United Front groups in Canada helped Beijing stockpile coronavirus safety supplies

Ellanjay

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Apr 11, 2020
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https://youtu.be/0LPCxywiyOM

Business Strategist: The Pandemic Helps Us Understand the Real CCP

June 10, 2020 | By Wang Ying, (Minghui.org)

As western governments take actions to hold the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) accountable for its fault that led to the coronavirus pandemic, entrepreneurs and business leaders have also come to recognize what could be learned from the catastrophe.

“It is well understood that China poses the single greatest geopolitical threat to our national security and freedom for the next century,” wrote Jay Lucas, founder and chairman of corporate consulting firm The Lucas Group, in his article published in The New Hampshire Union Leader on May 31 and titled “COVID-19 has unmasked the Chinese regime.”

“The corruption and deceit of the ruling communist regime has been exposed for what it is — an evil empire bent on world domination that lies to its own people and the world. The mask has been ripped off,” he explained.

Such views are also shared by think tank leaders. “As the U.S. protested and bickered, China attempted to strangle what was left of Hong Kong’s enfeebled democracy. China’s theory seemed to be that if it’s going to be blamed for the spreading virus due to its deceit anyway, it might as well not let such a pandemic go to waste,” wrote Victor Davis Hanson, historian and senior fellow at Hoover Institution, in his article “China Isn’t Letting a Pandemic Go to Waste,” published in National Review on June 4.

Economic and Moral Threat

Lucas said the pandemic highlighted the CCP’s massive cover-up. For example, the human-to-human transmission already occurred as early as on December 6, 2019, but the CCP did not acknowledge it until more than six weeks later, on January 20, 2020. Lucas pointed out that the CCP’s cover-up handicapped “the world in responding to the virus and leading to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.”

Lucas warned that, “We live in a dangerous world, and the Chinese Communist regime is truly a force for evil, with a set of values that are antithetical to those that we hold sacred. We live in a free society and value human life and dignity.”

Lucas next brought up the CCP’s infringement on basic human rights and personal freedom and its monitoring of “all communication, restricting access as it sees fit and punishing those who dissent.” He mentioned the CCP’s “social credit score” system to “track the extent to which citizens engage in behaviors that obey the totalitarian government and doling out rewards and punishments in accordance with their obedience.”

Lucas also touched upon the CCP’s persecution of its religious minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners. He expressed his shock at the CCP’s state-sanctioned crime of organ harvesting, “They have created a whole industry devoted to the extraction of organs, such as livers and kidneys, from living individuals in these concentration camps and then use these organs for resale and transplant. Meanwhile, leaving the donor victims to die. These are practices that shock the human conscience.”

“The world is now becoming awakened to the character and intent of the Chinese regime. The utter lack of honesty and transparency and the regime’s self-interested actions during COVID-19 have caused us to focus on the greater threats and dangers posed by China writ large, leading to one conclusion: China, ruled by a corrupt totalitarian regime bent on world domination, poses a mortal threat to our national security and freedom,” Lucas wrote, calling on the US to “take all necessary actions” to address this for the economic and moral stability of future generations.

A Global Villain

There are no signs that damages caused by the CCP would stop. “The Chinese strategy in reaction to disclosures that it hid vital data about the virus and exposed the world to contagion while it quarantined its own cities has devolved from ‘So what?’ to the current “What exactly are you going to do about it?” wrote Hanson in the aforementioned National Review article.

“Beijing warned European nations that if their independent media continued to condemn China, there could be commercial retaliation. A few European journalists still exposed Chinese deceit, even as shaken EU leaders backtracked and tried to contextualize Chinese misbehavior,” he continued, “For years, China has bullied and waged a virtual commercial war against Asian democracies such as Japan, South Korea, India, and Australia. It has subverted almost all international trading norms.”

Hansen pointed out that the CCP “conned gullible Western officials that eventually it would become a useful member of the family of nations” when in fact it was growing its clout at the expense of other nations. For instance, with cash from trade surpluses, the CCP “compromised strategically important nations by investing in their infrastructure through its neocolonial and imperialist multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative.”

“China may have been forced by the global epidemic to give up its nice-guy façade. But it has insidiously pivoted from global friend to its new role as an overt global villain,” Hanson concluded in the article, “While America tears itself apart with endless internal quarreling and media psychodramas, while Europe appeases its enemies, and while the rest of Asia stays mute, waiting to see who wins, China is now on the move — without apologies.”

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2020/6/10/185454.html
 

Ellanjay

Council Member
Apr 11, 2020
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https://youtu.be/T2XKIQkF1rc

Chinese Communist Party’s Decades-Long Propaganda Breeds Next-Generation “Wolf Warriors”

June 13, 2020 | By a Minghui correspondent

Violent aggression and deception are two distinctive traits of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in both its rule of the Chinese people and its maneuvering on the international stage to gain the upper hand over its opponents. It has shown such traits more explicitly during the current pandemic.

According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, nearly half of the Twitter accounts spreading messages on the social media platform about the coronavirus pandemic are likely bots.

“We culled through more than 200 million tweets discussing the virus since January and found that about 45% were sent by accounts that behave more like computerized robots than humans,” researchers stated.

Even though they could not say conclusively which individuals or groups are behind the bot accounts, the tweets appeared to be aimed at sowing division in America. “…It looks like it’s a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks,” said Professor Kathleen Carley at Carnegie Mellon University.

What the CCP’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in his tweet on March 12 and the Party’s behavior seem to affirm the assumption. In his tweet, Zhao claimed with little supporting evidence that “It might be US army [sic] who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.” The CCP has mobilized tens of thousands of “network supervisors” (paid social media users who censor information and post pro-CCP content) to propagate the idea to instill hatred against the U.S. among the Chinese people.

Next-Generation “Wolf Warriors”

Its Twitter campaign is only one of many examples of how the CCP spreads propaganda and disinformation to the world. And it is during the coronavirus pandemic that the magnitude and depth of its propaganda campaign, both at home andabroad, are being put on full display.

For decades, the CCP has been systematically replacing traditional values with the fighting and “struggle” ideology of communism. Growing up on wolf’s milk, many young minds were nursed with high esteem and pride in the CCP’s “supreme leadership” while bearing a deep, xenophobic grudge against the West.

After the Wuhan coronavirus spread outside of China and more and more people became infected around the world, countless posts appeared on Chinese social media platforms that took great pleasure in the situation, such as “Go, coronavirus!” or “Well done!” There were also rumors such as how “Brazil’s president came down with the infection” and “won the first place in getting the virus among prominent world politicians,” and so on and so forth.

While some of the posts were made by bots or internet trolls as indicated above, many more were from China’s next generation of die-hard young digital warriors known as “Little Pinks,” who fanatically defend the CCP with name-calling rhetoric to attack anyone who is “anti-CCP” or “anti-China” by their definition.

At one point, a giant inflated arch was erected outside a well-known restaurant named “Grandma Yang’s Congee Store” in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, with a slogan on top reading “Wish Japan a Long-Lasting Epidemic.” A photo of the arch was quickly spread with cheers among social media groups in China.

When the British Prime Minister was fighting for his life due to coronavirus infection, more than 440,000 paid posters gave their thumbs-up. Even a state-controlled TV station congratulated the U.S. on “winning first place” when the U.S. became the country with most infected cases. Likewise, the cyber warriors celebrated when Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Japan and others were hit hard by the virus.

Taking a Look Back

To fully understand how the CCP’s propaganda machine grew to the size it is today, it might be helpful to look at its history.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the CCP’s leading “Cultural Revolution Group” announced openly that “Newspapers can set a higher tone than government statements; the masses can set a higher tone than newspapers.” Such directives set the tone for the “Big Character Posters” encouraged by Mao Zedong to criticize, abuse, and frame “bourgeois counter-revolutionaries.” Many innocent people were so unscrupulously attacked that they resorted to suicide to escape the suffering, while the perpetrators did not need to bear any legal responsibility for their conduct because they were acting in the Party’s interest.

Such lawlessness was also extended overseas and to foreign embassies in Beijing, encouraged by Mao’s directive of March 1967 that Red Guards “should not only be internal revolutionaries but also international revolutionaries.” Embassies of “unfriendly countries” were violated, and their staff were harassed and beaten.

Most shocking of all was the siege and destruction of the British Charge D’affaires Office in Beijing on the evening of August 22, 1967. Thousands of rebels flocked in front of the office and held a mass meeting to “condemn British imperialist anti-China crimes” before setting fire to the building and cars. Charge d’Affaires Donald Hopson and his staff had retreated to a secure area but had to come out later when the building was set ablaze. They were beaten, kicked and humiliated. Donald Hopson was also forced to bow to Mao Zedong’s portrait to admit his “guilt.”

“The mob greeted us with howls of exultation and immediately set about us with everything they had,” Hopson later wrote about the violent incident. “We were hauled by our hair, half-strangled with our ties, kicked, and beaten on the head with long bamboo poles. I do not know how long this lasted.”

The CCP’s mouthpiece People’s Daily supported the lawless hoodlums and praised them in its report the next day: “Over 10,000 Red Guards and revolutionary masses in Peking surged to the British charge d’ affaires yesterday evening in a mighty demonstration against the British imperialists’ frantic fascist persecution of patriotic Chinese in Hong Kong…A meeting in condemnation of the British imperialist anti-China crimes was held in front of the office. The enraged demonstrators took strong actions against the British charge d’ affaires office.”

Fifty years have since passed. Though the West had long hoped that China would reform into a more democratic and open society along with its economic development, the thought has largely been reduced to wishful thinking.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2020/6/13/185494.html
 

spilledthebeer

Executive Branch Member
Jan 26, 2017
9,296
4
36

Chinese Communist Party’s Decades-Long Propaganda Breeds Next-Generation “Wolf Warriors”

June 13, 2020 | By a Minghui correspondent

Violent aggression and deception are two distinctive traits of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in both its rule of the Chinese people and its maneuvering on the international stage to gain the upper hand over its opponents. It has shown such traits more explicitly during the current pandemic.

According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, nearly half of the Twitter accounts spreading messages on the social media platform about the coronavirus pandemic are likely bots.

“We culled through more than 200 million tweets discussing the virus since January and found that about 45% were sent by accounts that behave more like computerized robots than humans,” researchers stated.

Even though they could not say conclusively which individuals or groups are behind the bot accounts, the tweets appeared to be aimed at sowing division in America. “…It looks like it’s a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks,” said Professor Kathleen Carley at Carnegie Mellon University.

What the CCP’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in his tweet on March 12 and the Party’s behavior seem to affirm the assumption. In his tweet, Zhao claimed with little supporting evidence that “It might be US army [sic] who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.” The CCP has mobilized tens of thousands of “network supervisors” (paid social media users who censor information and post pro-CCP content) to propagate the idea to instill hatred against the U.S. among the Chinese people.

Next-Generation “Wolf Warriors”

Its Twitter campaign is only one of many examples of how the CCP spreads propaganda and disinformation to the world. And it is during the coronavirus pandemic that the magnitude and depth of its propaganda campaign, both at home andabroad, are being put on full display.

For decades, the CCP has been systematically replacing traditional values with the fighting and “struggle” ideology of communism. Growing up on wolf’s milk, many young minds were nursed with high esteem and pride in the CCP’s “supreme leadership” while bearing a deep, xenophobic grudge against the West.

After the Wuhan coronavirus spread outside of China and more and more people became infected around the world, countless posts appeared on Chinese social media platforms that took great pleasure in the situation, such as “Go, coronavirus!” or “Well done!” There were also rumors such as how “Brazil’s president came down with the infection” and “won the first place in getting the virus among prominent world politicians,” and so on and so forth.

While some of the posts were made by bots or internet trolls as indicated above, many more were from China’s next generation of die-hard young digital warriors known as “Little Pinks,” who fanatically defend the CCP with name-calling rhetoric to attack anyone who is “anti-CCP” or “anti-China” by their definition.

At one point, a giant inflated arch was erected outside a well-known restaurant named “Grandma Yang’s Congee Store” in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, with a slogan on top reading “Wish Japan a Long-Lasting Epidemic.” A photo of the arch was quickly spread with cheers among social media groups in China.

When the British Prime Minister was fighting for his life due to coronavirus infection, more than 440,000 paid posters gave their thumbs-up. Even a state-controlled TV station congratulated the U.S. on “winning first place” when the U.S. became the country with most infected cases. Likewise, the cyber warriors celebrated when Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Japan and others were hit hard by the virus.

Taking a Look Back

To fully understand how the CCP’s propaganda machine grew to the size it is today, it might be helpful to look at its history.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the CCP’s leading “Cultural Revolution Group” announced openly that “Newspapers can set a higher tone than government statements; the masses can set a higher tone than newspapers.” Such directives set the tone for the “Big Character Posters” encouraged by Mao Zedong to criticize, abuse, and frame “bourgeois counter-revolutionaries.” Many innocent people were so unscrupulously attacked that they resorted to suicide to escape the suffering, while the perpetrators did not need to bear any legal responsibility for their conduct because they were acting in the Party’s interest.

Such lawlessness was also extended overseas and to foreign embassies in Beijing, encouraged by Mao’s directive of March 1967 that Red Guards “should not only be internal revolutionaries but also international revolutionaries.” Embassies of “unfriendly countries” were violated, and their staff were harassed and beaten.

Most shocking of all was the siege and destruction of the British Charge D’affaires Office in Beijing on the evening of August 22, 1967. Thousands of rebels flocked in front of the office and held a mass meeting to “condemn British imperialist anti-China crimes” before setting fire to the building and cars. Charge d’Affaires Donald Hopson and his staff had retreated to a secure area but had to come out later when the building was set ablaze. They were beaten, kicked and humiliated. Donald Hopson was also forced to bow to Mao Zedong’s portrait to admit his “guilt.”

“The mob greeted us with howls of exultation and immediately set about us with everything they had,” Hopson later wrote about the violent incident. “We were hauled by our hair, half-strangled with our ties, kicked, and beaten on the head with long bamboo poles. I do not know how long this lasted.”

The CCP’s mouthpiece People’s Daily supported the lawless hoodlums and praised them in its report the next day: “Over 10,000 Red Guards and revolutionary masses in Peking surged to the British charge d’ affaires yesterday evening in a mighty demonstration against the British imperialists’ frantic fascist persecution of patriotic Chinese in Hong Kong…A meeting in condemnation of the British imperialist anti-China crimes was held in front of the office. The enraged demonstrators took strong actions against the British charge d’ affaires office.”

Fifty years have since passed. Though the West had long hoped that China would reform into a more democratic and open society along with its economic development, the thought has largely been reduced to wishful thinking.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2020/6/13/185494.html




"LARGELY REDUCED TO WISHFUL THINKING" YOU SAY?


I suggest you are a little bit MISTAKEN!



The wishful thinking of western useful idiots and LIE-berals has been FULLY REDUCED!
 

Ellanjay

Council Member
Apr 11, 2020
1,722
250
83
https://youtu.be/Fv8R4gTMvL4

Perspective on the Pandemic:
The Ties Between Canada’s Elite and Powerful and the Chinese Regime

Commentary by Yao Liang, Tanya Du
June 18, 2020



Canada is among the top 20 countries in the world with the most cases of COVID-19 infection, despite its relatively small population and low population density. Within Canada, Quebec has been the hardest-hit region by far.


By mid-June, Canada had around 100,000 cases of infection and more than 8,000 deaths. Of that, over half of the infections and 65 percent of the deaths have been in Quebec, which has less than a quarter of the country’s population.

The Epoch Times editorial article “Wherever Ties to the Chinese Communist Party Are Close, the CCP Virus Follows” notes that “the heaviest-hit regions outside China all share a common thread: close or lucrative relations with the communist regime in Beijing.”

For decades, high-level Canadian leaders, well-connected elite, and powerful corporations, many of them based in Quebec, have pushed for closer ties between Canada and China.

Ottawa played an instrumental role in enabling the Chinese regime to gain world recognition in its early days and helped it along the way as it became one of the world’s emerging superpowers, while the regime continued to suppress its own people at home and spread its tentacles of influence abroad. Meanwhile, Canadian leaders have often turned a blind eye to Beijing’s human rights abuses during critical times.

Setting a Course

In 1970, the government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau became one of the first Western governments to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the ruler of China. Canada’s recognition of the regime paved the way for other Western countries to follow suit and for the CCP to join international bodies such as the United Nations.

Establishing relations with communist China and bringing it into the United Nations was one of Trudeau’s primary foreign policy objectives after he became prime minister in 1968.

Long before becoming prime minister, while on a visit to Moscow to attend a propaganda conference in the 1950s, Trudeau, then a political activist from Quebec, had reportedly told the wife of the U.S. chargé d’affaires that he was a communist and a Catholic and had come to Moscow to criticize the United States and praise the Soviet Union, according to the 2013 book “The Truth About Trudeau” by Bob Plamondon.

Trudeau had travelled to China in 1949 as a young man, and again in 1960 on a trip sponsored by the regime. He chronicled the latter trip with co-author Jacques Hébert in their book “Two Innocents in Red China.”

During their visit, the two witnessed scenes of one of the darkest periods of the communist regime, the Great Leap Forward, as noted in an article in The Globe and Mail. During this period, lasting from 1958 to 1962, Chairman Mao Zedong wanted to quickly bring industrialization to China and forced farmers to produce steel rather than crops, with those deemed not complying facing torture and even death. The Great Leap Forward led to a devastating famine that killed tens of millions of people.

In their book, however, Trudeau and Hébert write, “We are convinced that we are witnessing the beginning of an industrial revolution.”

During his official visit to China as prime minister in 1973, where he met with Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai, Trudeau praised the regime for its governance, saying the system it had developed “in comparison with all previous Chinese social systems, is striving to provide human dignity and equality of opportunity for the Chinese people.”

Trudeau’s comment came at a time when Mao was in the middle of his disastrous and bloody Cultural Revolution, which resulted in an estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to 20 million, with millions of Chinese suffering from torture and humiliation, seizure of property, and the destruction of the economy and traditional culture.

At Beijing’s insistence, Trudeau refused to issue permits to allow Taiwan to take part in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, even though the team was recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). To refuse entry to a country recognized by the IOC was unprecedented and met with strong objections by the United States.

Trudeau’s admiration for the CCP had long-term implications and set in motion decades of China-appeasing policies.

In 2013, when his son Justin Trudeau, then the leader of the Liberal Party seeking to become the next prime minister, was asked which country he admired most, he said: “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.”

Corporate Ties

Behind some of the most aggressive lobbying efforts for stronger Canada-China ties is a handful of big corporations with extensive business operations in China, many of them based in Quebec.

The Montreal-based Power Corporation, a multibillion-dollar financial services company, has been described as “the premier gatekeeper of [Canada’s] formal relations with China” by author Jonathan Manthorpe in his 2019 book “Claws of the Panda.”

In 1968, the company came under the control of Paul Desmarais Sr. and was run by his sons Paul Jr. and André serving as co-CEOs until last year, when they announced they were stepping down from their roles as CEOs but staying on as chairman and deputy chairman respectively.

Some of Canada’s most influential people have links to Power Corp., including four former prime ministers.

Former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s daughter is married to André Desmarais. Chrétien, Pierre Trudeau, and former prime minister Brian Mulroney all served as advisory board members of Power Corp. after leaving office. Former prime minister Paul Martin was president of one of the company’s subsidiaries, Canada Steamship Lines, and later bought it with a partner in the 1980s.

In 2019, Chrétien said Canada’s justice minister should use his authority to stop the extradition of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Vancouver in December 2018 on a U.S. extradition request. Mulroney advised that Chrétien and André Desmarais be sent to China on behalf of Canada to negotiate the release of two Canadians arrested by Beijing in retaliation for Meng’s arrest.

Several other prominent Canadian politicians, including former cabinet ministers, have also worked for Power Corp.

Another influential executive at the company was Maurice Strong, who later worked as the under-secretary-general of the United Nations. Strong is the nephew of prominent pro-communist reporter Anna Louise Strong. According to the Epoch Times series “How the Spectre of Communism Is Ruling Our World,” Maurice Strong was deeply influenced by his aunt and described himself as “a socialist in ideology and a capitalist in methodology.”

After retirement, Strong moved to Beijing, where he lived for the rest of his life. In a 2010 interview with the Guardian, he said he still maintained some cooperation with the United Nations “in particular to China and that region.”

Power Corp. is a founding member of the Canada China Business Council (CCBC), which was spearheaded by Paul Desmarais Sr.

Canada China Business Council

The CCBC advocates for strong relations with China and has counted among its ranks former politicians or individuals who went on to become politicians.

Paul Desmarais Sr. was the founding chair of CCBC. His son André is an honourary chair of the organization, and the current chair is André’s son, Olivier.

CCBC, formerly called the Canada China Trade Council, was founded in 1978 by eight major Canadian corporations and the Chinese state-owned company CITIC.

Half of the Canadian founding members—namely Power Corp., BMO Financial Group, Bombardier, and SNC-Lavalin—are based in Montreal. The other founding members are Barrick Gold Corp., Export Development Canada, Manulife Financial, and Sun Life Financial, the latter based in Montreal until 1978.

The book “Claws of the Panda” says the founding CCBC members “became a persuasive lobby for enhanced relations with China, for which the benefits of trade were held to be of paramount concern.”

The Canada-China business community has strong links with a once-powerful Chinese official, Bo Xilai.
Bo was a rising star of the CCP until he was removed from his post as Party chief of the megacity of Chongqing after a scandal involving Chongqing official Wang Lijun. Wang gave accounts of the involvement of Bo and Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, in the murder of a British businessman to the American Consulate in Chengdu.

Bo was part of a faction loyal to former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, a rival of current leader Xi Jinping. According to some accounts, Bo and some other officials in Jiang’s faction had been plotting to overthrow Xi, and this was one of the main reasons Bo was removed from power.

Both Bo and wife Gu were heavily involved in—and profiting from—the state-sanctioned harvesting of organs from Falun Dafa prisoners of conscience.

Chrétien once called Bo an “old friend,” and he was called “one of our key bridges” by Sergio Marchi, a former Liberal trade minister and a past president of the CCBC, according to The Globe and Mail.

The relationship between Bo and the business community is rooted in the close ties he had with the Desmarais family.

The Globe reported last year that Bo’s son, Bo Guagua, is working for Power Corp. But the ties go all the way back to the time of Paul Desmarais Sr. and Bo Xilai’s father. According to the Globe, Bo’s father, Bo Yibo, at that time vice-premier of the CCP, visited Paul Desmarais Sr. in the 1970s while en route to Washington to lay the groundwork for U.S. President Richard Nixon’s trip to China.

Shortly after Bo became China’s commerce minister in 2004, Power Corp. was one of the first foreign companies receiving designation to buy and sell yuan-denominated shares on Chinese stock exchanges, the Globe notes.

CITIC-Power Corp. Ties

CITIC Group Corporation, the only China-based founding member of the CCBC, is one of the Chinese entities that Power Corp. has deep ties with. The company is a state-owned investment company established to bring in Western investment to China.

CITIC was founded with the personal approval of Deng Xiaoping, the leader of the Chinese regime after Mao’s death. Its founder, Rong Yiren, later a vice-president of the People’s Republic of China, was known as “the red capitalist.”

André Desmarais was a board member of CITIC Pacific, a subsidiary of CITIC, from 1997 to 2014. During this period, Power Corp. bought stakes in CITIC Pacific.

Power Corp. also has a 13.9 percent ownership in China Asset Management, an affiliate of CITIC. Mackenzie Financial Corporation, an indirect subsidiary of Power Corp., has a 13.9 percent stake in China Asset Management as well.

“With a direct stake in such a broad swath of China’s economy, the Desmarais surely stand to benefit from Canada’s increasingly cozy relationship with the communists in Beijing,” says a 2005 Western Standard article titled “Puppets of Beijing.”

CITIC has included many CCP “princelings”—children of Party leaders—in its leadership ranks, including Wang Jun, who is the son of one of the CCP’s eight elders, and Bo Xicheng, the brother of Bo Xilai and son of Bo Yibo, one of the Party’s most senior political figures.

Paul Desmarais Sr. and André first met Rong during a business mission to China at the invitation of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, according to La Presse. Before Power Corp. bought a stake in CITIC, the Desmarais-Rong relationship had resulted in another joint venture in 1986: an investment in a sawmill in British Columbia.

‘Expanding the Relationship’

Former prime minister Mulroney, who has provided professional services to Power Corp. on different occasions, also sat on the board of CITIC after leaving office. According to a Globe article, Paul Desmarais Sr. was one of Mulroney’s two main mentors as a young man. Power Corp. regularly used Mulroney as a labour lawyer.

According to the 2014 book “Engaging China,” after a 1986 official visit to China as prime minister, Mulroney wrote, “Much remains to be done in expanding the relationship but persistent work by successive Canadian prime ministers, principally Pierre Trudeau, is clearly paying off.”

Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when much of the Western world shunned diplomatic ties with Beijing, Mulroney told Zhu Rongji, China’s vice premier at the time, that Canada “would be prepared to fully engage with China in the years ahead” but would need to be cautious because of Canadians’ concerns about human rights.

Mulroney played a key role in forging a partnership between Desmarais and entrepreneur Peter Munk to invest in gold deposits in China in 1994, a year after the end of his prime ministership. During a trip to China, Munk was impressed that Mulroney was able to arrange a dinner with Zhu Rongji, then head of China’s central bank, without whom they wouldn’t be able to get access to China’s gold deposits.

“This is a good example of how Brian [Mulroney] uses his connections and contacts and turns them into international business opportunities for the companies he’s involved with,” Munk told the Globe.

‘Pro-Beijing Turn’

The article “Puppets of Beijing” notes that Ottawa took a “distinct pro-Beijing turn” under Chrétien.

Chrétien once told the Chinese state-owned news network CGTN that he visited China “many, many” times when he was prime minister.

“For the 10 years as the prime minister, I met the president of China 17 times, so I was close to China,” Chrétien told CGTN. The Chinese leader during Chrétien’s tenure was Jiang Zemin, who came to power following the Tiananmen Square massacre, as the previous leader, Zhao Ziyang, was deemed too sympathetic to the protest movement. Jiang went on to launch a brutal campaign of persecution against the traditional meditation discipline Falun Dafa in 1999.

After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Chrétien was one of the first world leaders to bring China out of isolation, rebooting relations with Beijing after the West had shunned the regime for its killing of unarmed protesters.

Chrétien made a trade visit to China in 1994, bringing along premiers, foreign affairs officials, and some 400 business executives. The delegation signed $9 billion in trade deals while in China.

Ahead of the trip, Chrétien and other officials said they would be using the visit to discuss the issue of human rights. But that issue was put aside, a Maclean’s article notes.

“We do not practise megaphone diplomacy, but we do not practise doormat diplomacy either,” a senior Foreign Affairs Department official told Maclean’s at the time.

The article notes that the closest Chrétien came to discussing the issue was in a meeting with Chinese premier Li Peng.

“Chretien raised the issue so briefly that a Chinese foreign affairs ministry official later insisted it had not come up at all, and Nova Scotia Premier John Savage, who was at the meeting, did not initially recall any mention of the subject,” the article says.

During Chrétien’s tenure, Canada withdrew its support for a U.N. resolution censuring China for human rights abuses in 1997. Instead, any talk of human rights was reserved for private meetings, where Chinese representatives simply brushed off the issue.

The year 1997 was also a key year for Power Corp.’s foray into CITIC, as that was when it acquired a significant stake in the company’s subsidiary CITIC Pacific and André Desmarais became a board member of the subsidiary.

Chrétien also supported China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, which was instrumental in enriching the regime’s coffers.

Martin, who succeeded Chrétien as prime minister, maintained his predecessor’s China policy. During a 2005 trip by Chinese leader Hu Jintao to Canada, Martin and Hu agreed to build a “strategic partnership” between the two countries.

Some of the biggest orders for Martin’s shipbuilding business before he became prime minister came from China. According to an article published in the Walrus, in 1995 his Canada Steamship Lines company commissioned three new self-unloader vessels from the Chinese state-owned Jiangnan shipyards.

Resuming Close Ties

When Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006, there was a considerable change in Canada’s China policy, with Harper more vocally calling out Beijing’s human rights violations. He also refused to go to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which angered the CCP.

However, in the later years of his tenure, his government began to ease its tone on China.

Manthorpe writes in “Claws of the Panda” that behind this warming up in tone was “a major lobby operation mounted using the CCP’s agents of influence in business and academia to get the Harper government to change its attitude toward China.”

After the Liberal Party won the 2015 federal election, it almost immediately began a policy of seeking closer ties with China, at one point even considering an extradition treaty with the regime. The government also spent money on public relations initiatives to warm up Canadians to having closer ties with China.

Trudeau visited China in 2016 and 2017, pursuing preliminary talks toward a free trade agreement, despite a $50 billion imbalance in trade between the two countries in China’s favour. The talks failed in 2017 after the Chinese side didn’t want to entertain Trudeau’s request to consider progressive values in the deal.

The same year, Canada committed hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in Beijing’s prestige-building initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, meant to rival other multilateral development banks such as the World Bank.

Despite a clause in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) preventing member countries from forming free trade deals with “non-market” economies—a clear reference to China—Trudeau said in 2018 that Ottawa intends to pursue deeper trade ties with the Chinese communist regime.

The Liberal government was criticized by the opposition and U.S. politicians for allowing the takeover of two security-sensitive high-tech companies by Chinese companies. One was Norsat, a Vancouver-based satellite communications firm, and the other was ITF Technologies, a Montreal-based laser technology company.

In 2016, Trudeau’s attendance at cash-for-access events became a source of controversy after it was revealed that one of the guests was Zhang Bin, an adviser to the Chinese regime. The event was held at the mansion of Benson Wong, president of the Toronto Chinese Chamber of Commerce. The cost of attendance was $1,500 per person. Zhang donated $1 million to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal Faculty of Law, where Pierre Trudeau had taught.

Also in attendance at one of the events was Liu Meng, chairman of the Yangtze River International Chamber of Commerce and a member of the CCP, according to the Globe. Another attendee was Shenglin Xian, founder of Wealth One Bank of Canada, who at the time was waiting for approval from federal regulators to start his bank operation in Canada.

The Liberal government has yet to rule out including Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s equipment in Canada’s 5G networks, despite security concerns from the intelligence community and the United States, which has warned it would limit intelligence sharing with Canada if it allowed Huawei in the country’s 5G.

Quebec and China

A note on the website of the government of Quebec says, “China is a major focus of Quebec’s international relations.”

The province opened an office in Beijing in 1998, and another in Shanghai a year later. The total trade volume between Quebec and China was nearly $13.8 billion in 2016, with imports from China accounting for close to $11 billion and exports to China just $3 billion.

There are nine cooperation agreements between China and Quebec in a variety of fields, such as trade and higher education. The province also boasts that besides its relations with the Beijing regime, it has close ties with the province of Shandong and the municipality of Shanghai. Montreal and Quebec City both have twin cities in China.

Successive Quebec premiers have led many delegations to China, in an effort to deepen business ties.

During a trip to China in 2014, then-Liberal Quebec premier Philippe Couillard said he wouldn’t be bringing up the issue of human rights, saying “you have to listen to the point of view of your hosts on these questions.”

He later confirmed that he never discussed human rights, saying he went to China only to discuss “investment and employment.”

After leading another delegation to China in 2018, during which he signed 40 agreements worth $262 million, Couillard said he didn’t want to “defeat” the purpose of the mission with “misguided comments.” He said others shouldn’t “dictate to China how they govern themselves internally.”

Former Quebec premier Jean Charest, who was premier from 2003 to 2012, criticized the Harper government in 2014 for not pursuing trade ties more aggressively with China.

“What we hear between the lines is that there may be some concerns about dealing with China because of concerns of human rights issues, because of other issues. But if that was the case, you’d think that would have been taken into consideration before you negotiate the agreement,” Charest said in an interview with CBC, referring to the negotiation of a foreign investment promotion and protection agreement.

Charest, who visited China several times during his tenure as premier, is now providing consulting services to Huawei to help the company in Meng’s extradition case and in its bid to be involved in Canada’s 5G network.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/persp...-powerful-and-the-chinese-regime_3392583.html
 

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How Long Did It Take for the Coronavirus to ‘Go around the Planet’?

By Jim Geraghty, June 12, 2020

Earlier this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said SARS-CoV-2 surprised him with “how rapidly it just took over the planet. . . . This took about a month to go around the world.”

Certainly between January 1 and January 31, the coronavirus changed from the subject of vague reports about a strange flu in Wuhan to an official World Health Organization “public health emergency of international concern,” with cases in 19 countries.

But when did the virus start going around the world? France has determined that a man who had not traveled out of the country caught it in December. In Washington state, two Snohomish County residents who have positive serology tests potentially linked to COVID-like illnesses dating back to December. Last week, ABC News offered more anecdotal evidence from satellite photography suggesting that residents of Wuhan knew some sort of serious health problem was brewing in October; one interpretation of the data suggests hospital visits started increasing as early as August 2019. Separately, an American couple described a Chinese cruise company rushing to get them out of Wuhan on November 1.

So this virus certainly commanded the world’s attention in a one-month span . . . but how likely is it that this virus spread around the world for two, three, or maybe even four months before the world realized the scale of the threat?

Medical researchers are trying to get a sense of just how many people catch the virus and remain asymptomatic — that is, they get it and remain contagious but suffer no symptoms. A recent study concluded that “the overall rate of asymptomatic infection is likely at least 30 percent and could be as high as 40 percent to 45 percent.” We can be frustrated that governments and doctors couldn’t mitigate the spread of this virus earlier, but it is really difficult for medical authorities to detect and contain infections when the patients themselves don’t realize that they’re infected.



Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review.

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The Risk of the ‘Bailout of Everything’

Commentary by Daniel Lacalle
June 14, 2020, Updated June 15, 2020


Despite massive government and central bank stimuli, the global economy is seeing a concerning rise in defaults and delinquencies.

The main central banks’ balance sheets (the Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, Bank of England, and People’s Bank of China) have soared to a combined $20 trillion, while the fiscal easing announcements in the major economies exceed 7 percent of the world’s GDP, according to Fitch Ratings.

This is the biggest combined stimulus plan in history. However, businesses are closing at a record pace and unemployment has reached extremely elevated levels in many countries.

There’s an important risk in what I call the “bailout of everything,” or the conscious decision from governments and central banks to provide any needed support to all sectors and companies with access to debt.

Most of these stimulus packages and liquidity measures are aimed at supporting current government spending and providing liquidity to companies with assets, access to debt, and in traditional sectors. It’s not a surprise, then, that at the same time as we see the largest fiscal and monetary support plan since World War II, we are already witnessing two dangerous collateral effects: the rise of zombie companies and the collapse of small businesses and start-ups.

According to the Institute of International Finance, the figure of global corporate bond defaults has risen to $50 billion in the second quarter of 2020 despite historic-low interest rates and high liquidity.

Additionally, according to Deutsche Bank and the Bank for International Settlements, the number of zombie companies in the eurozone and the United States, large companies that cannot cover their interest expense costs with operating profits, has rocketed to new all-time highs.

According to economists Filippos Petroulakis of the European Central Bank and Dan Andrews of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “Europe’s productivity problem is partly due to the rise of zombie firms that crowd out growth opportunities for others.” This problem is only increasing in the current crisis.

The rise in bond defaults is a consequence of previous high leverage in a weakening operating income environment. This should not be a concern if creative destruction works to improve the economy, as inefficient companies are taken over by efficient ones and new investors restructure challenged businesses to make them competitive. The big problem is that massive liquidity and low rates are perpetuating overcapacity and keeping an extraordinary amount of zombie firms alive.

Maintaining and increasing zombie firms destroys any positive effect from restructuring and innovation. Additionally, to maintain cash flows and stay alive, companies are cutting investment in innovation, technology, and research. Meanwhile, small businesses that do not have access to debt or own hard assets are dissolving every day.

In most developed economies, where 80 percent of employment comes from small businesses, the “bailout of everything” is becoming a massive transfer of wealth from the new economy to the old economy, preventing a stronger and more productive recovery.

In the eurozone, the main beneficiaries of the European Central Bank corporate bond purchases are large industrial conglomerates that were already facing weak margins, poor growth, and bloated balance sheets in 2019. In the United States, the financing channel of the real economy is more diverse, and the impact of zombification is smaller, but not negligible or irrelevant.

Some of these problems may have been inevitable in a crisis, but the majority of them could have been mitigated significantly by implementing supply-side policies instead of large government-directed stimuli and recovery plans based on adding more debt to already challenged sectors.

The “Bailout of Everything” (as long as it’s large) creates significant risks. Low productivity and indebted sectors survive, creating a perverse incentive that benefits malinvestment and poor capital allocation. Additionally, as these sectors already had overcapacity and structural problems, their bailout does not lead to higher job creation or stronger investment. Furthermore, high-productivity sectors will likely suffer the tax burden that rises after these governments’ rescue plans, diminishing the employment potential and the likelihood of rising real wages as productivity growth stalls.

Finally, when governments bail out large and overcapacity-ridden conglomerates, investment in innovation, efficiency, and re-structuring of loss-making divisions are severely diminished. Why? Because the first reason why governments agree to take stakes or bailout large sectors is precisely to prevent them from restructuring. Alternatively, tax cuts and supply-driven liquidity measures to small businesses and technology would have worked significantly better at a lower cost for taxpayers.

There’s no doubt that some liquidity and support mechanisms are positive, but what we’re seeing today may have long-term negative implications. A weaker than expected recovery, with low productivity growth and a challenging return of the lost employment as well as poor investment growth are likely collateral damage of the misguided and panic-driven “Bailout of Everything.” Unfortunately, it will also generate more debt and higher taxes that will further complicate things for taxpayers and innovative sectors.

Daniel Lacalle, Ph.D., is chief economist at hedge fund Tressis and author of “Freedom or Equality,” “Escape from the Central Bank Trap,” and “Life in the Financial Markets.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-risk-of-the-bailout-of-everything_3387871.html
 

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General Chi’s Nasty Wuhan Soup: A Recipe for BioWar?

By J. R. Nyquist
January 30, 2020


Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves. There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio-weapons have been invented one after another. Of course, we have not been idle…. We are capable of achieving our purpose of ‘cleaning up’ America all of a sudden.

--General Chi Haotian


In a secret speech given to high-level Party cadres nearly two decades ago, Chinese Defense Minister, Gen. Chi Haotian, explained a long- range plan for ensuring a Chinese national renaissance. He said there were three vital issues that must be grasped. The first was the issue of living space — because China is severely overpopulated and China’s environment is deteriorating. The second issue, therefore, is that the Communist Party must teach the Chinese people to “go out.” By this Gen. Chi meant the conquest of new lands in which a “second China” could be built by “colonization.” From this arises the third vital issue: the “issue of America.”

General Chi warned his listeners: “This appears to be shocking, but the logic is actually very simple.” China is “in fundamental conflict with the Western strategic interest.” Therefore America will never allow China to seize other countries to build a second China. America stands in China’s way. Chi explained the problem as follows:

Would the United States allow us to go out to gain new living space? First, if the United States is firm in blocking us, it is hard for us to do anything significant to Taiwan, Vietnam, India, or even Japan, [so] how much more living space can we get? Very trivial! Only countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization.

“We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons,” said the general. “Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves.” The answer is found in biological weapons. “Of course,” he added, “we have not been idle, in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind.”

The ruling Chinese Communist Party considers biological weapons to be the most important weapons for accomplishing their goal of “cleaning up America.” Chi credits Deng Xiaoping with putting biological weapons ahead of all other weapon systems in the Chinese arsenal:

When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focus instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country.

It may seem difficult to believe, but Gen. Chi considered himself to be a “humanitarian” communist, and therefore admitted to mixed personal feelings on this matter: “I sometimes think how cruel it is for China and the United States to be enemies….” After all, he noted, America helped China in World War II. Chinese people remember that America opposed Japanese imperialism. But none of that matters now. “In the long run,” said Gen. Chi, “the relationship of China and the United States is one of a life-and-death struggle.” This tragic situation must be accepted. According to Gen. Chi, “We must not forget that the history of our civilization repeatedly has taught us that one mountain does not allow two tigers to live together.”

According to Gen. Chi, China’s overpopulation problem and environmental degradation will eventually result in social collapse and civil war. General Chi estimated that “more than 800 million” Chinese would die in such a collapse. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party has no policy alternative. Either America is “cleaned up” by biological attacks, or China suffers national catastrophe. Chi makes the following argument:

We must prepare ourselves for two scenarios. If our biological weapons succeed in the surprise attack, the Chinese people will be able to keep their losses at a minimum in the fight against the United States. If, however, the attack fails and triggers a nuclear retaliation from the United States, China would perhaps suffer a catastrophe in which more than half of its population would perish. That is why we need to be ready with air defense systems for our big and medium-sized cities.

In his speech, Gen. Chi provides us with a key for understanding China’s development strategy. According to Chi, “Our economic development is all about preparing for the needs of war!” It is not about improving the life of Chinese people in the short run. It is not about building a consumer-oriented capitalist society. “Publicly,” said Gen. Chi, “we still emphasize economic development as our center, but in reality, economic development has war as its center!”

The same can be said for China’s intense interest in the biological sciences. The West has yet to grasp the underlying motive for China’s ready participation in the West’s P4 microbiology labs, where the world’s most deadly microbes are studied, (i.e., pathogen lethality level 4 labs). This now bubbles to the surface in the Novel Coronavirus pandemic which has occurred in Wuhan, at the heart of China, just outside China’s principle P4 virology lab (specializing in deadly viruses).

Not long after delivering his speech, General Chi stepped down as Defense Minister in 2003, the same year as the SARS (Coronavirus) outbreak in China. This was also (coincidentally) the same year Beijing decided to build the Wuhan P4 virology lab. Given Gen. Chi’s speech, is the Novel Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan an accident occasioned by weaponizing the virus at the city’s P4 microbiology lab?

Three data points are worth considering. First, in 2008 Taiwan’s top security official told lawmakers that “Taiwan had intelligence linking the SARS virus to research done in Chinese labs.” Given China’s economic clout and political infiltration of Chinese language media, it is not surprising that National Security Bureau Director Tsai Chao-ming was forced to retract his statement, which had none of the usual features of a “gaff.” Was Director Tsai forced to retract a statement that was true, since he could not reveal his intelligence sources inside China?

The second data point worth considering: The Virology Journal has an article by Gulfaraz Khan, published on February 28, 2013, outlining the discovery of the Novel Coronavirus in Saudi Arabia in June 2012. Yes, it is the very same Novel Coronavirus with the following difference: when first discovered it could not be readily transmitted from humans to humans. Something changed in the virus since that time. Thus, the Wuhan version is labeled 2019-nCoV instead of simply NCoV. The latter is not contagious, while the former is spreading rapidly through China as these words are written. What do you suppose changed its transmissibility between 2012 and 2020? Random mutation or weaponization? If the current lethal outbreak had occurred in any other city than Wuhan, we might be inclined to believe in a random mutation. But Wuhan is ground zero for Chinese bioweapons. Should we credit such a coincidence?

The third data point worth considering: GreatGameIndia.com has published a piece titled “Coronavirus Bioweapon – How China Stole Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponized It.” The authors were clever enough to put Khan’s Virology Journal article together with news of a security breach by Chinese nationals at the Canadian (P4) National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, where the Novel Coronavirus was allegedly stored with other lethal organisms. Last May the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were called in to investigate, by late July the Chinese were kicked out of the facility. The chief Chinese scientist was allegedly making trips between Winnipeg and Wuhan.

Here we have a plausible theory of the NCoV organism’s travels: first discovered in Saudi Arabia, studied in Canada from whence it was stolen by a Chinese scientist and brought to Wuhan. Like the statement of Taiwan’s intelligence chief in 2008, the GreatGameIndia.com story has come under intensive attack. Whatever the truth, the fact of proximity and the unlikelihood of mutation must figure into our calculations. It is highly probable that the 2019-nCoV organism is a weaponized version of the NCoV discovered by Saudi doctors in 2012. It is almost certainly part of the bioweapons program extolled by Gen. Chi Hàotián nearly two decades ago.

We must have an investigation of the outbreak in Wuhan. The Chinese must grant the world total transparency. The truth must come out. If Chinese officials are innocent, they have nothing to hide. If they are guilty, they will refuse to cooperate.

The real concern here is whether the rest of the world has the courage to demand a real and thoroughgoing investigation. We need to be fearless in this demand, and not allow “economic interests” to play a coy and dishonest game of denial. We need an honest inquiry. We need it now.



End Notes:

“SARS a Chinese Weapon: Taiwan Official,” https://www.smh.com.au/world/sars-a-chinese-weapon-taiwan-official-20081007-4vse.html

“A novel coronavirus capable of lethal human infections: an emerging picture,” by Gulfaraz Khan, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3599982/

“Coronavirus Bioweapon – How China Stole Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponized It,” https://greatgameindia.com/coronavirus-bioweapon/

https://jrnyquist.blog/2020/01/30/general-chis-nasty-wuhan-soup-a-recipe-for-biowar/
 

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Brazil Faces a Choice With Soaring Pandemic Death Toll

Yu Qingxin, June 15, 2020, Commentary

The pandemic has taken a toll on Brazil since the Health Ministry confirmed the first case of CCP virus infection on Feb. 26. What is the reason behind this phenomenon? A recurring pattern shows that countries with close ties to the Chinese regime experience high CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus infection rates and deaths. What is the relationship between Brazil and China?

More than 13,000 graves were being dug in the city of São Paulo, according to media reports on May 1. Over 10,000 daily new cases have been reported in the city since May 13. As of June 11, the number of confirmed cases have gone up to 772,416, with 39,680 deaths—making Brazil second place in severity, behind the United States (the concealment of data by both China and Iran has made it impossible to compare both countries in the data).

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has rallied against a lockdown policy. He said, “There are many governors, in my view, who are taking measures that will harm our economy a lot.” However, his campaign to reopen the economy was met with resistance.

João Doria, the governor of São Paulo, started the quarantine in the city nearly two months ago—businesses, schools, and public spaces were closed and people were asked to stay at home.

“We are taking this measure out of respect for medicine and science,” Doria stated.

São Paulo has a population of about 12 million.

Since early April, São Paulo has become the CCP virus epicenter in Brazil. As of June 10, the confirmed death toll was 9,862. The already burdened local hospital system suffered from lack of facilities, with more than 3,000 hospital workers placed under quarantine, and 700 confirmed to be infected with the virus. From aerial photos, one can see the enormity of the mass graves for people who died of the virus.

Brazil and China Solidify Ties

Diplomatic relations between the Chinese regime and Brazil officially began in 1974. The China-Brazil High Level Coordination and Cooperation Commission (COSBAN) was formed in 2003. COSBAN has functioned as a strategic partnership development tool between both countries, bringing forth concrete actions such as the 2010-2014 action plan, the 2015-2021 action plan, as well as the 10-year plan 2012 to 2021. Years of collaboration has allowed the Chinese regime to infiltrate and spread its communist ideology in Brazil.

In 2018, Bolsonaro, as a conservative presidential candidate, warned that China was a predator looking to dominate key sectors of Brazil’s economy.

The Belt and Road Initiative Trap

For years, the Communist regime has tried to lure investment from Brazil through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road). The project involves building infrastructure projects throughout Latin America, Africa, eastern Europe, and southeast Asia.

China is Brazil’s largest trading partner. From 2003 to June 2018, Chinese firms have invested almost $54 billion in about 100 projects in Brazil, according to figures from Brazil’s planning ministry.

In 2017 alone, investments nearly hit $11 billion.

According to Chinese state media, before 2010, Chinese funds flowing into Brazil were primarily focused on assuring food and energy supplies for the Asian giant. But in recent years, that strategy has expanded to include the telecommunications, automotive, renewable energy, and the financial services sectors.

In the field of infrastructure and communication, China completed its acquisition of one of Brazil’s most profitable container terminals. It’s the biggest port investment ever made in Brazil or Latin America in 2018.

In capital investment, China has become a major foreign capital source for Brazil. From 2005 through 2017, Brazil has been the recipient of 55 per cent of all investments made by Chinese businesses in Latin America, according to the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

São Paulo’s Water Treatment Facility Controlled by Chinese Firm

China Gezhouba Group Overseas Investment Co., Ltd. (CGGC), through its Brazilian subsidiary, has acquired 100 percent equity interest of Sistema Produtor São Lourenço S.A., which is owned by Camargo Correa Group and Andrade Gutierrez Group of Brazil, and has obtained related water supply concessions.

The deal is funded by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and its total investment amounts to approximately $860 million.

Upon completion, the water treatment facility will be able to provide 410,000 tons of daily water supply to meet the needs of 1.5 million people.

A 2017 study published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences concluded that “water resource scarcity issues will become the core issue of the development of countries along the Belt and Road.” Nonetheless, as this article details, the water-related impacts of the Belt and Road are likely to have a significant effect on local and regional politics in BRI countries.

It is worth noting that the company CGGC is headquartered in Wuhan, the epicenter of the CCP virus outbreak in China. It has overseas outlets in 99 countries, 33 of them in countries participating in BRI.

Brazil Welcomes Confucius Institutes

The Chinese regime has also infiltrated Brazil’s education system. The first Confucius Institute (CI) in Brazil was established through an agreement between São Paulo State University (UNESP) and the Confucius Institute headquarters in Beijing, with the support of Hubei University in Wuhan. The Confucius Institute at UNESP is part of a network of more than 600 CI’s distributed in more than 140 countries.

The CI at UNESP began operating in the first half of 2009. Since then, more than 12,000 Brazilians attended its regular Chinese-language courses, including UNESP students, elementary and junior high school students, and community members in the 13 cities of São Paulo State, on UNESP campuses.

Brazil has the highest number of CI’s in Latin America. Brazilian think tanks and universities have established a number of Chinese research centers and project teams to promote Brazil’s understanding of China through publicity campaigns. The number of Brazilian students and tourists to China has also increased rapidly, and more than 30 Chinese universities offer majors in the Portuguese language.

The Chinese Communist regime has deeply penetrated Brazil with years of strategic partnership. As Brazil is hit-hard by the pandemic, will its leadership recognize the true face of the predator and exit the Brazil-China bilateral trap?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/brazil-faces-a-choice-with-soaring-pandemic-death-toll_3386871.html
 

Ellanjay

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COVID-19 Has Made the Ban on Private Health Insurance Even More Unconscionable

Commentary by Josh Dehaas
June 20, 2020




More than 70,000 surgeries were cancelled in Ontario to accommodate a surge of COVID-19 patients who never materialized. As of May, an estimated 30 to 35 Ontarians had died from missed cardiac surgeries as a result of the delayed procedures.

With 60,000 MRIs and 62,000 CT scans cancelled in Ontario, doctors worry that some cancer diagnoses could come too late. Ontario has begun resuming procedures, but it could take years to catch up.

In British Columbia, the government says it will take 17 to 24 months to catch up on the 30,000 surgeries it postponed. There were already 63,000 people waiting.

The fact that it could take years for sick Canadians get these surgeries done should make us angry. Canada is exceptionally bad at treating people within safe amounts of time. Clearing the hospitals for COVID-19 has made a bad wait-times problem worse.

If Canadians dig into why our system forces people to wait so long, they may start to see the ugly truth: governments use bans on private insurance and market pricing in order to monopolize care—something no other Western country does. The result is pain, suffering, and death. This is unconscionable and unconstitutional.

Politicians like this monopoly because it allows them to ration care, which keeps costs down. They use bogeyman rhetoric to scare the public into thinking that allowing private payment for care would lead to a U.S.-style system with the rich getting fixed and the poor left sick or bankrupt.

But the United States is an outlier. Countries in Asia, Europe, and Oceania offer high-quality universal health coverage without banning private insurance. In Germany, roughly 10 percent of people have extra private insurance. It’s true that those who pay more get seen more quickly, but the public system used by 90 percent of Germans also sees people significantly quicker than they would be seen in Canada. A 2016 Commonwealth Fund study that looked at wait times in 11 wealthy countries found that Canada had the highest proportion of patients—18.2 percent—waiting more than four months for surgery. The percentage waiting that long in Germany? Zero.

Allowing private payment means more overall health care dollars to go around. In Canada, we spent US$4,974 per capita on health care in 2018. Germans spent US$5,986 per capita. Many sick Canadians with extra cash would happily spend their money on private insurance which could buy them quality of life and stave off death, but all provinces except Newfoundland and Labrador effectively ban private health insurance for care that governments consider “medically necessary.” That includes things like hip replacements and CT scans but not medication, dentistry, or coverage for wheelchairs.

Allowing those who can afford private insurance to buy it wouldn’t harm other people; in fact, each person who chose private care would be taking pressure off the public system. Public wait lists would shrink.

Canada’s rationed resources could explain why, as German hospitals postponed only elective procedures like hip replacements in March, Canadian hospitals frantically cancelled pressing surgeries. Germany has that kind of flexibility, with six acute care hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants, compared two in Canada.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Brian Day of Vancouver’s private Cambie Clinic has been fighting these monopolies for more than a decade. With the support of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, he’s suing the B.C. government, arguing that restricting private payments interferes with the most fundamental rights guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: life, liberty, and security of the person.

In the case Carter v. Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the criminal ban on medical assistance in death, in part because our right to liberty means the government cannot interfere with “fundamentally important and personal medical decision-making.” What could be more fundamental than the decision to have a life-saving surgery or scan?

In R v. Morgentaler, which struck down Canada’s limits on abortions, the Supreme Court found that security of the person is infringed when the state “interferes with bodily integrity” or imposes “serious psychological stress.” This was reiterated in Chaoulli v. Quebec, the 2005 case that struck down Quebec’s laws banning private health insurance. The court found that the right to life itself is infringed whenever the state “impose(s) death or an increased risk of death on a person, either directly or indirectly.” That’s exactly what happens when governments create deadly wait lists.

Dr. Day’s challenge to these laws could be decided any day. Whichever way it goes, Canadians should demand that their governments remove the roadblocks to a private payment for care. Now more than ever, it could prevent suffering and save lives.

Josh Dehaas is a law student at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and a summer intern at the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a charity dedicated to defending constitutional rights and freedoms. Follow him on Twitter @JoshDehaas.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/covid...surance-even-more-unconscionable_3395276.html
 

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Why Did Russia Experience a Steep Rise in CCP Virus Infections?

Tian Yun, June 16, 2020, Commentary

By June 15, the number of Russian residents infected with the Chinese Communist Party virus (CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus) exceeded 530,000, the third highest number after the United States and Brazil.

Two high-ranking officials, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Culture Minister Olga Ljubimova, also tested positive for the virus. The development of the pandemic in Russia is somewhat unexpected. What went wrong that caused this steep increase?

Russia adopted quick and decisive measures at the onset of the pandemic. On Jan. 31, Russia closed its 16 border crossings with China and stopped issuing electronic visas to mainland Chinese. Russian authorities also completely stopped the trains going to and from China and North Korea. Major airlines either suspended or substantially reduced flights between China and Russia.

Voice Of America once characterized Russia’s pandemic control measures to isolate itself from China were the most stringent. As of March 16, fewer than 100 cases were identified throughout Russia.

However, the good times didn’t last long. Russian leaders began to restore the relationship with the CCP, praising China, and advocating cooperation. Since then, the number of confirmed cases increased rapidly, and there was a sharp surge in April. In early May, more than 10,000 cases were reported each day for ten days in a row.

I believe that it is Russia’s pro-communist stance that has caused its defenses against the virus to collapse.

Russia’s Attitude Towards the CCP’s Pandemic Control

President Putin had three phone conversations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping after the CCP virus started to noticeably spread outside China. Both the Russian Presidential Office and Xinhua News Agency reported on these three conversations.

The first phone call on March 19 was actually a delayed communication between the two countries, as Xi had already talked to over a dozen state leaders prior to this conversation with Putin. Russia’s quick action to close the borders with China, as well as showing a cold attitude towards China, might be the reason behind the delay.

The CCP’s Xinhua News Agency claimed in a press release that Putin appreciated China ’s efforts to fight the pandemic, saying that China “sets a good example” for the international community. Russia hopes to continue a mutually supportive and cooperative relationship with China in fighting the pandemic, and at the same time, continue to deepen the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between Russia and China.

The English announcement from the official website of the Russian Presidential Office stated that “The Russian side highly assessed the results achieved by the Chinese leadership and the Chinese people in countering the spread of the disease.”

On April 16, Xi and Putin talked over the phone for the second time. Xinhua News Agency reported that Putin said that some people tried to “smear” China with regard to the origin of the virus, and “Russia is willing to continue to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with China in various fields such as fighting the pandemic.”

Russian Presidential Office again reported the phone conversation on its official website. “Mutual support in countering this global threat is further evidence of the special nature of the Russian-Chinese comprehensive strategic partnership. The two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthening their cooperation in this area… Vladimir Putin praised the consistent and effective actions of Russia’s Chinese partners, which helped stabilize the epidemiological situation in the country. He stressed that it was counterproductive to accuse China of releasing information to the global community on this dangerous infection in an untimely manner.”

On May 8, Xi congratulated Putin on the 75th anniversary (May 9) of the Soviet Union’s victory of “the Great Patriotic War.” The Xinhua News Agency reported that Putin mentioned that “A few forces blame China for the pandemic. Russia opposes their conduct and will stand firmly with China.” However, there is no such statement from the Russian Presidential Office.

Although the two sides differ in their statements of the three phone conversations, Putin’s stance certainly helped to tide the CCP over during a difficult time. Currently, among influential nations, he is the only state leader who openly opposes the United States blaming the pandemic on the CCP. When the CCP is facing worldwide condemnation, the support from Russia is of great significance to Chinese regime.

Take a look at the timeline. The pandemic in Russia worsened drastically from late March, which coincides with Putin’s praise and support for the Chinese communist leaders. This is no accident.

Statement by Russia’s Foreign Minister

Foreign Ministers of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) held a video tele-conference on April 28 on battling the CCP virus pandemic. Russia’s Foreign Ministry publicized Foreign Minister Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions.

Speaking of the role of WHO, Lavrov said, “We share the opinion that the WHO is a critically important tool which has now become an unparalleled platform for gathering information and facts from various states… We will continue to support the WHO regardless of what other countries might say about its activities.”

He also said, “As for our evaluation of the Russia-China interaction in fighting the coronavirus, we believe that it deserves high praise. From the outset, we provided assistance to Wuhan in China, and I hope we have made our contribution to China overcoming this threat fairly quickly. Now Beijing is helping everyone, including our country, to curb the spread of this infection.”

It is well known that WHO has acted as China’s puppet in handling the global pandemic. When pandering to the CCP, WHO caused serious delay in global pandemic prevention. However, Lavrov spoke highly of WHO and praised the cooperation between China and Russia. His statement is a strong endorsement of the CCP.

The Russia-China Strategic Partnership

After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Russia actively made friendly overtures to the West and left the CCP aside. It wasn’t until the end of 1992 that China and Russia restored normal diplomatic and trade interactions.

When Putin came to power in 2001, Russia and China signed the “2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship,” which established an equal and cooperative strategic partnership. In 2010, the two countries confirmed the “Comprehensive Strategic Collaboration Partnership.”

After Xi Jinping came to power, interactions between Beijing and Moscow became more frequent. In July 2017, the Chinese and Russian navies held their first joint military exercise in the Baltic Sea. In September 2018, China participated in Russia’s annual military exercise code-named “Oriental 2018” (Vostok-18) for the first time. These actions have drawn great attention from the outside world.

Conclusion

Russia experienced 73 years of communist rule and has provided support for the CCP. Although Russia has now abandoned the communist system, it has not yet got rid of the imprint of communist toxins. Today, the CCP has replaced the Soviet Communist Party to become the “communist boss” on this planet, hoping to hold onto the communist red flag forever. It continues to persecute people with lies and violence and violates basic values.

Although Russia has vacillated in its attitude toward the CCP in recent years, it has basically maintained a close partnership with the CCP. Moscow often stands on the side of the CCP on human rights issues and fails to uphold justice. In recent years, Russian officials have even restrained and obstructed Falun Gong practitioners’ activities in Russia.

On Oct. 30, 2017, Putin personally unveiled “the Wall of Grief,” a monument to victims of Soviet-era political repression. Speaking at the ceremony, he condemned the Soviet Communist Party’s political persecution, saying, “Our duty is to not let it slip into oblivion.”

Now that Putin knows well the evil nature of the Communist Party, he should no longer take the old path. Recently, Russia made a very unwise choice to endorse the CCP on the handling of the pandemic.

The CCP often brags about the “degree of mutual trust,” “the level of cooperation,” and “strategic value” between China and Russia. In fact, this relationship is driven by immoral interests and deviates from universal values. It is dark and wicked. For any government, having a good relationship with the CCP will only bring about endless troubles. The dramatic reversal of Russia’s pandemic outbreak is a profound lesson.

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Perspectives on the Pandemic:
Severity of CCP Virus Outbreak in Netherlands Puts Spotlight on Beijing Ties

Commentary by Li Yan
June 18, 2020


The Netherlands, a small nation that ranks globally at 133rd in land area and 69th in population, is one of the countries most seriously affected by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

As of June 17, the Netherlands has reported more than 49,000 confirmed cases and more than 6,000 deaths. The city of Tilburg and North Brabant Province have become ground zero for the virus’s spread, as the first patient in the Netherlands was identified in Tilburg and it also has the highest number of patients in the country.

The tragic spread of the virus in The Netherlands comes as the country has forged closer ties with Beijing in recent years. Especially Tilburg is of pivotal importance in China–Netherlands cooperation in the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road). It has numerous business interactions with China.

Chengdu–Europe Express Rail: A Landmark of Belt and Road

North Brabant is an important component of the CCP’s Belt and Road project in the Netherlands. In 2016, the Chengdu–Europe Express Rail, which connects Chengdu and Tilburg, was officially opened. This was the only direct freight railway from China to the Netherlands. Compared with 45 days to ship by ocean, it takes only 15 days to travel on land via this express rail, with a cost as low as a quarter of that of air freight.

Tilburg is the sixth-largest city in the Netherlands, with a population of 217,000. The Wilhelmina Canal flows through the city. Because of its advantageous location, Tilburg is a commercial and transportation hub. Key industries in the city include wool, machinery, electrical appliances, and leather.

While the Netherlands is an important gateway to Europe, Tilburg is known as the “logistics gateway” of the country, directly connecting to Rotterdam, as well as Moerdijk in North Brabant, and also to the United Kingdom and France. In addition, many large international companies have distribution sites here. That’s why the Dutch GVT company was chosen by the CCP to operate the Chengdu–Europe Express Rail.

The express rail is a landmark of the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative, and has established a new logistics route for BRI to penetrate into Asia and Europe. It passes through China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands, spanning a total of 10,947 kilometers (6,802 miles). Through the express rail, a large number of Chinese electrical products, clothing, shoes, and hats are swiftly shipped to the Netherlands and beyond, while wines, milk powder, finished vehicles, and other goods from the Netherlands, France, and Spain can easily enter the China market, taking the BRI project to a new level. The two endpoints, Tilburg and Chengdu, have also become sister cities, laying the foundation for the Port of Rotterdam to become a pivotal part of the BRI in the Netherlands.

In fact, the economic and trade relationship between North Brabant and China has a long history. Deputy Gov. Bert Pauli of North Brabant Province told Chinese state media People’s Daily on Sept. 22, 2017, that more than 30 years ago, Philips, a well-known Dutch company headquartered in the province, set up a factory in Nanjing, China, to make TV components. Today, more than 130 companies in the province have established branches in China’s eastern coastal areas. With this foundation in place, it was natural that Tilburg would be chosen as an important location for the BRI project.

Port of Rotterdam Joins Belt and Road

The Netherlands, known as the gateway to Europe, has a well-developed logistics industry. With its superior geographical location, it has established a highly advanced water, land, and air transportation network and has become one of the most important commodity sorting centers in Europe. As a result, China’s BRI project has chosen the Netherlands as the nexus for its land and sea transportation networks.

Through the Port of Rotterdam and the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, the two major freight hubs in Europe, cargo from the Netherlands can arrive at any major EU market within two days.

When the CCP promoted the BRI in the Netherlands, its primary goal was to have the Port of Rotterdam and the local logistics industry cooperate with it, so as to open up a major hub of the “Silk Road by Land and Sea.”

The Port of Rotterdam transports goods to and from more than 1,000 ports around the world. Various terminals also have rail transshipment facilities, which means cargo can be loaded directly onto a train at the terminal, making it a perfect choice to access European destinations in the hinterland.

The Euromax container terminal in the port is today’s most advanced unmanned loading and unloading terminal, with an annual handling capacity of about 7 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), of which 25 percent of the container throughput comes from China.

The Dutch thought that joining the “New Silk Road” would allow their network of facilities to be extended and gain greater benefits. In particular, the authorities at the Port of Rotterdam were tempted by the fact that, in addition to the traditional maritime business from Asia, land and sea joint transport would allow it to connect to the Chengdu–Europe Express through Tilburg and Duisburg, Germany. Asia–Europe logistics would have more options. With improved connectivity, the port would also have greater profits.

China’s BRI project marched into European ports through the state-owned China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO Shipping). In May 2016, COSCO Pacific Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of COSCO Shipping Group, signed an equity transfer agreement with ECT Participations B.V., a subsidiary of Hutchison Port Group controlled by Li Ka-shing. COSCO Pacific bought a 35 percent stake in the Euromax container terminal owned by ECT for 125 million euros. After the completion of the acquisition, together with previously existing shares, COSCO Pacific had a 47.5 percent stake in the Euromax container terminal, thus becoming its largest shareholder.

COSCO Shipping holds controlling shares or ownership in many terminals in EU countries such as Spain. As its investment holdings keep increasing, it has more power and influence and is capable of choosing which ports it prefers and which to avoid. After China’s BRI brought to the Port of Rotterdam the largest shareholder, the port does have greater connectivity and business expansion, but the Netherlands itself sees no improvement in its ability to allocate logistic routes among various ports.

More Express Rail Lines Connecting to China

In addition to pushing the Port of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, to join the BRI, the city of Tilburg also led many Dutch companies to build express railways leading to China.

Following the inauguration of the Chengdu–Europe Express Rail in 2016, Dutch logistics company Nunner opened a new freight route to China two years later. The first train departed from Amsterdam on March 7, 2018, and traveled 11,000 kilometers (6,835 miles) before arriving in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province.

This is the first direct train line between a Dutch port and China. Erwin Cootjans, president of Nunner, said that Amsterdam was chosen as the starting point for a through train because the port offers inland waterway connections to a number of Dutch cities such as Kampen, Groningen, Meppel, Leeuwarden, and Harlingen. There are also fast connections from Amsterdam and Antwerp via short-sea shipping to Great Britain and Scandinavia.

In May 2018, CH Robinson, an international freight logistics group, announced the opening of a new rail freight service, with one end connecting to eight Chinese cities including Zhengzhou, Suzhou, Wuhan, Xiamen, Yiwu, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Chongqing, and the other end reaching eight European cities including Malaszewicze, Hamburg, Duisburg, Milan, Tilburg, Lyon, Paris, and Barking, located in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

The More Trade With China, the Larger the Deficit

The Netherlands is a major trading country and has maintained a trade surplus for years. However, the authorities found that under the framework of the BRI, although the logistic services brought more business opportunities, the country didn’t get many actual benefits. On the contrary, there’s an increasingly large trade deficit.

Statistics from Eurostat show that in 2016, import and export between the Netherlands and China totaled $82.49 billion, a decrease of 1.9 percent from the previous year. Specifically, the Netherlands’ exports to China were $11.51 billion, an increase of 11.9 percent; the Netherlands’ imports from China were $70.98 billion, a decrease of 3.8 percent; and the trade deficit for the Netherlands was $59.47 billion.

In 2017, the total import and export volume between the two countries was $107.4 billion, an increase of 30.9 percent. The Dutch export to China was $13.54 billion, an increase of 19.1 percent; the Dutch import from China was $93.86 billion, an increase of 32.8 percent. The trade deficit that year was as high as $80.32 billion.

In 2018, the bilateral import and export of goods totaled $112.64 billion, an increase of 4.7 percent. The Netherlands’ exports to China were $12.56 billion, a decrease of 6.4 percent; imports from China totaled $100.80 billion, an increase of 6.2 percent. Although the Netherlands elevated its ranking from China’s third-largest trading partner in the EU to the second largest in the previous year, the trade deficit between the Netherlands and China further increased, reaching $87.52 billion in 2018.

More and more people have come to realize that the Belt and Road project actually has become “the Pandemic Belt and Road.” The Netherlands is yet another case in point. All important partners of the BRI, such as the Netherlands, Iran, Italy, and Spain, have become the most severely affected areas in the world by the CCP virus. Even Switzerland, a neutral country, was one of the top 10 hardest-hit countries for some time. It has also signed a letter of intent with the CCP on the Belt and Road initiative.

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Five Questions About the Origins of the Latest Virus Outbreak in Beijing

Commentary by Yuan Bin
June 23, 2020

After more than 50 days of no new cases, Beijing has announced new confirmed cases of CCP virus (novel coronavirus) infection.

On June 11, the first local case was reported by the Beijing city government. To date, there have been more than 200 cases confirmed by authorities.

Scanning numerous information sources, I found five questions around this issue.

1. Did the virus come from imported salmon?

After the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus again hit Beijing, salmon became the authorities’ first suspect.

Following the report of the new case on June 11, authorities removed all salmon products from the market overnight and launched a major food safety inspection.

On the evening of June 12, Beijing’s municipal Party secretary Cai Qi and mayor Chen Jining held an emergency meeting on the outbreak. They claimed that the CCP virus was found in imported seafood, and the virus strain was different from the domestic strain. Import of seafood, beef, and lamb were halted immediately.

Salmon obviously became the scapegoat of the outbreak.

According to a report by state-owned Global Times on June 13, the CCP virus was detected on a chopping board used by a seller of imported salmon at the Xinfadi food market. The seller’s salmon was from the Fengtai district’s Jingshen seafood market, according to Zhang Yuxi, head of the Xinfadi market.

As a result, salmon naturally became the biggest “suspect” and “culprit.”

However, several Chinese virologists told Caixin.com that there is no scientific evidence to support that salmon can be infected with the novel coronavirus and spread the virus. The possibility of transmitting the virus through food contamination is also very slim.

More importantly, the nine personnel directly related to the stalls that cut imported salmon all tested negative in nucleic acid tests; the 186 personnel working at seafood sections of the Jingshen seafood market also all tested negative; and the 283 on-site samples collected from Jingshen seafood market all tested negative.

2. Did the virus come from the West?

Wu Zunyou, the newly appointed chief epidemiologist of the Chinese CDC, said the laboratory test results showed that the virus strain was closer to the strain from Europe. However, it could possibly come from Europe or the Americas, he said.

Guan Yi, Director of the State Key Laboratory for Emerging Infectious Diseases, University of Hong Kong told China Newsweek, “There have been no new cases in Beijing for more than fifty days. This time it must be imported.”

Guan also claimed, “The possibility of spreading through the temperature-controlled supply chain is the greatest. Many slaughterhouses in Europe and the United States have had the COVID-19 outbreak. If it is spread through the temperature-controlled supply chain, it is nothing new.”

A CCP official claimed on a Chinese social platform: “We ignored the prevention and testing of imported seafood and meat. Since the outbreak, we have strictly controlled inbound flights and travelers to strictly prevent imported cases, and have adopted extremely strict isolation and prevention measures for inbound people. However, there’s still a shortcoming. We have not tested the imported seafood, meat, and fruits. This provides the virus an opportunity to sneak in through salmon.”

The CCP’s troll army soon started to pick fights online and blamed the virus source of the Beijing outbreak on Europe and the United States.

In fact, the logic to see through this is simple. If the virus really spread to China through imported foods such as seafood, meat, and so on, how come it did not happen to other countries which also import from the same regions?

The global salmon farming output is roughly 2.2 million tons per year. The most important markets are Europe (about 1 million tons) and the United States (about 400,000 tons). China imports less than 100,000 tons a year, and its annual consumption is less than 5 percent of global output. Why is it that only salmon imported into China was found to contain the CCP virus? Does the virus have a preference for China?

3. Did the virus come from Hubei?

After Zhang Yuelin, general manager of Xinfadi Market, was dismissed, a worker at the market disclosed on social media that Zhang and the leadership were falsely positive about “incentivizing the procurement of produce from Hubei to save Hubei” and “neglecting the supervision of temperature-controlled transportation and staff.”

Hubei Province was a hotspot for China’s epidemic. Wuhan, the city where the virus first broke out, is the capital of Hubei.

Since the Xinfadi market has been actively buying goods from Hubei, is it possible that some virus-infected products from Hubei have brought the virus into Beijing? Or the driver who went to Hubei to transport the goods, or the freezer in the truck was affected with the virus, and then brought it into Beijing? I believe this is likely.

4. Could the virus have come from delegates to the Two Sessions?

The Two Sessions refers to the regime’s annual political meetings, where the rubber-stamp legislature and its advisory body enact policies and agendas. Normally held in March, the 2020 meeting was delayed until May 21 due to the CCP virus pandemic.

Some Chinese netizens speculated that the outbreak in Beijing was caused by delegates from other provinces who may have brought the virus to Beijing while attending the Two Sessions. Cases were already discovered before the end of the Two Sessions. To save face for Chinese leader Xi Jinping (since he’s the one who insisted on holding the Two Sessions), the outbreak was concealed for more than ten days. Fearing that Beijing will become the second Wuhan, the regime was forced to disclose the outbreak.

When did this wave of the Beijing outbreak begin? In an exclusive interview with state broadcaster CCTV News on the evening of June 15, Wu Zunyou said that it is still not very certain, but, “From the cases found so far, based on the time the case was found and transmitted, the earliest should be around the end of May.” If so, according to the incubation period of the virus of at least two weeks, it is very possible that this new wave outbreak would have appeared before the Two Sessions concluded at the end of May.

Since the epidemic began, Chinese official experts have admitted that there are a large number of asymptomatic infected people in China. One expert has said: “The virus stays in the body for more than three weeks, and it is possible to transmit the virus.” Thus, even rigorous nucleic acid testing may not fully detect all cases. Of course, the experts would not trace the outbreak back to the delegates. It would be considered a challenge to the Party’s political stability.

5. Why is all the attention on the salmon cutting board sample?

On the morning of June 13, during a press briefing about the Beijing outbreak, officials stated that on June 12, a total of 5,424 swab samples were collected from seafood, meat, and the external environment of farmer’s wholesale markets and supermarkets in Beijing. 40 environmental samples from the Xinfadi market tested positive.

What is puzzling is that, among the 40 positive samples collected from the environment, why was the salmon chopping board sample the only one that was released? Could there be any unspeakable secrets hidden in the 39 other samples? Or, was publicizing the salmon chopping board sample intended to mislead the public, into thinking the source of the outbreak was from outside China?

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Five Secrets of the CCP Pandemic Coverup Revealed in Leaked Documents

News Analysis by He Jian
June 23, 2020, Updated June 24, 2020


Internal documents from China’s National Health Commission (NHC), revealing comments from top health officials about the Chinese regime’s handling of the CCP virus outbreak, have exposed five key secrets about the authorities’ coverup.

The Epoch Times recently obtained a trove of documents, including an internal notice about a confidential teleconference on Jan. 14 with provincial and municipal health officials.

This confidential notice asked all relevant officials to attend an online training at 10 a.m. on Jan. 15.

The training session focused on how to proceed with the diagnosis and treatment of CCP virus infection, containment policy, and deployment of medical assistance in hospitals according to instructions of the NHC.

Another document is titled, “Teleconference talk on new coronavirus by director Jiao.” Jiao refers to Jiao Yahui from the commission’s Medical Administration and Supervision Department.

The document was a transcript of a presentation given by Jiao Yahui on Jan. 15 regarding the CCP virus.

According to an Associated Press (AP) report published on April 15, internal documents obtained by AP revealed that the head of China’s NHC, Ma Xiaowei, laid out a grim assessment of the coronavirus situation during a confidential teleconference on Jan. 14 with provincial health officials.

The transcript obtained by The Epoch Times revealed that Jiao Yahui mentioned that “Director Ma gave an important talk on the teleconference report on the coronavirus situation yesterday morning.” From this comment, it can be inferred that the teleconference Jiao Yahui participated in was the one held on Jan. 15.

Five Secrets Revealed in the Transcript

During the teleconference’s training session, Jiao Yahui’s presentation disclosed five major key points that have been hidden by the regime.

1. The CCP was aware of the outbreak

At the beginning of the talk, Jiao asked “everyone to maintain a high degree of vigilance,” because “everyone’s perception of this work is indeed different (from what’s demanded), and there is a big gap.”

When Jiao reminded officials of all localities to “keep a high degree of vigilance,” it was during the peak season of travel during the Chinese New Year. At that time, the CCP vehemently denied human-to-human transmission of the virus, and eight doctors were punished for “rumor-mongering.” The truth of the epidemic was kept not only from the general public, but also from medical staff at the grassroots level.

Jiao Yahui, as a senior health care committee member and insider, issued warnings at internal meetings. This shows that the CCP was very clear on the fact that the CCP virus was highly contagious and concealing the truth would lead to a severe epidemic.

2. The regime prioritizes discipline and stability over public health

Before discussing the specific work, Jiao repeatedly emphasized discipline, “that is, we want to make the inside tight and the outside loose.”

Jiao said, “Don’t create panic and instability in society” because Chinese New Year is coming. She specifically emphasized, “Everyone should not disclose in the circle of friends and the internet, but only for internal use at work.”

Jiao’s statement confirmed what’s believed to be the regime’s decision to conceal the truth, to preserve the festive holiday atmosphere and social stability, at the cost of missing the golden time to prevent the spread of the outbreak.

A Hong Kong media report in February indicated that Xi Jinping was notified in early January, about the outbreak and prevention mechanisms, but at the Politburo Standing Committee meeting on Jan. 7, Xi requested such measures not to affect the festive atmosphere. An opportunity to prevent the spread of the epidemic was thus missed.

3. Infection prevention comes second

Jiao talked about the formation of a team of experts specializing in “respiratory, infectious, acute care, imaging, and examination,” and “preparations” of supplies including protective gear, disinfectants, and anti-virus products and medicines.

These requirements are clearly in preparation for human-to-human transmission. However, authorities did not publicly acknowledge the possibility of human transmission until Jan. 20.

4. The “rule” to confirm a case

It is worth mentioning what Jiao specifically emphasized: “to strictly implement the diagnosis (procedure) of the first case.”

It is required that diagnosis and publishing the first confirmed case cannot be done by local authorities. It must be “confirmed by state and published by province.” That is, the testing and confirmation will be done by China’s National Disease Control Center (CDC).

Jiao also emphasized that even after the first confirmed case is made, subsequent cases still need to be “reviewed and approved by the national CDC laboratory,” and the diagnosis and public announcement are organized by the province.

Jiao said, “This is a discipline.” She also said, “The first case in each province must be diagnosed by a national agency, and then released in the province.”

5. Avoid “social panic” caused by deaths

Jiao said, “Especially if there are many death cases, it will easily cause panic in society, panic about disease and an epidemic situation.” Jiao said about reducing the mortality rate, “this is the focus of our critical care.”

Political commentator Li Linyi pointed out that the critical care and mortality rate proposed by the NHC and Jiao Yahui are more to prevent “triggering social panic” than to respect and save life under the CCP rule. Li Linyi believes Jiao was following Xi Jinping’s instructions, that is, she was implementing a policy of maintaining stability, not following standard medical procedures.

Chengdu Epidemiologic Investigation Report Confirms Part of Jiao’s Talk

A Jan. 16 report from the CDC of Chengdu city, Sichuan Province, proved that the “rule” of prohibiting local authorities from confirming cases was strictly followed.

According to this report, a patient surnamed Yang developed a fever on Jan. 3 in Wuhan. He returned to Chengdu on Jan. 9 after receiving treatment. Afterward, he repeatedly developed a fever and sought medical treatment. He was admitted to Chengdu First People’s Hospital on Jan. 11 and was treated in isolation.

The report said that on Jan. 15, the hospital took a sample from Yang onsite and sent it to the CDCs of both Chengdu and Sichuan for testing. On Jan. 16, the provincial CDC reported that his sample tested positive in a nucleic acid test.

Based on this, the Chengdu CDC made a “preliminary investigation conclusion” in the report: “This case is an observation case and diagnosed as a new coronavirus-infected pneumonia case. Further confirmation is required to combine with the national CDC diagnosis.” In other words, the case was not confirmed at that time.

In fact, according to China’s Jan. 21 epidemic briefing, as of Jan. 20, only Hubei Province, Guangdong Province, Beijing, and Shanghai had “confirmed” cases. This shows that the national CDC failed to confirm Yang’s test on Jan. 16.

This report from Chengdu city confirmed part of Jiao’s talk—that is, local officials are not authorized to “confirm” cases. Even if the patient samples test positive by the provincial CDC, they have to wait for the national CDC’s review and approval to be recognized as confirmed cases.

The Epoch Times Reports Numerous Coverups by the CCP

The Epoch Times has repeatedly exposed internal documents that revealed the CCP’s coverup of the epidemic.

For example, a document from the regional health commission in northern China’s Inner Mongolia, revealed details about the NHC’s instructions on how local health agencies should deal with the new disease (now known as COVID-19).

It asked hospitals to take measures to prevent the disease from spreading inside their facilities and train staff on such actions. It also asked hospitals to set up fever clinics and to “pre-screen and triage” anyone experiencing a fever, to determine levels of urgency for treating patients.

The notice was marked “for internal use only, and cannot be distributed on the internet.”

Commentator Li Linyi said this document shows, that the CCP long knew that the virus was highly contagious and may spread rapidly, but insisted on concealing that information from the public.

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The Complicated Ethics of Price Gouging

Commentary by Matt Zwolinski
June 26, 2020

Every time disaster strikes, the pattern repeats itself. Whether it’s a hurricane, wildfires, or a pandemic, every disaster brings with it a fresh round of complaints that merchants are engaged in “price gouging.”

And, predictably, each time such complaints appear, so does a wave of opinion pieces by economists, defending price increases as an efficient way to ration excess demand, and incentivize increased supply.

The economists’ response is cogent as far as it goes, but it leaves most people unmoved. However efficient, most people still think that price gouging is deeply immoral.

As it turns out, the question of what makes a price fair has been debated by moral philosophers ever since the time of the ancient Greeks. And while those debates provide some support for the modern condemnation of price gouging, the ethical issues involved turn out to be a good deal more complicated than most people appreciate.

One of the earliest theories of the just price was developed in Ancient Greece by Aristotle. Aristotle thought that a just exchange involves a kind of equality. To trade fairly with another person is to give up something of equal value to what you get. The value of a thing, in turn, is the function of the need it satisfies—a house is of higher value than a book, because the house satisfies a greater need. And the need, in turn, is roughly measured by the amount of money one is willing to pay for it.

Around 1,500 years later, St. Thomas Aquinas took Aristotle’s view one step further. If value is a function of need, and money is the mechanism for measuring and comparing need, then the just price is equivalent to the market price—the price that emerges out of the process of various people’s needs competing through the marketplace. And just as the market price will vary from place to place and time to time according to considerations of supply and demand, so, too, will the just price.

The conclusion that the just price is the market price—a conclusion that would stand as the dominant understanding of the just price throughout the history of the idea—does not mean that anything goes. Aquinas, for instance, thought that if you had a good that someone else desperately needed, and that you could easily part with, it would be wrong to raise the price in order to take advantage of that desperation.

John Locke, writing about 400 years later, took a similar position. But, interestingly, while Locke thought it would be wrong to take advantage of the desperation of particular buyers, he nevertheless held that a just price could and should reflect the desperation of the market as a whole. If there’s a famine in Dunkirk, he wrote, but no famine in Ostend, then it’s morally permissible to sell grain for a higher price in Dunkirk than in Ostend.

Locke’s position might sound callous, but it’s grounded in a humanitarian concern to ensure that people get what they need to survive in difficult times. Forcing sellers to sell at the same price in a famine as they do in normal conditions, could mean that buyers in the famine-struck city wind up with nothing at all, because goods sold at less than the market price would be snatched off the shelves and hoarded, or resold on the secondary market.

Preventing prices from rising doesn’t do anything to fix the underlying scarcity that caused those prices to rise in the first place.

What does all of this say about contemporary debates over price gouging? On the one hand, of course it is wrong to use your neighbor’s suffering as an opportunity for your own gain. On the other hand, a system of market prices that accurately reflects conditions of supply and demand plays a vital role in promoting human well-being for precisely the reasons that contemporary economic critics of anti-gouging laws point out.

In the end, we don’t necessarily have to choose sides. The economists are probably right that laws prohibiting price gouging are misguided, and likely to produce harmful unintended consequences. But the critics of price gouging are partly right, too.

Just because you have a right to charge a high price doesn’t mean that it’s always the right thing to do. Determining when it is, and when it isn’t, is a difficult and context-dependent decision. In other words, it’s precisely not the kind of question best settled by the blunt instrument of legal regulation.

Matt Zwolinski is professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego and director of USD’s Center for Ethics, Economics, and Public Policy. He is a contributor to the Independent Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-complicated-ethics-of-price-gouging_3402259.html
 

Ellanjay

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Apr 11, 2020
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Morality, the CCP’s Global Threat, and the Coronavirus Pandemic

June 28, 2020 | By a Minghui correspondent in China

A short film titled “Bus 44” sent shock waves through the audience at the 2001 Venice Film Festival. The film won the “Special Jury Award” in Venice and, later on, a number of other film festival awards.

The film was based on something that actually happened in a mountainous region in China.

On the day of the incident, a female driver was steering a medium bus on a winding road when three “passengers” suddenly took out knives and demanded money from everyone else on the bus. After they collected the money, they made the driver stop the bus and ordered her to get off, telling her they were going to rape her. She yelled for help as the thugs dragged her off the bus. No one responded to her desperate appeal, except for a skinny, middle-aged man, whom the thugs easily knocked to the ground.

The man shouted to the other passengers to help the driver, but no one seemed to care. They just sat there in silence while the young woman was dragged into the brush and gang-raped. One passenger said, “It’s all her fault (that we’re stuck here).”

Half an hour later, the three thugs brought the driver back. She had blood on her face and her clothes were a mess. Still, nobody seemed to care and urged her to drive on.

The traumatized woman pulled herself together, then told the man who’d tried to help her, “Get off the bus!” When he refused, saying he didn’t do anything wrong and had tried to help her, she said she would not start the engine unless he got off.

Everybody on the bus turned to the man, urging him to get off so that they could be on their way. A few men even got up to try to push him off the bus, while the three thugs were joking about how they’d enjoyed raping the driver.

The driver threw the man’s bag out of the window, and when he got off to get it, she shut the door and drove on.

As the bus neared the top of the mountain, the driver accelerated. She looked calm, but tears were streaming down her face. The passengers began to get nervous and told her to slow down. She didn’t say a thing, just kept going at full speed until the bus went off the cliff.

The only survivor was the man who had been forced off the bus earlier–the only one who tried to help her.

This story provides a glimpse into the sad reality of moral degeneration in China. After 70 years of totalitarian rule by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), traditional Chinese culture and ethical beliefs have been replaced by atheism and the Party doctrines of class struggle, violence, and deceit. So many people in today’s China have become selfish and unfeeling when it comes to the suffering of others. But as we can see in this story, silence in the face of gross injustice comes at a price.

“A Form of Evil Yet to Be Seen on This Planet”

Of all the horrible crimes that are taking place in China, the most evil and shocking one would be the forced, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.

Falun Gong is a mind and body cultivation practice based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. It has benefited tens of millions of people both in China and around the world.

Viewing the popularity of Falun Gong as a “threat” to its control of people’s minds, the CCP launched a brutal persecution of the practice in July 1999. It continues to this day. Innocent people are subjected to unlawful arrest, detention, imprisonment, and torture, and many have been killed for their organs.

That horrendous crime first came to light in 2006 when the ex-wife of a surgeon who was involved in such operations in a hospital in Tianjin came forward and testified.

In July 2006, David Kilgour, former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific, and David Matas, Canadian human rights lawyer, released an investigative report that concluded “…the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centers and ‘people’s courts,’ since 1999, have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas, were virtually simultaneously seized for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries.” In the report, it refers to the crime committed by the Chinese regime as “a form of evil yet to be seen on this planet.”

Shen Zhongyang, top liver transplant surgeon and former director of the Center for Organ Transplantation in Tianjin Central First Hospital and the Liver Transplant Institute of Armed Police General Hospital, was recognized as having “completed almost 10,000 liver transplants by 2014, making up a quarter of the country’s total liver transplants” in the introduction about him on a Baidu Baike (Baidu Encyclopedia) page.

Given the short wait time (from one week to 3 months) for organs in China, many patients from nearly 20 countries and regions, including Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, rushed to China for organ transplants.

When the holocaust was brought to light, many people vowed to never let it happen again. But decades later, when the systematic crimes of organ harvesting are taking place in China, many world leaders and media, due to the CCP’s political and economic clout, have kept silent about it.

Such silence has given the CCP tacit permission to continue it unscrupulous practices.

But such silence does come at a cost. According to David Matas, renowned human rights lawyer and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, the current coronavirus pandemic the whole world is now dealing with is the consequence of turning a blind eye to China’s human rights abuses.

In an interview with Minghui.org, Matas said, “If the rest of the world had been more aggressive in combating all this misrepresentation and cover-up and denial and counterfactual narrative in dealing with organ transplant abuse; if the global system had insisted on transparency and accountability in dealing with organ transplant abuse; and if China had [faced] global pressure for transparency and accountability in its health system in dealing with organ transplant abuse, we wouldn’t have this coronavirus now. And we are suffering the consequences now of turning a blind eye to organ transplant abuse.”

Matas also said that, despite the tremendous work that has been done over the past decade to stop the forced organ harvesting, it’s far from enough, because it is still going on in China today.

“It certainly hasn’t reached the governmental and inter-governmental level the way it should have done. And the reason is that we’re dealing with a geopolitical power, an economically powerful, politically powerful [power], who is not just throwing its weight around in China to keep its position secure in China, but it’s throwing its weight around globally to propagandize, to pressure, to intimidate, using economic and political leverage to cover up, deny, obfuscate, present a counterfactual narrative.

“For far too many people around the world, it’s just been politically and economically convenient to go along.”

The CCP’s Ambition and the Danger of Appeasement by the West

The Western world has held high hopes for the CCP to take a turn for the better along with China’s staggering economic development over the last few decades, especially after China was admitted into the WTO in 2001. They offered the CCP regime favorable trade terms and provided loans and other forms of financial support to boost China’s economy.

However, instead of embracing the fundamental values, ethics, and the rule of law upheld in the free world, the CCP seems to have become even more belligerent in its avaricious ambition to ultimately dominate the world by way of economic power and military supremacy.

It has been vigorously pushing towards this goal through the controversial “One Belt, One Road” initiative and the ambitious “Made in China 2025” effort, a state-backed industrial policy aimed at having China dominate global high-tech manufacturing. To that end, the CCP imposed coercive technology transfer on companies as a pre-condition to enter the Chinese market as well as unequal trade conditions thanks to huge government subsidies. At the same time, the CCP unscrupulously steals valuable intellectual properties from the Western world, particularly the U.S.

On the military front, the CCP has steadily increased its military budget, with USD 237 billion for 2020, the second-highest out of 138 countries. Its aggressive build-up of military-grade artificial islands in the South China Sea region, which has been in territorial disputes with Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, is also perceived by many as unruly aggression that undermines the peace and stability in the region, to say the least.

While building up its economic and military muscles, the CCP has also intensified its soft power infiltration into the Western society on a wide social and economic spectrum by way of corruption and bribery in order to exert its influence and gain more ground for the promotion of its narratives.

It is fair to say that the CCP has been quite “successful” in pushing toward its ultimate goal in the past few decades, to a large extent due to the help of political and business leaders in the Western world.

Truth be told, for decades, many government leaders and big business entrepreneurs around the world have adopted an “appeasement” policy in dealing with the CCP for short-term trade and economic benefits, thereby turning a deaf ear to the CCP’s human rights abuses and to the danger that such collaboration might, in the long run, be detrimental to their own nation’s economic development, intellectual property, and/or sovereign integrity.

A Wake-up Call

Oftentimes, people only wake up when their own lives are in imminent danger, and the current pandemic seems to have indeed awakened many to begin to see the CCP for what it truly is in view of its conduct during the outbreak. They are beginning to see the danger of dancing with a wolf, especially an aggressive wolf in sheep’s clothing.

We have noticed that the international community, especially democratic countries, have begun to share a common understanding that the CCP cannot be trusted and that the policy of appeasement when it comes to the CCP’s totalitarian regime will only lead to more danger, danger that could eventually erode the fundamental principles and values that their freedoms and the rule of law are built upon.

For example, Australia’s push for an international, independent inquiry into the outbreak of coronavirus has secured the backing of 116 countries, including 54 African states, even though the CCP was strongly opposed to any independent investigation and has threatened Australia with a huge tariff on barley and blocked some of its beef imports.

European officials, who are traditionally less willing to be openly critical of the CCP regime, partly out of fear of retaliation, have also paid attention to the CCP’s behavior during the coronavirus crisis.

“Over these months, China has lost Europe,” said Reinhard Buetikofer, a German Green party lawmaker who chairs the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with China. He cited concerns, from China’s “truth management” in the early stages of the virus to an “extremely aggressive” stance by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing and “hard-line propaganda” that champions the superiority of Communist Party rule over democracy.

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell also called for talks between Europe and the U.S. to counter China. According to international reports, Borrell said that the two sides should make a common cause in order to “defend values and interest.”

Borrell suggested launching a “distinct bilateral dialogue” focused on China and the challenges it poses to the EU and the U.S. by its “actions and ambitions.” He said, “For us, it’s important to stay together with the U.S. in order to share concerns and to look for common ground to defend our values and our interest.”

Revival of Humanity

The outbreak of coronavirus that has come down on us like an avalanche has caused us very real pain and suffering, physically and mentally, socially and economically. Many people have lost their lives, and the numbers are continuing to increase.

But times of crisis also provide us with opportunities to pause in our busy lives and reflect on ourselves.

Tu Long, a millennial in Beijing, said in an interview with Voice of America, that when bad things happened to his fellow Chinese, he told himself not to care about it and just to “keep calm and carry on.” But the coronavirus pandemic completely changed his view.

“When they expelled the migrant workers in Beijing, I said to myself, ‘I’ve worked very hard, I’m not a migrant, I will not be expelled.’

“When they built the concentration camps in Xinjiang [for the minority-Muslim Uighurs], I thought, ‘I’m not an ethnic minority, I don’t have any religious beliefs, I will not be in trouble.’

“I sympathize with the suffering of the people in Hong Kong, but I thought, “I will not go out and protest [for democracy]–it has nothing to do with me.’

“This time it hit my hometown. Many people I know have gotten sick, and some have died—I can’t stand it any longer.”

A friend once said to him, “If you want to live in China, you have to do either of these two things, and if you can do both, that’s the best: Number one, disregard your rationality. Number two, disregard your conscience.”

Tu Long said he could do neither and he is now preparing to flee China. “As a survivor of the Wuhan epidemic, for the rest of my life, I have an obligation to speak for the dead.” he said.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2020/6/28/185672.html
 

Ellanjay

Council Member
Apr 11, 2020
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https://youtu.be/eBi3aShNZxo


Comparing the Pandemic Cover-Up to the CCP’s Latest Persecution Campaign

June 27, 2020 | By a Falun Dafa practitioner outside of China

Every few years since it took power, the CCP has ordered a political campaign to target a specific group to renew its intimidation of the Chinese people. As qigong became trendy in the 1990s, Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline based on the principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance,” quickly stood out from thousands of qigong schools because of its free instruction, profound spiritual teachings, and powerful health benefits.

Even though the government initially promoted Falun Gong as it brought down the country’s healthcare costs, its overwhelming popularity and complete independence from government control eventually prompted the CCP to choose it as the target of a new political campaign. In 1999, ten years after the massacre of pro-democracy students at Tiananmen Square, the CCP ordered the persecution of Falun Gong.

Combining its decades of experience in carrying out political struggles with the fast development of modern technology, the CCP was able to make the persecution of Falun Gong more covert, cunning, and sophisticated than all its previous campaigns. With strict online censorship and the promise of economic benefits to the West, not only the Chinese but also the rest of the world have turned a blind eye to the massive arrests, detention, torture, and killing of Falun Gong practitioners.

Looking back at how the persecution of Falun Gong has evolved in the past two decades, one can’t help but see the astonishing similarity in the cover-up tactics used in both the persecution of Falun Gong and the coronavirus pandemic.

“If the rest of the world had been more aggressive in combating all this misrepresentation and cover-up and denial and counter factual narrative in dealing with organ transplant abuse; if the global system had insisted on transparency and accountability in dealing with organ transplant abuse; and if China had [faced] global pressure for transparency and accountability in its health system in dealing with organ transplant abuse, we wouldn’t have this coronavirus now,” said David Matas, a Canadian human rights lawyer who has investigated the CCP’s state-sanctioned organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience.

“One can assume the Chinese Communist Party did not intend to cause the spread of the coronavirus, but what they have been actively engaged in is willful blindness. And I would say that the rest of the world also has joined them in this willful blindness. And we are now all suffering its consequence.” Matas continued. [1]

Below, we look back at the CCP’s history in hopes that it can provide some clues in how to prevent this tragedy from happening again.

Censorship

Just as the CCP didn’t allow anyone with information about the coronavirus outbreak to disclose it, they also prevented Falun Gong practitioners from exposing the persecution of their faith. Both private and state-run media outlets, websites, and personal blogs were ordered not to publish information about the persecution.

Similarly, the authorities’ blocking the publication of coronavirus genome sequences is akin to its banning the publication of Falun Gong books and audiovisual materials. As a result, people couldn’t see authentic information, only government propaganda.

A Falun Gong practitioner told Minghui.org in 2011 that he attended a county-level work meeting about starting another round of editing local chronicles. The chief editor said, “It’s absolutely not allowed to put down a word related to the 610 Office (an extralegal agency created specifically to persecute Falun Gong) or Falun Gong in the articles. The international society is criticizing China’s human rights situation. The persecution of Falun Gong can’t appear in the local chronicles. In some areas, the articles were rejected and had to be re-edited just because they put down information related to Falun Gong.” [2]

According to an employee of Baidu, the largest search engine in China, a significant portion of “sensitive words” it censored were related to Falun Gong, such as variations of the name; torture methods described by practitioners; Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese lawyer known for defending Falun Gong practitioners; and the book Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, which sheds light on the CCP’s history of deception and killing.[3]

After arresting and torturing Falun Gong practitioners, the police often threaten them not to report the incident to Minghui.org, the central news and communications platform for Falun Gong practitioners around the world. Meanwhile, the police also monitor practitioners’ cellphones, landlines and emails in attempts to prevent them from raising awareness of the persecution. At the beginning of the pandemic, authorities monitored Dr. Li Wenliang’s social media and reprimanded him for “spreading rumors” about the outbreak.

But the censorship didn’t stop Falun Gong practitioners from getting the word out. With all information channels strictly controlled by the CCP, some practitioners chose to intercept TV signals to broadcast information about the persecution. Between 2001 and 2005, a total of 129 practitioners, nearly one-third female, were arrested for tapping into TV cables to get the word out. More than 85% of the practitioners, numbering 110, were given prison terms ranging from 3 to 20 years, with an average length of 12.5 years.

By 2017, 11 of the sentenced practitioners had died from torture-induced injuries or health problems, while 10 other practitioners have also lost their lives over the years. Some of the surviving practitioners are still serving time in prison, while others, though released, struggle to deal with the long-term injuries they sustained while in detention. [4]

Other practitioners have been sentenced and tortured simply for talking to people about Falun Gong or distributing literature about the persecution. Ms. Liu Wei, a resident of Tonghua City, Jilin Province, was arrested on August 17, 2011, for talking to people about Falun Gong. She was sentenced to 4.5 years twenty days later by Ji’an City Court. [5]

In another case, Mr. Wang Baoshan, a practitioner in Tangshan City, Hebei Province, was arrested at work on July 3, 2017, days after a banner reading “The World Needs Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” was found in a neighborhood. He was later sentenced to 5.5 years and fined 20,000 yuan. [6]

Disinformation

Alongside the coverup of the persecution, the CCP also spread disinformation and propaganda to demonize Falun Gong practitioners and justify the persecution.

By the end of 2000–a year and a half after the CCP launched the suppression of Falun Gong–the campaign had failed to garner support among many of the CCP’s rank and file. Then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin had toured southern provinces earlier in 2000 to shore up support for the campaign among local leaders. Meanwhile, public support for the campaign had waned.

On January 23, 2001, five individuals allegedly set themselves on fire at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The entire scene was caught on camera from multiple angles. Beginning just hours after the event, state-controlled media was flooded with reports that the self-immolators were Falun Gong practitioners. These reports included grisly footage of the victims, portraying Falun Gong teachings as directly responsible for the tragedy.

In the next few weeks, state-run media continued to report on it non-stop, quickly turning people across China from respecting and sympathizing with Falun Gong to becoming infuriated and attacking the practice. Hate crimes targeting Falun Gong practitioners increased, and the CCP escalated its persecution with increased arrests, torture, killing, and forced organ harvesting.

Two decades later, the self-immolation hoax remains the biggest misconception most Chinese have about Falun Gong. [7]

Mislabeling

In the pandemic, coronavirus patients were recategorized as having other diseases in order for the CCP to cover up the severity of the outbreak. In the persecution of Falun Gong, however, such mislabels went both ways: healthy practitioners were labeled as mentally ill, taken to mental hospitals, and injected with toxic drugs, thus becoming real patients; meanwhile, others with mental illnesses but who never practiced Falun Gong were labeled as practitioners and said to have become crazy after learning the practice.

In another propaganda campaign against Falun Gong, the CCP fabricated “1,400 death cases” and claimed that these people died from practicing Falun Gong. A closer look at the cases revealed that some of the “victims” never existed, some never practiced Falun Gong, and one who was said to have refused medical intervention died in the arms of the physicians who treated her. [8]

In one example, Wang Anshou, a worker at the Taishan Machinery Factory in Xingtai City, Shandong Province, killed his parents with a spade when he experienced a relapse of a mental disorder. The Xingtai City People’s Court civil case verdict given on November 10, 1999, states, “It is the court’s observation that the defendant suffered from a mental disorder before he got married and had tried to hide the fact. After getting married, the defendant had recurrences of mental illness many times and he had problems for a long time trying to cure his mental disorder. The defendant killed his parents with a spade when his mental illness relapsed…” “The defendant’s wife’s firm request for a divorce is supported by the court.”

The CCP blamed Wang’s killing spree on his practicing Falun Gong, despite the fact that the court verdict says nothing about him practicing Falun Gong. In addition, he had had a mental disorder since 1988, four years before Falun Gong’s public introduction in 1992. [9]

Concealment

Practitioners’ resilience and persistent efforts to counteract the slander have led more people to see through the CCP’s lies. This turned into a dilemma for the Party. Beginning in 2003, the CCP adopted a strategy called “loose outside but tight inside,” turning the persecution from a public spectacle into a hidden, underground agenda. CCP insiders called it “a war without smoke.” [10]

After the persecution went underground, the CCP claimed that Falun Gong had been defeated and that it had disappeared from China, trying to direct international attention away from its human rights abuses. This tactic mirrors the CCP’s claim of victory in fighting off the virus.

Destruction of Evidence

In 2006, “Annie,” the ex-wife of a surgeon, became the first whistleblower to expose the CCP’s forcible removal of vital organs from living Falun Gong practitioners for sale to wealthy Chinese and foreigners. This explained why the number of organ transplants skyrocketed in China after the persecution of Falun Gong began, despite the lack of an established organ donation system.

Annie, who made her first public statement about the organ harvesting atrocity in March 2006, said that her husband told her that he had personally removed the corneas from approximately 2,000 Falun Gong prisoners in Sujiatun hospital in Shenyang City within two years before October 2003. He said that none of the cornea “donors” survived after the procedure because most of their vital organs were also removed and their bodies were then burned. [11]

In response to that allegations and international investigations about forced organ harvesting, the Heilongjiang Province CCP Office issued an announcement on March 25, 2006, ordering all relevant departments to destroy classified documents, much like how the CCP destroyed virus samples in the current pandemic.

The announcement mandates, “In destroying these documents, one shall make sure there is no way to recover the original documents. Documents on paper shall be burned or shredded and turned into pulp. The paper shredders used should meet the requirements for shredding classified documents. Shredded documents shall be sent to designated places to be destroyed. Two or more people are required to be present, and no one shall leave the scene before the documents are fully destroyed.” [12]

In fact, many more orders in the persecution were given verbally, especially those by the extralegal, Gestapo-like 610 Office, and those who received the orders were forbidden to record the instructions.

In its attempts to cover up the organ harvesting crime, the CCP established a voluntary deceased donor program in 2010 but received few registrations due to culture barriers discouraging Chinese from donating their organs. According to the China Organ Harvest Research Center (COHRC), “Official accounts indicate that the percentage of organs sourced from donations jumped from 23% in 2013 to 80% in 2014, with voluntary donations becoming the sole official organ source in 2015. It is not plausible that such a complete transition in this system could have taken place in just one or two years.” [13]

A study reported in BMC Medical Ethics concluded that “rather than the ‘untarnished voluntary system promised by officials,’ a ‘voluntary system appears to operate alongside the continued use of nonvoluntary donors (most plausibly prisoners) who are misclassified as ‘voluntary.’ The study also said the goal of the manufactured data was ‘to create a misleading impression to the international transplantation community about the successes of China’s voluntary organ donation reform, and to neutralize the criticism of activists who allege that crimes against humanity have been committed in the acquisition of organs for transplant.’”[14]

Redirecting Blame

Oftentimes, when countries like the United States condemn the CCP for its notorious human rights record, the CCP criticizes them for interfering with China’s internal affairs. Meanwhile, inside China, the CCP blames overseas Falun Gong practitioners who expose the persecution for “colluding with foreign anti-China forces” and “damaging China’s image.”

When CCP spokesperson Zhao Lijian blamed the U.S. Army for bringing the virus to Wuhan during the Military World Games in October 2019, one can’t help but remember how former CCP chairman Jiang Zemin personally handed out a pamphlet defaming Falun Gong to more than ten heads of state during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in New Zealand at the end of 1999. In France, Jiang Zemin labeled Falun Gong an “evil cult” to foreign media in order to advance his persecution policy. [15]

History repeats itself. Whatever the case, the “always glorious” CCP never admits wrongdoing. Sometimes it plays the victim, and sometimes it plays the savior of the world. But whatever face it puts on each time, its repressive and authoritarian nature will never change.

References

[1] Minghui.org Renowned Human Rights Lawyer: “We Are Suffering the Consequences of Turning a Blind Eye to China’s Human Rights Abuses”
[2] Minghui.org The Chinese Communist Party Dares Not Document the 610 Office’s Persecution of Falun Gong in Local Chronicles
[3] Jonathan Stray. “What China is Censoring This Week.” May 5, 2009.
[4] Minghui.org. Intercepting TV Signals in China: A Look Back at Falun Gong Practitioners’ Peaceful Resistance to the Persecution
[5] Minghui.org. Ms. Liu Wei Sentenced to Prison for Talking to People about Falun Gong
[6] Minghui.org. One Banner Leads to a Five-and-a-Half-Year Prison Term
[7] Minghui.org. Self-Immolation Hoax on Tiananmen Square
[8] Minghui.org. 1,400 Alleged Deaths
[9] Minghui.org. Exposing the Lies of “1,400 Death Cases”
[10] Minghui.org. Why the Persecution of Falun Gong Went from Public Spectacle to Hidden Agenda
[11] China Organ Harvest Research Center. “The Killing of Prisoners of Conscience for Organs in China – Whistleblowers.”
[12] Minghui.org. CCP Orders Destruction of Classified Documents
[13] Minghui.org. New Report: “Transplant Abuse Continues in China Despite Claims of Reform”
[14] Minghui.org. New Religious Freedom Report Highlights Minghui’s Daily Reporting on Persecution of Falun Gong in China
[15] Minghui.org. The Collusion of Jiang Zemin with the Chinese Communist Party to Persecute Falun Gong

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2020/6/27/185663.html
 

Ellanjay

Council Member
Apr 11, 2020
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https://youtu.be/KPv84i7CfdA

Whereabouts of Top Chinese Officials Unknown During Beijing Virus Outbreak

Commentary by Zhong Yuan
June 30, 2020


Since June 11, the city of Beijing began to report new cases of CCP virus infections, and the outbreak has intensified. Beijing did not dare to publicly announce closures in the city, but it has implemented lockdown measures. Since the outbreak first began in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year, Beijing became the most important place for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to protect—as it is the seat of power. If Beijing falls, high-level officials may have to evacuate, so a power vacuum is likely to occur within the CCP—and the consequences would be unimaginable.

However, high-level CCP officials have not been seen in public since the outbreak began this month. Perhaps they left Beijing to avoid being infected with the CCP virus.

Xi Jinping Joined Two Teleconferences

On the eve of June 17, Chinese leader Xi Jinping appeared via video conferencing at the China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against COVID-19 in Beijing. Wang Huning, a top Party official and close adviser to Xi, was also present. Although a small number of CCP officials also joined the video conference, they were not physically present to the public.

On June 22, Xi joined the 22nd EU-China summit via video conferencing.

Then, Xi disappeared from the public. State-run media reports only indicated that Xi made telephone calls, sent congratulatory letters, issued orders, and wrote speeches.

Before the second wave of the CCP virus broke out in Beijing, Xi made two public appearances in early June.

On June 2, Xi presided over a panel of experts and scholars in Beijing and delivered a speech.

From June 8 to 10, Xi inspected the Ningxia region. This indicates that he had already left Beijing on June 7. The next time he made a public appearance was during the China-Africa video summit in Beijing on June 17.

Li Keqiang Made One Public Appearance Since June Outbreak

Before the outbreak began in Beijing, premier Li Keqiang inspected the cities of Yantai and Qingdao in Shandong Province from June 1 to 2.

On June 4, Li chaired a meeting with a team of health experts on combating the epidemic. State-run broadcaster CCTV did not provide pictures or videos from the meeting.

That evening, Li delivered a speech via video conferencing at the Global Vaccine Summit.

On June 9, Li chaired the State Council’s executive meeting. CCTV’s report did not provide a picture of the meeting place. The State Council is akin to the regime’s cabinet.

On June 11, Li held a video meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

After the novel coronavirus resurged in Beijing, Li made one public appearance.

On June 15, Li attended the online opening ceremony of the 127th Canton Fair (also known as China Import and Export Fair) in Beijing. This was his only public appearance in June.

On June 22, Li held a video meeting with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, accompanied by the High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell.

The Whereabouts of Other Top Party Leaders

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Party’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), appeared for four consecutive days from June 19 to June 21, presiding over the committee’s 19th meeting. Li wore a mask during the meeting.

Before the outbreak in Beijing, Li made two appearances in early June.

On June 1, Li presided over the 58th meeting of the Council of Chairpersons of the NPC Standing Committee in Beijing.

On June 9, Li chaired the 59th meeting of chairpersons of the NPC Standing Committee.

Wang Yang, chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CCPCC), the Party’s advisory body, made three public appearances after June 11.

From June 8 to 12, Wang was conducting “inspections” in Xinjiang, according to state media.

On June 19, Wang chaired the 37th CPPCC bi-weekly consultation forum in Beijing.

On June 22, Wang participated in the opening meeting of the 12th session of the CPPCC. He wore a mask during two meetings.

Before the outbreak in Beijing, Wang made two public appearances in early June.

On June 5, Wang presided over the 36th bi-weekly consultation forum of the CPPCC National Committee in Beijing.

On June 8, Wang hosted the 38th CPPCC Chairman Meeting in Beijing.

Wang Huning, a current member of the Politburo Standing Committee and the first-ranked secretary of the Party’s Secretariat, participated in two video conferences.

On the eve of June 17, when Xi Jinping hosted the China-Africa summit in Beijing, Wang Huning did not make a public presence at the conference.

Before the outbreak in Beijing, on June 4, Wang Huning attended the meeting of the epidemic work leading group chaired by Li Keqiang. CCTV did not provide a picture of the meeting place, only a text article and a photo.

Han Zheng, Senior Vice Premier of the State Council and member of the Politburo Standing Committee, made a public appearance on June 11.

Han chaired the plenary meeting of the Leading Group of the 24th Olympic Winter Games, to be held in Beijing in 2022. After that, there were no reports about Han’s activities.

Before the outbreak in Beijing, Han made one public appearance. From May 31 to June 2, he was investigating the cities of Changsha and Yueyang in Hunan Province.

On June 3, Han met with Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam in Beijing. CCTV did not provide a picture, only text.

There are no reports of the whereabouts or activities of Zhao Leji, head of the Party’s top anti-corruption body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, since the second wave outbreak began this month.

Where Are the Top CCP Officials?

The seven members of the Standing Committee may have left Beijing to avoid the pandemic. They only returned to Beijing when they had no other choice. The exact location of the high-level officials is unknown. Perhaps they are all staying near Beijing, or are scattered across the country. However, it is obvious that they would not dare to disclose their whereabouts to the public—that would create tremendous chaos for the nation and undercurrents within the Party. Large numbers of armed police and public security in Beijing could serve the proof of such concern.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/where...wn-during-beijing-virus-outbreak_3407534.html
 

Ellanjay

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Apr 11, 2020
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https://youtu.be/4IGHtPSFoS8

U.S. National Security Advisor Speaks About Strategies to Curb Chinese Communism

July 2, 2020 | By Minghui correspondent Zheng Yan

The coronavirus outbreak that started several months ago has caused over 10 million infections globally, with more than half a million deaths as of late June 2020. As many countries seek to hold the Chinese Communist Party responsible for covering up and mishandling the outbreak, the United States—which has more than 2.6 millions cases, has taken the lead in recognizing missteps in the past few decades that fostered the CCP’s growth and expansion.

Robert C.O’Brien, the United States National Security Advisor, spoke at Phoenix, Arizona, on June 24 regarding American policies towards the Chinese Communist Party. He reviewed lessons learned for the U.S. government in the past, and listed a number of areas that will be the focus of U.S. policy towards the CCP.

In particular, O’Brien talked about religious persecution in China. Because of manipulation from the CCP, many international organizations such as the U.N. Human Rights Council or WHO have failed to rein in the CCP’s damage to its citizens and people around the world.

O’Brien’s talk is one of a series of speeches to be delivered by top U.S. officials. Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Barr, and FBI Director Chris Wray have also scheduled speeches in the next few weeks that will highlight U.S. policies towards China.

Wishful Thinking about the CCP

O’Brien started his talk with a review of U.S. policy about China in the past few decades. “For decades, conventional wisdom in both U.S. political parties, the business community, academia, and media, has held that it was only a matter of time before China would become more liberal, first economically and, then, politically,” he said, “The more we opened our markets to China, the thinking went, the more we invested capital in China, the more we trained PRC bureaucrats, scientists, engineers, and even military officers, the more China would become like us.”

With that mindset, the U.S. helped China enter the WTO in 2001 along with other privileges. The U.S. officials also downplayed China’s gross human rights abuses, including Tiananmen Square. Technology theft by the CCP was also largely ignored.

“We could not have been more wrong—and this miscalculation is the greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s. How did we make such a mistake?” O’Brien reflected, “The answer is simple: because we did not pay heed to the CCP’s ideology. Instead of listening to what CCP leaders were saying and reading what they wrote in their key documents, we closed our ears and our eyes. We believed what we wanted to believe—that the Party members were communist in name only.”

In reality, the Chinese communism regime has remained essentially the same. Citing phrases from Australian government official John Garnaut, O’Brien said the history of Soviet Union and China have proven that communism is a totalitarian ideology. “Under communism, individuals are merely a means to be used toward the achievement of the ends of the collective nation state,” he explained. Although abandoned 30 years ago “as the most costly failed political experiment in history,” the communism doctrines nonetheless “remain as fundamental to the Chinese Communist Party as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights do to us as Americans,” he added.

Nature of the CCP

“The Chinese Communist Party seeks total control over people’s lives. This means economic control, it means political control, it means physical control, and, perhaps most importantly, it means thought control,” remarked O’Brien.

As pointed out by Garnaut, the CCP achieves control through two sets of tools—one is “weapons and violence,” and the other is “language and culture.” “Chinese leaders have always believed that power derives from controlling both the physical battlefield and the cultural domain,” quoting words from Garnaut, he explained, “Words are not vehicles of reason and persuasion. They are bullets. Words are for defining, isolating, and destroying opponents.”

O’Brien pointed out that “propaganda plays a central political role for the CCP.” Chinese citizens are forced to study “Xi Jinping Thought,” and foreign newspapers and social media (such as Facebook, Twitter) are banned, with “all content generated within China” being banned. “Just recently, between January 1 and April 4 of this year, nearly 500 individuals were charged with crimes just for speaking out about the Wuhan coronavirus, its effects upon the Party, and the Party’s cover-up of the disease,” he added.

The CCP also tightly controls religious beliefs, by suppressing and reinterpreting religious texts to conform to communist party ideology. Violators are subject to detention, forced labor, and other types of mistreatment. The CCP has invested billions of dollars into overseas propaganda, by controlling or influencing almost every Chinese language news outlet.

In addition to expelling foreign reporters, the CCP has also been abusing foreign social media for its own propaganda. Recently Twitter suspended more than 23,000 CCP-linked accounts, but there could be more accounts that are undetected. Such influence of the CCP has extended to American college campuses, businesses, and Hollywood.

The CCP has also hacked American organizations in both the private and public sectors, such as Anthem insurance, the Office of Personnel Management, and Equifax, stealing confidential and sensitive data.

Many international organizations such as U.N. and WHO have also been targeted. “These CCP tactics in international organizations, as we have seen with the coronavirus, are a major cause of concern not just for the United States, but to the world,” O’Brien added.

Actions Against the CCP

O’Brien listed six major actions that the U.S. is taking to counter the CCP’s influence.

First, the current U.S. government has “prevented certain companies that answer to the CCP’s intelligence and security apparatus—such as Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei—from accessing our personal and private data.” He added that, “The Administration also imposed restrictions on U.S. semiconductor technology from going to Huawei.”

Second, the state department has designated “the U.S. operations of 9 Chinese state-controlled propaganda outlets as foreign missions” because they “are the mouthpieces” of the CCP and will now face reporting requirements and visa restrictions.

Third, export restrictions are now imposed on “21 Chinese government entities and 16 Chinese companies complicit in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs and other minorities,” and travel restrictions are now placed on “officials complicit in these abuses from traveling to the United States.”

Fourth, the U.S. has left the U.N. Human Rights Council and the WHO to protest their close ties to the CCP.

Fifth, the U.S. government is limiting “the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to use student visa programs to place its officers and employees in our colleges and universities to steal U.S. technology, intellectual property, and information.”

Lastly, the U.S. federal employee retirement funds are now prohibited from investing “into PRC companies, including Chinese military contractors and manufacturers of surveillance equipment used to oppress religious minorities.”

O’Brien summed up the six major actions, “Now, these steps are just the start as America corrects 40 years of a one-sided, unfair relationship with China that has severely affected our nation’s economic, and recently political well-being. Just like the tariffs that were imposed by the President on unfair trade practices early in his Administration, there is more to come.”

In the end, he said the U.S. Government will uphold its core values such as the freedom of speech, and he also differentiated the CCP from Chinese people. “The United States has a long history of friendship with the Chinese nation. But the Chinese Communist Party does not equal China or her people.”

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2020/7/2/185720.html
 

Ellanjay

Council Member
Apr 11, 2020
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Video: Coverup of the Century

https://youtu.be/MZ74NhEUY-w

Coverup of the Century – Zooming In’s Documentary Movie with Simone Gao
The CCP actively worked to suppress all information both inside and outside of its borders from the earliest days of the outbreak. The physical, emotional, and financial costs have been felt throughout the world in the wake of the pandemic.

Steps included silencing and ignoring doctors, hamstringing research, and lying through official channels. Anyone who spoke out and acted with the public interest in mind was immediately censored.

This thorough investigation into the CCP’s operating methods in a crisis is critical knowledge to the rest of the world, to know how the regime handles crises, and the danger it implicitly causes for humanity.

Most disturbingly, the damage from the pandemic could have been significantly decreased had the CCP taken proper measures to inform the world. Yet, there are deeper, systemic concerns about how the CCP was even allowed to have the power it does now, and who facilitated that rise.

This documentary “The Coverup of the Century” gives insight to where responsibility truly lays for the near half-million deaths worldwide.