My original comment was “…to stop behaving like a spoilt child, learn to share, and recognise reality - i.e. ‘we are all going to recognise and trade with Taiwan…”. The spoilt child metaphor referred directly, specifically and only to the issue of Taiwan.
My phrase in the later response was ‘childish position on Taiwan’.
In neither case did I say that the whole nation state was a child or childish in general. Nor did I intend to imply that.
I agree with your point where you imply that all nation states can behave like bullies to someone somewhere from time to time and that there is a general lack of grown-up behaviour in the world. Even where China sometimes takes a grown-up position, or where other states are childish, that risks becoming just ‘whataboutism’ when the situation remains that China’s refusal to recognise the practical fact of Taiwan’s existence and independence and using its muscle to intimidate and bully other countries into behaving as if that is not true is in my view, metaphorically, the equivalent of childish behaviour.
Even toddlers who melt down over someone touching their ‘thingy’ can behave very rationally elsewhere. And adults behaving rationally can sometimes be childish, too.
I make these points not to create an argument or go out of my way to contradict your comments, merely to clarify what I was actually saying, which I fear may be somewhat misinterpreted by inferences that may have been drawn from it.
I’m not trying to defend the party, at all. They are not “heroes”. But FFS, they have been more forthcoming than our current president, and that should tell people something…
[ETA] Generally speaking let’s be clear about what criticism they deserve (Great Leap Forward, the attacks on Uyghers, suppression of criticism of the state, attacks on activists, etc), rather than just throwing around yellow peril conspiracy theories, right?
Especially when those conspiracy theories try to diminish confidence in and support of the WHO, the most important global nexus of information and action against infectious diseases, in the middle of a pandemic.
FYI China has been even more forthcoming this very day. It just announced that the number of deaths in Wuhan was in fact 50% more than previously reported.
Just let that sink in for a moment. 50% more than reported at the time.
It would be legitimate to wonder if this number will turn out to be accurate. I sincerely hope it is!
Again, whatever the very real failings of the government there, they are doing more than our current president.
There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism about an authoritarian government. They are still more forth coming on this than the American president. That should scare the shit out of us all… or at least reveal some deeply uncomfortable truths about our supposedly “free” society.
You can expect the same thing in New York City (which is just a little bit smaller than Wuhan, and is earnestly trying to report accurate numbers) in a few weeks to a month, once they have a chance to go back and perform autopsies on all the people who died at home or at hospitals before they had a chance to be tested. Even then, there will be a great deal of uncertainty as many of the dead will not be able to be examined or will not be in a state to get a definitive determination of COVID-19 status.
The current Chinese govt is a bunch of bastard-coated bastards with an exquisite bastard nougat filling, but they’ve handled the Covid-19 crisis surprisingly well, and compared to the Orange Shitgibbon and his crowd of lickspittles, idiots and sociopaths, they look staggeringly reasonable.
Here’s something else you might want to let have a chance to sink in:
China could double the number of reported deaths tomorrow, do it again the day after, and again the day after that … and they’d still be doing an objectively better job than Trump.
And, throughout it all, they’ve been providing the WHO with money and relevant information.Take a moment to ponder that.
I don’t disagree at all. Those points needed no assistance to sink in, whatsoever, I can assure you.
Some people seem to have possibly formed the opinion that merely because I criticise China on some points I am somehow trying to paint their activities as no better than the orange shitgibbon’s / posting them as some sort of defence of his patently reckless idiocy.
Really?
ETA And for all that China has done orders of magnitude better than fuckwit Trump has (and it can only get worse in that regard) and China has done nothing like the damage to the WHO that Trump has, China’s hands are not entirely clean re enabling the WHO to properly do its job.
This passage jumped out, in the full article linked below.
Taiwan did have observer status at the WHO until 2016. That changed, however, with the election of President Tsai Ing-wen, of the traditionally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, which has been followed by Beijing massively ramping up pressure on Taipei, poaching its few remaining diplomatic allies and staging military shows of force.
The WHO argues that Taiwan’s exclusion from meetings of member states does not have an effect on the day-to-day sharing of health information and guidance, with experts and health workers still interacting with international colleagues through the organization. However, numerous observers, including Taiwanese officials, have claimed that it has had a negative effect both during the SARS epidemic and the current crisis.
Natasha Kassam, an expert on China, Taiwan and diplomacy at Australia’s Lowy Institute, said that early on in the coronavirus pandemic, a lack of direct and timely channels to the WHO “resulted in inaccurate reporting of cases in Taiwan,” with WHO officials apparently relying on Beijing for numbers from the island.
“Taiwanese authorities have complained about the lack of access to WHO data and assistance,” she said.
That lack of information may have forced Taiwan to go it alone and make decisions early on independently of the WHO guidance and broader international consensus.
Assistance goes in both directions, however, and in recent weeks, Taiwanese officials have repeatedly complained that their exclusion from the WHO is preventing the island playing its full part in the global response.
“We want to help – to send out our great doctors, our great researchers, our great nurses – and to share our knowledge and experience with countries that need it,” Vice President Chen Chien-jen, a Johns Hopkins-trained epidemiologist, told the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei last week. "We want to be a good global citizen and make our contribution, but right now we are unable to
I don’t think you are doing that, but others have been. I think it’s important to correct faulty assumptions with regards to orgs like the WHO, as there are right wing talking points that see them as little more than puppet organizations for foreign powers trying to bring down America. This is how we got Trump, so any little thing I can do to give people a more accurate picture, I’ll be doing.
Thank you, this is exactly the tidbit I was looking for. Not that such nicities mean much any more, I assumed this was another case of cutting aid to Crimea.
To sumarise, I asked why you believed the infection and death stats coming from China with such conviction because this seemed a bit unusual based on what I know from the history of the chinese government and your reasons for trusting their stats are:
Trump is bad
China released numbers
I appreciate the answer, but I remain unconvinced.
That sounds like …