Chinascope – Page 337

Resuming Business: China Closed Several Businesses It Just Resumed

China has been portraying itself as having come out of the Coronavirus outbreak with a zero or very low infection count. Many times, Xi Jinping has stressed the importance of resuming production. However, recently some businesses that have resumed were asked to stop again, both at the national level and in the provinces or cities.

#1. On March 27, the China Film Administration issued a Notice that all theaters should remain closed and those that reopened should be closed immediately.

#2. On March 29, Shanghai announced it would close all indoor tourist attractions, including the three observatory towers (Oriental Pearl Tower, the 88th Floor of Jin Mao Tower, and Top of Shanghai Observatory at Shanghai Center) which had reopened on March 12, as well as the Shanghai Aquarium and Madame Tussauds Shanghai.

#3. On March 25, Sichuan Province stopped the order to close bars, discos, movie theaters, and video game rooms; thus they could operate again. However, on March 28, KTV (for karaoke) and Internet cafes at Chengdu City, Sichuan Province received Notice to stop business again. Some customers at KTV were told to leave in the middle of singing.

#4. March 29, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province issued an emergency notice that all facilities holding cultural activities, including movie theaters, performance theaters, singing and dancing facilities, and Internet cafes will not resume operation; any facility that has reopened should close immediately. Travel agencies should not arrange tourist activities across provinces.

Beijing News: China and EU Decided to Set-up Temporary Appeal Arbitration Arrangement

Beijing News recently reported that, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, China and the European Union, along with more than ten other WTO (World Trade Organization) member countries decided to establish a temporary appeal and arbitration arrangement while the official WTO appeal mechanism cannot function. The new arrangement will perform the WTO article 25 process to settle appeal and arbitration cases among participating countries. The dispute settlement mechanism is one of the core functions of the WTO. The official unit stopped functioning after December 11, 2019, due to certain member country blocking the judge selection process. China and other WTO member countries are working hard to notify the WTO of this new arrangement and welcome more countries to join. The participating countries in the temporary arrangement issued a Minister-level joint announcement on March 27, 2020.

Source: Beijing News, March 27, 2020
http://www.bjnews.com.cn/finance/2020/03/27/709985.html

Briefings | | April 1, 2020 | Geo-Strategic Trend

Propaganda and Lies: CCP Accused the U.S. and Italy of Being the Origins of the Virus

To defuse its accountability of hiding information and its inaction which caused the worldwide outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tried to accuse other countries of creating the virus. The following are two cases:

#1: Zhao Lijian, Spokesman & Deputy Director General of the Information Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after accusing the United States of sending soldiers to bring the epidemic to Wuhan, retweeted a tweet by an American named Beatrice (an anonymous name), as evidence that the U.S. had the virus earlier:

From Twitter: Rt: I really think COVID-19 has been here in America for awhile. Do you guys remember how sick everyone was during the holidays/early January? And how everyone was saying they had the “flu” and the flu shot “didn’t work”?

The Daily Beast interviewed Beatrice and reported that she is not a doctor, nurse, or epidemiologist. She was just a normal person wondering aloud on Twitter what was going on with this disease.

#2: Global Times, a media under the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, referenced an NPR report quoting Dr. Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan. The doctor said general practitioners in the country “remember having seen a very strange pneumonia, very severe, particularly in old people in December and even November.” Global Times created an article stating that Italy had the virus back in November 2019. It also tweeted:

#Italy may have had an unexplained strain of pneumonia as early as November and December 2019 with highly suspected symptoms of #COVID19, reports said.

However, on March 24, il Foglio, an Italian media published a special interview with Dr. Remuzzi. Dr. Remuzzi said that Chinese media misquoted his words. He stated three times in the interview, “No doubt this virus is from China.” Guilia Pompili, the reporter who interviewed Dr. Remuzzi mentioned that Chinese news reporters had inquired of Dr. Remuzzi many times recently and each time Dr. Remuzzi clarified his position that the virus was from China. However, he had not yet seen any of the reporters reporting his clarification, which he felt quite bizzare.

Justice: International Experts Suggested Six Legal Grounds to Sue CCP

More and more voices have expressed an interest in holding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) accountable for the worldwide outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus. Epoch Times summarized six legal grounds that international legal experts have suggested for nations or individuals to use to file lawsuits against the CCP.

1. Comparing it to a Terrorist Organization

Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner who has long been suing terrorist organizations and countries supporting terrorism, suggested that people could raise the point that the CCP’s action was like supporting terrorist actions.

2. Suing for Personal Injury, Death, and Other Causes of Action

Berman Law Group in Florida filed a lawsuit on March 19, accusing the CCP of failing to report the disease and also failing to take containment measures promptly.

3. International Trade Laws

Juliya Arbisman from Diamond McCarthy LLP, a law firm in New York, suggested international trade laws. For example, people can sue the CCP for hosting the illegal wild animal market that created the opportunity to spread the virus from animals to humans, based on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES ).

4. United Nations (UN) Charter

Ivana Stradner, an international law and national security expert at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), pointed out that the CCP violated the International Health Regulations (IHR) that requires its member countries to notify the World Health Organization (WHO) immediately about an emergency public health event that might cause international attention. She also said the CCP’s action violated Article Seven of the UN Charter, which authorizes the UN Security Council to take action to maintain or restore international peace and safety.

5. Biological Weapons Convention

David Matas, a Canadian human rights attorney said that Article One of the treaty is that any signing country, under no circumstance, can obtain or possess a biological weapon.

6. International Obligations and Customary International Law

Israel lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner thinks that the CCP’s accusation that U.S. soldiers brought the virus to Wuhan severely violated international obligations and customary international law. People can file lawsuit at the International Court of Justice.

Chinese Scholar: Recession Is Inevitable

Xu Xiaonian, a professor of economics and finance at the China Europe International Business School, said that as long as the pandemic in Europe and America is not over, Chinese export companies will have no orders, and a recession is inevitable. Xu made the remarks at the CEIBS Alumni Association on the evening of March 26 when discussing the outlook for the recent pandemic and the Chinese economy.

Xu Xiaonian said in his speech that the current rate of resumption of work is actually meaningless. “Where are the orders?” He asked.

Xu believes that many of the online discussions about an international pandemic are “foolish.” As long as the pandemic in Europe and America is not over, China has no orders; workers have no wages and there is no consumption. “We are not able to finish the rest of the course by ourselves. We have to accompany the whole world to finish the entire journey. Only when the world economy returns to normal can China be normal. ”

“We can’t close the door and play by ourselves. We are not only short of food and oil, but we are also short of markets; we are short of orders. Our per capita GDP is one-fifth of that of the United States and one-fourth that of Europe. The domestic purchasing power cannot support our enormous manufacturing capacity.”

He also said, “We still lack raw materials, especially the technology-intensive basic raw materials, which must be imported from South Korea, Japan and Germany. We lack technology, and technology cannot be developed rapidly when we close the door.”

Source: Sina, March 30, 2020

https://cj.sina.com.cn/articles/view/2662090253/9eac460d01900lzr0?cre=tianyi&mod=pcpager_fintoutiao&loc=18&r=9&rfunc=100&tj=none&tr=9

Briefings | | March 31, 2020 | Economy/Resources

“World Leader”: EU Is Concerned with China’s “Mask Diplomacy”

The South China Morning Post reported that, since Europe suffered the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been conducting “Mask Diplomacy.” That is, through supplying the European Union (EU) countries with face masks and other medical equipment and materials, it is trying to boost its global leadership position and to control the discourse power. Beijing has blocked the shipping of medical supplies to other countries so that it can totally control which country it will help.

Italy, Spain, France, Austria, and many other EU countries, with Hungary being the latest, received aid or permission from China to import medical supplies from China. Some big Chinese corporate names – including billionaire Jack Ma and tech giant Huawei Technologies – have also sent medical equipment to the EU.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the EU, warned that Beijing “struggles for influence” in a “global battle of narratives.”

“There is a global battle of narratives going on in which timing is a crucial factor. China is aggressively pushing the message that, unlike the US, it is a responsible and reliable partner.

“In the battle of narratives we have also seen attempts to discredit the EU as such and some instances where Europeans have been stigmatized as if all were carriers of the virus.

“The point for Europe is this: we can be sure that perceptions will change again as the outbreak and our response to it evolves. But we must be aware that there is a geopolitical component, including a struggle for influence through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity.’”

Two recent developments have driven EU officials closer to the rhetoric of regarding China as a “systemic rival,” a phrase first used under the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen’s predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker.

First, there is the sense that China’s leadership prefers to deal directly with European countries, rather than through the EU. Von der Leyen was the only major European leader who did not receive a phone call from Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Second, the EU was startled by the reaction of Serbia, which was on course to begin accession talks at some stage to join the EU. When the EU hastily enacted an export ban on medical equipment, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic lambasted EU solidarity as a “fantasy,” turning instead to Xi, whom he called a friend and a brother.

LTN: The U.S. Aims to Cut Huawei’s Global Supply Chain

Major Taiwanese news network Liberty Times Network (LTN) recently reported that officials in the U.S. Trump administration have agreed to take new steps to reduce the global chip supply to Huawei significantly. The plan directly points to Huawei’s largest chip supplier TSMC. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the world’s largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry, headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan. According to the newly proposed rules, the United States will have to certify any foreign companies that use U.S. chip-making technology or equipment before they can sell chips to Huawei. According to anonymous sources, the new effort was designed to stop TSMC from manufacturing chips for Huawei. It is still unclear whether President Trump gave the OK to this plan or not. He may have some hesitation because the implementation of this plan may not only hurt TSMC, but may also impact U.S. companies. Huawei refused to comment on the news and TSMC said it cannot comment on hypothetical questions and won’t discuss matters regarding any specific customer.

Source: LTN, March 27, 2020
https://ec.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/3114302

Briefings | | March 31, 2020 | Information/Technology US-China Relations

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

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Xinhua Commentaries: “Exposing the Three Major Political Deficits of the U.S.”

Beijing News: China and EU Decided to Set-up Temporary Appeal Arbitration Arrangement

Chinese Scholar: Recession Is Inevitable

LTN: The U.S. Aims to Cut Huawei’s Global Supply Chain

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