China wasted 6 key days. Launchers digital Yuan
Newsletter published on April 15, 2020
(1) China wasted 6 key days. in which Covid-19 might have been contained
(2) China launches digital Yuan
(3) Decentralized, digital certificates for Education qualifications
(4) Military freeze - the virus isn't going away; 'We're going to have
to be able to operate in a COVID environment'
(5) Bill Gates Foundation Funds Microchip Implant Vaccine Technology
(6) How Covid-19 might affect China's Belt and Road
(1) China wasted 6 key days. in which Covid-19 might have been contained
In the 6 days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they
likely were facing a pandemic, Wuhan hosted a mass banquet for tens of
thousands; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year
China didn't warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days
By The Associated Press
April 15, 2020
In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they
likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan
at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of
thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year
celebrations.
President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But
by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a
week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The
Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.
That delay from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by
Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the
longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for
weeks and even months in addressing the virus.
But the delay by the first country to face the new coronavirus came at a
critical time — the beginning of the outbreak. China's attempt to walk a
line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a
pandemic that has infected almost 2 million people and taken more than
126,000 lives.
"This is tremendous," said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the
University of California, Los Angeles. "If they took action six days
earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical
facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the
collapse of Wuhan's medical system."
Other experts noted that the Chinese government may have waited on
warning the public to stave off hysteria, and that it did act quickly in
private during that time.
But the six-day delay by China's leaders in Beijing came on top of
almost two weeks during which the national Center for Disease Control
did not register any cases from local officials, internal bulletins
obtained by the AP confirm. Yet during that time, from Jan. 5 to Jan.
17, hundreds of patients were appearing in hospitals not just in Wuhan
but across the country.
It's uncertain whether it was local officials who failed to report cases
or national officials who failed to record them. It's also not clear
exactly what officials knew at the time in Wuhan, which only opened back
up last week with restrictions after its quarantine.
But what is clear, experts say, is that China's rigid controls on
information, bureaucratic hurdles and a reluctance to send bad news up
the chain of command muffled early warnings. The punishment of eight
doctors for "rumor-mongering," broadcast on national television on Jan.
2, sent a chill through the city's hospitals.
"Doctors in Wuhan were afraid," said Dali Yang, a professor of Chinese
politics at the University of Chicago. "It was truly intimidation of an
entire profession."
Without these internal reports, it took the first case outside China, in
Thailand on Jan. 13, to galvanize leaders in Beijing into recognizing
the possible pandemic before them. It was only then that they launched a
nationwide plan to find cases — distributing CDC-sanctioned test kits,
easing the criteria for confirming cases and ordering health officials
to screen patients, all without telling the public.
The Chinese government has repeatedly denied suppressing information in
the early days, saying it immediately reported the outbreak to the World
Health Organization.
"Those accusing China of lacking transparency and openness are unfair,"
foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Wednesday when asked about
the AP story.
The documents show that the head of China's National Health Commission,
Ma Xiaowei, laid out a grim assessment of the situation on Jan. 14 in a
confidential teleconference with provincial health officials. A memo
states that the teleconference was held to convey instructions on the
coronavirus from President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice
Premier Sun Chunlan, but does not specify what those instructions were.
"The epidemic situation is still severe and complex, the most severe
challenge since SARS in 2003, and is likely to develop into a major
public health event," the memo cites Ma as saying.
The National Health Commission is the top medical agency in the country.
In a faxed statement, the Commission said it had organized the
teleconference because of the case reported in Thailand and the
possibility of the virus spreading during New Year travel. It added that
China had published information on the outbreak in an "open,
transparent, responsible and timely manner," in accordance with
"important instructions" repeatedly issued by President Xi.
The documents come from an anonymous source in the medical field who did
not want to be named for fear of retribution. The AP confirmed the
contents with two other sources in public health familiar with the
teleconference. Some of the memo's contents also appeared in a public
notice about the teleconference, stripped of key details and published
in February.
Under a section titled "sober understanding of the situation," the memo
said that "clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is
possible." It singled out the case in Thailand, saying that the
situation had "changed significantly" because of the possible spread of
the virus abroad.
"With the coming of the Spring Festival, many people will be traveling,
and the risk of transmission and spread is high," the memo continued.
"All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic."
In the memo, Ma demanded officials unite around Xi and made clear that
political considerations and social stability were key priorities during
the long lead-up to China's two biggest political meetings of the year
in March. While the documents do not spell out why Chinese leaders
waited six days to make their concerns public, the meetings may be one
reason.
"The imperatives for social stability, for not rocking the boat before
these important Party congresses is pretty strong," says Daniel
Mattingly, a scholar of Chinese politics at Yale. "My guess is, they
wanted to let it play out a little more and see what happened."
In response to the teleconference, the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention in Beijing initiated the highest-level emergency response
internally, level one, on Jan. 15. It assigned top CDC leaders to 14
working groups tasked with getting funds, training health workers,
collecting data, doing field investigations and supervising
laboratories, an internal CDC notice shows. The memo directed Hubei
province, where Wuhan is located, to begin temperature checks at
airports, bus and train stations, and cut down on large public gatherings.
The National Health Commission also distributed a 63-page set of
instructions to provincial health officials, obtained by the AP. The
instructions ordered health officials nationwide to identify suspected
cases, hospitals to open fever clinics, and doctors and nurses to don
protective gear. They were marked "internal" — "not to be spread on the
internet," "not to be publicly disclosed."
In public, however, officials continued to downplay the threat, pointing
to the 41 cases public at the time.
"We have reached the latest understanding that the risk of sustained
human-to-human transmission is low," Li Qun, the head of the China CDC's
emergency center, told Chinese state television on Jan. 15. That was the
same day Li was appointed leader of a group preparing emergency plans
for the level one response, a CDC notice shows.
On Jan. 20, President Xi issued his first public comments on the virus,
saying the outbreak "must be taken seriously" and every possible measure
pursued. A leading Chinese epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, announced for
the first time that the virus was transmissible from person to person on
national television.
If the public had been warned a week earlier to take actions such as
social distancing, mask wearing and travel restrictions, cases could
have been cut by up to two-thirds, one paper later found. An earlier
warning could have saved lives, said Zhang, the doctor in Los Angeles.
However, other health experts said the government took decisive action
in private given the information available to them.
"They may not have said the right thing, but they were doing the right
thing," said Ray Yip, the retired founding head of the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control's office in China. "On the 20th, they sounded the alarm
for the whole country, which is not an unreasonable delay."
If health officials raise the alarm prematurely, it can damage their
credibility — "like crying wolf" —and cripple their ability to mobilize
the public, said Benjamin Cowley, an epidemiologist at the University of
Hong Kong.
The delay may support accusations by President Donald Trump that the
Chinese government's secrecy held back the world's response to the
virus. However, even the public announcement on Jan. 20 left the U.S.
nearly two months to prepare for the pandemic.
During those months, Trump ignored the warnings of his own staff and
dismissed the disease as nothing to worry about, while the government
failed to bolster medical supplies and deployed flawed testing kits.
Leaders across the world turned a blind eye to the outbreak, with
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling for a strategy of "herd
immunity" — before falling ill himself. Brazilian President Jair
Bolsonaro sneered at what he called "a little cold."
The early story of the pandemic in China shows missed opportunities at
every step, the documents and AP interviews reveal. Under Xi, China's
most authoritarian leader in decades, increasing political repression
has made officials more hesitant to report cases without a clear green
light from the top.
"It really increased the stakes for officials, which made them reluctant
to step out of line," said Mattingly, the Yale professor. "It made it
harder for people at the local level to report bad information."
Doctors and nurses in Wuhan told Chinese media there were plenty of
signs that the coronavirus could be transmitted between people as early
as late December. Patients who had never been to the suspected source of
the virus, the Huanan Seafood Market, were infected. Medical workers
started falling ill.
But officials obstructed medical staff who tried to report such cases.
They set tight criteria for confirming cases, where patients not only
had to test positive, but samples had to be sent to Beijing and
sequenced. They required staff to report to supervisors before sending
information higher, Chinese media reports show. And they punished
doctors for warning about the disease.
As a result, no new cases were reported for almost two weeks from Jan.
5, even as officials gathered in Wuhan for Hubei province's two biggest
political meetings of the year, internal China CDC bulletins confirm.
During this period, teams of experts dispatched to Wuhan by Beijing said
they failed to find clear signs of danger and human-to-human transmission.
"China has many years of disease control, there's absolutely no chance
that this will spread widely because of Spring Festival travel," the
head of the first expert team, Xu Jianguo, told Takungpao, a Hong Kong
paper, on Jan. 6. He added there was "no evidence of human-to-human
transmission" and that the threat from the virus was low.
The second expert team, dispatched on Jan. 8, similarly failed to
unearth any clear signs of human-to-human transmission. Yet during their
stay, more than half a dozen doctors and nurses had already fallen ill
with the virus, a retrospective China CDC study published in the New
England Journal of Medicine would later show.
The teams looked for patients with severe pneumonia, missing those with
milder symptoms. They also narrowed the search to those who had visited
the seafood market — which was in retrospect a mistake, said Cowling,
the Hong Kong epidemiologist, who flew to Beijing to review the cases in
late January.
In the weeks after the severity of the epidemic became clear, some
experts accused Wuhan officials of intentionally hiding cases.
"I always suspected it was human-to-human transmissible," said Wang
Guangfa, the leader of the second expert team, in a Mar. 15 post on
Weibo, the Chinese social media platform. He fell ill with the virus
soon after returning to Beijing on Jan. 16.
Wuhan's then-mayor, Zhou Xianwang, blamed national regulations for the
secrecy.
"As a local government official, I could disclose information only after
being authorized," Zhou told state media in late January. "A lot of
people didn't understand this."
As a result, top Chinese officials appear to have been left in the dark.
"The CDC acted sluggishly, assuming all was fine," said a state health
expert, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution. "If we
started to do something a week or two earlier, things could have been so
much different."
It wasn't just Wuhan. In Shenzhen in southern China, hundreds of miles
away, a team led by microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung used their own test
kits to confirm that six members of a family of seven had the virus on
Jan. 12. In an interview with Caixin, a respected Chinese finance
magazine, Yuen said he informed CDC branches "of all levels," including
Beijing. But internal CDC numbers did not reflect Yuen's report, the
bulletins show.
When the Thai case was reported, health authorities finally drew up an
internal plan to systematically identify, isolate, test, and treat all
cases of the new coronavirus nationwide.
Wuhan's case count began to climb immediately — four on Jan. 17, then 17
the next day and 136 the day after. Across the country, dozens of cases
began to surface, in some cases among patients who were infected earlier
but had not yet been tested. In Zhejiang, for example, a man
hospitalized on Jan. 4 was only isolated on Jan. 17 and confirmed
positive on Jan. 21. In Shenzhen, the patients Yuen discovered on Jan.
12 were finally recorded as confirmed cases on Jan. 19.
The elite Peking Union Medical College Hospital held an emergency
meeting on Jan. 18, instructing staff to adopt stringent isolation —
still before Xi's public warning. A health expert told AP that on Jan.
19, she toured a hospital built after the SARS outbreak, where medical
workers had furiously prepared an entire building with hundreds of beds
for pneumonia patients.
"Everybody in the country in the infectious disease field knew something
was going on," she said, declining to be named to avoid disrupting
sensitive government consultations. "They were anticipating it." ___
Contact AP's global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org
(2) China launches digital Yuan
From: bronek <bronekc@icloud.com>
Screenshots of what appears to be China’s upcoming digital yuan flooded
WeChat today
Has China’s digital currency gone into public beta?
WeChat was suddenly flooded with screenshots of the digital yuan today.
A downloadable app was also released.
By Amy Castor and Shuyao Kong
Apr 15, 2020
CHINA'S DIGITAL YUAN TAKES A STEP FORWARD. IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK.
Screenshots of what appears to be China’s upcoming digital yuan flooded
WeChat today. The digital currency appears to be part of a trial being
conducted by the Agricultural Bank of China, or ABC. The bank, one of
the country’s biggest, is not particularly tied to agriculture, but it
is among four banks that the People's Bank of China tapped to be part of
the beta rollout of the currency.
Matthew Graham, CEO of Sino Global Capital, broke the news, as well as
images of the currency, on Twitter on Tuesday. "Americans still trying
to figure out if they should put on a face mask while China pushes out a
revolutionary technology," he tweeted.
Matthew Graham @mattysino Americans still trying to figure out if they
should put on a face mask while China pushes out a revolutionary
Matthew Graham @mattysino United States: should we defund the post
office; China: should we adopt a next-generation digital currency
"As we understand it, the DCEP project has reached the next phase of
testing," Graham, an American who lives in Beijing, told Decrypt.
"Specifically, the testing is with the Agricultural Bank of China, and
we are told in four pilot regions." The regions are Shenzhen, Xiongan,
Chengdu, and Suzhou, he said.
The app is available for download here. The version that is circulating
is designed for the ABC. Specifically, it is designed for whitelisted
customers in the four pilot regions, Graham said on Twitter. (To install
the app, users need to give the ABC special security permissions though,
he said.)
What is the digital yuan?
DCEP stands for digital currency/electronic payment; otherwise known as
China’s central bank digital currency project. The digital yuan is
expected to function more like a counterpart to paper money than a
cryptocurrency. Unlike Bitcoin, its value is stable. And the central
bank will be able to monitor every transaction.
A team within the People's Bank of China has been silently working on
the project since 2014. And while the central bank has been typically
vague and secretive about the work, rumors have been swirling for months
that a launch was imminent.
The app is a fairly straightforward implementation, which includes a
wallet and a way to transfer the digital currency with a QR scanner.
Graham explained it uses NFC technology, possibly useful for rural or
unwired areas. "First impression is that the app looks slick, it’s a pro
job in the Silicon Valley tech sense," he said.
Mobile payments are already hugely popular in China. Residents in big
cities often only carry their smartphones and pay for everything with
apps such as Alipay or WeChat that are linked to their bank accounts. [...]
Functionally, the app overlaps significantly with Tenpay (Tencent's
WeChat Pay), Alipay, and other mobile payment schemes that are
commonplace in China—and that’s likely the point. Graham said that top
goals for the digital yuan likely include "more granular data and
control over the economy, wrestling power back from Tenpay and Alipay,
and using it for international payment reconciliation in an attempt to
undermine U.S. dollar hegemony."
(Updated on April 14 at 7 p.m. ET to add a quote from John Kiff. Later
updated to note that PBOC has been working on its DCEP project for six
years, since 2014. A previous version of the story said five years.)
(3) Decentralized, digital certificates for Education qualifications
With the traditional learning model disrupted by Covid-19,
decentralized, digital certificates are gaining traction
Coronavirus is driving education onto blockchain With the traditional
learning model disrupted, a bright idea for decentralized, digital
certificates is gaining traction.
By Andrew Hayward
Apr 13, 2020
Spring break started early for many students—and may continue on
indefinitely, thanks to the global spread of novel coronavirus
(COVID-19). The pandemic has shuttered schools the world over as social
distancing becomes the new norm, putting significant physical barriers
between students and their teachers.
As a result, more schools than ever have adopted online learning,
connecting instructors and pupils through online video chats, lesson
plans, and interactive apps (one university in Japan even conducted its
graduation ceremony using telepresence robots).
The lockdown has required many teachers and students to adapt to
unfamiliar technology, and while it has also forced institutions and
school districts to address issues of unequal hardware and Internet
access, it has ultimately shown that education can continue outside of
the traditional classroom setting for a very large number of people.
This dramatic shake-up has some reappraising long-held ideas about
education, and has helped to shine a light on other potentially
disruptive ideas in the space. One that’s poised for widespread take-up
in the wake of the lockdown is blockchain certificates for qualifications.
Blockchain learning certificates use blockchain to create a
decentralized, student-owned, and easily-verified certificate or
credential that tracks educational diplomas, certificates, badges, and
accreditations across institutions, workshops, online classes, and other
learning scenarios. Every course and qualification the student
receives—from micro-courses at work to degree modules—is logged on a
single, immutable ledger.
The idea's not new, but the concept could be given a significant nudge
forward in the wake of the coronavirus lockdown; indeed, one South
Korean university has already issued degree certificates on blockchain
as a result of the quarantine.
One leading proponent of blockchain learning certificates is John
Domingue, director of the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open
University. For more than 50 years, the Open University (OU)—the largest
undergraduate university in the UK—has welcomed millions of students
without the qualifications needed to begin pursuing a degree. Blockchain
provided an intriguing next step forward in its aims.
"We thought there might be a match between this technology as a trusted
ledger and some of our views on lifelong learning and accreditation, so
we started to look at it then," he tells Decrypt of the OU’s first
interest in 2015. "There's already decentralization [at the OU], a
disaggregation between the creation of high-quality learning materials
and teaching. For us, it seemed to be a natural step forward to say,
‘Okay, if we were reinventing the OU today, blockchain would be a good
fit with its decentralized approach’."
"If we were reinventing the Open University today, blockchain would be a
good fit."
Domingue and his Open University colleagues don’t believe that anyone at
21 or 22 years of age has all the knowledge that they need for an entire
lifetime, and he suggests that a balance of work and learning over the
years is a more likely future scenario. As these lifelong learners study
at different institutions—such as the OU’s own FutureLearn online
education platform—and take on varying types of training and
experiences, he suggests that they should have a standardized, but
decentralized record.
"The immediate question that comes to mind is: Where are you going to
store the accreditation so that it's verifiable? Storing it in one
location doesn't make sense because you'll be learning from many, many
providers," he says. "A decentralized approach to accreditation, which
maps to the decentralized way that people will learn in the future,
makes sense to us." [...]
(4) Military freeze - the virus isn't going away; 'We're going to have
to be able to operate in a COVID environment'
Military sees no quick exit from ‘new world' of coronavirus
By ROBERT BURNS
April 15, 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military is bracing for a months-long
struggle against the coronavirus, looking for novel ways to maintain a
defensive crouch that sustains troops' health without breaking their
morale — while still protecting the nation.
Unlike talk in the Trump administration of possibly reopening the
country as early as May, military leaders are suggesting that this
summer may be the best-case scenario of tiptoeing toward a return to
normal activities. Even that is uncertain, and for now the focus is on
adjusting as the pandemic's threat evolves.
"We are going to need to change and adapt, because even over the coming
months the virus isn't going to go away. We're going to have to be able
to operate in a COVID environment," Deputy Defense Secretary David
Norquist said recently, referring to the disease caused by the novel
coronavirus.
Officials have frozen most forces in place overseas, stopped troops and
their families from moving to new assignments, and cut back access to
the Pentagon. The military services have halted or restricted recruit
training, canceled major exercises, and isolated troops in the most
sensitive units. The new Space Force has delayed a satellite launch, and
the Navy this week postponed the return of the USS Harry S. Truman,
keeping the aircraft carrier at sea to shield its crew from virus
exposure at home.
These steps to protect the force have parallels in civilian society, but
a far-flung military can't function by staying at home.
"This will be a new way of doing business that we have to focus in on,"
says Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. "We're adjusting to that new world as we speak today."
The notion of "normal" in the military may never be the same.
"We've all deployed and fought enemies abroad, however, today's enemy is
here in our communities," said Lt. Gen. Brad Webb, commander of the Air
Force's training and education command. "We don't know what ‘new normal'
will look like until we get to the other side."
Defense Secretary Mark Esper has been consistent in saying it will take
time to determine when to begin lifting restrictions on the military,
and he has faced little public pressure — from military families or the
White House — to rush things. In civilian society, there is an open
split between those like President Donald Trump who want the country
reopened soon to mitigate economic damage and those, including many
state governors, who fear reopening prematurely will undermine progress
against the virus.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the the
pandemic has spread so far and wide, potentially creating instability in
some countries, that the U.S. military cannot return to business as usual.
"We have got to take a hard look at how we as a military, we as a
Department of Defense, conduct operations in the future," he said.
In a further sign of uncertainty, Esper said Tuesday that he will extend
a "stop movement" order halting what are called permanent
change-of-station moves by troops and their families. He did not say how
long he will extend the order, aimed at protecting troops and originally
set to expire May 11. If it continues into the summer, military members
with children could face serious hardship, since they need time to
settle and enroll their children in new schools.
Coronavirus has been less deadly in the military than in the rest of
American society, but the number of confirmed cases is still rising. As
of Tuesday the total exceeded 2,600, up from 1,521 a week earlier. Two
troops have died of the disease — a National Guard member in March and a
Navy sailor on Monday.
Even after the number of the military's coronavirus cases crests, a
degree of uncertainty about restoring normalcy will linger. The Navy's
top doctor, Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, says the virus wields a "secret
power" that the military must take into account as it adjusts in the
weeks and months ahead.
"What we've learned, certainly in the Navy with regard to COVID-19, (is)
that stealth, in the form of asymptomatic transmission, is this
adversary's secret power," he told reporters. "And so we recognize that
despite really our best efforts, we're going to have to learn how to
operate with the virus."
Webb, the Air Force training commander, said his service is doing about
99% of its recruiting online rather than with traditional in-person
pitches. And while the way ahead isn't clear, he said, "I think we have
the opportunity now to never go back to old ways." [...]
Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
(5) Bill Gates Foundation Funds Microchip Implant Vaccine Technology
By Celeste McGovern
Tuesday, April 14, 2020 at 5:30 am (1159 words)
This article is copyrighted by GreenMedInfo LLC, 2020
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated more than $21 million
towards developing a vaccine technology that uses a tattoo-like
mechanism which injects invisible nanoparticles under the skin that is
now being tested in a vaccine against the virus that causes COVID-19.
The microneedle technology is also being wed to injectable technology,
funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which embeds under the
skin a vaccination record visible by near infrared light that can be
read by smartphone technology.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the technologies with
aims to enable them in "house-to-house" vaccine campaigns undertaken by
people with "minimal training."
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh reported in their study
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32249203> published April 1 in
EBiomedicine, a Lancet Journal, that their microneedle patch vaccine
against the SARS CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 "prompted robust
antibody production in the mice within two weeks."
The patches resemble a spiky piece of Velcro, with hundreds of tiny
microneedles made of sugar. The needles prick just into the skin and
quickly dissolve, releasing the vaccine into the tiny abrasions and
inducing a potent immune cell response despite the minute amount of the
vaccine material - far more potent than an intramuscular injection.
The researchers had been testing vaccine using the microneedle patch for
other coronaviruses, including the one that causes Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and reported that three different
experimental MERS vaccines induced the production of antibodies against
the virus.
These responses were stronger than the responses generated by regular
injection of one of the vaccines along with a powerful immune stimulant
(an adjuvant). Antibody levels continued to increase over time in mice
vaccinated by microneedle patch-up to 55 weeks, when the experiments
ended. The researchers have now turned their technology to the COVID-19
virus, SARS CoV-2.
"Testing in patients would typically require at least a year and
probably longer," senior co-author of the study, dermatology professor
Louis Falo said.
"This particular situation is different from anything we've ever seen,
so we don't know how long the clinical development process will take.
Recently announced revisions to the normal processes suggest we may be
able to advance this faster."
Another study <https://sci-hub.tw/10.1126/scitranslmed.aay7162> funded
by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and published in December,
2019 by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the
Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and
the Global Good, Intellectual Ventures Laboratory in Bellevue, WA,
describes how "near-infrared quantum dots" can be implanted under the
skin along with a vaccine to encode information for "decentralized data
storage and bio-sensing."
"To maximize the utility of this technology for vaccination campaigns,
we aimed to create a platform compatible with microneedle-delivered
vaccines that could reliably encode data on an individual for at least
five years after administration," said the MIT paper, titled
Biocompatible near-infrared quantum dots delivered to the skin by
microneedle patches record vaccination. "In addition, this system also
needed to be highly biocompatible, deliver a sufficient amount of dye
after an application time of 2 min or less, and be detectable using a
minimally adapted smartphone."
Fridrik Laurusson, an author of the microchip study, is from The Global
Good, Intellectual Ventures Labarotory
. Its website features Microsoft founder Bill Gates on its front page
and describes itself as a "collaboration between Bill Gates and
Intellectual Ventures" a company founded by Nathan Myhrvold and Edward
Jung of Microsoft.
Wikipedia describes Intellectual Ventures in Gates' home state as a
private American company that "centers on the development and licensing
of intellectual property" and "one of the top-five owners of U.S.
patents, as of 2011".
"Its business model has a focus on buying patents and aggregating them
into a large patent portfolio and licensing these patents to third
parties," according to Wikipedia
The company has been described as the country's largest and most
notorious patent trolling company,[2] the ultimate patent troll[3], and
the most hated company in tech.[4]
The website of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation lists multiple
grants awarded to develop the "microneedle array patch" - for use in
"house-to-house campaigns via administration by minimally-trained
personnel."
The most recent grant for $370,035
was awarded in February, 2020 to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention for an MMR vaccine patch that does not require refrigeration
and "enables house-to-house campaigns" via people without medical
experience or training. [...]
Gates, whose father was the director of Planned Parenthood
<https://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_gates.html> Federation of
America and mother worked for PPFA's funding affiliate
United Way, has been noted for his population control ideology.
His wife, Melinda Gates, launched a Family Planning Summit on World
Population Day in 2012 with the aim of garnering tax dollars from
governments to expand reproductive health services aimed at lowering the
global birth rate. ____
This work may be reproduced and redistributed, in whole or in part,
without alteration and without prior written permission, provided all
copies contain the following:
1. "(c) [Article Date] GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and
distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more
from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here
2. Complete original title and author credit directly below the headline.
3. An original do-follow hyperlink intact and active going back to
the article location you are reproducing; all other hyperlinks within
the article are do-follow and remain intact.
4. No changes or edits to title, content, hyperlinks, or images are
permissible without written permission from GreenMedInfo LLC.
(6) How Covid-19 might affect China's Belt and Road
The Belt and Road After COVID-19
Possible post-pandemic scenarios for China's long-term foreign policy
strategy.
By Plamen Tonchev
April 07, 2020
The Belt and Road After COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly looking like a watershed, one of
those moments in history that mark the end of an era and usher in a new
one. The world is poised to change dramatically as a result of the novel
coronavirus and many of the assumptions that seem plausible today may
have to be revisited a few months down the road. Everything will depend
on the severity of the coming socioeconomic shock and the resilience of
the world order.
While it is too early for authoritative forecasts, three scenarios are
possible at this stage. The best case envisages a moderate economic
disturbance, which can hopefully be dealt with by the existing world
order and through the mobilization of existing financial tools. A much
more likely scenario, which qualifies as bad, foresees severe economic
damage necessitating a massive demand for reconstruction, even if it
cannot be met through available resources and by the shaky global
institutional architecture. The worst-case scenario will be really ugly:
it includes a devastating economic collapse of potentially historic
proportions, leading to social and political turmoil in a number of
countries, a sea change as to configuration of the world order, and
curtailed connectivity.
The oft-repeated assertion that we'll be living in a different world
once the pandemic has been contained certainly applies to China's
emblematic Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), too. Interestingly, the
pandemic has exposed the risks and weaknesses of global
interconnectedness, which cannot but affect China's BRI.
It'll take some time before the impact of the COVID-19 calamity can be
gauged with a sufficient degree of precision. The first scenario seems
to be a pie in the sky and the third one is simply impossible to grasp
in its entirety, which is why the only somewhat credible conjectures for
the time being could be made in relation to the bad scenario. In this
case, several key questions about the future of BRI stand out.
Who Foots the Bill?
In the bad scenario, a snag that BRI is likely to hit is a funding
shortfall. So far, President Xi Jinping's signature project has been
powered primarily by China, whose growth rates were decreasing even
before the outbreak. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is
facing a daunting task revitalizing an economy that is up against
serious structural challenges. Three months after disaster struck in
Wuhan, the country appears to be coming round, but a V-shaped rebound is
not a given and analysts continue to slash their forecasts. With the
United States and Europe reeling from the pandemic, Chinese exports will
take a big hit. At home, Beijing is faced with limited room to stimulate
the country's highly leveraged economy, with persistently bad news
coming in. Last February, China's official urban unemployment jumped to
an unprecedented 6.2 percent, though the real rate may be even higher.
Some 5 million jobs in urban China have reportedly been lost to date
because of the lockdown and that number may go up to 9 million by the
end of 2020. Therefore, Beijing's utmost priority will be preserving low
levels of unemployment, while it will probably postpone the vaunted goal
of doubling the country's 2010 GDP by the end of this year.
The political imperative of ensuring social stability will require
much-needed resources, at the expense of what many Chinese citizens view
as a waste of money overseas. While Xi's grip on power remains
unchallenged, there is a perception that he may have jumped the gun with
an overly ambitious and assertive foreign policy agenda, including the
BRI. The COVID-19 outbreak has exposed the need for Beijing's
decision-makers to focus on domestic development and China will have to
reconcile two competing priorities: avoiding the middle-income trap,
while at the same time posturing as a superpower abroad. So, not only
may BRI be short of cash, but it will also be hard to sell at home and
mostly probably won't be touted within China for a while.
Will China Get Its Money Back?
Worse still, all the economies along BRI routes will find themselves in
tatters in the wake of the outbreak. There will be an ever-growing
demand for infrastructure in Eurasia and Africa, but already-limited
available resources in recipient countries may evaporate altogether. For
instance, Pakistan, China's all-weather partner and host to the biggest
BRI megaproject in the world, is poised to sustain a $8.2 billion loss,
according to a preliminary assessment by the Asian Development Bank. At
present, the respective figure for Bangladesh is $3 billion. Thailand
has given up hope of hitting a 2.8 percent growth target this year and
is now bracing up for a recession. Africa is equally vulnerable, as
China is the continent's largest market for natural resources, and a
primary source of industrial products and consumer goods. It's only a
matter of time before the epidemic spreads across African countries in
full force and leads, in parallel to a public health crisis, to a severe
economic slump.
In all developing countries remittances are bound to shrink due to job
cuts overseas, thus putting further pressure on the economies vying for
Chinese investment. Project failures, cases of insolvency, and
bankruptcies are expected to grow exponentially along BRI routes in the
months, if not years, to come. Reportedly, coronavirus-hit Chinese
companies executing BRI contracts can rely on support from the China
Development Bank in the form of low-cost financing and special foreign
exchange liquidity loans. Yet, Chinese policy banks will be increasingly
picky and inclined to stay away from new projects that may turn out to
be loss-makers.
The Show Must Go On
According to a recently published theory, the terrestrial Silk Road
Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road, the two distinct BRI strands,
are priorities eight and nine on Xi's Top Ten list — not even close to
No. 1 (preserving the CCP's power), No. 2 (maintaining national unity),
and No. 3 (the expansion of the economy). This reading of Xi's worldview
suggests that, under extreme circumstances, Beijing will not deem the
BRI as important as political and social stability at home. And the
position of the Chinese leadership over the past two years has been
anything but enviable – it's been steadily exacerbated by the trade war
with the United States, an inexorable economic slowdown, riots in Hong
Kong, Tsai Ing-wen's re-election in Taiwan, and now the coronavirus
calamity.
But this is not to say that the BRI is over, far from it. As Mark Twain
would have chuckled, rumors of the death of the BRI are greatly
exaggerated. It is a symbol of China's emergence as a leading global
power and a big chunk of Xi's personal legacy, hence its inclusion in
the CCP's constitution. As is to be expected, Beijing's official
rhetoric is that the COVID-19 outbreak will only have a temporary impact
on the BRI. In fact, the initiative's fuzzy content is being further
enriched with the "Health Silk Road" add-on narrative and "mask
diplomacy" in a major soft-power push, as Beijing seeks to fend off
unpalatable questions about its fumbled initial response to the outbreak
and turn the tables on its critics.
In the short run, the BRI will be in trouble. In particular, the summer
of 2020 may be a period of hibernation for a number of BRI projects. The
outbreak has brought Chinese labor supplies and equipment imports along
BRI routes down to a trickle. Currently, major infrastructure projects
in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, and other countries are
progressing at a snail's pace. Yet, while the Belt and Road has been put
on hold due to the outbreak and proliferation of the virus, this
shouldn't be seen as anything other than a short-term upheaval.
A Different BRI
In the mid to long run, ongoing BRI projects will pick up again, though
it is reasonable to assume that this will be a new BRI, an enterprise of
a different complexion. And the BRI is bound to change, with inescapable
questions about its China-centered nature: overdependence on Chinese
companies and Chinese staff working on BRI projects financed through
loans from Chinese banks. But, above all, it needs to change due to its
inherent conceptual defects. Long before being hit by COVID-19, the BRI
was infected with the virus of poor design, misconception, and chutzpah.
Notably, Chinese authorities have yet to come up with a clear-cut
definition of the BRI, which remains a loose set of infrastructure
projects and bilateral deals. Seven years after this ambitious
initiative was announced it remains, at best, a blurred vision in need
of a comprehensive conceptual framework, international standards, and a
coherent implementation strategy. This is one of the reasons why the BRI
has become controversial and has caused a backlash in many countries.
And this is also why a process of recalibration, of sorts, has been
under way for at least a year now, if one is to take Xi's words at the
second Belt and Road Forum in April 2019 at face value.
The Chinese president sketched out his grand vision in September 2013,
at a time China had an annual growth rate close to 8 percent and some $4
trillion in its coffers. Back then, initial estimates of the resources
to be allocated to the BRI went all the way up to a bombastic $8
trillion, only to come down to $4 trillion later on. In March 2018,
Morgan Stanley predicted that China's overall expenses along BRI routes
could reach $1.2 to 1.3 trillion by 2027, but even this is now looking
increasingly unlikely.
The World Bank estimates that cumulative BRI expenditure up to 2019
stood at $545 billion. So far, about two-thirds of Chinese spending on
completed BRI projects has gone into the energy sector and transport,
roughly accounting for $50 billion and $15 billion, respectively.
However, developing countries in need of infrastructure will be terribly
cash-strapped, so unless money is offered by multilateral financial
institutions or debt relief is considered, there may be a shift away
from roads, bridges, and coal-fired power plants funded through Chinese
loans.
Due to domestic political and financial constraints, China will no
longer be in a position to shower BRI partners with loans. Arguably, it
will think twice before getting embroiled in ill-conceived investments,
such as the standard gauge railway in Kenya or the highway to nowhere
currently being built in Montenegro. From now on Chinese policy banks
will be much more wary of a potential "creditor trap" and will identify
projects on the basis of robust due diligence.
Instead of the hitherto scattershot Chinese approach to building
anything that's buildable, new BRI projects will probably be more
strategically chosen. Beijing has been investing in the creation of a
globe-spanning network of economic corridors, logistics zones, and
financial centers, with stress laid on sea ports and adjacent areas.
Egypt's Suez Canal Economic Zone and Sri Lanka's Colombo Port City
clearly exemplify this trend, while the ambitious Sino-Oman Industrial
City project has yet to take off the ground.
Investment in energy will remain sought-after, with Chinese solar-panel
makers aggressively seeking overseas contracts now that state subsidies
are being slashed at home. In addition, projects are likely to focus on
more sophisticated forms of connectivity, such as 5G networks or, in the
wake of the pandemic, disaster management, public health-related
high-tech, and even remote surgery. China will surely use the BRI for
the projection of its soft power, an increasingly important battlefield
in international relations. Not least of all, the geopolitical dimension
of the BRI will be further accentuated by the involvement of China's
military, ostensibly under a humanitarian and peace-building camouflage.
A different BRI will not necessarily be embraced by the rest of the
world, marked by fragmentation and confrontation. It is true that recent
developments have undermined confidence in the capacity and competence
of U.S. governance and the EU is in disarray. However, it remains to be
seen whether China's attempts at burnishing its image as a global leader
will pay off. The world has become aware of the risks of overwhelming
reliance on China and the coronavirus may convince some in the
international community to approach ties with Beijing with a greater
degree of wariness. The outbreak has engendered profound skepticism
about the prudence of leaning too closely on China and BRI may very well
be a case in point.
Plamen Tonchev is Head of the Asia Unit at the Institute of
International Economic Relations (IIER), Athens, Greece.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.