China’s state-run media Global Times published an opinion article expressing concern over the U.S. attempt to expel Russia from international communities. The following is a translation of the article:
After the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the United States and the West imposed multiple sanctions on Russia and attempted to isolate Russia internationally. The latest move is that the United States and other Western countries called on most of the G20 members to work together to remove Russia from the organization.
The United States is attempting to undermine international law and the multilateral order through the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This is a trend that deserves the international community’s high vigilance … In fact, this pan-politicized operation by the U.S. has neither a solid legal basis nor wide support from the international community.
First, from the perspective of international law, it is difficult to find a legal basis for expelling Russia. Membership in an international organization is not determined by one or two countries, but by the constitution of the international organization. If the articles of an association have relevant provisions, the procedures shall be performed in accordance with the provisions of the articles. In general, international organizations do not have the right to directly expel or suspend membership if the constitution does not provide for it.
As the main forum for international economic cooperation, the G20 needs to follow the principle of consensus. Trying to deprive a member of its membership is bound to undermine the unity of the G20 and impact global economic governance, which is not in the interest of any party.
Second, international mainstream voices do not actually support the expulsion of Russia. Although the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to suspend Russia’s membership in the Human Rights Council, after the vote, Serbian President Vucic said that Serbia voting in support of the resolution was out of fear of the threat of sanctions if Serbia voted no. This fully shows that under the coercion and inducement of the U.S. and the West, a large part of the true voice of the international community has been silenced in the hustle and bustle of the U.S. and the West. So to what extent can such voting results reflect the mainstream understanding of the international community? Moreover, many G20 member countries such as China and Indonesia have expressed their opposition to the remarks about boycotting Russia in the G20. The Brazilian foreign minister severely criticized the way Western countries handled the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and opposed the expulsion of Russia from the G20. Even in the World Tourism Organization, many member states disapprove of suspending Russia’s membership. Under the discourse hegemony and selective reporting of the United States and the West, the voice of expelling Russia seems to be very loud, but in fact most countries are the “silent majority.”
Third, international organizations do not want to expel Russia. In the context of the prolonged epidemic and intensified conflicts, what international organizations need more is solidarity and cooperation to overcome difficulties, rather than widening the gap and deepening the estrangement. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that few international organizations openly support the expulsion of Russia.
In a word, to a large extent, “expelling Russia” in the international system is actually just a false proposition that American and Western politicians have made. The reality is that economic globalization has made the international community highly interconnected. This move by the U.S. side will not only tear apart the international system, but will not help resolve the current Ukraine crisis; nor is it in line with the general trend of the era of globalization. In the end, the era when one country or several countries have the final say has passed. The U.S. and the West should carefully reflect on what rights they have and what qualifications they have to issue orders to other countries.
Source: Global Times, April 25, 2022
https://opinion.huanqiu.com/article/47k9g3kLjhr
Government: Beijing Plans to Keep the “Zero-COVID” Policy Until the 20th Party Congress
Two sources indicate that Beijing plans to continue its “Zero-COVID” policy and not switch to the coexistence approach at least until after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) holds its 20th National Congress later this year. The “Zero-COVID” policy has created mounting humanitarian crises in China, especially during the ongoing Shanghai lockdown.
Joerg Wuttke, President of the E.U. Chamber of Commerce in China, said during an interview with the Swiss, German-language daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), “(I)n closed meetings – especially in ministries that deal with the economy and businesses – I meet very well-informed and open-minded top politicians. They know what Zero Covid means for the economy. It’s just that they can’t use this knowledge to bring about policy change at the moment. Until the 20th Party Congress, which will take place later this year, they will stick to the Zero Covid policy. President Xi wants to be confirmed for a third term, so he cannot change his narrative this close to the finish line. The president has maneuvered himself into two dead ends at once: He can’t change his Covid policy, and he can’t change anything about his friendship with Vladimir Putin.”
A news commentator from Epoch Times stated that he had received the meeting minutes of an official COVID information meeting on April 25. The keynote speaker was Jiang Rongmeng, a member of the National Health Commission’s COVID Expert Group and Vice President of Beijing Ditan Hospital. Jiang is a real medical expert in the CCP inner cycle: he went to Wuhan during the lockdown, is an expert in the Beijing Emergency Management Bureau, and is one of the main authors of the “COVID Treatment Plan.”
Jiang listed five pre-conditions for China to change its Zero-COVID policy:
- Medicines need to be available, which won’t be ready within six months.
- 80 percent of the elderly are vaccinated, which is possible to achieve in six months.
- There are enough isolation beds, which is easy to do.
- There is enough ICU capacity [throughout China], which is unlikely to happen. China lags far behind the United States and Europe on this and it is impossible to catch up in a short term. It is easy to buy equipment but it takes 5 years to train an ICU doctor.
- Public opinion needs to be reset. Now people are scared of COVID and many will go to the hospital even if they have a low temperature when switching to the coexistence policy, which will deplete the hospital’s capacity.
These conditions indicates that Jiang does not think China is ready to change its COVID policy in the next six months due to its own situation.
Related postings on Chinascope:
- Government: Beijing Defends Its “Zero-COVID” Strategy
- Government: Beijing Criticized Shanghai Officials for Passively Resisting COVID Control
Sources:
1. NZZ, April 30, 2022
https://themarket.ch/interview/chinas-leadership-is-prisoner-of-its-own-narrative-ld.6545
2. Epoch Times, April 27, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/4/27/n13722036.htm
Why Has Beijing Chosen Lee Ka-chiu to Be the Next Chief Executive of Hong Kong?
Former Hong Kong Chief Secretary for Administration Lee Ka-chiu (John Lee, 李家超), a veteran police officer, became the only candidate running for the sixth term in the Chief Executive election. Continue reading
Shanghai’s Infectious Disease Expert Calls on Authorities to Stop “Zero-COVID” Policy
On April 27, Epoch Times reported that Miao Xiaohui, a leading infectious disease expert in Shanghai, issued a post on April 23 calling on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities to stop its “zero-COVID ” policy, so as to reduce the secondary disasters that the approach has caused.
Miao was the vice president of Changzheng Hospital, which is affiliated with the Second Military Medical University of China. Concurrently he was the director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University. He made it clear that the “zero-COVID ” approach was ineffective and lacked any scientific basis. He said that a number of neighborhoods in Shanghai had been locked down and controlled for nearly one month, that that period exceeds the three longest incubation periods for the Omicron virus and is “completely inconsistent with the basic laws of infectious disease epidemics.”
The “zero-COVID ” approach has triggered a large number of secondary disasters. One example is that many people’s deaths should not have occurred. “Let’s stop it!” He appealed.
As early as April 8, Miao even publicly pointed out that, under the strict lockdown, the “zero-COVID ” policy will lead to a run-on medical resources. He called for concern about the additional deaths and for settling the situation as soon as possible. He believed that, during the Shanghai lock-down period, because of the run-on medical resources, a number of chronic non-infectious diseases, infectious diseases, and acute diseases, plus a 66 percent increase in the suicide rate due to psychological stress, will result in a severe number of additional deaths that should not be ignored.
(Since the lockdown of Shanghai, many hospitals have been closed. This has led citizens to lose access to basic medical services and, as a result, many have lost their lives due to the lack of timely treatment. Some people spontaneously counted the list of dead persons in Shanghai who “died not from the COVID-19, but because of it.” By April 27, the number of deaths reached 176. For example, Yu Hongsan, a senior notary at the Shanghai Oriental Justice Office, suffered an asthma attack and passed away on March 19 because an ambulance could not get to him in time. By April 28, The total death toll from COVID-19 in Shanghai was 337 .)
The need for and the cost of the “zero-COVID ” approach and the lockdown of the city should be considered carefully, Miao stated. In order to reduce the crowding for the use medical resources, he suggested that asymptomatic infected people may be isolated at home; re-checked as to whether the universal nucleic acid testing is absolutely necessary; and hospitals should not be closed completely. It should be noted especially that nucleic acid testing can increase the problem of cross-infection.
On April 24, Ding Xian, former Party Secretary of the Jing’an Branch of the Shanghai Huashan Hospital, also pointed out the shortcomings of the “zero-COVID” strategy: “Repeated nucleic acid testing, overwhelming burdening of staff, and a most serious cross-infection pattern, where science has been thrown in the trash.”
Yin Youkuan, the former deputy director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital of Shanghai indicated in an April 22 post that the number of positive cases will increase by 3 to 4 percent for every full staff nucleic acid test done. He took a community in Shanghai as an example where originally there were no positive cases. However, after a few days of nucleic acid testing, 83 positive cases emerged. He pointed out,”That’s what the staff brought in.”
At present, Shanghai has implemented a so-called “Hard Quarantine” in a closed and controlled area. This means that the doors in the whole building are locked from the outside and residents can only move around inside their own apartments.
Source: Epoch Times, April 27, 2022. https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/4/27/n13721825.htm
Propaganda: The CCP Fakes a Calm Scene While Beijing Went Through Crazy Stocking up
Shanghai has showcased to China and the world how big the humanitarian disasters are that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can create and does not care about, when it is imposing its strict lockdown to fight the COVID-19 virus.
The city of Beijing recently reported increased COVID cases. The CCP is known for hiding its COVID numbers, so the actual infection count in Beijing is unknown. Residents in Beijing, learning from the Shanghai disaster, started a wave of buying out everything from the grocery stores in order to prepare for a possible lockdown which the authorities might announce anytime soon. They were thinking ahead so they would not be caught without food.
Similar to other stores, CCTV employees also emptied the grocery store inside China Central Television (CCTV).
On April 24, Liu Xin, a news anchor at the China Global Television Network (CGTN), the overseas propaganda arm of the CCTV, posted a message with her relatively true thoughts (without much of the CCP’s message) on Twitter: “Beijing’s Turn, but we are getting ready. I stocked up too, for the first time in two years. Let the tough times come.” She also posted pictures of empty shelves
However, buying out everything in a hurry does not reflect the intention of the CCP’s propaganda. The CCP wants to project a calm, stable scene. It does not want panic scenes and does not care about the reality of whether people have stocked up enough food and supplies.
So a day later, Liu deleted her earlier message and posted a new one on Twitter: “Overnight, the very same shop got filled up again with fresh products. It’s just a matter of what you want to buy, not what you can! It was completely unnecessary for me to overthink last night.” She also posted pictures of shelves fully loaded with vegetables.
Also on April 25, a former CCTV reporter Wang Zhi’an posted on Twitter, “The CCTV has its own grocery store. My former colleague told me that the CCTV’s employees emptied that store, with nothing left. After the crazy buying, these anchors sat down in front of the TV camera and told the audience, ‘Beijing residents, you can live a good life; there is no need to rush to stock up.’”
Source: Epoch Times, April 27, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/4/27/n13721547.htm
TGTM Helped Columbia University Reject Chinese Student Hostile to the United States
The Great Translation Movement (TGTM) (see Chinascope posting) is a volunteer-based translation efforts to translate Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) domestic propaganda and the brainwashed Chinese people’s extreme online messages, from Chinese to English, to present to the Western world the true ideology and sentiments in China.
Recently, a Chinese student who was admitted to the Columbia University, posted on WeChat in Chinese that he had received the offer and “will go buy guns to blow out Americans.” TGTM translated his posting into English and sent it to the Columbia University. The school discussed it with the student who admitted his posting. Then Columbia University cancelled his admission.
Many Chinese people posted comments to support Columbia University’s decision.
Source: Epoch Times, April 20, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/4/20/n13715768.htm
The Great Translation Movement and the Communist Party’s Concern
The Great Translation Movement (TGTM), which has the goal of informing the Western world about the true thoughts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese people it has brainwashed (by translating what the Chinese actually say), has created a real impact in Western society. As a result, the CCP media recently denounced it, indicating that it has reached a level at which the CCP can no longer ignore it.
TGTM started in March this year, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The CCP published strong domestic propaganda to support Russia and misled some of the Chinese people so that they posted messages online to support Russia and ridicule Ukraine (in one example, they even wanted to bring some of the beautiful Ukraine women to China to “save” them). A group of Chinese with consciences started to translate these extreme views into Ukrainian. Later the movement expanded into translating CCP propaganda and people’s postings on WeChat, Weibo, Tiktok, and extreme Chinese leftist websites, into English, Korean, and Japanese. The movement has an official Twitter account TGTM_Official, with more and more volunteers joining to supply translations. Western media and society in general have picked up this information in order to demonstrate the CCP’s true qualities and true self to the world so the world’s people can understand its true nature.
China.com.cn, China’s official site which is run by the Chinese government body’s China Internet Information Center (CIIC), posted an article on April 27, 2022, to comment on this movement. It called The Great Translation Movement an “Internet virus” and said it had been mutating and creating a relatively large negative impact on China’s overseas propaganda and international image.
To stop the spread of this “Internet anti-China virus,” that article claimed, China needed to take necessary counter measures. It indicated that, on its official side, China needs to strengthen its domestic Internet platform in order to control and regulate netizens’ behavior. From the civilian angle, China needs to utilize the postings by Chinese students studying overseas and the Chinese diaspora who have patriotic sentiment toward China, leading them to promote the “true” China and build a good international image for China.
Source: China.com, April 27, 2022
http://www.china.com.cn/opinion2020/2022-04/27/content_78189333.shtml
China Mandates Code of Conduct for TV Dramas Cast and Crew
China’s regulation of the entertainment industry is extending to the production crews of TV dramas and web dramas. The China Federation of Radio and Television Association (CFRTA), and China Netcasting Service Association (CNSA), two government-controlled organizations that oversee the countries radio, television, and webcasting industry, released a draft version of the “Production and Operation Guidelines for TV Series and Web Series Production Crews.” The document, published on April 25, requires the TV production units to establish a “professional ethics assessment system for actors and actresses.”
The crew has been told to follow the requirements of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) strictly, and ensure the “correct ideological orientation” of the theme of the dramas. The regulation covers the management of costumes, makeup, props, and scenes, to prevent the improper use of costumes, and errors in images, sounds, and contents.
The document requires that the production crew resist “unreasonably high remuneration,” and strictly regulate the compensation contracts of television dramas. Cast members must “practice core socialist values, promote the spirit of patriotism, and resist all acts that undermine national honor, religious beliefs and national unity.”
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), April 26, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202204260271.aspx