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

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Xinhua: U.S. Middle East Proposal Received Mixed Reactions

Xinhua reported, one day after U.S. President Trump announced the new Middle East peace agreement, that the key players had mixed responses. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stood behind the U.S. and supported the proposal. The Palestinians clearly refused the proposal in full, since they were not at all involved in drafting the deal. The UN Secretary General supported the “Two Nations” strategy since it had been determined in a number of UN resolutions. The Arab League said the U.S. plan will result in the loss of many rights on the Palestinian side and called for compliance to international laws and standards. Egypt urged a dialogue between Palestinians and the Israelis to offer their thoughts on the Trump proposal. Turkey, however, described the U.S. proposal as already dead. Iran asked all Islamic countries to stand up against the U.S. “shameful agreement.” Jordan in the meantime supported all peaceful efforts and suggested a swift start of proper negotiations. The European Union needed more time to look carefully at the new proposal but was willing to help in the negotiation. The French government will also carefully study the agreement and stick to a “Two Nations” solution. The Germans said only an agreement accepted by both sides can lead to long-lasting peace. The British government welcomed the U.S. proposal, but emphasized the importance of having the buy-in of both the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Source: Xinhua, January 29, 2020
http://www.xinhuanet.com/2020-01/29/c_1125511294.htm

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Global Times: U.S. Department of the Interior Grounded Its Drone Fleet

Global Times recently reported that the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) just announced that its drone fleet is formally grounded. This is due to the fact that many of these drones use China made parts that potentially can be used for spying. However, exceptions can be granted if there is a natural disaster or another similar emergency. This is in fact an extension of an order from last year, which paused the use of the DOI drone fleet. Many analysts pointed out that the biggest party impacted will be the Chinese drone manufacturer DJI, which is a big supplier to the DOI fleet. DJI later expressed deep regrets over this decision. It suggested that the decision was politically motivated so as to reduce DJI’s market share in order to support U.S. manufacturers. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the U.S. government to give up such an outdated cold war mentality. The DOI fleet has around 800 drones that were either made in China or made with Chinese parts.

Source: Global Times, January 31, 2020
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/9CaKrnKp7KO

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

Lianhe Zaobao: High Profile International Companies Suspended Chinese Operations

Singapore’s primary Chinese language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao recently reported that, with the spread of the coronavirus across China, several high profile international companies have suspended their Chinese operations. Google closed all of its outlets in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. IKEA closed all its 30 stores in Mainland China. IKEA earlier only planned to close half of its stores. McDonald’s closed all its 300 branches in Hubei Province. Multiple airlines decided to reduce or close their flights to and from China. Air Canada cancelled a full month of all flights to Beijing and Shanghai; Lufthansa, Swissair, and Austrian Airlines cancelled two weeks; Air France reduced flights for a week; British Airlines cancelled all flights to all Chinese cities. American Airlines and Delta both reduced flights. Lion Air Indonesia cancelled all of its flights to China. Indian’s IndiGo Air stopped flights to Chengdu, China, and Hong Kong. China has so far closed more than ten cities. Local spending saw a significant reduction in China. This might also be a reason to suspend retail activities.

Source: Lianhe Zaobao, January 31, 2020
https://beltandroad.zaobao.com/beltandroad/news/story20200131-1025165

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend Social Stability

Patients of Coronavirus Ended Their Lives to Avoid Infecting Family Members

As the Wuhan hospitals are packed and short of medical supplies, many patients of coronavirus who weren’t able get a hospital bed had to go back home for self-quarantine. Out of the fear that they would pass the virus on to their beloved ones at home, some of them chose to end their lives.

An eyewitness saw a patient crying on a bridge in great grief and desperation. The patient left home for fear of infecting his wife and child. The hospital had no room for him, so he rented a room where he could stay. He had to walk a long distance between his rental place and hospital when seeking treatment as the public transportation has stopped. He had no energy to walk anymore and had no food. He jumped off the bridge. Police came and told the eyewitness not to mention it on the Internet.

Another person posted on WeChat that her neighbor, an older gentleman, was diagnosed as a suspect of the coronavirus, without confirmation. He hanged himself so as not to trouble others.

Another person revealed on WeChat that an older woman in his classmate’s community had a fever for a few days. The hospital couldn’t confirm her case and just asked her to go home for self-quarantine. Worrying she might infect her family, she jumped off of the building.

Source: Secret China, February 3, 2020
https://www.secretchina.com/news/gb/2020/02/03/921721.html

Briefings | | |   Social Stability

China’s Ambassadors Failed to Raise Money from German Businesses for a Pro-China Portal

German national television recently reported that two of China’s Ambassadors to Germany asked German businesses for money to finance a portal supporting Beijing.

The idea of the portal, named “China reporter,” was from Wolfgang Hirn, editor of Manager magazine and Georg Blume, a free-lance writer for Times and Der Spiegel. Both are viewed as “experts on China” in the German media circle.

Shi Mingde, the previous Chinese Ambassador to Germany, had been trying to raise money for this project. On February 28, 2019, his last day as Ambassador, he even wrote fund-raising letters to large foundations and companies listed on Dax.

His successor Wu Ken sent his letter on December 4, 2019, a few days after the media exposed the Communist regime’s systematic arrests of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. “Since the German media did one-sided reporting (criticizing the CCP), it has become a more urgent need to spread a full and better image of China.”

According to the German media’s investigation, none of the foundations or companies that received the Ambassador’s letters provided funds. However, it is quite shocking that the CCP even asked German businesses for money for it to influence public opinion in Germany.

Source: Epoch Times, January 21, 2020
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/20/1/20/n11808274.htm

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources Geo-Strategic Trend Government/Politics

Virus Origin: Genome Analysis of the New Wuhan Coronavirus Found Viral Sequences Suspicious of Laboratory Engineering

Dr. Lyons-Weiler, the founder and CEO of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (IPAK), published an article stating that medical research found evidence that might suggest the novel coronavirus in China could come out from a laboratory-induced event. He listed possibilities of the origin as either a vaccine or a biomedical weapon.

Dr. Lyons-Weiler has written many articles and three books, many of them are on medical related topics.

“There is, however, clear evidence that the novel sequence, which I will refer to henceforth as INS1378, is from a laboratory-induced recombination event. Specifically,

(1) The sequence similarity to other coronavirus sequences is lower to its most similar sequences in any coronavirus than the rest of the genome (IPAK finding)

(2) The high sequence similarity of INS1378 to a SARS spike protein (2; IPAK Confirmed).

(3) We also found significant sequence similarity of INS1378 to a pShuttle-SN vector that was in use in the 1980’s in China to create a more immunogenic coronavirus (IPAK finding, details below, Option 4).”

He gave four options on the origins of virus:

Option 1. Natural coronavirus related to bat coronaviruses, Not a Recombined Virus. He concluded that this option is a “falsified hypothesis.”

Option 2. A recombined virus that naturally picked up a SARS-like spike protein in its N-terminus of the viral genome. He concluded this option as “speculative hypothesis and unlikely.”

Option 3. A recombined virus made in a laboratory for the purpose of creating a bioweapon.

“Both China and the US hinted at the other side’s potential liability in playing a role in bringing about a novel coronavirus in the lab specifically for the purpose of being used as a bioweapon. To add to the intrigue, a Chinese Scientist had her security access revoked from a BSL-4 laboratory in Manitoba, Canada for violating protocols, allegedly sending samples of deadly viruses to mainland China. On January 26, The Washington Times published an article citing an Israeli defense expert who claimed that China has likely proceeded with a bioweapons program.”

He called it a “rumor” but didn’t reject it from the angle of possibility.

Option 4. A recombined virus made in a laboratory for the purpose of creating a vaccine.

“IPAK researchers found a sequence similarity between a pShuttle-SN recombination vector sequence and INS1378. It turns out that the sequence from pShuttle is most closely related to the Spike protein from SARS coronavirus. This particular technology was used in 2008 to attempt to develop a more immunogenic vaccine against coronavirus.”

Studies reported “serious immunopathology in animals – rats, ferrets, and monkeys – in which animals vaccinated against coronaviruses tended to have extremely high rates of respiratory failure upon subsequent exposure in the study when challenged with the wild-type coronavirus.”

He thinks Option 4 is “most likely.” The Chinese government might have conducted human trials with this vaccine, or this vaccine might have escaped from a lab. “The available evidence most strongly supports that the 2019-NCoV virus is a vaccine strain of coronavirus either accidentally released from a laboratory accident, perhaps a laboratory researcher becoming infected with the virus while conducting animal experiments, or the Chinese were performing clinical studies of a Coronavirus vaccine in humans.”

Sources:
1. Principia Scientific International, January 31, 2020

On the Origins of the 2019-nCoV Virus, Wuhan, China


2. Washington Times, January 26, 2020
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-link-china-biowarfare-program-possible/
3. James Lyons-Weiler website

James Lyons-Weiler, PhD

Hot Topics | | |   Defense/Military Social Stability

Why WHO Praised Beijing’s Response to the Coronavirus

On January 28, when the situation of the Wuhan coronavirus continued to worsen, the World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping and other Chinese Communist Party leaders. Tedros gave high praise to the commitment of the Chinese government to combat the transmission of the virus very highly.

As multiple governments, including the U.S., France, Japan, South Korea, and Russia, have implemented or planned to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan, WHO advised against it, expressing full confidence in the Chinese government’s capabilities.

Earlier on January 23, WHO decided not to declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC. On January 28, WHO admitted an error in its risk assessment. The Geneva-based UN agency said in a situation report that the risk was “very high in China, high at the regional level and high at the global level,” and that it had stated things “incorrectly” in its previous reports on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday that the global risk was “moderate.”

Records of donations of WHO member states (to Who) show China’s payments rose from sixth place in 2016-2017 with a share of 5.14 percent, to the third place in 2018-2019 with a share of 7.92 percent, second only to the 22 percent from the U.S. and 9.68 percent from Japan.

Lin Shih-chia, Chief Executive Officer of the non-government organization Foundation of Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan (FMPAT), told Radio Free Asia that it was not surprising that the WHO gave priority to politics over professional judgment. Lin, who has been advocating Taiwan’s participation in WHO for 25 years, recalls that, although the mission of the WHO should prioritize the health of all human beings, Taiwan’s experience over the past few years has shown that WHO placed politics high on its agenda. From 2009 to 2016, Taiwanese delegates were able to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer. However, after Tsai Ing-wen, a leader unfavorable to Beijing, was elected, Taiwan was no longer qualified as an observer.

According to Chen Chien-jen, Taiwan’s vice president and epidemiologist, during the SARS epidemic in 2003, Taiwan was blocked from immediate notification of the situation because Taiwan was not a WHO member state. 37 Taiwanese died from SARS.

Jessica Drun, a researcher at the Project 2049 Institute, told RFA that, “China’s influence in the United Nations and international organizations is ubiquitous. … When political considerations are given priority (over public health considerations), health care across the region and the world is at risk.”

Source: Radio Free Asia, January 28, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/huanjing/jt-01282020122829.html

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

China Revised Down Its 2018 GDP Numbers to Show Growth in 2019

Recently Beijing “uniformly” arranged its work to review and revise its 2018 economic data fully, so that the GDP number in 2019 could still show growth.

On January 22, the Tianjin Statistics Department published Tianjin’s GDP in 2019 as 1.41 trillion yuan (US $200 billion). It also had a small footnote: “According to the National Statistics Bureau’s uniform arrangement, Tianjin’s GDP in 2018 is revised to 1.34 trillion yuan.” That was a dramatic cut of 29 percent from the previously claimed number of 1.88 trillion yuan. This revision gave Tianjin 5.5 percent GDP growth in 2019. (Editor’s note: However, the sharp drop in the 2018 number would mean Tianjin’s GDP growth from 2017 would be quite negative, unless the authorities revised down the 2017 number, and then as a chain reaction, revised down the 2016 number. … Anyhow, this showed that China’s GDP number and its impressive high growth could just be a mirage that the communist regime created.)

The Jilin Provincial Statistics Department reported a GDP of 1.17 trillion yuan in 2019. It cut its 2018 GDP number down by 25 percent to 1.13 trillion yuan, so that it could show a 4.2 percent increase in 2019.

Shandong Province revised down its 2018 number by 13 percent. The Liaoning Province reduction was 7 percent. Heilongjiang Province was down 21.5 percent.

Source: Epoch Times, January 23, 2020
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/20/1/23/n11815506.htm

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources Government/Politics