by Pepe Escobar – Posted with permission
In the Belt and Road framework, China is supplying much of the world including virus-hit Europe with medicine and healthcare items
When President Xi Jinping was on a phone call in mid-March with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti, before the arrival of a China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Milan full of medical help, the key takeaway was the Chinese pledge to develop a Health Silk Road (Jiankang Sichou Zhilu).
That was in fact already inbuilt in the Belt and Road Initiative playbook since at least 2017, under the framework of enhanced, pan-Eurasian health connectivity. The pandemic only accelerated the timeline. The Health Silk Road will run in parallel to the multiple overland Silk Road corridors and the Maritime Silk Road.
In a graphic demonstration of soft power, so far China has offered Covid-19-related equipment and medical help to no fewer than 89 nations – and counting.
That covers Africa (especially South Africa, Namibia and Kenya, with Alibaba in fact announcing it will send help to all African nations); Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru); the arc from East Asia to Southwest Asia; and Europe.
Less than a year ago Italy became the first G-7 nation to sign a memorandum of understanding formally joining Belt and Road – much to the displeasure of Washington and the Atlanticist galaxy in Brussels and beyond.
Earlier this year in Sicily, I discussed these intricacies in detail with Enrico Fardella, Professor of History at Peking University and an expert on China-Mediterranean relations.
Italy is supported on myriad fronts – not only at the highest political level but also via the Chinese Red Cross, Sino-Italian associations, tech/logistics Chinese companies and donations from Alibaba, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo. There are three Chinese medical teams in Italy at the moment.
This all ties up with the larger Belt and Road picture, featuring investments in Genoa and Trieste, two key ports and future Belt and Road nodes.
This Chinese soft power offensive is carefully calibrated to offset the current paralysis of global supply chains. China is now working overtime to supply many parts of the world with medicine and related healthcare items – always with the Belt and Road framework in mind, as if doubling down on Globalization 2.0.
That spells out the interconnectivity of nations that badly need development and infrastructure along with the need for good health systems and practices.
And that prepares the terrain for, when Covid-19 is more or less tamed and the Chinese economy fully recovered, the Belt and Road reboot: an inexorable historic trend based on a new economic model that Beijing deems more equitable, and in the interests of the Global South.
‘Chinese lie‘
A Health Silk Road is already in effect when we see China, Russia – and Cuba with its first-class health system – sending teams of doctors and virologists as well as planes with medical equipment to Italy, and China sending drugs, test kits and supplies to illegally sanctioned Iran.
China immediately understood what was at stake as it saw Covid-19 ravage many hot points of world-famous Made in Italy. With its offer of skilled, cheaper manufacturing, China had initially lured key Italian fashion houses to outsource their production to China, and most of all to Wuhan.
The connectivity – which has been there for decades – works both ways. Chinese investors started to arrive in northern Italy in the early 1990s. They bought a string of factories; renovated them; created their own, top Made in Italy brands; and brought in tens of thousands of skilled Chinese seamstresses to work in these factories.
There are plenty of direct flights from Wuhan to Lombardy – to serve at least 300,000 Chinese who have moved permanently to Italy to work in Chinese-owned factories producing Made in Italy.
So it’s no wonder Doctor Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Pharmacology Institute in Milan, became a superstar in China. In an interview that went viral, Remuzzi talks about his explosive findings in conversations with general practitioners in Lombardy.
Here’s Dr. Remuzzi, at 4:19: “Do you know what happened? Certain family doctors, who have the best antennas in the territory, at least the most able and attentive ones, have told me recently that they were seeing grave cases of pneumonia, which we had never seen in other years.
These pneumonia cases had nothing to do with typical flu pneumonia, they were interstitial pneumonias, they had to do CT, radiography [to diagnose it], and this was seen in October, November, December. So this virus has been circulating a long time.”
That was indeed in parallel with or even before the first coronavirus cases in Wuhan in mid-November. It’s been already scientifically established that the virus strains in Wuhan and in Lombardy are different. Which came first, and where from, remains a matter of incendiary debate.
Inevitably the Health Silk Road would have to be dismissed by the Atlanticist gang as a disinformation ploy exploiting the pandemic to “destabilize” and weaken Europe. That’s the narrative promoted by EUvsDisinfo, an NGO whose personnel love to blast Russia and China for a living.
So for the Brussels bureaucracy, the Health Silk Road is not about saving lives; it’s about “destabilizing” the EU and improving Xi Jinping’s domestic image after China lied, lied and lied again about the extent and severity of coronavirus. That happens to be the exact same narrative of the Trump administration, US corporate media and US intelligence.
Does it matter? Not for those 89 nations that are receiving much-needed help and equipment. The dogs of demonization bark while the Health Silk Road caravan passes.
Public officials in the West exhibit by their actions a deficit of love for humanity. What they are trying to hold onto is their love of capital and deceit. They cannot stop lying and manipulating. They don’t know anything else.
Russia, China, and Cuba are leading the way into a new future that will follow the terrible cost of Covid-19, a cost that we will pay for allowing the vermin western elites to play their dirty neoliberal economic games on us and plow and plunder the rest of the world.
You are exactly right.
The whole response in the US is to save the big corporations and the big banks.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, is being done for the people.
Trump should have commandeered (and he has the legal authority to do it) a company produce masks on a gigantic scale and citizens should have been required to wear masks in public.
Just that one action would have stopped the exponential increase in illness.
And many more could have followed.
Was it done?
No.
Because the elites (and Trump is one of them) could care less about humanity.
The Russians, the Chinese and the Cubans know exactly what they are doing and how it will look post-crisis.
The only questions that remains are these:
Are the citizens of the West still “conscious enough” to recognize just how brutal and heartless is the system that they are living under? Can they even understand the nature of the failed system they are living under when the proof is shoved right in their faces?
“Are the citizens of the West still “conscious enough” to recognize just how brutal and heartless is the system that they are living under? Can they even understand the nature of the failed system they are living under when the proof is shoved right in their faces?”
No.
They cant b/c its all they know, its normal to them, they have trained themselves to live and dream of a different sort.
Now if their hand held devices were somehow turned off and they could not occupy or amuse their selves anymore, then you would have a problem of brutality and failed systems.
Short answer is NO nad they never will be. Too dumbed down by typical murikan culture.
Sorry Pepe,
China is trying to
– cover it‘s ass (because of it’s evident misinformation about the numbers of CoVid cases and fatalities)
– taking over the number one position in world leadership and exploit the obvious weakness of „the ValueWest“ politically
– launch a giant smear-campaign about the superiority of the Chinese society model.
I am not convinced – nobody is (as far as my friends and comrades are concerned – China in fact lost a lot of trust in the CoVid pandemie)
Even if they are able to deliver some of the cheap and some of the not so cheap crap they normally sell – let‘s say good mobiles – the westerners are currently not in the mood to buy it. And a „Made In China“ is currently a good reason to look for a different vendor. How about South-Korea.
Lots of companies will think twice before going to China once again – lots of companies will come back. Especially to the US, at a minor level to Europe as well.
That’s how I see it – a Health Silk Road won‘t happen – not this time. And not for the next 20 years.
In terms of trust and friendship – China lost.
They lost their face …..
‘They lost their face” Well not to the sane ones who stay away from the propaganda,once this virus has passed it will be business marching on as always.For its all about sales and profit, where they can buy their products the cheapest and sell it for the most, and that will be China with their modern plants equitment and workers.
Now the west speaking of the U.S. has a hallowed out financial system from forty years of financial fraud, and the fat lady is still warming up in the wings,now the stock market is sinking into the quicksand of its own making, which of course now they are blaming on the virus which only came about at a very fortunate time to cover over the rot that was already being exposed.Take a trip around the rotting infrastructure that makes up America,the rusting hulks of what use to be busy factories with good paying jobs, and picture in your mind just how many years it would take to re-build those plants and factories train workers,buy the new equipment from other countries seeing we don’t make it anymore, and you may have an idea as to why we will be buying from China.!!
Oh yes and I forgot you speaking of China trying to cover its ass by changing the count of those with the virus and those who have died.Now Australia has changed their count 12 times and will change it again as more data become available,which is just what China did and its the same as we will do.!!!
Personally, I’m less interested these days in engaging with the angry outbursts that come from pent up frustration and fear of a fast changing world situation that challenges the personal worldviews of unprepared people. Those that have done the work, reap the rewards in trying times like these. However, it is important to counter any clear misinformation, misinterpretation, or malcontent that distracts or confuses.
In this case, there were several reports in the early stages of China’s response that made it clear the statistics were not reliable (except perhaps for death). These adjustments/changes were mostly done in respect to technical bureaucratic definitions and categories so that a maximum of Chinese citizens could get tested for Covid-19 without incurring $cost (i.e. so they could qualify for government services). And, unlike the idiot USA non-health system farce which is now on sad display to the world beyond make-believe TV reality-show land, the Chinese strategy stomped on the virus rather effectively.
Much like the 1918 Spanish Flu (which started in the USA, Kansas to be precise) this Covid-19 outbreak is very likely to have had major US input contributions to the late 2019 outbreak in Wuhan, China. Just like that gay BS policy in the US military some decades back — “don’t ask, don’t tell” (or words to that effect) — the non-testing policy regime for coronavirus strictly enforced by the US CDC meant effectively a “don’t look, don’t report” cover up head-in-the-sand public health policy. The same faux-elitist culture at work. The Covid-19 strains in China, Italy, Iran, (I’m not sure of the rest as I’ve stopped focusing on developments on that cutting edge) are all reported to have come from (not each other) but a common ancestor root most likely mutating out of north American soil on unsuspecting international carriers (e.g. tourists, military games. academic conferences, business trips etc).
Both the USA and China owe the world an apology, imo (and probably $$$ in compensation) for providing the seed and the soil for this dangerous development. If the USA encouraged affordable testing, accurate public health reporting, and good personal hygiene; and communist China stamped out the disgusting wildlife trade and medieval butchery practices, then the spark for this latest round of coronavirus mutation may not have occurred as it has.
What you know China did or didn’t do is what you have been told and sold, not what you have learned.
The virus was hitting the US and Europe months before it appeared in Wuhan.
This we now know.
The Chinese, just like the American and European doctors did not know what they were confronting with the new pneumonia in 2019. Read the stories from the US press about the vaping pneumonias, and the deaths which, when tested for flu, showed flu didn’t kill the Americans, something else did. No one in the West sounded the alarm.
Sounds familiar?
Learn something before you add to the sh*t thrown at China.
As for data and what the Chinese sent or didn’t send, every nation formulates its own data categories and formulas. Australia changed its sets 12 times. France just now, today, added deaths in nursing homes to the total. Italy was totally screwed over and didn’t have solid data. Why would China have perfect data considering the massive target of 60 million in the Province and 12 million in the Wuhan city? China was mobilizing massive action unlike anything anywhere on Earth. The virus spirals logarithmically. It hit 5 million in Wuhan for starters. Nowhere did any nation have anything similar. The biggest one hot spot elsewhere was S.Korea and the religious cult. Tiny in comparison
The US first got hit in a nursing home. 37 died fast. New Rochelle, NY got hot. Tiny numbers compared to what Wuhan was.
You have all the answers but don’t know what the questions are.
China will always have the Brit and Yankee stain on it. The old Empires have a habit of pissing on those who pass them by and leave them in the dust of history.
65% of the world will be the market for China’s products. The US and the West will struggle trying to catch up.
Three teams of Chinese doctors are working in Italy. You think the Italians won’t love those Chinese faces forever?
Where are the Americans? Oh, they sent air force planes to take the Italian supply of test swabs for themselves.
Jack Ma or Jeff Bezos? Ma has given away tens of millions of dollars in masks, medical devices and supplies to countries around the globe. Bezos? Counting his money like Scrooge McDuck.
Have we heard from Google and Facebook? I’ve seen what Huawei and Tencent have done.
When the world recession hits, it will be the Chinese economy that lifts the others.
Imperfect, burdened with bad habits and rigid ideology, China is still more agile, scholarly and energetic compared to the dying breed of corrupt phobic losers the West has.
“Three teams of Chinese doctors are working in Italy. You think the Italians won’t love those Chinese faces forever?
I can vouch for that enthusiasm as I have friends in Northern Italy. They are gleeful over China’s much needed help.
Italy and Greece have been hit the hardest with “austerity measures” imposed cruelly upon them by the EU/German dictates. Millions have suffered in both nations for years.
My Italian friends say, “Molto Grazie” to China, Cuba, Russia, little Albania, and Venezquela!!!!
“Where are the Americans? Oh, they sent air force planes to take the Italian supply of test swabs for themselves.” — and I believe there were early reports of France’s stockpile supply of certain malaria-orientated drugs (soon after to be hailed as the silver bullet if applied early enough) being hijacked and stolen (one assumes out of the country). Go figure. Looks like gold bullion is yesterday’s relic in Corona-times.
Larchmonter445 on April 02, 2020 · at 4:51 pm EST/EDT
Thanks for this. Living through this in the US and watching it unravel in real time is stunning. I am no one special and am a beat up late sixties guy.
That said, I think it is another end to ’empire’. The various special interests that make up the Republican Party are some of the worst extremes of those groups, be it money, religions, racists and libertarian ‘governing’ types. Since Trump got here, no matter what nonsense or lies he tells, the people around him go about at warp speed doing (or undoing) everything that matters in our lives. It is as if they all realized that this was the time. They will either manage to grab it all, or if – as they deserve – destroyed for another 90 years or so since great-grandpa tried to stop FDR and all we had. It is going to be ugly. Because it will have to be.
Stay safe.
they’ll buy Made In Vietnam and those will just be Chinese companies, they’re already doing it. This will just be extended and expanded. Western economy is utterly shot it will take a decade to recover, too long austerity, a lost decade of growth and now this virus. People wanting the cheap but quality stuff will have to buy Chinese (even if its re-branded) because they simply won’t have the money to pay top dollar for iphone etc. What people say now is not what they will do in a years time, although for sure West will be on the ‘Chinese flu’ band wagon for as long as it takes, Reality is the west rely on China and the far East and simply do not have the manpower or the money to reverse their suicidal globalisation tryst. I don’t deny factions will try to do this but they simply don’t have what it takes, the West is so fragile right now in so many ways. The only way I can see people accepting the prolonged poverty and social dislocation of going cold turkey from China is via war, that may be Washingtons last resort.
Chris GG,
I was in China when this virus broke out.
I have been in constant contact with Chinese citizens since then.
The response of Chinese government was not just “good” – it was awe inspiring.
The only way that “China loses face” is as a result of the propaganda vomited out by the western media.
That propaganda might carry the day in the United States, but is will not in Italy or in other countries where China came to the rescue while the EU fiddled.
‘China lost’. What? Everybody bends backwards to get China’s (and Russia’s) help. Australia is desperate to send all its seafood and beef to China in exchange for medical supplies, when restricting the local consumption.
This kind of attitude, which started as if a button was pushed to open the gates of an anti-China propaganda blitz, strongly suggest that the ‘pandemic’ was destined for China, in the hope that it would take them unprepared, creating an economic disaster and mass revolts against the CCP. All China bashers are now in a severe state of cognitive dissonance. Nothing happened as planned. People not only did not revolt against the ‘inefficiency’, ‘cover-ups’, ‘lies’ of the ‘totalitarian government’, but gained more confidence in the efficiency of it. Neither did China ‘lost’ the confidence of the ‘world’ but it won big time. Trump went hat in hand to the biggest ‘foes’ of MAGA to beg for help.
As good an analysis as any. This might have been a bio-economic attack. It blew back on the US (and others).
Entirely possible.
Anonymous,
You wrote:
People I know in China are saying exactly what you suggest. Despite the narrative that the Corporate Media is trying to advance, there is a tremendous level of gratitude in China for the actions of the Chinese government.
In terms of friendship China lost? Hardly. The U.S. is at war against the entire world, threatening some, sanctioning others and attacking militarily still more. Now they are lining up to attack Venezuela since their inhumane sanctions have failed to topple the government. On the other hand, nations like China, Russia, Iran, Cuba send out a helping hand to the hurting. The west is a vile, gangster system with no credibility. Guilty until proven innocent. Murderers and robbers. And now they are going to turn their violence inward on their own citizens.
“The dogs of demonization bark while the Health Silk Road caravan passes.”
I admire the optimism and I hope Pepe is right. In recent weeks so much information has been tumbling out both from all the local papers and medics speaking out on social media as well as from the scientific and medical research which grows daily.
The virus has definitely been around since Jan 1 and anecdotally as Remuzzi says, since fall 2019. There’s acknowledgement from numerous sources that many hospitals became vectors of transmission with contamination running rampant inside hospitals, leading to a high mortality rate and knocking infected medics out of service and into quarantine.
However the points I outline above are MAINLY acknowledged ONLY in scientific papers and in the local papers from Cremona, Bergamo, Lodi, Brescia etc. They are not a subject of hot debate nationally. In the global media, there has been some quiet recognition that the chaos in Lombardy and Madrid is not inevitable.
So, a lot of Italy remains unaware of what really happened in Lombardy and the average person here is preoccupied with the INPS website crashing and other bureaucratic hurdles to get the meagre helicopter coins, the babysitting reimbursement, the smart working bonus ….some people are trying to claim both ;)
The large rivers of money will be funneled directly to banks and corporations, to be discovered later. Meanwhile the PD and the right wing parties are out in full force. The right plays to the xenophobe: we wouldn’t have needed this stuff anyway if someone hadn’t…..
We have Fontana bringing in some bloody cardinal to bless a new makeshift hospital in Fiera, Milan which opens about 7 weeks too late after almost 14,000 have died. The Assessor of Welfare for Lombardy, Gallera, pretends the crisis has nothing to do with him. These people are psychopaths. I am sorry, but there’s no other word to describe them.
Renzi and a whole bunch of technocrats including Draghi, Letta and Monti now want to sell Italy to the highest bidder. The virus is a thing of the past, now it’s all about money. That’s another nest of vipers.
The propaganda machines are working overtime: the Russian stuff is crap, the Chinese owe us and on it goes.
The gratitude factor–going by the headline in the major dailies is almost non-existent.
I fear that the social unrest from the economic fallout, the billion euro bailouts hoovered up the banks, the PD wanting to sell Italy to the EU and the right wing playing the xenophobia card….So again, I really hope Escobar is right!
@Rachana: “The gratitude factor–going by the headline in the major dailies is almost non-existent.”
Never give a man a helping hand; he will resent you for not having given the whole arm. — Aristotle, Ethics, around 400 BC
Around Year 0, came the New Testament with its story of The Good Samaritan….
The struggle between realistic old-fashioned common-sense Prudence (Aristotle) and fire-new kingdom-come Charity (Rabbi Yeshuah of Nazareth) reverberates to this day.
“For we wrestle not only against men of flesh and blood, but also against principles and powers in the Heavens” — St.Paul
A welcome corrective to all the crap and lies propagated by the various governments who feel beholden to the US governments present and past. The world needs many more like Bepe Escobar.
“This Chinese soft power offensive is carefully calibrated to offset the current paralysis of global supply chains.”
Fake pandemic. Chinese initiated mandated shutdown of the world economy. Solution – “we are here to help”.
But the Chinese miscalculated:
1. They killed off much of their customer base (the West).
2. The medical help won’t change much, because soon the Western ppl will need money to survive. Lots of it. Will the Chinese foot the bills? I don’t think so. Riots and unrests are coming to the West.
Indeed your reading the tea leaves right for it coming to the neighborhoods all over America, as you can see in the surge of people rushing to buy whatever to defend themselves,and forget that old slogan “we are from the government we are here to help you”ask the folks in New Orleans about all the help they received which was just about zero.The smart ones will plant and raise a garden learn how to can it,and have enough lead to protect it for its coming!!!
Well to be clear, I meant the Chinese are trying to pull the ‘we are here to help’ scam. But it won’t work. And Pepe is wrong, soon everybody in the West will fight over a bag of potatoes – no one will remember the masks China sent. RT had a piece on riots in Italy. Society collapse has already started. People are becoming desperate there. The US will fare even worse. Bcs they got guns & ar-15s.
And to borrow from Dimitri Orlov, growing your own food is the right path, relationships/connections with others moreso than guns.
They wont be fighting over anything, you’ll either be able to afford it, or if not, and you still want it, you have to find a way to cleverly steal it, this is the future.
Removed – the Saker site policy doesn’t allow copying and pasting comments from other sites. Mod.
That off hand comment by Ramuzzi, btw, is fully confirmed by these papers, all stating unequivocally that the virus was circulating much earlier than Feb. 20
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134820300447
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300972?fbclid=IwAR1xn2STOWCrUDGuXthJXlp_qfyo85pjCKiZYA-VcSgwB_cVJmfWheFoRQo#
given that it was not a comment, but a translation, (requested by others incidentally), I think you missed part of my point.
Reading the comments, it feels as if I’ve dropped into a big bad hole or a bridging course on China before we can get into China 101 and only Larchmonter makes sense. It seems like the patient teaching (androgogic, i.e., adult i.e. you gotto learn yourself) of many years has just fallen by the wayside and all we get is what I call RATM type comments, i.e., Running At The Mouth.
We’ve learned about China, how they work and how they do things over years on The Saker Blog.
Work by Ramin Mazaheri,
/a-necessary-revolution-in-discussing-chinas-cultural-revolution-an-8-part-series-1-8/
which he eventually based a book on.
Jeff J Brown and his interviews with The Saker and his many China publications,
https://chinarising.puntopress.com/about-the-author/
Godfree Roberts with his series for Unz, meticulously researched,
https://www.unz.com/author/godfree-roberts/
and, we know about the size of the information op against China, at least through the eyes of Steve Bannon. Now multiply that with the whole of the US State Dept, all the lawmakers and Trump himself, and you will have an idea of how you are being deceived on China.
/steve-bannons-gift/
And all this, and we still get comments like “China is trying to
– cover it‘s ass (because of it’s evident misinformation about the numbers of CoVid cases and fatalities)”
Look folks, I knew that this Virus thing is not going to stay in China. I knew that the other countries are not preparing well enough. I knew when China released information, step by step as they had it. The current cry of ‘misinformation’ or not enough information is a cya effort’ If these countries could not get it, why is it that a simple soul like I could get it.
At the moment Chris Martenson speaks about the dangerous blame game as well. I queued up the video at 6:15 where he, with a few well placed bullet points, makes it very clear that he also followed it, and the ones that complain about not enough data, and China hid things away, is propaganda and a continuance of the blame China game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFwkjlaYJeA
Y’all do know that there is a war between the US and China still raging, did you? Don’t be fooled by the propaganda. China’s assistance to other countries is real, and translates into masks, medical equipment, respirators and feet on the ground doing the actual nursing. So is the Russian help. The Western bleating is just that … bleating. (And y’all know that Putin, Xi Jinping and Trump are not all of a sudden going to come and jump out of a cake with superman suits on and save Trump’s ass and make the World a Better Place as we have it now from certain US factions – that is unicorn thinking).
And also take a gander at what Noblesse Oblige actually means,
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2020/04/noblesse-oblige.html
apply this knowledge and you may understand a bit about Russia’s actions and China’s actions.
Now I know very few of our drive by shooter comments are going to go into a serious study, especially not in these times. So, hear our Larchmonter, and myself.
China is not trying to show off .. China understands clearly that this is a global issue and that only globally we can get rid of this. That is why they spring with all kinds of equipment for others .. These people actually think globally. That is why Jack Ma gifts massive amounts of medical equipment to the US and they accept it, but they stop the gift shipment to Cuba – the SOB’s. Because the US is not thinking globally, but just in their own narrow grasping exceptionalism, that they buy out a plane full of emergency equipment to Italy, on the runway, at 4 times the price – because they do not think globally and have no respect for the other humans that share this planet. This is all when they cry about price gouging in their own country.
If you think it is a ‘we are here to help scam’, from China, your thinking is clearly shallow and you should complete the bridging course before you enter understanding China 101.
.
What you call “China 101”, I.e. what you assume you know is just group think. Alt-sites aren’t no different than MSM.
Sure, Pompeo’s words about China are lies, but Pepe’s hail-China, Ramin’s pro-Iran articles are propaganda pieces too.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Always been so.
Btw,
I was one of the few who downplayed “Turkey’s invasion of Syria” , while most of the folks here were panicking. So how did that turn out? (Rethorical question)
> is just group think.
All human thinking is “group think”, because humans are social animals, living in communities.
But not all groups are the same, agreed.
For myself, I largely prefer to collectively think with the Chinese.
If you don’t want to share your mindset with China, can’t you just ignore them ? Why do you feel the need to actively fight them ? What has China ever do that made you harm or discomfort ?
It’s a real question, I don’t understand your behaviour (unless it is not “your” behaviour, but just a pavlovian reflex , media induced)
Best post on the subject.
Concur completely.
If we do anything here, we are very good at separating wheat from chaff, and we pursue facts and proof. We enjoy the potential of myriad viewpoints, but insist on commenter’s knowing what they are talking about.
This is serious racism aimed at the Chinese. It is dressed up as anti-communism and pro-democracy.
It is also hybrid warfare. INFOwar is real and dangerous because it is usually fabricated, layers of lies, and in the age of the Internet, it manipulates the “sources” for researching the truth so the truth stays hidden.
I hold no liking for the CCP. I warned of President Xi’s deep dive backward into Maoism. I sent a Russian language book of Xi’s writing to Saker several years ago with the warning that Xi’s Mass Line was deep ideological hokum that might trip up the ascent of China.
As someone who studies China on a daily basis, I have learned a lot about the culture and how the society works in macro form. One would have to live there for ten years to learn the micro. Wuhan was classic Chinese behavior. The local authorities were slow to alert the Central Government. (But we have seen this in the Italian response to pneumonia in 2019 that they had never seen before, and in US doctors not understanding pneumonias they lost patients to in 2019.) Once they understood it was a novelCoronaVirus, they took just 5 days to create the Genome of the virus and publish it to the whole world. From that date, everyone knew or should have known they had a killer loose. It took a month more to understand that it was so dangerous because of its sneaky ability to spread from asymptomatic carriers.
What these facts tell us is that the Chinese could not report data that they didn’t know was relevant until its relevance was discovered and proved. COVID-19 had toured many continents before it erupted in Wuhan.
For clarity’s sake, my comment is directed in support of Amarynth’s comment, of course.
RATM’s are part of the INFOwar, whether he realizes it or not.
If you pull up my comment history , one can easily notice I was pro-East (including China & Iran), and anti-West (angry at their imperialistic policies and ignorance of the populace).
But this changed after the ‘ Turkish Invasion of Syria’ , somewhere in January, when I realized how strongly groupthink is ingrained even here. So I shifted my perspective, more in line with Bro 93’s. Good ppl are to be found everywhere. And I should not hate them or wish them bad things. In my heart I forgave them (the West). I felt it is the right thing to do.
But I also pursue truth. When I state things I do so without fear or agenda.
When I write “RT had a piece on riots in Italy.” That ‘society collapse has started’ and that ‘noone will remember Chinese masks bcs they I’ll be fighting over bread’ that is not China bashing or infowar. This is the shape of things to come. I understand that many dismiss what I wrote bcs they are afraid. That’s OK. Bcs that fear will exactly bring about what I am predicting.
Let’s stop the China bashing shall we?
Action speaks louder than words as far as ordinary people in the RoW are concerned.
When PRC was grappling with its Covid-19 epidemic, what did the West, led by the US, do? It gloated at China’s predicament; disparaged and dismissed its epidemic control efforts (“draconian” frequently cropped up in the West’s running dog media narratives — implying an absolutely “un-free” society in PRC); pontificated about hygiene; and sat with its arms folded, not lifting a finger to help and actually hoping for the worse for China. Not lifting a finger to help countries with “fragile” (WHO descriptor) medical systems in the developing world, Asia, Africa, Latin America, when the virus started to spread.
Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, suddenly we’re all of the same global family and should help and care for each other. Peace and love (and masks and medicines) please.
But up to a point. A member of the humanitarian R2P (responsibility to protect but protection mainly by bombing) cabal, Australia, has refused to allow a German cruise ship with sick passengers on board from docking and is doing its best to shoo the ship back to Germany. Who cares about the sick Germans on board; that’s the liberal democratic way, right?
China is not acting out of pure altruism, of course (international politics are part of the equation, perhaps a minor part but a part nonetheless — I’m a realist), but by giving tangible assistance China is winning the hearts and minds game worldwide and concurrently showing up Western elites for what they are — lying, hypocritical, corrupt carpetbaggers. This will stand PRC in good stead in its confrontation with the AZ Empire post-Corona. The same could be said for Russia.
Western elites and their running dogs don’t like the fact that PRC is beginning to smell like a bunch of roses now, and are mounting a huge PR assault which evidently many people are swallowing lock, stock and barrel, the underlying narrative being “this is all China’s fault. It’s not our fault for gloating earlier and not preparing the country (insert name) for the epidemic.” It may work in the West but it’s not going to work in RoW — or even Italy, Serbia, Spain — nor any one of the 80 or so countries as Pepe mentioned where millions of people are donning masks and gloves provided by China.
Fine example of Western MSM propaganda:
https://youtu.be/iO73MdOwPgI
Oops, wrong reply box. Comments meant to be addressed generally but also written to say agree with amarynth’s opinion re China.
well I will reply and say very well said.
Good comment.
Thank you for your in-depth comments. It saves me the aggravation of having to respond to the Department of State conveyor belt.
The constant accusations against China and others is a typical western technique: demonize those you want to destroy, accusing them of crimes which the west itself is guilty of committing.
amarynth & L445,
Thank you both for these reminders.
Something that always seemed strange to me is that the ‘pivot to Russia’ and ‘pivot to China’ information war started while we were still importing lots of stuff from those places. Didn’t China make our iPhones? (and lots of other things like RE magnets and pharmaceuticals)?
One thing I’ve noticed since I started paying attention (recently, ~2013) to a lot of this stuff, is that my sources of information always seem to degrade over time. Twitter is a fine example — it was almost completely unfiltered back then, sometimes showing comments and sometimes up-close pictures from residents of Donetsk, UA. Eventually they started hiding them, and finally deleted a bunch of the accounts I once followed. It’s almost useless now. And then there was Ulfkotte’s book — what happened to it was like a current-day book-burning. What he said is obviously true now, the ‘news’ is ~100% fact-free. Not so much lies as an irrelevant fictional narrative. Never more obvious than since Trump was elected.
In the wake of this epiphany, one thing I noticed — it’s about the paper that was written by those Indian bioinformatics specialists, in which they found some very specific HIV sequences in the published CoV-19 genome — that paper was so hastily withdrawn because it hadn’t passed peer review. (How long might this ‘peer’ review process take?) Anyway: was it factually incorrect in any way?
Bottom line, my thought is this: the paper was made available in pre-published form, and then very quickly and very publicly withdrawn and un-published. The fact that it was withdrawn in such a manner, it seems to me, is an indication that it was a ‘glitch in the matrix’, so to speak. . .
From what I can see, the difference between the response of the west and the response of very nearly everyone else to this viral outbreak is much like the difference between night and day.
When will daylight finally dawn upon us in the west?
When will we finally embrace the dawn, once again?
We all draw but one breath, one and the same, and so live.
You said…”is much like the difference between night and day.”
Indeed just as the difference between Pepe and Pompeo is like night and day…no prizes for guessing which one represents the night!
Cheers
Col
When and if this pandemic is ever over, the credibility of the US will have collapsed. While other nations seek to halt the spread of coronavirus by helping those hit the hardest, the US continues its sanctions and threats. Is there anyone in the US halls of power that realize the cost this behavior will bring upon the US? It is time for the US to step down from its pedestal and rejoin the human race as an equal.
Over 40 years ago I read a science fiction novel (I cannot remember the title) a statement by one character concerning the decline of the planets society. He said, “The problem with our society is we have all failed to understand seeking to give has far greater power than seeking to get.”
The US credibility never seems to fall all the way due to the sheer indifference or fear of the other nations. If it hasn’t collapsed after decades of post-WW2 aggression, why would recent behavior during this virus situation made a difference in the eyes of the rest of the world?
The rest of the world is still largely obligated to keep its mouth shut or face the wrath of the monetary and military hegemon. But rest assured, seething discontent does indeed exist. When US hegemony finally ends, as it soon must, the outpouring of anti-US (which is to say, Zionist) sentiment will be epic.
Pro-China voices on the Internet are out on full force to save China’s image.
It’s quite telling that there’s not even a single peep about how Chinese masks and tests kits had to be rejected due to them being defective and substandard (‘Made in China’, anyone?).
Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52092395
Instead of this kind of lousy propaganda stunt of sending out unusable medical supplies, China can help the world by shutting down their disease-spreading wet markets and improving their hygiene standards so that the rest of the world doesn’t have to suffer again.
The masks and test kits you speak of were sold by unlicensed sellers and the products were not the officially certified products from China government.
If you buy stuff that isn’t certified, you get what you pay for.
Think about it. Why would China sell inferior products?
Remember DVDs? You could get an official DVD and you could get a pirated DVD. The latter were usually crap transfers, mediocre quality. Did you blame Beijing government for the fact you were stupid?
China had everything to lose and nothing to gain from producing inferior medical products.
By the way, BBC is the British government which hates the Chinese people and their government about as much as it hates and demonizes Russia and Russians. BBC and the Truth never met, never meet and never will be in the same space or time.
Britain kept China hooked on opium for 150 years. Just understand a bit of history and then watch your sources.
“Did you blame Beijing government for the fact you were stupid?”
Why do the moderators even allow snarky comments like this?
I can see that criticism directed against China is distressing for you, but I think you can state your opinions without being so condescending to other commentators.
My only point was that Pro-China voices didn’t even bother to mention the defectiveness of those products, and that China needs to improve their country’s hygiene. If China wants to win this propaganda war, then it would be to wise for them to have reign over these unlicensed sellers, no? So, does the fact that BBC is anti-China make this blunder a fabricated story? Maybe you can find this story from some Chinese sources so that we can get China’s side of the story.)
You said…”My only point was.”
Just me but I noted two points…the other one being your apparent Sinophobic comment that even Fatboy Pompeo would be utterly envious of…
…”China can help the world by shutting down their disease-spreading wet markets and improving their hygiene standards so that the rest of the world doesn’t have to suffer again.”
and the comment…”Did you blame Beijing government for the fact you were stupid?”…
My 2cents worth re comprehension of this comment was that it was not aimed at you personally Sayer. Rather at any one of us reading this exchange, so that WE could reflect on an instance like that such as pirated DVDs, where WE were indeed sucked in and made to look somewhat “stupid”.
Larchmonter
Absolutely….and the BBC’s crowning glory of all time in a very long list?
Hard call really… but perhaps most disgraceful of all was when their announcement re 911 building #7’s collapse was so up to the minute that well… ahem, ahem …in fact, so splendidly up to the minute that in their unbridled glee and excitement they actually made the announcement some 20 minutes before the event even happened. What’s more its complete destruction which looked remarkably like a controlled demolition was all due to a very innocuous fire in one office.
Yep, sky-scrapers in that area were certainly having a bad day alright.
YCHMTSU
Col
PS Perhaps Sayer could maybe hit them up for a job…word on the street is they are looking for more correspondents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEsjv9vKCGc
@Did you blame Beijing government for the fact you were stupid?
Well, that’s what stupid people do. I was last year on a trip to China. Everywhere the guides warned us to avoid peddlers who were offering ‘cheap’ products.
Why did USA make a conscious decision not to make stuff?
Why do they only buy from China’s lowest-bidder?
You sow what you reap.
If the USA was willing to pay and demand swiss-engineering quality for a the right-price China would deliver, but USA wants $1 stores, and junk that is designed to fail first use.
Why does all medical hw come from China? WHy did USA quit making? Why do all pills come from India? Why did USA quit making essentials?? Most of this is because a bag of pills in India is a penny, sold in USA for $1,000’s of dollars, same for diagnostic hardware 100’s of USD in China, and $1,000’s of USD in USA for a single use of machine per patient, if approved by ‘insurance’
USA created this system, a system that was bound to fail and kill.
“China can help the world by shutting down it’s disease spreading wet markets”
But Pepe’s article clearly states that the virus was seen in October, November, December of 2019 in Italy I.e. “parallel with or even before the first coronavirus cases in Wuhan in mid-November. ..”
“virus strains in Wuhan and in Lombardy are different. Which came first, and where from, remains a matter of incendiary debate.”
So it looks like it didn’t start with a bat in Wuhan at the wet market.
Sayer, I don’t live in a country where the food process is hidden from me. I go to local wet markets to buy fresh chicken and some meat and definitely fresh catch fish that was brought in that very morning. But then again, I know what I am doing, and I don’t trust the local supermarket and I insist on fresh food. My family was in the meat business and I learned it from young, so, I was lucky. I find in the wet markets that people are much more knowledgeable about hygiene standards simply because they work with fresh food. And once they realize that you are knowledgeable as well, you invariably pick up a friend for life. It is a knowledge base that is being lost in the developed countries and I have found this knowledge base still very active with those that work in fresh food. We don’t eat chicken that has been ‘hygiened’ by a quick visit to the bleach bath and is beautifully packaged for the supermarket.
Because in some civilizations the food process is hidden, does not mean that it is necessarily a sane process. Go and visit a animal slaughter house and you will see what is hidden from you. Because you buy it processed and packaged in a supermarket does not mean hygiene. This specific process has made people lose contact with where their food comes from and now kids in developed countries think eggs come from a supermarket and milk from a carton. And, they have no respect. I do not know of any other country that has food fights like in the US. Because it is not respected, it is denatured into products like MacDonalds, where it is nuked to death and has no value to really nourish the one who eats it. In other cultures, food still forms a very strong cultural bond and we do not throw it at one another. We almost had a divorce in our house when once my American husband tossed a piece a toast over to me – different civilizational standards.
China should do exactly what they do, and what they decide to do, with their own food process. The rest of the world is not suffering because of China but because of their own unwillingness to see what is happening and to do preparation specifically for a viral episode. Now they cry about it and blame China and their food culture and their hygiene, while hiding their own away. This is not a new game but has been going on for some years now. It is an extension on the war on Russia – same old, same old.
Once one has the temerity to tell a country of 1.4 billion people how they should live, without understanding their cultural norms, or their insistence on fresh food, one has to seriously investigate one’s own biases and what you soak up from your own imposed cultural norms.
I finally watched an excellent interview with one of the most respected, Russian economist Сергей Глазьев (Sergey Yurievich Glazyev is a Russian politician and economist, advisor to the president of the Russian Federation on regional economic integration, member of the National Financial Council of the Bank of Russia, and, since 2008, a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKDeJz6bgSI&feature=youtu.be
At some point, towards the end of this interview, he said that there’re over 600 US military labs specializing specifically in bacteriologic-weapons creation. Since the US administration categorically refused signing a non-proliferation moratorium in regards to these weapons, there is a strong feeling that it was their handy work. The fact that it is a hand-made virus (his words) is a certainty.
He also expressed some thoughts that it is time to create an international tribunal, and investigate the Corona virus phenomena (my very loose translation).
The whole interview is absolutely top notch. I’m a useless translator, hence I’m hoping that somebody from the Saker’s community might translated this invaluable interview.
KINZAZA
I would love to see the translation!
This international tribunal must come to pass…it is really humanity’s only hope left now. The atrocities get steadily more outrageous as we plummet into a full-on Orwellian nightmare.
Cheers
Col
The other very interesting conclusion made by Glazyev, was that, in this hybrid warfare, China already came out as a winner. He said that according to customs data, there is about 10% more shipments out of China now, compare to the same time last year. This was definitely not the desired outcome for the empire. Also, now there are some very strong incentives for the advancement of the Eurasian economic integration to offset the fact that the US is no longer a viable customer for the Chinese goods. The bad news for the citizens of the Anglo Zionist empire is that now the controllers will unleash all their poisons internally.
“This international tribunal must come to pass…” — don’t hold up your hopes, NZ.
If anything came to pass byway of public pressure it would be managed the same as ‘9/11’ commissions and MH17 etc.
It is either a Nature story with a wildlife-human conflict angle; or a Conspiracy story with a criminal angle.
The double bind complexity stems from the fact that it may well be both — each a cover for the other.
What’s certain is, the economic impacts are well out of proportion to the actual deaths recorded; and in ‘normal’ times (e.g. up until recently in the US) it would be page-15 news (just another bad flu year etc) with the MSM focus on the perhaps seasonal increase (like 2016-17 spike) registered in other co-morbidity classifications (with” Covid-19 if they had too) leading to a draw-forward and early cull of the already highly ‘affluenza’ diseased (now not so) ‘Ok Boomer’ inhabitants of the departing lounge (together with an unfunded pension sucking liability sub-text).
The fact that they have chosen to focus on the Covid-19, which as some have implied has been, in various fast mutating forms, around for some time unrecorded, suggests to me that the Great Distraction is in fact from the Greater Economic Depression that they (the <1%) have either decided to willfully precipitate (not letting an opportunity pass); or just as likely, finally failed to maintain as a 'never-ending' cornucopia (read Fed and QE+++) and unicorn BS cover story for the plantation serfs who think they are 'free'.
Look out your windows and you'll see 1929!
Look at your TV (media) and you'll see Corona-19 (and those spiky balls) everywhere.
Look at your bank balance and wallet/purse with a little pacifying 'top up' from your government … and
See the hideous amounts of loot these criminal classes infesting the top are paying themselves to maintain their privileged places in the food chain.
Ayn Rand all the way up, and boot prints on your head; social-capitalism parachutes all the way down and pockets of fiat currency private equity to buy up anything of worth for cents on the dollar.
Unless there is a way out to escape; then we are all in (by definition) a massive Double Bind.
What the virus does not kill; the impacts on dissociated personality, and/or state paramilitary forces will.
And yet, the sheeple could easily vote Bernie Sanders, or Jeremy Corbyn, or whomever stood up for that policy line but it is highly unlikely. Why? The three core deficits: laziness; deceit; and fear.
Forget Orwell's "1984" and boot on the face forever. Think Bangladesh 2021 and a pet-chip in your hand or no food stamps (or travel, medical, insurance, haircut, internet, phone, …) for you and/or your loved ones. And if we do not own a plantation, then we are either picking (GM) cotton, or cleaning the big white house on the hill.
Pepe Escobar's global "Planet Lockdown" scenario starts with a local "Plantation Lockdown" near you and I.
Good night, and good luck…
Ad res: “This all ties up with the larger Belt and Road picture, featuring investments in Genoa and Trieste, two key ports and future Belt and Road nodes.”
Initially, the region of Apulia (Italian: Puglia) with its capital Tàranto had positioned itself to be the main Italian stop-over on the “Silk Road”. Whatever happened wit those plans?
“It’s perception, you stupid” (without trying to harm anyone). It really is. My own perception, just a few months ago, just before this coronavirus horror story started, was wrong. I thought that the West is intelligent and clever, although nefarious and psychopathic. But they are not, for a long, long time. They are actually stupid, stupid beyond belief. Look at it:
• The West has ego-maniacal leaders. I don’t see anything similar in Putin or Xi, or Iranian supreme leader, or Bashar Al Assad, just to name a few
• The West has psychopaths in their most prominent positions. Chinese execute their psychopaths (every year some 5.000 of them, although not all of them are psychopaths, and that for sure doesn’t mean that I personally encourage such a punishment). Psychopaths should be locked in the specialized institutions: not executed and certainly not holding high office functions
• The West has no honesty in their interpersonal communications and much so less in their business relations. As one of TheSaker’s commentators’ said: “Capitalism in the West is the game of who will screw-up more people for his personal gain”. The Chinese Communist-controlled capitalism is of definitely different flavor. Not ideal, but definitely much better
• If you beat your wife and your kids every single day, they won’t love you, they will despise you, and then there will be a day when the oldest son will smash your face. Chinese and Russians and some other Eastern nations are doing just the opposite for quite a long time: step by step, brick by brick, man by man, woman by woman, kid by kid.
• Money is West’s God: when you take off all the masks one can see that only money counts, not people, not young persons, not old folk,… I can see these things almost the opposite in the East, and growing each day
• Etc.
One has to be really stupid, coming almost uninjured from the WWII as the new superpower and making wrong decisions at every crossroad. Instead of unloading millions upon millions of tons of bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos (just for starters), they could have made it much better: unload millions upon millions of infrastructure projects, all around the world, in poor countries, Africa, everywhere. Everybody would love Americans, even with their nasty petro-dollars. Instead of building weapons of mass destruction, they had a chance to build instruments of mass respect.
But no, they had to choose the most evil of all possible roads, which goes nowhere and which will finally kill them as a society. Stupid beyond belief and reparation. The window of opportunity for Americans is closed, as long as East would have comparable armaments and military equipment. Psychopaths doesn’t risk a life, they are cowards. In a few years from now, young and knowledgeable people will run from West to East in millions, like some time ago people fled from East to West Berlin. Amen.
Unfortunately, the New Silk Road will provide a target for the Empire to carpet bomb it with their B-52s. They should also think of a way to camouflage the road by going through forest and under mountains and station along the road S-300s and S-400s where the road cannot be hidden.
@Charles Carroll
US B-52 jet bombers had their hay day during the Vietnam war 1955 -75 where they lost 31 of them.
In total, the United States military lost almost 10,000 aircraft in Vietnam; helicopters and UAVs 3,744 planes, 5,607 helicopters and 578 UAVs.
Today B-52s are largely obsolete and would be sitting ducks flying over well armed adversary territory.
Oh, come on! Stop watching video-games.
I read this article in Asian Times site and ive found another interesting article there.
Just speculation but, its a fast one. Just check the map.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/map-suggests-tb-vaccine-may-help-prevent-covid-19/
China deserves respect and outright admiration, and that is exactly what this pandemic is bringing about, especially in the Global South. As far as the rotting West is concerned, since Chinese tangible medical aid is frowned upon, maybe the Chinese should consider sending huge quantities of opium instead — the Euro-trash and the Exceptional and Indispensable folks will need it very badly. It’s about time the Chinese learned how to say Thank you with malicious glee.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/04/the-science-says-maskup-a-look-at-two-new-virus-studies.html#more
Masks and the how the virus spreads. MOA has some new science on these elements.
The Asian countries know this and have been wearing masks from the beginning.
Look at their trajectory compared to the Europeans:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Jonn__Mc/status/1244957684820070402
The WHO has insisted that masks are unnecessary and the West has foolishly followed their advice. It is only since a few days ago that WHO has started recommending masks.
Just to present the argument against wearing masks (which has been put forward where I live.) As with influenza, the most common way to contract the virus would come from your hands contracting the virus, and then touching your face. This would be especially true while we are physically distancing so that droplets don’t contact our faces directly from another person spewing them on us. The prevailing advice is to practice good hand hygiene (washing regularly) and continue with physical distancing.
The concern with masks is wearing one tends to result in more touches to your face. I wore a mask for a day or two and I can attest to that. I was constantly adjusting it, picking at it. Also, these masks need to be replaced frequently otherwise they can become contaminated and are no longer useful, just like rubber gloves. And then I’m breathing those contaminants directly into my nose and mouth.
So thanks, but no thanks. I’ll let the health care workers wear the masks – people are spitting directly in their faces all day – and if I get coughed or sneezed at, I’ll rely on soap and water or an alcohol pad/wipe.
to Anonymous April 3rd, 2020:
No, first are the droplets infecting through the air, when someone sneezed or coughs or speaks directly into your face
The second is as you said: through your hands putting into your face.
Therefore hand washing is a very good prevention.
However, prevention against droplets containing the virus is only by wearing masks.
You haven’t wear it all the time just when you are within people. Sure even with normal masks (not special ones) a part of droplets would put some amount of virus into the masks. However, the amount of virus would be much less to be into your face than without masks.
It is he total amount of virus coming into contact with our breathing system the point plus our immune system plus our behavior (with our hands).
Moreover, with masks you are giving other people some sort of security: if you sneeze the infection of others would be much much less.
> Moreover, with masks you are giving other people some sort of security: if you sneeze the infection of others would be much much less.
Indeed. And that is why, and how, those masks are used since a lot of time in countries like Japan. People with a flu wear them, to prevent contaminating the others.
I have to say that from what I read here it’s a lot of pooh pooh. Yes the good people of China all loving and trusting their government by buying houses all over the western world, getting duall citizenship just in case. Even having babies in the West just for passports. We in the West don’t do that. What about all the students studying in the West? We westerners don’t flock to China to study. I also don’t see us (west) much interested to study Chinese but they love to learn english etc. Ever try to get Chinese citizenship if white? Or work permit? Impossible. Chinese people also do not have much empathy for strangers, kindness is in short supply etc. Another thing, did they look after their land? No, pollution everywhere. Money is what they worship and nothing else, far beyond the West my friends.