Hidden Harmonies China Blog

Sayragul Sauytbay/Сайрагүл Сауытбай was by the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on 4 March 2020 given the «International Woman of Courage»-award (IWOC), an American award presented annually by the U.S. Department of State (mainly to opposition figures in other countries), https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-states-international-women-of-courage-award/

Besides on Jun 22, 2020 the book «Die Kronzeugin: Eine Staatsbeamtin über ihre Flucht aus der Hölle der Lager und Chinas Griff nach der Weltherrschaft» by Sayragul Sauytbay and German journalist Alexandra Cavelius was published on «Europaverlag. And «Scribe Publishers», a publisher in the United States, is going to translate and published the book in the UK, the US and Australia in May 2021 under the title «The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s Modern-Day Concentration Camps», https://www.dw.com/en/how-china-is-destroying-kazakh-culture/a-54434930

Journalist Alexandra Cavelius has earlier cooperated with Rebiya Kadeer, former president of World Uyghur Congress, on writing the book: «Rebiya Kadeer, Alexandra Cavelius: Die Himmelsstürmerin, Chinas Staatsfeindin Nr.1 erzählt aus ihrem Leben» (Verlagsgruppe Random House, 2007). and with the English version: «Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace With China» (Kales Press, 2009)

Earlier in 2013 U.S. Department of State had given a similar «IWOC»-award to Chinese Tibetan Tsering Woeser.

A sum of money probably follows the award, but that is not stated at the web-site of the U.S. Department of State.

There are many reasons for Donald Trump to threaten to shut down Tiktok. One is personal. He is still infuriated about his team being tricked into his Tulsa rally disaster earlier in June.

Another is political. Donald is down in the polls. He is not down and out, but he is down across the board in so many areas, across demographics, and in electorally critical states. He needs a win, soon, and he ain’t going to get it against the Coronavirus. So he wants to manufacture a win against China.

But there may be a third…

Perhaps Donald really wants to shut down many of the younger generation who absolutely hate his guts – his racist, revisionist, some say fascist vision of America. He wants to shut them down. Immobilize them against mobilizing against him this coming election.

If the following video is anything to go by, I think this may be an important but less discussed reason for Trump’s tirades against Tiktok. Tiktok is becoming an important platform of discourse and expression for teens around the world. He sees them as a threat. He wants to silence a generation.

Please pass along this message…

No, that didn’t happen. What did happen is an example of America’s full-spectrum propaganda against China.

Here’s an article from Forbes on forced Uyghur labor when it first appeared in March, and then updated when it was exposed for using photo of a factory in Brazil. Notice the March date remain unchanged, no editorial correction:

Now it seems America’s Color Revolution has come home to roost, we can see the difference in narrative between protest violence at home and the Hong Kong protest violence that was glorified and rationalized by our media back then.

So just how bad was it? Take this incidence of protest violence as example. An off-duty officer was jumped by 3 rioters a year ago. He suffered over 20 stab wounds and lost portions of fingertips. When his wife arrived the doctors told her to “be prepared”. Officer Wei managed to survive the 14 hour surgery ended with a hundred stitches all over his body. To date he is still struggling to recover and may require additional surgeries:

(Warning: graphic footage in interview)

There are many China experts talking about China, but most do not really understand China. Kishore Mahbubani is one of the few I would like to recommend who can talk about China with some understanding. His most recent book “Has China Won” generate quite a stir in Western academic circles and there were a few debates with other experts you can access in YouTube. He is a retired Singaporean diploma and was head of delegation to UN.
As you can see from the title he thinks China is winning the war with West and analyzing the event before the Corvid pandemic, and the recent conversations and debates he further accentuate China’s advantage versus West. He is generally friendly with China although critical in the perspective of liberal thinkers in general. He agrees with Professor Zhang Weiwei and consider China from the perspective as a civilization with more than 2,000 years of unbroken history and various philosophies shaping the present course rather than the normal critics as authoritarian or even Marxism.
Though he thinks China made a mistake in overplaying her hand and being arrogant and triggering the attacks by Trump Administration rather than continue to play Deng’s strategy of hiding her strength. And the fact of alienating the U.S. business community and causing overwhelming negative reaction from U.S. populace. I think he is wrong in that analysis as negative reaction was inevitable as China climb the ranks from way down to near the top. The Bush administration was ready to cut down China to her size as the spy plane incident developed, but was sideswiped by 9/11 and Bin Laden. Obama was ready to encircle China with Pacific Rim agreement and was cancelled by ignorant Trump. Islamic terrorism although damaging in Xinjiang did gave China 15 more years of breathing room with U.S. pressure and sanctions as Huawei and China is now on semiconductors.
Professor Mahbubani is correct on China’s defensive nature and diplomatic policy. He is too optimistic on whether West can rise to China’s challenge and he is rare among the Western experts being seeing China clearly.

As calls for “defunding” the Police in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death mounts across America – land of the free, it is interesting to compare how police treats its citizens in the U.S. vs China – often depicted as a “police state” in the West.

Police brutality is nothing new in the U.S. or the West (for example, see this, or this, or this, or this). What about China?

As we get closer to the infamous date that many westerners would like to remember about tanks running around Tiananmen Square, I would like to remind why the events leading it in the first place. In case if you are brainwashed by western propaganda, the Chinese in early 1989 at the time saw rampant inflation and the Chinese government at the time weaning people out from the Iron Rice Bowl. Some people are simply disgusted how corrupt officials get rich while many other people suffer, especially academics. I rather not get into the details of this, but when the government doesn’t listen to the demands of its people, the government loses its legitimacy.

Fast forward today in America. America has been socialist for the Rich thanks to the bailout during the financial crisis, thanks to Obama.  This snake oil salesman president also crushed the occupy wall street movement by the way. President Trump made it worse by giving rich people tax breaks. He bungled covid-19 response and gave the rich tax breaks and gave the poor the scraps. What stuck me to write this article is that the pro-business CNBC knows that this is happening.

Many Americans stuck at home, jobless, see their business evaporate, seeing many minorities die while the stock market went sky high, big businesses getting bigger. There is enough kindling out there to start the fire and the death of George Floyd is just the catalyst. If George Floyd was killed 6 months ago, the response will not be so intense.

Like what happened in early 1989 in China where its people questioned the legitimacy of its government, I think today many Americans have the same feeling. Do they care if some local stores get looted or burnt down? Probably not. Meanwhile, Trump floated the idea about sending out the military to quell the protests. Let’s hope that June 4th will not be an ominous day in America just like in China. Then again, president Trump, the elites and western media are blind thinking that these riots and protests are really about a racial problem and firing police officers and putting them in jail will solve the problem, I think they are wrong.

I’ve wrote this article an article about a year ago of why I believe that Trump is the best thing to China since Nixon.

Trump’s mishandled almost every foreign and domestic policy from Trade war with China. Now Trump is knee deep in a recession and handling the coronavirus. China seems to have the upper hand controlling of the coronavirus situation and has passed the National Security Law in Hong Kong.

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3086558/hong-kong-national-security-law-us-set-go-it-alone-hard-line

I recall several months ago when the Hong Kong government was proposing to pass the extradition treaty many other countries were outraged that this would happen. Compared to this many countries including Japan, South Korea, India, ASEAN as well as EU seems to be pretty quiet about this. Besides the US, only the other 4 five eyes countries (Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand) are somewhat vocal about China’s latest move. Perhaps it is another sign of America’s decline and China’s rise.

Many people in the West – apparently led on by the U.S. government – believe that the Chinese had covered up information regarding initial extent of the epidemic in China. Some had asserted that the death toll in China was actually magnitudes higher. When that could not be proven, some are taken to the notion that China kept data regarding human-to-human transmission from the world. The supposed evidence? An email Taiwanese authorities sent to the WHO on December 31.

This email has often been presented to constitute evidence that Taiwan had learned of and warned the WHO of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan, but that the WHO ignored. Turns out, the email did not make any such assertion. No one has been able to present an email from Taiwan to the WHO reporting any information about human-to-human transmission.

This article from China Daily is good. Very good. It links to sources from the West itself that debunks the junk that is pervading through Western political establishments and many mainstream media.

Another article is this one from Independent Media Institute (IMI).

Yet another is this one from the Grayzone by Max Blumenthal and Ajit Singh.

And finally, this one from the TriContinental (archieved pdf here).

Copied below is the China Daily article…

[This article was first published on Asia Times]

Despite his Administration’s many failures in responding to the Covid-19 crisis, Trump is rebranding himself as the tough, indispensable leader America needs.  At the center of Trump’s new pitch: his “travel ban” against China back in February.  According to Trump, but for his “early” and “decisive” actions, “thousands and thousands of lives” would have been lost.

“Everybody was against it.  Almost everybody, I would say, was just absolutely against it. … I made a decision to close off to China that was weeks early. … And I must say, doctors — nobody wanted to make that decision at the time.” 

Trump’s “travel ban” however was more taking a swipe at China than keeping America safe. 

Recently I have been reading so much junk and misinformation about China that’s it’s unbeleivable. Of course, there will always be bottom feeders such as this from a David Cole on TakiMag. But there are some more reputable ones too, such as those from Niall Ferguson about China deliberately spreading the virus to the world…

Anyways, recent allegations from Ferguson were sufficiently disturbing that Prof. Daniel Bell took the time to look at the evidence provided. Shockingly he found that even the allegations from Ferguson are based on either misunderstanding or deliberate misinformation. Rather than put word into the Professor’s mouth, I’ll copy his response (copied from his website) below.

Following is a recent piece from George Koo about the Sad State of American Anti-China Fever – from a Chinese American’s Perspective. It was published on Asia Times.

I completely empathize and echo George’s sentiment. America in my opinion has degenerated to a shadow of its former self – much in the last 20 years. It’s not the economy or gdp per se. America is still doing well there. It’s its psyche. It has conjured falsehood out of thin area against invisible enemies. It has fought pointless wars after pointless wars. The election of President Trump and the degeneration of President Trump from Candidate to President are all emblematic of America’s decline. It is a nation that no longer cares about truth … From the President down to the senators to many in the press, stories are presented in biased, unbalanced ways. There is little goodwill toward each other … or the world. It’s all about winning and success … devoid of humanity.

Without much adieu, please read George’s article.

While western media wants to portray that China is making up ‘conspiracy theories’ about the origins of the Coronavirus coming to the US, many epidemiologists will point otherwise. However, the fact is that many pandemics start locally and it takes some time before it spreads worldwide and it usually starts in small wave(s) before it goes critical. Here are several instances of such outbreaks.

1. Oct-Dec 2019, Italy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-timing/italian-scientists-investigate-possible-earlier-emergence-of-coronavirus-idUSKBN21D2IG

This outbreak happened in Northern Italy in the last 3 months of 2019 where hundreds more people got hit with the same symptoms. Because the virus has spread unabated, the recent second wave got hit very hard to Northern Italy and spread to neighboring countries including Switzerland, Germany, and Spain,

However, the Chinese believe this virus spread within Wuhan as the result of the Military Games in October 2019 and it comes from the US. In fact, many point out with the closure of Fort Detrick because of how it handles hazardous pathogens last August.

2) Virginia, US June/July 2019.

Another “mysterious illness’ with the same coronavirus symptoms happened in Late June/Early July in Greenspring retirement home.

https://wjla.com/news/local/new-total-of-sickened-individuals-at-greenspring-retirement-community

As the result of this outbreak, 3 people died and more than 80 elderly and staff got sick. Many people point to a security officer who works in Fort Belvoir which is very close to this nursing home as the source of the infection.

[Editor’s note: rolling updates on coronavirus timeline]

France:

New York:

New Jersey:

California:

[Important Editor Note: I have since communicated with the authors of the article and other experts in the field and now retract this post in the sense that there are major problems with the methodology of this study. First the bat virus chosen to anchor the tree is too far away to serve as an anchor. You can get whatever tree you want! Second, there are major issues associated with forcing a most parsimonious tree in a set of data with a lot of missing data – perhaps systematically biased missing data. The data set is mostly from China, and even there only a subset. Whatever tree built is a best tree for the data, and may be completely off from reality. The study is still interesting in that it is not assuming a place of origin; it is trying to figure out a place of origin. But the study – at least in its current form – has failed. If I get time, I will write a follow-up post on this study explaining in more detail. Thanks.]

I have been reading this article in the PNAS titled Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes by Peter Forster, Lucy Forster, Colin Renfrew, and Michael Forster. The study involves a study of the genomes of 160 covid-19 patients from the around the world. As readers may know, viruses are RNA-based entities that periodically and regularly undergo mutations. One can study these mutations and almost like clockwork trace their evolution – i.e. their lineage and migration pattern.

The authors specifically employed a methodology known as “character-based phylogenetic networks”. The technique has been used as the “method of choice” to reconstruct prehistoric human population movements, language evolution, various ecological studies, and some 10,000 phylogenetic studies of diverse organisms – and now virology.

I have posted references that explain the U.S. attempt to smear China in light of its own catastrophic handling of the coronavirus crisis. Turns out Taiwan is an integral part of that. Interesting article I read first on Guancha. I will translate a part … and refer to the CNBC report that it refers to as well … and conclude with some brief thoughts.

Earlier Allen had talked about US government’s effort to smear China. While Trump has moderated his rhetoric after the G20 call with Xi, the propaganda push continues with latest round accusing China of deliberate under counting.

The obvious fake news from the likes of Falun Gong are easy to spot, but the consistent Echo Chamber by mainstream media is harder. For example this article from US government funded propaganda outlet Voice of America contributing to the claim Chinese government is excluding or not counting asymptomatic individual: https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/china-officials-exclude-asymptomatic-covid-19-carriers-data

The sixth edition of the guidelines, released March 7, reads, “Asymptomatic patients with clinical manifestations will be promptly amended as confirmed cases.”

This is an especially insidious piece of propaganda. Although VOA translated the part they want you to focus on about asymptomatic individual not being classified as confirmed case thus excluded, its conclusion defies logic – how is it possible to say these cases are not tracked, if their classification are to be amended later?

VOA simply left out the part about counting asymptomatic individual. Here’s the relevant section omitted, from the 6th edition coronavirus reporting guideline – asymptomatic positive cases are in fact counted as suspicious case and amended to confirmed case once symptomatic:

(3) Report Early.

1.Case report.

Various healthcare organization should report suspected, confirmed, asymptomatic individual within 2 hours online. …

2. Report Update. Suspected cases should be immediately updated on confirmation or exclusion. Asymptomatic positive individual should be immediately updated as confirmed, on symptom manifestation.

（三）早报告。

1.病例报告。

各级各类医疗卫生机构发现疑似病例、确诊病例、无症状感染者时，应当于2小时内进行网络直报。…

2.报告订正。疑似病例确诊或排除后及时订正。无症状感染者如出现临床表现，及时订正为确诊病例。

And here’s the irony – while the Chinese test and track asymptomatic positive cases, we don’t count them because we don’t test people without symptom. Here’s what Yale School of Medicine said early on that never made press:

Surveillance is inherently difficult, especially for a respiratory disease caused by a novel virus during what is normally flu season in China. … So, just because the modeled projection and the numbers on the ground don’t add up, it does not imply that there is a cover up. The institutes in China have thus far done an outstanding job of communicating throughout a very challenging and dynamic situation.

Despite Trump having said he will stop using the term “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus” a few days ago, ¹ the U.S. is still actively pushing the world to buy the idea that China covered up its coronavirus outbreak, a cover up which directly lead the world to suffer a pandemic.

The G7 just failed to issue a joint statement because the U.S. kept pushing for a statement about a “Wuhan virus” that the others felt was unnecessarily antagonistic.

Recently, I found an article that goes over the U.S.’s full spectrum efforts to smear China in the face of its cataclysmic failures at home. Please refer to the following for a good overview how the US wants to pin China for covering up the Coronavirus Crisis:

[This article is cross-posted on TheSaker and GlobalResearch]

Despite strong rebukes from the WHO, President Trump and his Administration officials in recent days have made an emphatic point of calling the COVID-19 virus the “Chinese Virus” or “China Virus.”  When pushed on the racist overtone of his rhetoric, Trump retorted, “Cause [the virus] comes from China. It’s not racist at all, no, not at all. It comes from China, that’s why. I want to be accurate.”

Sadly, most Americans, even if uncomfortable, appear to agree on the facts, if not the tenor, of Trump’s choice of words. ¹

Here are some facts about the COVID-19 virus that will helpfully set the American public straight. 

[This article was originally published on Globalresearch.ca.]

Japan, China and Taiwan Reports on the Origin of the Virus

The Western media quickly took the stage and laid out the official narrative for the outbreak of the new coronavirus which appeared to have begun in China, claiming it to have originated with animals at a wet market in Wuhan.

In fact the origin was for a long time unknown but it appears likely now, according to Chinese and Japanese reports, that the virus originated elsewhere, from multiple locations, but began to spread widely only after being introduced to the market.

More to the point, it appears that the virus did not originate in China and, according to reports in Japanese and other media, may have originated in the US.

Here’s a video on all the Black Terror violence that went down in Hong Kong during the Color Revolution (warning: graphic violence):

It seems apparent now that Bernie is becoming the Democratic candidate for president. He is becoming a target not just from the Republicans but from from the Democratic establishment themselves. Perhaps the best illustration of this is from Late Night comedy show.

While he is not my first choice of a candidate, I do see why he is so appealing and many democratic voters see him more appealing than many of the Democratic establishment candidates.

Yesterday 15/2-20 «France 24» news network, showed a video about Mr. Fangbin in Wuhan, who was interrogated by the police, after he had entered hospital areas and filmed patients and alleged body bags, and also posted his videos on Chinese social media platforms. (The videos were also posted by Jennifer Zeng @jenniferatntd at Twitter).
The videos are badly made and actually it’s just a stupid story, but France 24 has made it into a human rights issue, and also talks about all the support Mr. Fangbin has got on the internet. See his videos and France 24’s article at https://observers.france24.com/en/20200207-china-wuhan-coronavirus-Fangbin-shopkeeper-censorship-videos

One of France 24’s sources is an US-based group called «Chinese Human Rights Defender». And what sort of group is that? «Radio Free Asia» (Washington, D.C.) wrote in 2018 the following about their work: «Advocacy group China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) and a partner NGO, Equal Rights Initiative, said Friday that in the southern XUAR alone some 660,000 rural residents of Uyghur ethnicity may have been detained in the camps, while another up to 1.3 million may have been forced to attend mandatory day or evening re-education sessions in their villages or town centers.»
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/millions-08032018142025.html
From this one can see that «Radio Free Asia» surprisingly is using a tiny and almost unknown organization, called Chinese Human Rights Defenders, as a reliable source on Xinjiang.

The staff at Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) are «International Director» Renee Xia (Mandarin, English), +1 863 866 1012 (+1 is USA and 863 is Florida area code), and Frances Eve (English), +1 661 240 9177 (which is in California; Twitter: FrancesEveCHRD). At their website no street address is given, but a post-box: PO Box 1905. Washington, DC 20013 USA.

One may wonder who takes care of their postbox, since none of the two lives in Washington DC? Ajit Singh and Ben Norton at Grayzone has checked the US tax forms of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and found rather shockingly that: «On its tax forms, CHRD lists its address as the Washington, DC office of Human Rights Watch.» https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/amp/

At the web-site of Chinese Human Rights Defenders they write about their mission: «CHRD operates a small emergency grants program which provides legal aid and emergency assistance to victims of human rights abuses.» https://www.nchrd.org/about-chinese-human-rights-defenders

Since such a small organization also is able to «empower grassroots activism in China», as they write, they need funding, and a list at Hidden Harmonies, https://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2018/09/03/the-national-endowment-for-democracy-and-china/ shows that in 2017 Chinese Human Rights Defenders probably got $672,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)! (The donations at NED’s web-site are called «Assistance for Human Rights Defenders: $272,000, «Capacity Building for Human Rights Defenders: $300,000», «Defending and Assisting Rights Defenders: $60,000», and «Humanitarian Assistance for Human Rights Defenders: $40,000»)

$672,000 was in 2017 around 4,5 million yuan – a huge sum in China, and CHRD has likely used parts of these money to fund opposition activists and anti-government projects inside China.

Sadly state-owned «France 24» television – with millions of viewers, is willing – without any reservation, to use this obvious anti-China group as a reliable source about what’s going on in Wuhan. That is journalism at a low level.

Nathan Rich has been putting out many incredible commentaries on China on Youtube for the last few years. And this most recent one on Dr. Li’s death certainly ranks among the best commentaries I have seen in English (or Chinese even) on Dr. Li’s death in Wuhan.

Dr. Li was one of the earliest doctors to notice a SARs like virus going around in Wuhan and had “tweeted” about it on his Weibo account. Local government officials would sanction him about it – asking him to sign some papers admitting what he did was wrong and not to do it again. Later when a concurrent government investigation revealed that a new virus was truly going around, the government retracted his sanctions. Dr. Li would go on to work on the front lines … but later – just a few days ago – die from the virus.

Some people have gone anti-government over this. In the Youtube commentary, Nathan Rich noted that he can understand how people thought Dr. Li was a “hero” and that the government has erred, however he also noted that the most critical thing now is to save lives and go forward, and not distract from the government’s valiant efforts. He posited for those who are angry: even had people listen to Dr. Li’s original (then unsubstantiated) claims, would we really be better off?

Yes, more people might have more masks in the initial days and more might have been more diligent about washing hands, etc. But almost certainly, judging by people’s behavior since the Wuhan quarantine, people would have fled Wuhan and tried to cover up the fact that they might be virus carriers. So, while, on a personal level, leaving town would have been the “human” thing to do, it most certainly would been the worst thing to do in terms of saving lives and reducing the spread of the virus.

Would we be better off today had people listened to Dr. Li (and others’) initial warnings … or much worse off?

[A redacted and edited version of this article was published in the China Daily]

Nowhere is man freer than on the field of battle, where it is a matter of life and death, wrote Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace. One way of determining people’s morality is by observing their reactions during a crisis.

Western audiences have offered three types of reactions to the recent virus outbreak in China: Sympathy, Sinophobia, and Schadenfreude. Sane westerners, one hopes, empathized with the victims, wishing the outbreak ends soon. Racists took advantage of it to indulge in stereotypes and memes. The third category, the western media, was delighted with the opportunity to insult the Chinese government.

Right now many Chinese cities are on the lock down and at the epicenter of this outbreak at Wuhan people could not come in and leave the city. While I agree that there should be some preventative measures to stop this virus from spreading like cancelling public events, shutting down the city by shutting down transportation and schools are excessive.

Let’s step back to what is a coronavirus. According to this Harvard article:

Coronaviruses are an extremely common cause of colds and other upper respiratory infections. These viruses are zoonoses, which means they can infect certain animals and spread from one animal to another. A coronavirus can potentially spread to humans, particularly if certain mutations in the virus occur.

So yes, coronaviruses are common cold virus but this is a particular new strain which started in Wuhan. The problem with this virus is that many people who gotten this virus don’t show much symptoms and could be carrying the virus for days before we get sick. But to think about it, people don’t usually get really sick from the common cold either. For all we know, that this virus has spread far and wide already without knowing about it.

We also have to think about how many people who are infected vs the number people who actually died from this virus.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-01-24/china-coronavirus-panic

https://www.livescience.com/56598-deadliest-viruses-on-earth.html

The Latest data is 4474 infected and 107 dead. That’s little more than 2%. To put that in perspective, many other viruses such as Ebola and smallpox outbreaks has been more higher mortality rates than this coronavirus. Heck, the common flu killed hundreds of thousands every year and there is no pandemic for this.

To put in perspective of the last coronavirus, SARS, I believe that this was also overblown. This virus eventually faded away because people had overcome and developed an immunity for this virus. This will happen to this coronavirus.

Chris Kanthan has just published an article called «Embracing Islamic terrorism». The article, together with 23 links, is a shocking and well-documented review on American foreign policy:

https://www.nationofchange.org/2017/05/28/embracing-islamic-terrorism/

• In link number 3 John Kerry, at that time US Secretary of State, says: «They (the Syrian government) are targeted by the opposition, who we are arming and training […] What we are trying to do is help Syrians to fight for their own country. And we have been spending a lot of money, a lot of effort to try to help do this.» Kerry’s comments came at a meeting that took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2016.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdVa5qoh_80
  
• Link 7: What did American vice president Joe Biden say in 2015: «Our biggest problem is our allies … the Turks … the Saudis, the Emirates et cetera. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad … What did they do? They poured hundred of millions of dollars, ten thousand of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and extremist elements of jihadists coming from other parts of the world! So you think I am exaggerating?»: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOf7jzc7faY

• Link 9 (removed from YouTube) is a CNN interview with retired US army general Wesley Clark, there the American general says: «ISIS got started through funding from our friends and allies…» (17/2-2015). The video can still be found through archive.org, but loads slowly: http://web.archive.org/web/20170307120237/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHLqaSZPe98

• Link 10 is a telegram written by US Secretary of State 30/12-2009: «Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT, and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan.» LeT is Urdu for «Lashkar-e-Taiba», literally Army of Good, one of the most active Islamist terrorist organizations in South Asia. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09STATE131801_a.html

• Link 15 was a video with the title «Kill Shiites, Christians and Jews» – Textbooks for kids in Saudi Arabia (25/5-2017), but it can’t any longer be found at YouTube.

At the end of his article Chris Kanthan also mentions the problems with terrorism in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

When Trump ran for the Presidency, I openly supported him. I did not support him because of politics per se. I actually disagreed with most of his policies. However, I did agree with him that the U.S. needs to put Americans first, start dismantling the U.S. Empire, and do what is best for the American people.

I knew that Trump might end up doing many foolhardy things. I am dismayed but actually not surprised about Trump’s trade and subsequent technology war on China. But I still firmly believed that in the end, Trump will do the right thing. An America that puts “America First” will ultimately be good for America … and the world alike.

However, I will not lie, through the last few years, I have been steadily disappointed. I’ve been disappointed with Trump’s lack of resolve on his core promises, and lack of foresight and leadership when it comes to major policies such as engaging China.

Financial Times recently published an article on how the Chinese government is trying to plan its economy to better adjust to an aging population that is expected to peak in 2050 with around 35% of population over 60. According to the article, this is a culmination of a series of policies actually started at the same time as when the one-child policy was enacted.

Compared to other Western articles that tend to demonize China’s one-child policy, the FT article offers an interesting read of China’s policy of population control. According to Chinese government estimates, today’s population would be 250-300 million larger were it not for its one-child policy.

I usually cringe when I hear people categorically attacking China’s population control policies. While the one-child policy is well known throughout the world, China actually has had enacted other policies in its history, including its “late, long, few” initiative which promoted people to have children later in life and to lengthen the times between pregnancies.

Since the mid 1960’s, China’s birthrate has consistently dropped. Is it a coincidence that since the mid 1960’s, China’s economic growth has also consistently grown?

Before the “Fake News” became “popular,” we were here. This blog was started to counter anti-China fake news created and spread by Western establishments in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics. We were created during the days of ANTI-CNN – now defunct …. and part of April Media according to Wikipedia.

In light of the previous posts by Charles Liu and Rolf, I thought I would revisit our roots again … by republishing a 2017 article by a Chinese journalist who had worked for a Dutch newspaper … and quit. The article described firsthand how ugly “fake news” was made.

It is saddening and enraging to read this article because we know things haven’t changed since 2017. If anything, things have gotten even worse. Also, we know that Fake News matter. It had lead to death and riots in Lhasa in 2008, and has led to more death and riots in Hong Kong in 2019.

Without much adieu, below is the article by Zhang Chaoqun.