The Chinese Big Lie

Xertz

I would tend to be very wary of the Chinese data given the track record but, I'm also very aware that the US and UK are in very odd political situations at the moment and led by spin, and jingoistic spin at that.

So basically I don’t believe either side. They’re both proven to be total liars, willing to manipulate facts to suit politics.

The paranoia of an authoritarian regime or the paranoia of a populist showman who can’t distinguish fact from his own opinion. Wouldn’t trust either of them. As for the UK? Where do you even start?!

I’d need to see data from an independent source that is trustworthy.

Credibility of those three nations just isn’t great. It’s a total disgrace that the UK and USA are like that now but, we are where we are. Elect people who can’t tell fact from fiction and spin faster than a washing machine and your credibility is soon down the toilet.

lak

There's a number of countries fudging their numbers in one way or another,marking deaths down as the underlying cause,only counting those who died in hospital etc.China were just the first to do it.

Xertz

The issue is more China’s track record on transparency is not what you’d call exemplary and they did try to initially arrest and silence the late doctor who was trying to warn everyone about it.

China’s got fantastic, warm, vibrant, friendly people and it can be a wonderful place, but it’s run by an authoritarian regime that has become more regressive in recent years and is absolutely paranoid about anything that would threaten stability.

It has all the trappings or a liberal democracy on the surface, even a vibrant market economy, but scratch a little deeper and it’s still very much an authoritarian regime that’s willing to pull out all the stops to control the political narrative and has far more tools to do so than even the USSR had back in the day.

As for the USA and its new cult or personality approach to presidency. It’s just a little bit difficult to take them at face value either anymore.

The CCP should never be forgiven. If there is anything short of war the the rest of the world can do to release their grip on China then we must do it. Otherwise this will happen again and again.

Never forget they deliberately spread this, how else do you explain this:

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/chinese-embassy-accuses-australia-of-overreaction-after-coronavirus-travel-ban-extended

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/coronavirus-indonesia-insists-on-travel-ban-despite-chinas-protest

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/01/coronavirus-deaths-china-voices-anger-at-us-travel-ban

“Although travel restrictions may intuitively seem like the right thing to do, this is not something that WHO usually recommends,” said Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesperson. “This is because of the social disruption they cause and the intensive use of resources required,” he added

https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/31/as-far-right-calls-for-china-travel-ban-health-experts-warn-coronavirus-response-would-suffer/

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-02-06/china-lashes-out-at-countries-restricting-travel-over-virus

Beijing is growing increasingly angry at countries imposing harsh travel restrictions on visitors from China as the world tries to contain the spread of a deadly coronavirus.

Authorities have registered “strong objections” with countries who have cut flights to China during the outbreak, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Thursday. She said countries were ignoring recommendations from the World Health Organization and International Civil Aviation Organization, which have advised against canceling flight routes and limiting travel to affected nations

_Brian

_Brian wrote: »

It would take decades to get local manufacturing to a position that countries would be comfortable treating China harshly.
Raw materials and spare parts for near everything comes out of China. A country that pisses them off will find its manufacturing dead.

I expect it will be motions, strongly worded letters and “bringing it up at meetings.

No, raw material s come out of places like Australia, south America and even Ireland mines a huge volume of lead and zinc. Large even on a global scale. Biggest lead zinc mine in Europe is in navan.

We can bring back manufacturing very quickly with the political will.

Working with metals is hugely polluting (smelting). Nobody in the west wants to do it because it's easier to send it somewhere like China where they ignore environmental concerns.

Yurt2

Not exactly a sure-fire smoking gun, and I'm aware that this is idle internet speculation and circumstantial evidence, but Chinese netizens and online sleuths reckon they've found patient zero...

This wouldn't be a good look for the party if proven to be true.

TheValeyard

FVP3 wrote: »

You people are quite deranged. A non political organisation that is head quartered in Geneva is apparently controlled by China merely because it refuses to bow down to US/UK propaganda on the number cases in China. There's a reason why the US has set its propaganda dogs on the attack - once US numbers climbed above the Chinese numbers it was a huge embarrassment and so the numbers were disputed immediately, mostly based on an argument to incredulity or neo-mccarthyism.

So people are deranged about China, but Once again let's blame America.

US/UK propaganda? The WHO cant even say the word Taiwan without cutting off a press conference and pretending that Taiwan doesnt exist or got a good handle on the crises.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-52088167


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zmescience.com/science/taiwan-has-valuable-coronavirus-lessons-but-the-world-health-organization-continues-to-shun-it/amp/

And let's not forget the WHO is still dealing with the fallout from the ebola outbreak and corruption allegations


https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/11970382

Yurt2

The WHO is an intensely political organisation. If you had any idea of backroom political horsetrading that goes on to ensure their guy gets in the right places in these multilateral organisations.

While I do not for one second trust China on this, it is interesting the its the US and UK leading the charge on this line of attack. Through monumental mismanagement and denial of the issue to the very top of their governments, cases in their respective countries are spiralling out of control, and all we hear is but China to deflect attention from their own inadequacies

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

While I do not for one second trust China on this, it is interesting the its the US and UK leading the charge on this line of attack. Through monumental mismanagement and denial of the issue to the very top of their governments, cases in their respective countries are spiralling out of control, and all we hear is but China to deflect attention from their own inadequacies

China is i think lying anyway,

But likes of trump and boris johnson administrations should face nuremberg type trials for their carry-on in face of such scientific evidence

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

China is i think lying anyway,

But likes of trump and boris johnson administrations should face nuremberg type trials for their carry-on in face of such scientific evidence

Agree on both points - to me it is looking increasingly like this whole thing stated from an accidental exposure at the virology lab in Wuhan. I hope i'm wrong but...

Cuddlesworth

banie01 wrote: »

The mobile phone subscriber number drop in 1st QTR in China points to a fairly extreme event.

Be it people were rounded up and sent for re-education?
Or there was a drop in subscribers for some reason?

Off the top of my head.
A large working poor community, dropping paid subscriptions while out of work?
Click farms closing down.
I mean relative to their population, the drop was a tiny number.

I see a global pandemic has brought out the conspiracy crackpots.

A lab infection sounds like a great idea, meanwhile the virologists that have been warning governments for years that wet markets including large varieties of wildlife could cause this exact same scenario and have caused this(SARS, MERS). Yet the lab is the best option?

China lying about their numbers. Probably some fluffing there. But they are also a country where quarantine is guys welding apartment blocks shut and the streets were genuinely empty, so maybe not.

Donald/Boris looking for somebody to blame. Probably.

jmayo

I know we have a lot of Chinese "students" in this country, but looking at the level of English in some posts I would reckon some of the Chinese Communist Regime fanboys/girls are indeed Irish.

Is it because they are seen as the Anti US that means they are being supported?

One poster gave the list of countries that the US has been militarily involved in, but they failed to mention that China were very much involved in wars in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Korea and invaded Tibet and made part of their own state.

The Chinese state invaded Vietnam in 1979 after they deposed China's ally Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge genocidal regime in Cambodia in 1978.

China has been basically stealing other states territorial waters over last couple of decades.

So please lets not pretend that it is just the US that likes to stick their noses into places.

Wibbs

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

A lab infection sounds like a great idea, meanwhile the virologists that have been warning governments for years that wet markets including large varieties of wildlife could cause this exact same scenario and have caused this(SARS, MERS). Yet the lab is the best option?

Yeah I'm dubious of the lab infection start point myself. Could it happen? Sure, but I don't buy the lab techs being splashed with bat blood and pee and getting it that way. Labs have very strong procedures going on. That's far more likely to happen in an open air market with butchering going on. Never mind that it seems to be more pangolins involved as the initial animal vector to humans, not bats and IIRC the genetics of the virus suggest that.

Plus this is as some have described it a "war" of sorts, humanity against an invisible enemy. However and just like guns and bombs wars it's also most certainly a propaganda and information war between countries, with many actors, paid and unpaid on all sides.

Take the video above. I actually remember that guy from ages back. Him and a mate of his travelling around China making vids on the back of motorbikes. He seemed to love the place then, married a local IIRC, though there was definitely a touch of the suspicion about China from him, but latterly it seems to have really soured for him for different reasons. So I'm not sure how indepedent he is. There are also other European and American guys on youtube and social media being cheerleaders for China. I'd not trust their rosey pictures either. Now American can be hard to judge from outside, but triple that for China.

FVP3

TheValeyard wrote: »

Sure no one except its international mouthpiece (WHO) believes them

So I looked into the claim that WHO is the international mouthpiece of China. Thats an extraordinary claim that would need extraordinary evidence.

There is little evidence of that. Sure if you google it you will get references in the last few months. All are from far right wing neoconservative pro US online rags.

Fox News. National Review. AEI. The "Council of Foreign Relations", theHill, theFederalist etc, etc, etc

All of these are barely journalism, and most are just online publications from the military and neo conservative NGOs that dominate US politics. All were pro Iraq war. None contradicted the intelligence services in 2003, rather the reverse. They were paid up supporters of every lie, speaking power to truth.

They all progandise that China supported the election of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, but the evidence of that claim is non existent.

When I google W.H.O election 2017 I get sober accounts of the election. None mention China. There were multiple rounds of voting, and the voting was behind closed doors. From the NYT

The election was the first conducted by the W.H.O. under more open and democratic rules. After nearly two years of public campaigning, originally by six candidates, the voting took place in a closed-door session in which the health ministers of 186 countries cast their ballots in secret.

Dr. Tedros — a malaria expert who campaigned under his first name — ultimately beat Dr. David Nabarro of Britain after three voting rounds. The final tally was 133 votes to 50, with three abstaining or not voting. Dr. Sania Nishtar, a Pakistani cardiologist and expert in noncommunicable diseases, was eliminated after receiving 38 votes in the first round.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/health/tedros-world-health-organization-director-general.html

There is no mention of China in that article except to say the previous incumbent was chinese. And nobody knows how China voted, as it was behind closed doors. Probably they did vote for Tedros, as did 132 others. That's a long way away from being a "Chinese Stooge" There is no mention in 2017, or 2018, or 2019 that Dr. Tedros is chinese controlled stooge or imposed by China, anywhere. That starts in the last few months.

Wibbs

For me what has been shown with the WHO is that because they've actually feck all power they're very careful politically to the point of being a "stooge" for everyone when it suits or how the wind blows. They've pussyfooted at times with China, the UK and the US. Never mind their advice has been dubious more than once and they took their sweet time pulling their finger out. International travel for one.

Dravokivich

Wibbs wrote: »

For me what has been shown with the WHO is that because they've actually feck all power they're very careful politically to the point of being a "stooge" for everyone when it suits or how the wind blows. They've pussyfooted at times with China, the UK and the US. Never mind their advice has been dubious more than once and they took their sweet time pulling their finger out. International travel for one.

Sure they are under the U.N. Would you expect it to be an authority States respect? Especially when the U.N is more than happy not to follow through on their own stuff with the likes of those aforementioned States.

FVP3

The WHO was wrong on international travel, and Trump was right. But that's a world away from:

Sure no one except its international mouthpiece (WHO) believes them

And if you think that Chinese propaganda is impressive, look at all the people who literally believed that on this thread. None investigated the actual election but took for granted that China imposed this guy.

SuperRabbit

Can we stop confusing Chinese people with the Chinese government. Chinese people are wonderful and despite the controlled media (you can see from British Media "Ireland are being more strict because the virus is worse there" "Italy only had a high death rate because they have a higher life expectancy" that that isn't unique to China ), believe me, they know just as well as us about the vast majority of the things which their government could do better. I don't like it being called a Chinese lie or Chinese propaganda when lying and propaganda is a government thing. And yeah, the Chinese Government are particularly good at it but let's not associate that with China itself and its people.

bob mcbob

jmayo wrote: »

I know we have a lot of Chinese "students" in this country, but looking at the level of English in some posts I would reckon some of the Chinese Communist Regime fanboys/girls are indeed Irish.

Is it because they are seen as the Anti US that means they are being supported?

One poster gave the list of countries that the US has been militarily involved in, but they failed to mention that China were very much involved in wars in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Korea and invaded Tibet and made part of their own state.

The Chinese state invaded Vietnam in 1979 after they deposed China's ally Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge genocidal regime in Cambodia in 1978.

China has been basically stealing other states territorial waters over last couple of decades.

So please lets not pretend that it is just the US that likes to stick their noses into places.

Yes one in particular joined around 10 days ago has made over 300 posts in that time which can be summarised as China = good, America (& allies) = bad.

neris

10000 dead in Spain only 3000 odd dead in China something fishy about the chinese numbers

SuperRabbit

bob mcbob wrote: »

Yes one in particular joined around 10 days ago has made over 300 posts in that time which can be summarised as China = good, America (& allies) = bad.

Heh, I for one feel honored that Chinese government ambassadors would visit us, and we a small country of less than 5 million.

Hello from Ireland! 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100001 00100000 00001101 00001010!

bob mcbob

SuperRabbit wrote: »

Heh, I for one feel honored that Chinese government ambassadors would visit us, and we a small country of less than 5 million.

Hello from Ireland! 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100001 00100000 00001101 00001010!

To paraphrase Monty Python

Nobody escapes the Chinese Communist Party

SuperRabbit

FVP3 wrote: »

The WHO was wrong on international travel, and Trump was right. But that's a world away from:



And if you think that Chinese propaganda is impressive, look at all the people who literally believed that on this thread. None investigated the actual election but took for granted that China imposed this guy.

MERS was the only time they recommended suspending international travel, right? And that had a death rate of 30%. I guess we have learned the hard way to take the r0 as seriously as the death rate.

At the time I had a knew someone from S. Korea who was really angry the WHO hadn't recommended this, and that his government hadn't suspended travel from China or from Wuhan. I thought he was overreacting, I was looking at a death rate of 0.6%-3%.. I was so so so wrong.

Just on the "Trump was right" thing, by the time he "suspended" flights from China, most airlines were already limiting them, and he didn't block them, there were still flights arriving from China weeks after his announcement, It's weird, I don't know what happened there. Anyway a broken clock is right twice a day, we all definitely should have ended tourism at least. I know people who brought the thing back from their holidays, which they insisted on going on because they didn't want to "lose" their money.. the money is already spent! Stay home! Too late now anyway. If you can afford to go on holidays you can afford not to go on holidays.

thecretinhop

the chinese leaders are sociopathic ruthless murderers who should all be executed after this ends.

also there should be payments from china to all other countries.

Knowing china well i think once it was in their own country they did not give a damn about it spreading, would they be sociopathic enough to do that yes i think they would.

auspicious

NSAman wrote: »

True. America and its population are undereducated and totally ill-informed about this pandemic. The lack of testing (which is evident everywhere) is astounding. The lack of information given to COVID19 infected people is stupifying. The level of ignorance and lack of procedures for hospital staff is extremely worrying (Staff being told to go back to work when they feel 95% well.. i kid you not)

Despite TV and radio having averts the actual facts are rarely discussed anywhere except on drama filled crap TV programs which bore the Crap out of you.

I always knew this was coming. The fact that it is here and still some morons don’t understand or take the time to educate themselves is testament to a population that is not the brightest (in the main).

When you are disadvantaged you don't have opportunities or motivation. You become disconnected. It breeds health problems both physically and mentally. When reality is grim your outlook is grim. Your view of your
leaders, countrymen when no help is forthcoming is bleak. And calling them morons just compounds their issues. That's nonsense.

In China we have seen the streets been decontaminated with large spewing trucks or a lad on the back of a bike. Police cars patrolling the neighbourhoods telling everybody to remain indoors. Oh how we laughed.
Even in India we have seen the photos of corporal punishment dished out to civilians caught flouting the new measures. That's too extreme we admonished.
But what about these New Yorkers with no hope or education, no access to communications?They have been ignored or there has been minimal effort to warn them. They will pack up the hospitals and further increase the death rate stats. They will unfortunately maintain the spread and its threat.

2u2me

A new report(Projection) from Imperial College London seems to back up the low death rate that China are reporting.

. We estimate that, across all 11countries between 7 and 43 million individuals have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 up to 28th March,
representing between 1.88% and 11.43% of the population.

https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk:8443/handle/10044/1/77731

2u2me

neris wrote: »

10000 dead in Spain only 3000 odd dead in China something fishy about the chinese numbers

Feminists were holding rallies on the streets of Madrid while Wuhan was in lockdown.

Thousands march in Spain on women's day despite coronavirus fears

Xertz

SuperRabbit wrote: »

Can we stop confusing Chinese people with the Chinese government.

It's completely reasonable to talk about the Chinese people and the Chinese Government as two completely different things as the Chinese people have no control over "their" government. It's very much something that's imposed on them without any democratic oversight.

So, while you can certainly blame the US media and electorate on Trump - I know they've an electoral collage distortion, but even so they voted in a senate that refused to impeach him and as for the the UK electorate and tabloids - Boris and the Tories are fully democratically elected and representative of the opinion of the majority who voted.

However, you absolutely cannot accuse the Chinese population of electing their own government as it's effectively a dictatorship, albeit by committee.

So it's one country you can definitely excuse the public for the behaviour of their government.

Xertz

2u2me wrote: »

Feminists were holding rallies on the streets of Madrid while Wuhan was in lockdown.

Thousands march in Spain on women's day despite coronavirus fears

There was no indication that a lock-down in Europe was needed on 8th March. We were still only vaguely debating closing schools at that stage and still talking about Patrick's Day going ahead.

It's all very well to talk about these things in hindsight. At the time there was no notion that things would get this bad this quickly.