Posted on 03/19/2020 7:42:05 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
China has shut down permits for Mt. Everest amid the coronavirus epidemic, as the ruling Chinese Communist Party's propaganda message focuses on 'imported cases' of COVID-19.
Beijing has canceled permits for the Chinese side of the mountain, although the Nepal side remains open for the time being, although the country has suspended arrivals from countries worst-hit by the coronavirus.
The authorities are meanwhile focusing media coverage -- all of which is tightly controlled by Beijing -- on other countries that are struggling with outbreaks of COVID-19.
Unconfirmed reports on social media said local and regional health authorities are being told to stop reporting new cases unless they are in recent arrivals from overseas.
While, RFA was unable to verify the content of those reports, health officials have reported COVID-10 cases in recent arrivals from the U.K., Italy and Iran in recent weeks.
Guangdong-based rights activist Wang Aizhong said that the authorities, at the very least, appear to be emphasizing imported cases in official media reports.
"The goal is still to make much of the superiority of China's [authoritarian] system and the decision-making abilities of its government," Wang said. "Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that there could be a resurgence of the epidemic in China, so they will be able to blame other countries for that."
Shifting the narrative
The Chinese Communist Party typically argues that its authoritarian rule is better in time of crisis, because it enables the government to act decisively to shut down huge swathes of the country.
There are also signs that Beijing is seeking to shift the narrative away from the fact that the first outbreak of COVID-19 was in its central city of Wuhan, in spite of there being no trace of it recorded outside China before that time.
Zhong Nanshan, director of the Chinese Medical Research Center for Respiratory Diseases, told a news conference on Feb. 27: "We can say that the epidemic first appeared in China, but it didn't necessarily originate in China."
Official media is also focusing on aid and humanitarian assistance to Italy, where services are struggling to cope with a sudden and overwhelming surge in COVID-19 cases amid a nationwide lockdown.
China on Thursday dispatched a brand new A350 Eastern Airlines jet with nine medical experts and 31 tons of medical supplies from the Chinese Red Cross to Italy's anti-epidemic expert group.
The plane flew directly from Shanghai to Rome, and carried supplies including ICU equipment, protective equipment and antiviral agents, reports said.
Media reports also highlighted a video conference call between health minister Ma Xiaowei and World Health Organization (WHO) officials, during which he "shared China's experience in resisting the epidemic."
Promoting traditional Chinese medicine
Beijing-based freelance writer Wang Zang said the truth is that the pandemic was caused by local officials who tried to cover up what was known about the virus at the start of the outbreak in Wuhan in mid-December.
"The truth is becoming clear and the eyes of the world are being opened," Wang said. "Any attempt to blame others or avoid responsibility will end in failure, and the rest of the world will eventually hold [China] to account."
Top Chinese medical adviser Zhong Nanshan, a pulmonologist who discovered the SARS coronavirus and helped manage the outbreak in 2003, told the WHO on Thursday that if countries work together, the COVID-19 pandemic could be over by June.
But reports were emerging of a rift on the panel of experts in charge of managing the coronavirus outbreak in China, with Zhong reportedly dissenting from President Xi Jinping's decree that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) should be used in tandem with mainstream medical approaches to tackle the virus.
The People's Daily on Wednesday published a signed opinion article reiterating the need to integrate TCM with western medicine that has been widely reprinted by other publications and institutions.
Zhong, on the other hand, has been quoted as saying: "We do not expect TCM to have a strong antiviral effect."
An unconfirmed social media post said on Wednesday that Zhong has since been replaced as director of the department of healthcare reform at the National Health Commission by Liang Wannian, who will lead a team that includes TCM specialists.
The post was deleted soon after it appeared online.
Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Fok Leung-kiu and Fong Tak-ho for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Xi must deflect and direct the citizens’ anger.
I don’t think we can believe a thing they say about anything. If they say the sky is blue, go check.
If China is getting this under control, they’re sure not going to show anyone how they did it.
My own thought is that those “hospitals” were filled, and then sealed shut.
We need to strengthen ties with Taiwan, prepare for the worst, and pray.
“they’re sure not going to show anyone how they did it.”
We know how they did it. California is now doing the same thing.
My suspicion is the ChiComs screened everyone in Wuhan for the virus and cremated anyone who tested positive or presented symptoms. A victory for the People!
China can afford to infect 2 million, then harvest the antibodies from whoever survived. Communist oligarchs. I guarantee that was just one aspect of their approach to this.
Remember the many reports of enormous numbers of cremations in all of the funeral homes in and around Wuhan, gas clouds over China from the 24/7 burnings of bodies, exhausted funeral home workers, etc.?
“We know how they did it. California is now doing the same thing.”
I don’t think anyone outside of China knows what is happening there, how bad its gotten, or what was done.
To look at what the rest of the world is doing with the spread, ground zero must have been something unseen before.
[China can afford to infect 2 million, then harvest the antibodies from whoever survived. Communist oligarchs. I guarantee that was just one aspect of their approach to this.]
Xi is right to be leery of death tolls going to the moon, given the way pandemics have a way of breeding both bottom-up revolts and elite mutinies, I think he’d want to have at least something resembling a cure in hand before getting people back to work. In a time of ostensible emperor worship, pandemics during the Tang dynasty 1300 years ago triggered this elite revolt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Lushan_Rebellion
And this peasant revolt*, which lasted a full decade and captured the imperial capital:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Chao#Rebellion
Nobody worships Xi Jinping as a living god, either his inner circle all the way down to the people sweeping the streets. Xi, like his fellow emperors over thousands of years, as well as potential challengers, isn’t so much forward- as backward-looking. He examines thousands of years of Chinese history as a catalog of the ways in which future challenges to his reign might arise. Pandemics are just one of those challenges, and you can bet he takes this seriously, not because he particularly cares about the hoi polloi, but because this is one of the ways in which he might get himself killed.
* For comparison, Spartacus’s campaign lasted just over 2 years and never captured the Roman capital.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War#Beginning_of_the_revolt_(73_BC)
Commiefornia is rounding decenters up and putting them in internment camps?
Ooops, I am so sorry DEAR LEADER I meant to say Hospitals.
Americans are resorting to carrying around a bag of groceries to give themselves “cover” for their movements
and they’re stocked up to the max on defensive gear
and practicing its use in the quiet comfort of their jail cells (I mean, houses.. we now get to pay for our own incarceration)
and there’s not a single roll of TP on the grocery shelf
but we can deal with all that krap, what I can’t cope with is being denied the opportunity to climbing 30000 feet up Mount Everest! This is way, way TOO MUCH denial of my Liberty!!!!!
.s
And then burned to the ground. I wouldn't put anything past them.
Just when you wanted to get away from it all.
Take this photo of Baghdad Bob --- 
Add words like VIRUS? WHAT VIRUS? LIARS!!
Paste this guy's face on him, but with the same hat, and maybe the same glasses --- 
Then put a bunch of these moving in from the sides --- 
Optional: Modify the virus images as well: Cut triangles out of the sides, and change the dominant gray color to Pacman-Yellow, so each virus image is halfway between what you see above and something like this below. (All the mouths should point towards Xi-Bob) --- 
Next, the Chicoms will say they closed Everest to protect endangered species like the Yeti.
My own thought is that those “hospitals” were filled, and then sealed shut.
We know how they did it. California is now doing the same thing.
```
Has CA started to weld and chain residences shut? Has CA opened ‘hospitals’ without sewage hook ups, medicines, doctors, nurses and machines? Has CA begun rounding up people on the street and forcibly removing them?
Which government doesn’t???
They are doing what they need to do to survive.
I think our attention is being deflected to China instead of focusing on the leftists and monopolists who have placed us in the condition of globalism today.
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