https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Political-carnage-of-China-s-coronavirus-outbreak-is-just-beginning Political carnage of China's coronavirus outbreak is just beginning Xi Jinping will emerge weakened from crisis thanks to slow government response Minxin Pei February 19, 2020 03:00 JST Xi Jinping gestures near the slogan "Race against time, Fight the Virus" during an inspection of the center for disease control and prevention in Beijing on Feb 10: Xi could double down on purges and social control. © Xinhua/AP Official heads have finally started to roll now the outbreak of the coronavirus in China has claimed more than a thousand lives and shows no signs of abating. The Chinese Communist Party fired the party chiefs of Hubei province and Wuhan municipality on February 13, putting local officials on notice that it would no longer tolerate incompetence in handling the worst public health crisis since the SARS epidemic 17 years ago. As the CCP leadership habitually treats its local officials as dispensable instruments of rule, regardless of their loyalty or competence, few should be surprised by the unceremonious departure of these two local party chiefs. Their only offense appeared to be their faithful compliance with Beijing's policy of suppressing freedom of expression in the service of the party's political monopoly. While the fate of the local officials sacked for the poor handling of the Covid-19 outbreak will likely be a footnote in future accounts of this disaster, the political impact of the epidemic could be far more consequential than most expect. To be sure, the amount of political damage the CCP and, in particular, President Xi Jinping will sustain depends on the duration of the crisis and the severity of the economic disruption. Nevertheless, even under the most optimistic scenario of the containment of the outbreak by mid-April, the CCP's performance-based legitimacy and Xi's image will have been seriously dented. A useful way of thinking about the potential fallout of the coronavirus outbreak is to recall the SARS episode. There are some potential lessons. A leadership transition nominally occurred at the end of 2002 when Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang Zemin as the CCP General Secretary. However, Jiang continued as the de facto top leader by retaining his position as commander-in-chief. The outbreak of SARS quickly upended his plans. Several of Jiang's loyalists, including the minister of health, were held responsible for lying to the public about the outbreak. Taking advantage of public outrage against Jiang, for his violation of the implicit two-term limit, and his incompetent and deceitful cronies, Hu and the premier at that time temporarily relaxed media control and began a series of political maneuvers that forced Jiang to step down from the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission in September 2004. This episode must be weighing on Xi's mind today. His abolition of the presidential term limit in March 2018 has cost him much political capital. In the last two years, a series of adverse events, especially the U.S.-China trade war and the unrest in Hong Kong, have further eroded his image as an omnipotent leader. In the run-up to the 20th national party congress in the fall of 2022, Xi needs all the good news he can get to make a strong case for extending his term. But the coronavirus outbreak has made it harder for him to do so easily. Scapegoating local officials will not appease public outrage. Medical staff transfer a patient from an ambulance at the Jinyintan hospital where pneumonia victims are being treated in Wuhan on Jan. 20. © Reuters His authority has apparently taken a hit already. He learned of the outbreak as early as January 7, when he convened the Politburo Standing Committee to discuss how to respond. Curiously, despite what Xi calls his "repeated instructions," the Chinese government did not sound the alarm of a public health emergency, nor did he cancel his planned state visit to Myanmar on January 17-18. The decision to wage an all-out effort to contain the virus was not made until January 20 -- two days after he returned to Beijing. His absence on the front line during the first two weeks of the crisis -- in particular his decision to send Premier Li Keqiang to the epicenter of the outbreak, Wuhan, instead of going there himself -- has also raised doubts about his leadership. We can only interpret Xi's tour of a neighborhood in Beijing on February 10 -- and the firing of the party chiefs of Hubei and Wuhan three days later -- as belated remedies to regain the control of the political narrative. Xi Jinping inspects the novel coronavirus prevention and control work at Anhuali Community in Beijing on Feb. 10. © Xinhua/Reuters Of course, it is too soon to say how the Covid-19 crisis will affect the outcomes of the 20th party congress. What is certain is that a succession of serious domestic and external setbacks has greatly complicated Xi's plans. While he may still get a third term in 2022, he could be forced to make more political concessions, such as appointing an heir apparent and promoting senior officials who are not seen as his loyalists to the Politburo Standing Committee. Alternatively, he may be tempted to emulate late ruler Mao Zedong, who typically lashed out against his critics and suspected foes in the party each time his policy flopped. Instead of beating a political retreat and seeking compromise, Xi could double down on purges and social control. Regardless of Xi's course of action, history may again rhyme in China, where a power struggle unfailingly erupted in the aftermath of political debacles such as the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the Tiananmen crackdown (1989). It is a safe bet that the downfall of the two apparatchiks in Hubei is the beginning, not the end, of the political carnage to come. Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a nonresident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States
Wuhan Mother Speaks Out "No Beds, No Medicine, All Lies" https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/econ...s-no-medicine-all-lies-YaKcRN-lv0eLHTropm9swA
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...dd157e-52ed-11ea-80ce-37a8d4266c09_story.html China expels three Wall Street Journal reporters over opinion article written by academic In this July 2, 2019, file photo, Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. By Anna Fifield Feb. 19, 2020 at 4:37 p.m. GMT+8 BEIJING — China expelled three Wall Street Journal correspondents from the country Wednesday because the newspaper did not publicly apologize for a headline on a column that Beijing deemed racist, a dramatic escalation in the Communist Party's efforts to silence criticism from abroad as well as at home. Deputy Bureau Chief Josh Chin and reporter Chao Deng, both American citizens, as well as reporter Philip Wen, an Australian national, have been ordered to leave the country within five days, the Journal reported. The paper did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The Foreign Ministry has been repeatedly criticizing the Journal since it published a coronavirus-related column on Feb 3. by Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College, under the headline “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia.” The title is a reference to the time at the beginning of the 20th century when a weak China was carved up by colonial powers. The opinion pages of the Journal, as with The Washington Post and other American newspapers, are run separately from the news department, and people with knowledge of the Journal’s operations said that the Beijing bureau had no involvement with the commissioning of the column or writing its headline. Mead alluded to this on Twitter on Feb. 9, as the Foreign Ministry made increasingly heated remarks about the headline. The ministry had accused the Journal of using racially discriminatory language and offending the Chinese people. The Journal is blocked by China’s Great Firewall, meaning people cannot access its website without software to make it appear that they are outside the country. “China demands the WSJ recognize the severity of its mistake, make an official apology and hold the persons involved accountable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters Wednesday. “However, regrettably, what the WSJ has done so far is nothing but parrying and dodging its responsibility. It has neither issued an official apology nor informed us of what it plans to do with the persons involved,” Geng said. The move by Beijing follows a decision by the United States a day earlier to designate five major Chinese media outlets as government entities. “The Chinese side handles affairs related to foreign journalists in accordance with laws and regulations,” Geng said. “The Chinese people do not welcome those media that speak racially discriminatory languages and maliciously slander and attack China.” He added that the Foreign Ministry reserved the right to take further actions. In August, China ejected a Wall Street Journal reporter, Chun Han Wong, a Singapore national who had covered Chinese politics out of the paper’s Beijing bureau since 2014. This was in apparent retaliation for a report detailing allegations that a cousin of Chinese leader Xi Jinping was involved in high-stakes gambling and potential money laundering in Australia.
Yeh, more likely if you order some machinery from Harbor Freight they will throw in some free coronavirus because "you are a valyooed customer."
Trump White House put coronavirus-infected Americans plane full of healthy people — over CDC objections The Trump State Department overrode the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and put American citizens infected with the coronavirus on a plane full of healthy people, despite the risk that they could spread the infection. The Washington Post reports that the CDC wanted to keep 14 coronavirus-infected Americans in Japan instead of flying them home because they could infect healthy people. However, the State Department believed it could bring the infected Americans home by quarantining them on the plane with a plastic-aligned enclosure. “It was like the worst nightmare,” said a senior U.S. official who was involved with the decision. “Quite frankly, the alternative could have been pulling grandma out in the pouring rain, and that would have been bad, too''