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© 2021 AFP'Stock up', China says, amid new COVID outbreak
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Alex
Which probably means Japan is about to have another TP shortage crisis
Numan
People keep claiming that there is a shortage of items on the shelves because of a transportation and logistics issues.
I see from a different angle. I think that problem is that people who are overspending (panic buying) are creating these shortages. Just like when Japan has an earthquake and everyone goes scrambling for toilet paper.
treble4punk
There's actually an international supply chain shortage. Manufacturers of everything have been backed up months.
PTownsend
"concerns that the problem could worsen as climate change brings increasingly extreme weather."
China has long been planning its economy. So it would seem with its huge reserves of rare earth metals needed for use in alternative energy equipment and it being the globe's largest emitter of CO2, the CDC rulers would have done something much more to mitigate against climate change problems.
"Report: China emissions exceed all developed nations combined"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57018837
"China has generally kept daily new case counts"
But when the CDC has such a stranglehold on news, data and information, who knows how many new cases there might actually be.
People planning to attend the China Winter Olympics probably should be quarantined for a long time before being allowed back into the country they originally came from. But I know that would be seen as a violation of the 'rights' of the global far right 'freedom' crowds unconcerned about how they might affect other people's health.
Hopefully those in sensible populations everywhere will stay far away from the CCP/ IOC Games. Those two groups and their commercial sponsors should not be supported in any way. Long passed time to STOP any support at all for self-serving groups like them. Boycott corporations backing the Games, boycott the Games.
Fighto!
Boycott the Genocide Games, 2022.
Aside from the many ethical issues about holding an Olympics in a nation which is actively committing genocide, it is going to be extremely dangerous.
This pandemic is nowhere near over.
bob
"Stay scared" China says.
And western media comply.
Chico3
When will this ever end!!!!!! I'm sure many of us want to get out of Japan for a while and come back without being quarantined or wear masks.
daito_hak
More brutality in a ugly dictatorship regime that has found the perfect excuse with a virus for more brutality and oppression against the population.
Sven Asai
Don’t cry and complain all the day long. You don’t want to handle this at all, so show now that you really can ‘live with the virus’. And it’s all on you, if it fails!
noriahojanen
China's zero tolerance on covid is ridicul...ups, sorry, very amazing!! (sarcasm). A single case led to the full shutdown of the Disneyland, forcing over 10,000 into "self"-isolation. Economic and law enforcement costs may also be amazing. Welcome to a totalitarian society.
kaimycahl
Well well, I thought the devil who let the cat out of the bag had this China virus under control. Now all of a sudden China is urging its citizens to stock up on daily necessities and asking authorities to take steps to ensure adequate food supplies as the country adopts increasingly tight measures to contain its latest COVID outbreak. I guess the chickens had come back home to roost!!
quercetum
This government takes action to protect its people. We might disagree the extent to which we need protection but China does not err on the side of neglect.
It's just the way China does things: a highly intensive helicopter style of parenting its citizens. Like your parents who made you throw away your rock record collection upon hearing a spirted church sermon on hidden messages: Is it fun to smoke marijuana? Is Paul dead? More than 38,000 people were tested as a result. That's one single coronavirus case. Take that and apply it to East Turkestan. If you have messages and ads from Islamic extremist groups, you will be put into detention centers. The good apples get thrown away with the bad ones.
Control is definitely the issue they have.
We are still waiting for evidence which has not been presented. CNN even tried an interview with a fake ex-cop wearing a fake uniform with the wrong Kanji for police. Where are the bodies?
Crises are tests but can help people to bond together. What the anti-China group calling for the boycott of "genocide" games may not realize is that these attempts to discredit China is strengthening China. From Tibet to East Turkestan, Hong Kong to Taiwan, Covid-19 to coal emissions (stop exporting coal then), Toshiba to Alstom to Huawei, all serve to galvanize the people. Wall Street continues to invest in China. China has passed every test thrown at it and some with flying colors. Crises help a nation come together. There are many examples.
Australia is doing just well despite China's sanctions. Australia turned out fine when Britain reduced its military presence in the region and severed its trade ties with Australia in favor of trading with mainland Europe decades ago. Britain effectively disowned it, but in the end Australia’s high court officially recognized Britain as a foreign country.
For much of its history, Finland wasn’t an independent nation. It was considered part of Sweden from the thirteenth century until 1809 and, after that, it became an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. It was through an oppressive governor, appointed by Tzar Nicolas II in 1894, which led Finland to its independence during the Russian Revolution. If little Finland can fight off a Soviet army in 1939, so can Taiwan fend off mainland China if enough countries come to its support despite reports of low morale in the Taiwanese military.
Chandler Bing arrived in Japan carrying demands from the US President to access ports in Japan. The Japanese said "kekkou desu" but he said "I'll be there for you" and came back with 9 warships. Japan said "douzo oagari kudasai." After the US forced the deal, the British, Russians and Dutch were soon pressing for their own ports as well. All this led to a remarkable ability to maintain Japan's identity while adapting to a changing world through the Meiji period. Japan rose to the occasion. There are also the American colonists, Postwar Germany, Indonesia, Chile; all responded to their threats and challenges.
China is doing well. If it doesn't get lured into war, it will continue to dominate trade and technology. Money goes into technology and better people's lives more effectively than political freedom. Gorbachev was not able to pull off reforms, but Deng Xiaoping had success. The Soviets carried out political reform but not economic reforms. China not carried out economic reforms but not political reforms. So one the one hand, you can complain about politics but you're poor. On the other, you can't complain about politics but you're free to make money.
Once people have money and better lives, they don’t complain as much. The Chinese may not be allowed to openly denounce their government, but it's quite assuming to think they wish they could when they're focusing their energy on making money.
Money is true freedom. Financial independence is freedom. You can buy a car and go to places. If you money and can buy a plane ticket to go anywhere in the world, you don’t worry about food, cloth or tuition for your children. Yet you may have political freedom but still be poor and are still prisoners of poverty and tools of the wealthy elites.
There is more than one way to skin a cat. It doesn't have to be through CIA moles and overthrowing governments. Lifting 400 million people out of poverty and into the middle class is the start of the journey to freedom. Crises and criticism will continue to strengthen China. Freedom means different things, and the means to freedom are not just one.
quercetum
China carried out economic reforms but not political reforms.
clothes
Mark
I am sure that some scum scavengers will soon take to the social media and start spreading fake news about shortage of food so they can make $, and I hope that the police is monitoring the situation so they can go after them.
NOMINATION
That is if you believe everything that comes out of China. Double digit cases in a country of 1.4 billion people? Yeah, sure
GBR48
I wonder if combining Xi's Communist purity drive with the fantasy of Covid Zero could be enough to initiate a leadership change? The Chinese people will only put up with so much.
Zaphod
China might have a new outbreak or it might not.... what the CCP says is motivated by politics, and not by facts. In the event, it seems they want to stoke the worldwide Corona panic, seeing it is worked so well in their favour.
tokyo-star
indeed---for a govermtn that is capable of filtering and controling all tidbits of information, you need to examine carefully its ulterior motive of making information like this so readily available, whether the information is true or not.
tokyo-star
will they, though? thousands mowed down in 1989....millions starved to death in the 60s....yet the same govt is in power---the madman at the helm of the worst manmade famine in human history is even on their money!
Desert Tortoise
And those chickens just happen to have H10N3.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/human-infection-with-avian-influenza-a(h10n3)-china
Desert Tortoise
The most likely manner for the removal of Baby Ping Ping would be a coup within the CCP. He has no shortage of enemies many of whom live in fear for their lives and the lives of their family members. Plus the modern CCP is a billionaires club populated heavily by members of the business owning community who joined to influence policy and to network with the highest levels of power. They are not Maoist true believers like Baby Ping Ping is and resent the actions he is taking that diminish the wealth and power of their leading Chinese corporations. Telling innovative risk taking business people to look to the sclerotic State Owned Industries for their leadership made Xi many enemies and acts as a positive deterrent to the kind of entrepreneurship that build China. Xi has been pushing for the institution of a property tax on businesses and private residences but the CCP does not know how to implement this in a way that would not result in mass tax avoidance. But all the ingredients are there for Xi and the members of the Politburo Standing Committee to end up like the Gang of Four imprisoned after show trials and new more business friendly and less orthodox leadership installed.
Zaphod
quercetum
You mean the poverty that the CCP put in in the first place? Remind us how many millions starved because of chairman Maos brilliant ideas.
Desert Tortoise
While my family suffered grievously under Mao' Red Guards and we all hate the CCP, China's poverty was a long time in the making. China was invaded and colonized first by the Europeans, the Russians in the north and later by the Japanese. There was more or less constant warfare from the early 1900s as Republican forces under Sun Yat-Sen sought to rid themselves of the ethnic Mongolian Qing dynasty through 1949. Japan and Russia fought over areas that are now parts of China. Dalian was formerly Russia's Port Arthur and was fought over bitterly until Theodore Roosevelt negotiated an end to the Sino-Japanese War ( and none too soon for the Japanese ). Russia controlled vast portions of what is now northern China until after WWII when Stalin returned much of it to China.
2020hindsights
Zaphod
Lifting 400 million people out of poverty and into the middle class is the start of the journey to freedom
True, but irrelevant.
JeffLee
@Desert Tortoise
The Europeans didn't "colonize" China. There were several relatively small spheres of influence formed after localized wars and unequal treaties. The Europeans, along with Asian and South American countries, established an international settlement in Shanghai, There were a few other small specks of presence and influence: Macau and Hong Kong. The British wanted to lease (not own) HK after the Emperor kicked them out of their tiny and crowded trading post in Canton. (The penalty for white people being on mainland China without special permission in the 19th century was death, which is one big reason the Europeans went to offshore islands.)
China's great colonizers were the Mongols/Manchu, who actually did take over and pillage large swaths of the country. China's later decline was overwhelming caused internally, through the devastating White Lotus and Taiping rebellions, fomented by local forces, although the presence of the Europeans and especially the Japanese didn't help matters for the ruling officials.
Sure, and yet you seem to believe all its propaganda.
quercetum
Yes the one that eventually occurred after the US successfully placed embargoes and sanctions on China and continued for a total 23 years.
If the cops surrounded your house and restricted goods from going in, yes you are still responsible when your children are famished.
Remind us whether this was during war or during peace times.
quercetum
Just take a peak at history. It only takes a few minutes. The previous dynasty collapses, Japan invades, a civil war, US embargoes, then a famine.
The harder life is the stronger you become if you keep fighting. Look where they are now. They are ahead in technology.
Desert Tortoise
The Russians controlled all of Manchuria from Dalian north, a large part of Mongolia and parts of Xinjiang. The British controlled a broad swath of territory on either side of whole length of the Yangtze River as well as large areas of what is now Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal. The also had control of the area roughly from Xiamen to Guangzhou and extending about the same distance inland, bookended by French controlled territory to the south west and Japanese controlled territory north and east of Xiamen and up beyond Fuzhou. The French controlled large swaths of what is not Guangxi and Yunnan Provinces. Close to a third of what is now modern day PRC was colonized by European powers.
Desert Tortoise
People have funny expectations. The US fought a bitter war with China in Korea from 1950-53, a war for which there has not yet been a treaty to formally end it, and Mao was openly and publicly stating that he thought China could survive a nuclear war with the west, the west would not survive, and the outcome would be a stronger communist society. Despite this some here think the US should have had a normal trading relationship with PRC, this with a nation that was going through a cultural revolution and Great Leap Forward. Are you sure Mao was even interested in a trading relationship with the US? What motivated Mao to open to the US was his fear of the Soviet Union, not a desire to open China to the world. It would require Mao's death for China to start to open up to the world.
Zaphod
Desert Tortoise
Alas, not only here, but also among the people who control the current Potus. That is why we live in dangerous times, and Taiwan should be worried.
quercetum
Discussions on international relations is one perspective. How it affects the people’s lives - famine and poverty - is another.
Why would one country impose economic sanctions against another (Sino-Soviet Alliance) in pursuit of foreign policy objectives? How effective is the use of economic weapons (embargoes and sanctions) in attaining such objectives? It is generally concluded that sanctions tend to be ineffective in achieving foreign policy objectives.
While the effects of economic weapons may be meager, the indirect and long-term effects are considerable; the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Anti-Rightist campaign were in part prompted by the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.
Though the embargo created difficulties within the Western alliance, Beijing was driven to press the USSR for much greater economic assistance than Moscow thought feasible, and disagreements between them eventually led to the collapse of the Sino-Soviet alliance.
The cause of poverty through various factors does not change the alleviation. Regardless of whether the Chinese were originally poor or rich, the CPC has successfully lifted 400 million of its population out of poverty and is on course to continue to develop leading to freedom.
quercetum
Strict definitions of colonization is a point well made but does not refute the arguments made:
”China's poverty was a long time in the making. China was invaded and colonized first by the European
China as rendered by Desert Tortoise was in a situation far worse than a colony or being colonized. It was essentially carved up.
So that Europeans didn’t colonized China is moot; the Europeans with Australia and Japan were physically in China dividing it and ransacking the palace. It’s one thing to be colonized by a stronger country but another to be occupied by Allied forces consisting of approximately 45,000 troops from the eight nations of Germany, Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Austria-Hungary.
quercetum
You missed the point or you’re trying to say the US was justified in placing a 23 year embargo on China. It wasn’t about foreign relations but poverty due to sanctions and the alleviation of poverty.
First, the Korean War was over. Embargoes are usually placed during war. If you are arguing the Korean War is technically still on going then Taiwan and China are still in a civil war.
Second, war was over and the UN lifted the sanctions but the US trade embargo went on for another two decades. No one has denied the effects - direct or indirect - of the sanctions on China. That the US was just or not in placing an embargo when war was over is irrelevant to the effect of the embargo had on the people.
Third, the US banned trade with China but also lobbied other countries to do so. It would be hard to argue that US sanctions had no effect or relationship to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolutions.
I was studying Chinese at Middlebury College one summer in Vermont. The Chinese teacher showed us a film, not a documentary or propaganda piece, but a love story. She used it for listening practice. In the film there was a scene where there were three or four people sitting in a room and all of a sudden they hear something and scrambled to catch a mouse scurrying along the wall. They pounced on the rodent like a cat, a barnyard mouser. The person who caught it began to devour its head and ate like he hadn’t eaten for weeks like the convict Magwitch given food by Pip in Great Expectations. There was no food and they were famished. We asked our teacher about that then heard stories of China in the 50’s and 60’s.
Some might respond to this in the following way:
a) serves them right for fighting us in the Korean War.
b) Mao is an evil dictator.
c) This is a Communist country.
None of these responses were how we felt. I see things things differently and see the consequences of actions rather the reasons for the actions.
Numan
Desert Tortoise is right on all accounts about the various invasions and occupations. It is one of the reasons that China (Xi) has been securing its borders through expansion to give them tactical advantage and ease of defending. Some of the current borders are harder to defend than others, so they are pushing outward for more favorable terrain, or they are building artificial terrain like islands.
Zaphod
quercetum
You are unaware that Maos party created the horrific mass starvations in Communist China by their insane policies like the "great leap forward", and the war on birds? Just wondering.
I really do not see how anyone can accept the claim that the CCP lifted people out of poverty.
Zaphod
Numan
By the same logic, all countries should "securing its borders through expansion" i.e. neighbouring countries. Are you serious?
China should get out of Tibet and Xingyian, instead of genociding their populations in order to "secure its borders".
Desert Tortoise
Alas, not only here, but also among the people who control the current Potus. That is why we live in dangerous times, and Taiwan should be worried.
The US sends warships and Coast Guard cutters to challenge Chinese maritime claims on what seems like a weekly basis. The Marines are being re-invented to keep the PLAN inside that first island chain arming themselves with anti-ship missiles that can be landed on a beach and fired from land. The US rallies allies to stand up to China instead of being pushed around by them yet some on the right persist with this fairy tail that some how the current US President is soft on China. Far from it and the evidence is obvious.
Desert Tortoise
@quercetum, why would the US engage in trade with a nation such as China under Mao that was vocally committed to the destruction of the US and the destruction of capitalism? By what stretch of logic is that a reasonable expectation? People in the US and its leaders were afraid of the Chinese. So were the Soviets, perhaps even more afraid of them than the US because they shared a very long border with them whereas the US only had to worry about defending regional allies on their land. Why would the US want to enrich their stated enemy by trading with them? In what kind of twisted universe is there an expectation of helping one's sworn enemy? If Chinese suffered, and Momma certainly suffered, the blame lies squarely on Mao's shoulders. The US didn't owe China the time of day.
Desert Tortoise
Visit a big Chinese city like Shanghai and you will see. It will surprise you actually. It's not a US standard of living but compared to the China of 1949, or even 1969. it is night and day. My brother in law has a 3 bdm/2 ba flat nearly as large as my first home. It's on the 6th floor of an 11 story building and parking his car costs a fortune but inside his place is nice, with all the conveniences. It is as nice as most homes I've seen in Europe. Living in any Chinese city is crowded but food is abundant and good, medical care pretty good (I have used doctors in Shanghai on occasion and our kid has been treated by the Fudan University Children's Hospital which dwarfs any we have used in the US), and public transportation is much better than anything we have in most US cities. Yes it is repressive but hundreds of millions of people are living in decent flats and have abundant food rather than the dirt floor shack my wife grew up in cooking on cow turds or whatever wood they could gather to boil their daily rice. They don't have to scrounge the forest for food like my wife did growing up under Mao. So yeah, from Deng onwards the Chinese achieved much in the way of improving the lot of their people.
Strangerland
It's too bad that the sources of his information are too secret for the general public to be told. Very clandestine.
Silvafan
@Zaphod
Am I serious? Yes, that is what China is doing. No one said it was right or wrong. I am just stating facts. You seem to be clearly using "strawman logic" to win an argument that does not exist. You are debating yourself. Actually, you seem to be debating like @jpn_guy from earlier this week. I wonder why that is!
Once again you no very little about what you are discussing. The parts you do mention are only half right. It is not just Tibet but Afghanistan, India, and Bhutan! These are all about unsettled land disputes for securing their borders because of their future ambitions of world dominance. The same is true about the waters in the South and East. They want the most favorable border in these situations from a military strategic standpoint (Ex. the many "Great Walls" of China). Either border with a country with a strong relationship like North Korea as a buffer country or create borders that are easily defendable (physically and even economically).
This is the Chinese territory expansion blueprint: (their excuses for Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghur region, Taiwan, or whatever)
1 explain an economic interest for a new territory to the rest of the world
2 use civilian authority to police
3 create rules and regulations that must be followed in the interests of safety
4 use those new rules to segue into a military presence
5 complete sovereign control.
Numan
@Zaphod
Am I serious? Yes, that is what China is doing. No one said it was right or wrong. I am just stating facts. You seem to be clearly using "strawman logic" to win an argument that does not exist. You are debating yourself. Actually, you seem to be debating like @jpn_guy from earlier this week. I wonder why that is!
Once again you no very little about what you are discussing. The parts you do mention are only half right. It is not just Tibet but Afghanistan, India, and Bhutan! These are all about unsettled land disputes for securing their borders because of their future ambitions of world dominance. The same is true about the waters in the South and East. They want the most favorable border in these situations from a military strategic standpoint (Ex. the many "Great Walls" of China). Either border with a country with a strong relationship like North Korea as a buffer country or create borders that are easily defendable (physically and even economically).
Silvafan
This is the Chinese territory expansion blueprint: (their excuses for Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghur region, Taiwan, or whatever)
1 explain an economic interest for a new territory to the rest of the world
2 use civilian authority to police
3 create rules and regulations that must be followed in the interests of safety
4 use those new rules to segue into a military presence
5 complete sovereign control.
Helix
China's zero tolerance on covid is ridicul...ups, sorry, very amazing!! (sarcasm). A single case led to the full shutdown of the Disneyland, forcing over 10,000 into "self"-isolation. Economic and law enforcement costs may also be amazing. Welcome to a totalitarian society.
Just like New Zealand.