Posted on 01/29/2020 6:45:46 AM PST by Kaslin
While meeting with a World Health Organization official in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping conceded that the coronavirus epidemic presented "the Chinese people" with a struggle. "The epidemic is a demon, and we cannot let this demon hide," Xi said. Xi added that the Beijing communist government would "release information on the virus in a 'timely' manner."
Read "timely" as "judged politically convenient by a Communist Party dictatorship confronting economic contraction and political resistance from Hong Kong and Taiwan that Beijing fears could spread to mainland China."
Yes, "demon" is a metaphor for a pathogen capable of killing millions. However, it is a demon the dictatorship's repressive policies animate and tolerate in lieu of free communication.
The coronavirus (medical shorthand: 2019-nCoV) began infecting human beings in the city of Wuhan (Hubei province) sometime in December 2019.
Time marches on. As I write this column, medical investigators find evidence that mid-November may be a more accurate date for the devil's eruption.
The WHO has (so far) refrained from calling the epidemic a global emergency. The senior WHO official who met Xi praised the dictatorship's response to the epidemic. But here's the frame for understanding the WHO: The WHO walks a diplomatic precipice when it engages authoritarian regimes. Democracies like the U.S.? No.
Does China respect the UN, which oversees the WHO? Only when it benefits. Proof: The Chinese dictatorship ignored the UN Hague court ruling on the Philippines' claim against Chinese territorial and resource theft. China signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty -- but completely ignored the court's decision.
Beijing does disdain international norms it cannot bend to its own benefit.
2019-nCoV, however, is beyond Xi's dictatorial control. China's dictatorship may awe Free World idiots, but it cannot intimidate a pathogen.
The coronavirus and its potential consequences of mass death expose the dictatorship's brittleness. If you prefer, substitute "incompetence masked by police intimidation and lack of free expression" for "brittleness."
Brutal authoritarian political control exacts overt and covert systemic costs. Western commentators -- The New York Times' Tom Friedman is a particularly smarmy example -- admire authoritarian China's alleged skill at solving major problems that dithering Western democracies cannot. What really dazzles Friedman and his ilk is the regime's one-command-solves-it pose. Information control, especially control of dissent, bolsters this fraud.
Since 1980, China has made extraordinary economic progress, but its government's destructive decisions are telling. The notorious one-child policy produced a demographic devil. What Western admirers touted as a farsighted plan to promote zero population growth killed millions of baby girls, skewed female-male sex ratios and, as of 2010, began creating a worker shortage.
Doctors in China and several Asian countries -- the virus is on the verge of savaging Thailand -- advocate isolating infected patients. The Great Firewall of China isolates the Chinese people from global information access and sharing. Beijing demands its citizens use state-sponsored social media in lieu of global alternatives. Isolation from information sharing hinders angry citizens from criticizing the communist leaders.
But this system isolates Chinese leaders from bad news -- like mass illness -- that caring human beings must share.
China's government penalizes free information access and transmission. The regime's despicable Social Credit Rating system collects data on individuals using cellphones, public video cameras, internet and travel activity, and neighborhood gossip. Security operatives analyze the gobbledygook, looking for -- get ready -- signs of anti-government behavior.
In communist China, an individual or even a respected doctor in a research bureau reporting on contaminated food, much less a possible epidemic outbreak, is conceivably guilty of anti-government behavior. Said brave soul is subject to fines, travel restrictions, public shaming and perhaps prison.
Why? Because the Chinese Communist Party can dismiss the initial warning as illegal criticism of the party.
As the party bigwigs dither, a deadly pathogen kills.
They are allowing the transmission of essays blaming Uncle Sam for the virus, while presumably suppressing alternate theories that focus on the fact that Wuhan is the site of an bioweapons lab.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3811792/posts
5m traveled from Wuhan before the quarantine. Wuhan is a major hub throughout China for internal and international flights. We shall see by February 3, what the impact will be. This is the 14 day infection period.
Political implications of this outbreak, just FYI, not a formal Bring Out Your Dead ping.
Its a body blow to China’s economy and anything that affects the economy is likely to undermine Communist rule.
The coronavirus is looking more and more like China’s Chernobyl from which the Soviet Union never recovered.
The Communist Party has finally met an enemy that can’t be contained or easily repressed.
Dictatorships too are subject to the whims of nature.
Chernobyl:CPSU = Wuhan:CCP
AND, unlike the USSR in 1983, there are two available alternative Chinese governments, in Taipei and in Hong Kong.
Dictatorships are brittle. Lose the mandate of heaven and you never know what can happen.
They’re trying to keep the genie in the bottle but its not working.
Similar to blaming the President for the Iranian shooting down of the Ukrainian passenger jet or I suppose anyone pointing blame at someone else for their own deeds.
Chernobyl happened in 1986 making the timeline shorter between it and the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The collapse of the Berlin Wall was in 1989 and another huge turning point.
I didn’t think the Chi-Coms believed in religious things such as Angels and Demons.
Socialism equals death.
These people are supposed to be experts with up to date scientific management of society and the economy.
And they can’t handle the flu? Oops!
“If Xi Jinping does not repent he will perish!”
“Trump admin condemns imprisonment of Chinese pastor Wang Yi, calls for his release: ‘We are alarmed’”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3805031/posts
The actual start date of the Wuhan (2019-nCoV) infection in China remains unknown.
It wasn't until it received some public notoriety
that the Chinese State acknowledged its existence.
It may have been an exploratory lab that loosed the virus 'in the wild' by accident.
Or it may have been accidentally released by some poor Chinese just doing "dumpster diving",
and finding lab experimental rats, and thinking that this would make
a convenient meat source which could be sold to make money at the 'wet market'.
Regardless, we have to deal with it, ..and contain it, and quarantine it.
Politicians in charge of things equals death.
In the Summer of 2001, DOD conducted a tabletop wargame exercise called "Dark Winter". The premise was five cases of smallpox appearing over a brief time in hospitals in Oklahoma City.
It was a very realistic scenario, at a high level. Sam Nunn played the President. The Governor of Oklahoma played the Governor of Oklahoma, and so on.
They ran the simulation a number of times, the lowest number of deaths was 30 million.
And the reason was, the decision makers ALWAYS made the right decision, but they ALWAYS made it one incubation period too late.
"Close the airports? Of course, as soon as you PROVE smallpox in the USA is being disseminated by air travel."
"Roadblocks? Of course! Just prove to me that people incubating smallpox have transferred it elsewhere using motor vehicles!"
A year and a half after DW, DOD/DHS ordered (on a Friday) that every State prepare an executable plan to immunize the entire population of the State against smallpox within ten days from the "go" signal. OF COURSE we wanted to know why, since there was no known smallpox in the wild and the only stocks then known to exist were in Atlanta and Novosibirsk - we never got a good explanation.
Anyway, we had to hustle to find vaccination sites that could operate in the New Hampshire winter, schools were out because "the children must keep going to school" (like you would send your kid to school during a 30 million death smallpox event). I finally realize they weren't serious when we worked up a terrific Mall scenario - in one end, pass through multiple stations, out the other end, shuttle back to your car.
Higher authority (Republican at all levels) said no, because "We want shopping to continue as normal".
Socialism is bad, all right, but socialist and capitalist politicians are all playing the same game.
I think the folk religion and ancestor worship is so engrained in China that even the Communists didn’t dare try to eliminate it.
...so he's going to play, "Hide the..."
That's what Xi said! /rimshot>
...I didn't think the virus was being particularly secretive.
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