originated in US last year and killed more than 10k Americans before US sent special force to Wuhan to infect us Chinese! Even the head of CDC admitted it (see article).
3. A 5 member US special force went to Wuhan in November. They returned to US and all died in suspicious circumstances.
4. Now all the western countries are sending infected agents into China to blow the epidemic again.
You might notice a common theme that US is the enemy, and they are the originator of all bad things that happened to China. This is not a coincidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
Use of the phrases like these, exemplifying the tu quoque logical fallacy, was an attempt to deflect criticism of the Soviet Union by referring to racial discrimination and lynching in the United States.
It is not "Classic Chinese / Soviet tactic (TM)". It is a friggin natural sense of justice that normal people possess.
1. WeChat is heavily patrolled and monitored by the PRC censors. If the PRC doesn't want these rumors to circulate, these rumors would not last more than a hour (or seconds. It's very enlightening to see the sensitive terms get filtered in real time.)
In fact, in the last week or so, I've been getting more conspiracy forwards. The spread of rumors on this topic on WeChat is speeding up.
2. I don't see US' Secretary of State accusing China of intentionally creating the virus.
Reddit tries to stop conspiracy theories with quarantines and bans. But they're rapidly spreading anyway.
> 2. I don't see US' Secretary of State accusing China of intentionally creating the virus.
It really is symmetric: Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas, has been on Fox saying exactly this.
Fox also has other people on saying it was a joint North Korean and Chinese bioweapon, made solely to attack America, but released initially in China as a decoy. Fox is the most watched cable news channel in America.
I think you're just grasping at straws because you've already decided what narrative you want. In which case there's nothing more for me to say here.
Senators are within the top 100 most powerful people in the US.
But in the current one, who gets on Fox seems to be a more reliable indicator of the thinking of the ruling clique than official pronouncements. Stuff that gets repeated on Fox enough tends to end up coming out of the President's mouth eventually. Official pronouncements from Secretaries of Suchandsuch get countermanded by tweet. One of the President's closest advisors broadcasts on Fox nightly.
"Blame China" is a simple message and it would not be rational to think it is not going to be tweet-official policy soon enough.
To the downvoters - explain.
They're so at odds they agreed to give the Pentagon $100B more this year than last, in addition to loosening accounting rules so they can hide even more of their shenanigans from the taxpayer. They're so at odds that Gitmo is still open, we're still fighting in a dozen nations, we're undermining the democratic governments of several more, and they just gave the next appointed coup leader a unanimous standing ovation at the state of the union ("it's not good!") speech. They're so at odds that to contest an election with a loud-mouthed incoherent corrupt old person with shady Ukraine connections, they've chosen... a loud-mouthed incoherent corrupt old person with shady Ukraine connections.
They're so at odds that when the government decided they needed to destroy a journalist for doing journalism, for revealing to the USA voter and tax payer the evil shit done with their votes and taxes, not a single journalist anyone had ever heard of spoke up in his defense. Oh yeah, that MSM is speaking "truth to power" now. Good grief.
Yes, the American media isn’t perfect, but deriding it as “fake news” while CCTV a somehow put on a pedestal just seems really wrong. The fact is that it is at least independent of the government and doesn’t have to act in the interest in the ruling executive (and in fact, depending on who is president, there will always be plenty of media that isn’t friendly to their agenda).
The first thing authoritarians do when they gain power is to try and delegitimize the free press so they can get rid of it. That is exactly wha it is going on now, and whenever someone uses the term MSM, that is what I know their agenda is.
For all that they caterwaul about surface controversies like is it worse to arrange corrupt positions at foreign firms for one's children or is it worse to investigate such positioning, Fox and MSNBC agree about everything important to the rich bastards who own both the media and the government. For instance, China: we're told constantly by both (all) news firms to fear China. In this very thread there is evidence of a widespread derangement stemming from that constant gaslighting. ("What if the masks are pre-impregnated with virus?!%?") After all, China is an independent nation with a military! USA military-industrial complex might make a lot of money losing a war with China! They must all be evil bastards bent on destroying us! Oh but they're not as bad as Russia! Or Iran! Or Venezuela! Or some random goat enthusiasts in some desert somewhere! When the topic is a war into which we haven't yet blundered, there is unanimity in the war media. (Since you're language policing, tell me: is "war media" better or worse than "MSM" that you derided upthread? On the one hand, it's evocative and focused on the bottom line. On the other, it is one more syllable... I can't decide!)
China is played in western media because that is the perception that their audiences want to see. It isn’t universally negative either, it just is what it is. Media reports negative stories about everyone (not just China), because negative news sells more than positive news and unlike CCTV, they have to pay the bills.
In the short term, though, you're mostly right. News media firms program to increase audience engagement. Rachel Maddow didn't particularly enjoy turning her program into all-Trump-all-the-time in mid-2015, but she couldn't really help it. There was a large portion of the cable news audience that couldn't resist the frisson that came from seeing that one guy who had said mean things to people on that one TV show now saying other mean things to other people on the news. These morons would tune into to anything Trump (to some extent, they will still), and as Les Moonves observed it was "damn good" for the bottom line.
It's tempting to assume that the modern news media firm doesn't really care about which direction their product points. The particular cars that crashed don't really matter when the morons just want to see car crashes. We could hypothesize an efficient market and be smug in the sure knowledge that there are no long-term trends. Or, we could pull our heads out of our asses and actually observe the trends.
Maybe USA is so irredeemably racist that China is an easy mark for this sort of media malpractice. Somehow our racism has ignored all of sub-Saharan Africa? And somehow Israel is not only not despised, but is actually celebrated, despite the fact they are every bit as awful to Palestinians as China is to Uighurs? This is a strange reflection of common USA prejudice!
In fact, Israel purchases (often with USA tax money) large quantities of armaments from USA armaments manufacturers. The moment they stopped doing that, or alternatively the moment their rivals seemed likely to purchase even more armaments in hopes of finally destroying them, would be the moment they were seen in a very different light in USA news media. In the long run, every stupid misguided war USA or its proxies fight is preceded by a long run of news media demonization. Maybe that's just a natural thing, but I'm suspicious.
Elon and Jack Ma debates in Shanghai, just listen this guy talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3lUEnMaiAU
Edit: I am not defending the United States. Just look at what our president said this afternoon. Couldn't even string a cohesive sentence together. If Jack Ma is genuine and wants to help - who knows? To me it feels like a huge power move as the OP said - it feels "correct" to me. This news is trending big time on Twitter.