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Comment by ubermon | Hacker News Reader

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.

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?

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For instance this makes it fake:

"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://time.com/5814940/china-mask-diplomacy-falters/

There are a ton of sources here:

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. Yes countries initially claimed that kits and masks were defective. But later researches showed that countries made wrong orders because of haste, not understanding Chinese standards, etc. I already said elsewhere that the Dutch ordered wrong masks. In case of the Spanish: they ordered kits for testing whether a recovered patient had the virus, not for testing whether one is infected.

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.

Sources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22825391

Sources please ( I am Dutch and I am surprised about your claims ).

Let op! Niet elk mondmasker geeft voldoende bescherming tegen corona! -- Explains the different Chinese standards -- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/let-op-niet-elk-mondmasker-ge...

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...

So you have no source for the claim that 'The Dutch made an ordering mistake'.

I won't read LinkedIn btw, that is not a source.

Why do you not find those sources convincing? Yeah nobody is explicitly making the statement "sorry, I messed up" but if I put the facts together then that's still what happened, in my opinion.

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

One reason people don’t trust China’s aid is that the shortage is caused by China.

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

Nonsense.

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...

Just like with oil, any industry can be gamed if a single player accumulates a massive stockpile of a commodity, then floods the market to drive prices down and make production unprofitable for competitors.

> So why it is not in China best interests to offer genuine support when they can?

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.

Turns out everyone is just flailing and drunk on the dance floor, geopolitically.

I just hope they stay away from their respective red button consoles.

All democratic nations should get together and invest in manufacturing. If democracy falls, the treaty would asymetrically punish those that give up rights and freedom of their people.

The issue with faulty PPE is that demand has surged and tons of Chinese factories are trying to retool to meet that demand.

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...

> The regulations should improve quality, but will also make it more difficult to obtain PPE from China.

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.

Shhh, just join us, "China is bad" is all you had to say, don't waste your own time.

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