Posted on 10/04/2022 8:45:10 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
China had a good run both in the media and with our elites for over 3 decades–because there was a ton of money to be made and as with all gold rushes the damage is ignored.
Our tech companies rely on the country, our consumer products often come from there, and our entertainment and sports industries have grown reliant on their patronage. It turns out that the bargain we made with the country had larger downsides than expected.
President Trump was the first president to fight back against the hollowing out of the American economy, but until COVID hit it was an uphill battle. COVID changed everything, though, although not for exactly the right reasons.
It is highly likely that COVID was engineered in a Chinese lab using CDC grant money, and that Anthony Fauci has been working semi-successfully to cover it up. Personally I don’t think China would have released it intentionally–look at the damage it has done to China itself. They were merely careless. The US itself has at times been quite sloppy with dangerous viruses, so it’s no surprise that China was even more careless.
But it isn’t China’s role in creating COVID and failing to warn the US and the world about it that has led to the US and other countries decoupling our economies, too slowly, from China’s. Just as we have mostly ignored genocide and slave labor in China, a few million deaths wouldn’t have gotten in the way of the big guys getting rich off cheap labor.
What’s killing China is its Zero COVID policy. It has made life hell for Chinese, and made life difficult for American companies who need the flow of goods from China to continue unabated.
Chairman Xi’s bizarre policies are tearing China apart, and for some reason he cannot seem to let them go. From stories of people getting welded into their own apartments to dystopian travel and quarantine policies Xi has crippled the economy and destabilized his regime.
It has gotten to the point that policemen in quarantine suits are pointing automatic weapons at citizens:
NOW – China starts enforcing its zero-COVID policy with machine guns at Xishuangbanna Airport in Yunnan.
People screaming "are you gonna kill us all?"pic.twitter.com/DLu6H4GPw0
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 4, 2022
Americans who live in China tell harrowing stories:
On September 7, three days before the national Mid-Autumn holiday weekend, my husband and I received separate phone calls from the pandemic prevention office in the Shanghai district where we live. We were informed that we had become sub-contacts to a recently confirmed COVID-19 case and were required to be taken to a centralized quarantine facility.
Having lived through the excruciating two-month lockdown of the city, we have adapted to the new post-lockdown reality: lining up for PCR tests every two or three days, scanning venue codes posted outside every public location to facilitate contact tracing, showing a green health code on our smartphones to gain access to restaurants and other services. But to be informed of an imminent quarantine was a first, and as U.S. citizens living in China, the uncertainties of what awaited us exacerbated our anxieties.
The Shanghai lockdown ushered in a new level of heavy-handedness in the Chinese Communist Party’s upkeep of “zero COVID.” Lockdowns continue to be imposed nationwide. The calamities we witnessed in Shanghai – people scrambling for supplies, denied access to medical treatment – have been repeated throughout the country.
We think of China as where our modern technological marvels originate, and in some sense that is true. They are manufactured there, but with foreign intellectual capital. As modern technology has clashed with inefficient and frankly incompetent bureaucracies more scared of Beijing than their citizens, a nightmare has developed. It is a techno-dystopia.
In Chengdu, authorities barred people from exiting shaky buildings amid an earthquake. In Lhasa, tourists were stranded on the Tibetan plateau until they were confirmed to be COVID-19-free. In Guiyang, residents starved for days on end as authorities restricted deliveries in large areas of the city. In all three cases, local officials have made ad hoc apologies for their mishandling of the situations, but mishandling continues.
My husband’s Chinese employer intervened on our behalf, negotiating for us to self-isolate at home. But just as we thought we were spared from the harshest treatment, our apartment building manager appeared at our door the next day with two bags of hazmat suits. She told us a van would pick us up at an unspecified time to quarantine in an unspecified location; when they arrived we were to put the suits on. It appeared that negotiations were off the table. My husband contacted his up-line manager, who assured him that we would not be taken anywhere.
The next day, the health code on our phones turned red.
Standardized throughout the country, the health code comes in three colors. Green is the color of acceptance; yellow or red would effectively limit a person’s freedom to access any public services even in case of emergency.
Arbitrary code assignment has been reported in multiple regions. In Minquan, a county with 700,000 residents in central Henan province, the anti-COVID-19 office decided to assign a yellow or red code not only to its entire population but also to anyone with a travel history to local coronavirus hotspots.
This kind of arbitrariness is not new in authoritarian China – growing up here, I experienced it firsthand – but the quest for “zero COVID” has amplified it. And there is no legal recourse for infringement upon individual rights when levied by the authorities itself.
Confined at home, I called the restaurant where we supposedly contracted risk of infection. A staffer picked up the phone, and like a wrongfully convicted victim who has found a jail mate, he told me the confirmed COVID-19 patient stopped at the restaurant on September 3 and placed an order to-go. The transaction happened at the entrance and lasted no more than a few minutes. The restaurant was contacted on the 7th like we were; all workers and customers who had been to the venue between September 3 and 6 were required to quarantine. Both the staffer and I remarked on the absurdity of the verdict, but there was nothing we could do.
As is often the case in China (and too often here as well), the privileged can get better treatment. But it is not the privileged who make society run. As the top of the economic pyramid they depend upon the base to remain elevated. And the base is collapsing under the weight of even greater than normal oppression.
Nobody at the top of Chinese politics is inclined to relent, at least partly because they have banked their legitimacy on containing COVID there, while the West was harder hit. Xi and his cronies scared their population about the virus even more than our own, presenting it as an existential threat, and any relaxation of the restrictions would confirm that they were hyping the virus to emphasize their competence at stopping its spread. They are in a bind.
The emphasis on politics has created practical problems. Beijing has refused to approve foreign vaccines, opting instead to provide only less effective homegrown ones to its 1.4 billion people. The government has pushed propaganda depicting the virus as having devastated Western countries, feeding widespread stigma and a fear of infections even among the young and healthy. It has silenced voices seeking to offer a different approach, labeling them traitors.
Still, the question is how long China’s calculus will remain in favor of the current approach. Youth unemployment is soaring, small businesses are collapsing and overseas companies are shifting their supply chains elsewhere. A sustained slowdown would undermine the promise of economic growth, long the central pillar of the party’s legitimacy.
…
“The social and economic cost will continue to increase. So I think ultimately they’re going to reach a point where the cost exceeds the benefits,” Dr. Huang said. But, he added, “it just might be farther off.”
For now, officials are sticking closely to the status quo, imposing the most extensive lockdowns in months to contain a series of new outbreaks.
China is facing enormous economic problems due to COVID, and that is in addition to the imbalances built into their economy. The Chinese economy has relied on a stimulated construction boom, and is facing a financial collapse that could make the 2008 crash in the West look tame. Nobody is certain how they can avoid the collapse.
It’s hard to see how China can sustain itself politically and economically under these conditions. As a key part of the world economy any collapse there would have devastating impacts across the world. Xi’s policies seem to make a collapse inevitable.
Decoupling our economy from China’s couldn’t happen fast enough. The US and Europe depend far too heavily on China. They have proven to be a very dangerous partner to have.
The question I have is: why the drama? Covid in America has turned out to be a nothingburger. Why are they so strident?
“Social Credit” on steroids loses all credibility.
I used to think it was because the Chi-Coms knew that it was their bioweapon which had escaped, to which they had added considerable gain of function, and were worried it might mutate into something truly dreadful.
But by now, surely they have worked all the bugs out (so to speak) and realize that as bad as it may be — it isn’t nearly bad enough to justify what they are doing to their own people.
Its another layer of official govt control you can’t object to.
Stuff is falling apart in China financially, and if mobs revolt in cities they dont have enough commie bodies to stop it. They aren’t gonna die for their leaders who they also know benefitted from the corrupt system with kickbacks and bribes.
Ask FReeper Grandpa Dave to share his rant:
“It was never about your health”.
Just awful. When my son goes to Japan occasionally, he’s still unable to leave the base (he’s been on a few different bases). He was there just a couple of weeks ago. I was surprised they are still so strict. It’s nothing compared to China tho.
Does Tiananmen Square ring a bell? Actually, it might not, in China. But it’s a question perhaps better left unasked when living under a tyrannical government.
The author must have missed what happened in China TWO YEARS AGO.
what a joke.
officially, China has had about 2mn cases, 14,000+ deaths. population 1.4bn.
USA 88mn cases 1mn+ deaths. population 340mn.
Chinas is #152 of 154 for covid deaths per million
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
China has not used mRNA vaccines, even tho they helped develop them. China now has its own mRNA vax, which has been approved for use....by Indonesia, not China.
articles such as this one in Hotair are no different to those in all the FakeNewsMSM, which go along with the rubbish that China is suffering from covid.
China has chosen to further crack down on its population for reasons other than covid.
“It has gotten to the point that policemen in quarantine suits are pointing automatic weapons at citizens”
Coldly, perhaps, I say “so what”? China already exerts near total tyrannical control over its citizens. They the populace all know and have learned to live within ever tightening restrictions, or they are in jail or missing their livers already. So how is one more set of restrictions going to “destroy” the country? I can think of one or more other things that might.
This article is not saying Chinese are suffering from covid. It is saying the people are suffering from the covid crackdown.
I'm with the other posters, this surprises me because I assumed the Chinese unleashed it on the rest of the world. I don't think intentionally but instead, after it got out, they decided to capitalize on the situation by locking out domestic flights to wuhan but allowing international flights.
I assumed they decided to take advantage of the situation and cripple the rest of the world. If this is true, then the government should have pushed their economy ahead while the rest of the world's collapsed, but they didn't. There are 2 possible explanations I can see.
1) This was a complete accident and the Chinese leadership was blind sided by the virus.
2) The virus hits Asians harder. There is evidence that the virus hits blood type AB hardest, A & B next, and O the least. I believe Asians very rarely have blood type O so I think the virus hits them harder than the average american where O is the most common blood type. I suspect the heavy handedness because of fear of the virus is because it is worse for the average Chinese versus the average American
Of course, it could be the government simply asserting power. It's difficult to know in a totalitarian society
It’s interesting to observe the network of CCP controlled governments who adopted China’s draconian Covid policies: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc. CCP’s nutty policies were quickly replicated throughout the west. The leaders loved their new found powers.
It was the genius of Donald Trump, and the laboratory of democracy afforded by the constitution, to allow governors to set Covid policies for their states. So here we have a mountain of data that shows that draconian control measures, ie., lockdowns and masking, were ineffective compared to the laissez faire policies of free red states like Florida.
When Brandon was elected, one of the measures of Covid success was how many people were vaccinated. When the percentage hit the wall, polling indicated that it was Trump supporters who were resisting the jab. Eureka! Brandon figured he could blame the spread on the unvaccinated, impose mandates and purge Trump supporters from public life in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, now we know the vaccine is ineffective and harmful. Trump supporters are very smart and independent thinking cookies resistant to propaganda campaigns.
Han Chinese are supposed to be a high IQ people. Turns out that they are crazy, mind numbed robots. I hope they keep supplying my local Dollar Tree Store. Guys...check out the hardware section there.
A new Cultural Revolution, perhaps? Terrorizing the people into complete submission, preparing them to be afraid to set foot outside or ask questions when their money becomes useless or vanishes from their accounts and people begin starving?
Wild guess.
So is their real estate bubble, and their financial lies for the last two decades.
Being used to quell dissention and uprising, there is no covid
I worry that Covid will not be a nothingburger this winter unless people increase their Vitamin D3 consumption. Optimum blood Vitamin D levels seem effective in keeping even Covid cases out of the hospital. Extra Zinc helps too.
Aside from Trump policies and Constitutional law relegating Covid decisions to the states, there is another important factor here that does not exist in China. Despite Fauci and Pfizer political efforts to force people to take their mRNA vaccines and $3000 a treatment Remdesivir, there have been many independent, although often censored, efforts to make people aware that things like Zinc used with ionophores like Ivermectin, HCQ, and over the counter Quercetin, can treat early Covid successfuly. Such independent thought is being brutally destroyed in China. It took at least 6 monts before Fauci would even admit Vitamins D3 and C “might” be useful for immune health.
One possible measure of true China death statostoces was the number of cell phone accounts that disappeared in 2020. I think it was something like 18,000,000 accounts or more.
I await with great interest the CCP meeting starting 10/15 to decide whether Xi should continue to rule. This vote is held every 5 years.
The writer doesn’t make any effort at understanding why the Chinese take such draconian measure. The regime acts like it is frightened at the possibility of a breakout of the virus into the population. Why? AFAIK they have never gone to these extremes for disease outbreaks in the past. What do they know about this one that has them taking such desperate measures?
I wonder. And I wonder why the media doesn’t wonder.
The Chinese government threatening it’s own citizens? What’s new or different about that?
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