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China’s Reaction to Trump’s Election Win

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Xinhua Commentary Series: Spotlight on the U.S. Presidential Election

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Wu Guoguang: Xi Jinping’s Reversal of the Course, Will China’s Transition be Peaceful or Marked with Bloodshed?

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Cheng Xiaonong: U.S.-China Strategic Relations Have Crystallized

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China’s Manufacturing PMI Continued to Fall in April

Shanghai Securities News recently reported that, according to numbers that China’s National Bureau of Statistics just released, the Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) was 47.4 percent in April, a decrease of 2.1 percentage points from the previous month, and the overall prosperity level of the manufacturing industry continued to decline. The PMI of large enterprises was 48.1 percent, a decrease of 3.2 percentage points from March; and the PMIs of medium and small enterprises were 47.5 percent and 45.6 percent. Both decreased by 1.0 percentage points from March. Sub-indices further showed that manufacturing activity slowed significantly, market demand has fallen sharply, inventories of major raw materials continued to decrease, employment of manufacturing enterprises has declined, and the delivery time of raw material suppliers has slowed down significantly.

In the meantime, Caixin also released its Chinese Manufacturing PMI numbers for April. Caixin PMI is a well-respected economic indicator monitored globally by financial institutions. Caixin’s China Manufacturing PMI recorded 46 for April, 2.1 points lower than March, and was in contractionary territory for the second consecutive month, the lowest value since March 2020. This trend is consistent with the National Bureau of Statistics. The various sub-indices of the Caixin PMI showed that both manufacturing supply and demand continued to contract in April. Both the production and the new orders recorded the lowest values since March 2020. Market orders and product circulation were disrupted. Some surveyed companies reported that customers canceled orders due to difficulties in delivery and logistics. New export sub-index in April fell to its lowest level since June 2020. Employment has been in contractionary territory for eight of the past nine months. Inflationary pressures remain high.

PMI (the Purchasing Managers Index) is an indicator of financial activity reflecting purchasing managers’ acquisitions of goods and services. A PMI number below 50 typically reflects a decline.

Source: Shanghai Securities News, April 30, 2022
https://news.cnstock.com/news,bwkx-202204-4873814.htm
https://news.cnstock.com/news,bwkx-202204-4873819.htm

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

City of Yiwu Launched a Level II Emergency Response to Covid-19

Well-known Chinese news site Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) recently reported that The Covid Prevention and Control Administration of Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province issued a notice declaring a Level II Emergency Response to the pandemic. Level II requires the close-down of all indoor businesses, such as movie theaters and bars. The city applied strict control at key highway entrances and exits. All residential communities in the city will be under close-down management, and 24-hour Covid test certificates are required for entry and exit. All of the city’s middle schools, primary schools and kindergartens are temporarily closed. Public areas, government buildings and company buildings also require 24-hour Covid test certificates. Known as the World’s Supermarket, Yiwu is the world’s largest wholesale market for small commodities. At present, the market has an operating area of more than 6.4 million square meters, with 75,000 booths, offering over 2.1 million kinds of small commodities. Products are sold to more than 210 countries and regions around the globe. In 2021, the volume of express delivery services in the City of Yiwu reached a total of 9.29 billion pieces. The government expected a certain level of impact on the performance of transportation and logistics.

Source: Sina, April 27, 2022
https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2022-04-27/doc-imcwiwst4298656.shtml

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources Geo-Strategic Trend Social Stability

Government: Shanghai Volunteers Found Someone Took Their Identifies and their Compensation

Recently, when people in Shanghai tried to register themselves as volunteers, they found their names had already been registered. Someone had taken their identities, completed the registration process, and collected the compensation meant for volunteers.

For example, a woman found from the official volunteer website that she did 26 hours of volunteer work in 2017, but she was pregnant at that time and never did that work. An elementary student found she “was registered” in November 2019 when she was seven; a son found that his aging father did 16 hours of volunteer work in 2018 though his father had been sick and had mobility problems.

There were also many fake volunteer identities and fake incidents of participation in work during the COVID lockdown. A man reported to the authorities that he found out that he “was registered” as a volunteer in two groups. One was with the Huangpu District Yuyuan Street Neighborhood Volunteer Service Center, which pays each volunteer at least 50 Yuan (US $7.5) for each event. He had never received any money. Another man said volunteers in his neighborhood receive 120 Yuan each day and some other regions are even paid 400 Yuan.

On March 3, Xinhua reported that 5.2 million people in Shanghai, or over 21 percent of the permanent population there, had registered volunteer accounts.

Editor’s note: Obviously in Shanghai, someone has stolen people’s identities to register volunteer accounts and then collected money based on their fake registration. Since this involves repeated payment distributions from the government, it is unlikely that the authorities knew nothing about it.

Sources:
1. Epoch Times, April 27, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/4/27/n13721701.htm
2. Xinhua, March 3, 2022
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-03/03/c_139781116.htm

Hot Topics | | |   Government/Politics Social Stability

Global Times: “Expel Russia” Is a False Proposition

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

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend US-China Relations

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:

  1. Medicines need to be available, which won’t be ready within six months.
  2. 80 percent of the elderly are vaccinated, which is possible to achieve in six months.
  3. There are enough isolation beds, which is easy to do.
  4. 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.
  5. 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:

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

Hot Topics | | |   Government/Politics Social Stability

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

Hot Topics | | |   Social Stability

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

Hot Topics | | |   Government/Politics Social Stability