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...
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.
This is the same article as the OP.
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.
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.
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...
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.)
So its implied. They cant confirm anything but they need to refute that its spread through humans
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.
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.
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
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.
Evidence for this claim? I believe they closed all movement, including international flights.
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...
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.
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.