In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

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Clutch Cargo
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In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

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An opinion piece from the UK. Long read but interesting..

London: China won the first half of the COVID Cold War decisively. It executed lockdowns with immaculate precision, cuffing dissenters to balcony railings and sealing citizens in their homes. Having near-enough eliminated COVID within its own borders, it fired up its industrial engines to meet roaring demand for Chinese goods.

A diplomatic coup over the United States followed, as the World Health Organisation ruled out the Wuhan lab leak theory. Most powerful of all was China’s psychological victory; as Beijing exulted in the liberating discipline of the Chinese Way, the locked down West brooded over the selfish inadequacies of freedom.

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Now, though, a lousy vaccine strategy and a counterfeit economic recovery are coming back to haunt the Chinese Communist Party. A Western world that has spent a year luxuriating in existential crisis might dare to wonder: is the brute force of the authoritarian, centralised state no match after all for the innovative agility of a free capitalist society?

In an astonishing admission of weakness, China’s top disease control official has confirmed that the efficacy of the country’s COVID vaccines is low. With trials abroad suggesting that protection rates could be as poor as 50 per cent, the country’s regulator is now considering whether to mix jabs to boost their effectiveness.

This is a catastrophe for China.

The country is stuck in an unsustainable zero COVID trap, only able to maintain an upper hand over the virus by closing its borders to almost all foreigners and limiting domestic travel.

Beijing could be left behind within months, as rival countries reach herd immunity and reopen for global business. On this point, even the Chinese commentariat has been remarkably candid. State epidemiologists have taken to the airwaves, warning that China’s vaccine rates are insufficient to reach herd immunity by the end of year, let alone the end of the summer.

Newspaper column that usually foam against the “putrid ambitions” of anti-Chinese forces are instead analysing the progress of Britain, Israel and the United States with sober dread.

Nor are China’s vaccine woes the only threat to the country’s apparent COVID advantage.

Doubts are starting to grow about Beijing’s miraculous economic recovery. A recent IMF forecast stirred controversy, projecting that while Western economies would almost completely avoid permanent scarring – and US GDP in 2024 would be even higher than it was anticipated to be before COVID – China’s economy will end up 1.59 per cent smaller than pre-pandemic expectations.

This exposes the drawbacks of a Chinese model that prioritises ambition over invention, saving face over doing the groundwork, and scale over quality.

Perhaps in all those official Maoist castigations of Chinese backwardness in the 20th century, the country lost a sense of its essential Self. The pioneering civilisation that gave us the wheel and the compass has “renewed” itself by becoming a piracy powerhouse that cannot innovate. This, it turns out, is a handicap in a pandemic.

China’s biopharma industry has remained small and low-grade because it is not possible to thrive in cutting-edge science by copying rivals (unlike with smartphones and solar panels).

Beijing has had to rely on outdated technology to churn out vaccines that are not only less effective than their Western equivalents but more expensive (the cost price for the Sinovac jab is $US30 per dose, compared with AstraZeneca’s $US3).

The state subsidises such mediocrity through an overly centralised procurement process that promotes a race to the bottom. The modest global growth of the Chinese pharma industry in recent years has been mired by corruption scandals and the recall of hundreds of thousands of vaccines.

It is in this troubled context that Chinese firms rushed out COVID jabs for the CCP. Having given the coronavirus to the world, Beijing had hoped to rehabilitate its image through vaccine diplomacy. It is a strategy that may be about to backfire calamitously.

Not that the West is perfect. AstraZeneca’s woes show that developing and rolling out a highly effective and cheap vaccine is a challenge. As the Anglo-Swedish firm’s recent run-in with US regulators also demonstrates, Western Big Pharma is not immune from legitimate criticism over data transparency.

Still, there is something in the fact that profit-driven Western companies have used COVID-19 as a selfish PR opportunity for themselves, rather than for the selfless greater good of their nations. With their reputations on the line, they have aimed to develop vaccines that work as quickly as possible – rather than as quickly as necessary.

The Chinese economy’s post-COVID path invites similar scrutiny. The country’s crushing debt levels – worsened by uncontrolled public sector “recovery” spending – may not be as sustainable as mainstream economists claim. Its “mass entrepreneurship and innovation drive” has stifled competition with garbage subsidies.

The CCP’s “new development model” to unleash domestic consumption seems predestined for failure, given that it depends on the distribution of real financial power to ordinary citizens. After slinging hundreds of millions of peasants from the fields into factories, meanwhile, China has run out of low cost labour just as its population has begun to age rapidly.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/ ... 57inp.html
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by SternAAlbifrons »

^^^^
lol
That is political propaganda far more than it is a situational report.
However true parts of it may well be.

I have loathed propaganda ever since i was taught in primary school that it is the province of the Stalinists, Maoists and Nazis.
As opposed to the Free World where the strength and values of our Democratic principles precluded the need for it's use.

'Creeping in now tho', big time.
Last edited by SternAAlbifrons on Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

clutchcargo wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:53 pm An opinion piece from the UK. Long read but interesting..

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/ ... 57inp.html
For further information on this opinion piece. There is nothing inherently wrong with being a politically conservative journalist, but as always, the source of the article gives added information.
(Above) Source: The Telegraph, London
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-telegraph/ finds a right-wing Conservative bias
Writer: Sherelle Jacobs
From the Conservative Woman website: TCW’s Brexit Roll of Honour: The Telegraph’s Sherelle Jacobs.
[Sherelle Jacobs is a British journalist, who is the Assistant Comment Editor at The Daily Telegraph.]

Elsewhere:
Sherelle Jacobs with Steve Bannon:
Bannons War Room
Published February 26, 2021 1,215 Views
Rumble — Telegraph columnist Sherelle Jacobs shares her latest column on the danger of WHO’s cover up for the CCP, and why China is a disproportionate threat to the rest of the world with pandemics.
https://rumble.com/ve701z-steve-bannon- ... acobs.html
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by nerdlinger »

SternAAlbifrons wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:15 pm ^^^^
lol
That is political propaganda far more than it is a situational report.
However true parts of it may well be.

I have loathed propaganda ever since i was taught in primary school that it is the province of the Stalinists, Maoists and Nazis.
As opposed to the Free World where the strength and values of our Democratic principles precluded the need for it's use.

'Creeping in now tho', big time.
It despairs me how flagging something as “opinion” means you somehow get license to misrepresent facts and repeat comprehensively debunked guff because hey, it’s an Opinion piece.
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by Phnom Poon »

of course there's a whole lot of bias in any 'news'
but look at the facts and arguments, and debate

if the china vaccines aren't effective
they will have to keep closed borders, use western vaccines, or just wait until the rest of the world is vaccinated

china have been doing a roaring trade outfitting the west for a temporary home-body lifestyle
will that continue?

do we now trust china more, or less, as a trading partner?
especially as a crucial or sole supplier of anything?

.

monstra mihi bona!
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by nemo »

Their treatment of Uighurs and bullying of Philippines is not winning friends.
I think they have lost a lot of export business and more of that to come.
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by Clutch Cargo »

Phnom Poon wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:59 pm of course there's a whole lot of bias in any 'news'
but look at the facts and arguments, and debate

if the china vaccines aren't effective
they will have to keep closed borders, use western vaccines, or just wait until the rest of the world is vaccinated

china have been doing a roaring trade outfitting the west for a temporary home-body lifestyle
will that continue?

do we now trust china more, or less, as a trading partner?
especially as a crucial or sole supplier of anything?
It will be a total loss of face and reputation if they succumb to using western vaccines. I doubt they could ever bring themselves to it. In their eyes it would be admittance of failure. I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the official that admitted their vaccines aren't up to scratch. Hence it will be adoption of the fore mentioned or the latter mentioned options imo
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by nemo »

Everyone knows they are the greatest liars in the world by the ineptitude of their lies.
Other nations tolerated it for so many decades that CCP began to believe their own lies about the irreplaceable nature of China's position in global trade.
All the clothing and footwear can now come from the subcontinent- commodity tech from korea, japan, taiwan. Vehicles from mexico etc etc.

This is all evident now, the supply lines are reforming, hastened by the ship stuck in suez and future risk mitigation in terms of exposure to Chinese supply.
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by Phnom Poon »

nemo wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:27 pm the supply lines are reforming, hastened by the ship stuck in suez
the stuck ship was just a hiccup
but it might be viewed as a harbinger in retrospect

.

monstra mihi bona!
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Re: In a turnaround, China is starting to lose the COVID Cold War

Post by nemo »

Lessons learned
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