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Showing posts with label Western news agencies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Western news agencies. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Chinese experts attend WHO briefing online to further give update on epidemic information as Western news agencies, politicians insist their double standards no matter how China changes its anti-virus policies

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People enjoy leisure time at a business center in Beijing, capital of China, Dec 24, 2022. In recent days, business areas in Beijing have bustled again as the epidemic prevention and control measures have been optimized in line with the evolving epidemic situation. Photo:Xinhua

People enjoy leisure time at a business center in Beijing, capital of China, Dec 24, 2022. In recent days, business areas in Beijing have bustled again as the epidemic prevention and control measures have been optimized in line with the evolving epidemic situation. Photo:Xinhua

Chinese experts on Thursday attended an online briefing for the World Health Organization (WHO) members to provide a further update on COVID-19 epidemic information. The WHO said that China has stepped up efforts to share information on the epidemic over the past few weeks, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said on Friday.

According to the WHO, China has been uploading genetic sequencing data of the virus and sharing more information about the epidemic over the past few weeks. China is ready to strengthen cooperation with the international community including the WHO to better tackle challenges of the epidemic and protect people's lives and health, said Mao.

Experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Southeast University attended the online briefing for member states of the WHO on Thursday, according to the National Health Commission, a latest move by China to carry out close cooperation with the WHO.

At the meeting, the WHO Secretariat briefed member states on the latest situation of the global coronavirus outbreak and vaccination coverage. The Chinese experts introduced China's current measures for COVID-19 prevention and control, variant strains monitoring, vaccination and clinical treatment, and actively exchanged views with member states, according to the health authorities.

Mao said on Thursday that since COVID began, China has shared information and data with the international community including the US in an open and transparent manner, in response to the international community's concerns over China's epidemic situation and requests for more detailed and accurate information.

China has held several technical meetings with the WHO and Mao also briefly revealed the related information at the regular press briefing. Mao confirmed on Thursday that Chinese experts would further inform the WHO of epidemic containment in China in detail and respond to technical issues that are of concern to other parties at the WHO briefing with member states.

Mao noted that facts have proven that China has always maintained close communication with the WHO and shared information and data on the epidemic in a timely, open and transparent manner in accordance with law. 

Mao also stressed that China's COVID situation is under control and called on all countries to take science-based and proportionate COVID response measures in response to some countries' travel restrictions targeting travelers from China 

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 Western news agencies, politicians maintain insistence on their double standards no matter how China changes its anti-virus policies

Passengers wait for trains at the Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, on December 30, 2022, ahead of New Year's Day. Photo: IC

Passengers wait for trains at the Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, on December 30, 2022, ahead of New Year's Day. Photo: IC 

No matter how China decides to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic, some Western media and some Western politicians will never be satisfied.

Over the last three years, when China adopted a strict virus prevention and control policy and effectively protected the health and safety of its people, some Western pundits relentlessly made unfounded criticism, demanding China to "open the door," otherwise there would be "no freedom and human rights." 

However, at the end of 2022, when China optimized and adjusted its domestic epidemic prevention policy according to the changes in the global situation, some Western politicians and media outlets began to blame China for being a "threat" to other countries' defense in terms of the pandemic.

Analysts pointed out that this is another collective political shows put on by certain countries in the West, and once again they want to blame China for the pandemic in order to contain and isolate China.

With their clumsy political performances, they are trying to create a new round of division and confrontation, which will seriously hinder swift collective global recovery from the haze of the pandemic, analysts said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday that the US and other countries are taking health measures targeting people traveling from China to protect their citizens, and China should not take retaliatory measures.

Mao Ning, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, responded on Wednesday, stating that "We have noted that, recently, some people in the US have made comments on China's COVID policy adjustment. We also noted that many people have said if the US had not politicized the pandemic, and had treated it responsibly and put people's lives first like the Chinese government did, perhaps the COVID situation in the US and the whole world would not have become what it is today."

"We truly hope the focus will be on tackling the virus rather than politicizing the COVID issue, and countries can step up solidarity and make joint efforts to defeat the global pandemic as soon as possible," she noted.

Never-ending biases

Some Western media outlets have politicized China's efforts to prevent and control COVID while taking the epidemic as a political tool to defame China.

The New York Times, for example, pointed fingers at China in a report on December 27, 2022, claiming that China did little in using three years to bolster its health system and launch vaccination drives targeting millions of vulnerable senior citizens. 

Such a biased tone is rampant in certain Western media coverage that exaggerated the epidemic crisis in China through exaggerating sensationalist stories, extreme tragic cases in hospitals, and horrific images at crematoria across the country.

These narrative and tactics are very familiar to most Chinese people as these rhetoric and tactics have been used in earlier reports that had tarnished China's "dynamic zero-COVID" policy before China optimized its policy and eased its epidemic control measures. 

For example, on November 16, 2022, the New York Times published an article entitled "What videos show about the extremes of China's 'zero-COVID' policy." In an attempt to delegitimize and smear China's epidemic control policies, the article stated that the Chinese government had employed extreme measures such as separating children from their parents and enforcing strict punitive measures for violators. 

In fact, China had used the last three years to learn from the ever-developing global pandemic situation. From 2020 to 2022, China's monthly case fatality rates have seen a drastic decline. 

What's more, vaccination rates increased over the last three years which has effectively slowed severe morbidity. By December 23, 2022, China's 31 provinces have seen 3.47 billion doses of vaccination administered, with the coverage rate of the whole population exceeding 90 percent, according to domestic media reports.

A top official from the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a recent interview that the Chinese government had anticipated increased demand for medical treatment while optimizing epidemic prevention management, and was trying to delay peak infections as much as possible by increasing the availability of fever clinics and related medicines.

By contrast, some Western countries, with much more advanced medical systems and being rich in resources, have scored poorly in preventing and controlling their local epidemics if we look at, for instance, the over 1 million death toll in the US attributable to COVID-19. 

Another risk constantly hyped and exaggerated by Western media is that China's mass infection could create a "potential breeding ground" for new variants to emerge.

"The fact that 1.4 billion people are suddenly exposed to SARS-CoV-2 obviously creates conditions prone to emerging variants," French media France 24 quoted experts as saying. 

Similarly, the Washington Post portrayed China as "a threat to the entire world" because "it's escalating toll of infections could generate new variants that might be more transmissible or cause more severe disease."

But these accusations turned out to be groundless. China has been closely tracking the new strain. Xu Wenbo, an official at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on December 22, 2022 that hospitals across the country would collect patient samples and upload the sequencing information to a new national database, allowing authorities to monitor possible new strains in real time. 

Scientifically speaking, the strains currently circulating in China are primarily BA.5.2 and BF.7, which are already prevalent around the world. That means that, as the Washington Post put it, "Variants can emerge from anywhere." A particularly aggressive new strain of the Omicron variant, XBB.1.5, is taking hold in New York and the northeast of the US. US CDC models say the XBB variants represent about 40.5 percent of the total infections in the US, according to the Washington Post.

Health experts in many countries have said there is no need to impose entry restrictions on travelers from China. Some analysts point out that this is yet another collective political performance by certain countries, who once again want to blame China for the pandemic in order to contain and isolate China.

People enjoy dinner services at a restaurant in Beijing on December 24, 2022. Photo: Li Hao/GT

People enjoy dinner services at a restaurant in Beijing on December 24, 2022. Photo: Li Hao/GT

Unremitting smearing

In the last three years since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has made every possible effort to protect the lives and health of the Chinese people while fighting and curbing various mutations of the virus. From a global perspective, China's severest disease and death rates are among the lowest. 

Meanwhile, some Western countries buried their heads in the sand early on, unwilling to deal with the reality of COVID-19 when the virus was most ferocious, leading to heavy loss of life. But they tried hard to avoid talking about the heavy price they had paid, and instead repeatedly blame others. 

In the early stage of the pandemic, when the Chinese people were at the forefront of the valiant fight against the rampant spread of COVID-19, media outlets in the West such as the New York Times (NYT), The Economist, and The Guardian failed to portray the real situation when they should have, but were quick to use underhanded tropes to perpetuate double standards against China's efforts.

Some Western media outlets have systematically stigmatized China and created Western political discourse against China. For instance, "isolation" is called "blockade," and anyone who praised China's work was termed as "catering to China."

Let us not forget that some Western media outlets and Western politicians insisted on calling COVID-19 the "Wuhan virus" to stigmatize an innocent city and incite racist sentiment against Chinese people around the world.

In March 2020, two tweets by NYT posted 20 minutes apart showed how Western media have unashamedly engaged in double standards. The two posts described China and Italy's response to the epidemic - in the first tweet, the NYT Twitter account claimed that China's isolation measures came "at great cost of people's livelihood and personal liberties"; whereas 20 minutes later, while talking about Italy's similar actions, the newspaper praised it for risking its own economy to stop the spread of what was Europe's worst epidemic at the time.

"The measures those [Western] countries have taken were just to stage a political stunt," said Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University. "Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the performance of these countries was obvious to all. For example, the US, which had advanced medical resources and public health emergency response capacity, scored very poorly in COVID-19 prevention and control," he told the Global Times.

"If these countries could divert just 1 or 2 percentage points of their thoughts from smearing China, would we have reason to believe that the global fight against COVID-19 would see a light at the end of the tunnel sooner?" asked Shen. 

Collusion with US government

In the political logic of some people in Europe and the US, no matter whether China decides to "open the door" or "close the door," it is wrong either way. Some Western media and politicians' opinions change with the wind, analysts said.

Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations at the China Foreign Affairs University, noted that some Western media outlets in fact cooperate and collude with the US government. "Some Western media are responsible for smearing and attacking China's epidemic control policy no matter what China does."

These media outlets did not report China's epidemic prevention and control measures based on fact but they tried to use it to smear China's international image and weaken China's governance and influence. 

"Such behavior can be called a tragedy. But this is reality," Li said. 

"The US government enlisted some media to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a political tool. So they smeared China's anti-pandemic contributions in China and other parts of the world. They did this to help US gain advantage in an international competition," he said. 

Shen noted that for other countries and regions, they should avoid using China as a scapegoat, and instead, they should have implemented effective COVID-19 control measures. However, the situation looks less rosy at the moment. The U-turn as characterized by certain countries' words and moves related to China's adjustment of epidemic control measures is an all-out sign of a desire to attack China. 

Meanwhile, China has gained a clear understanding of the post-pandemic situation, as the rest of the world employs electron microscope-level scrutiny as led by American and Western public opinion and anti-China politicians, analysts noted.

"If there is a slight flaw, it will be magnified infinitely. If they cannot find a flaw, they will just create one," Shen said. 

"China's great contributions to the global fight against the pandemic are undeniable. We don't need to listen to those biased and malicious voices," he stressed. "After all, the road is under our own feet." 

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Sunday, November 23, 2014

It's not news if it's good, the Western news


The success story of regional integration in Latin America today is seldom heard elsewhere in the world, even as people there experience it daily.

LATIN America has been experiencing a progressive, historic but silent revolution for 10 years now. However, few people in the rest of the world seem aware of it.

The silence is not because these countries had sought to avoid world attention. Rather, the international media dominated by Western news agencies seem to have other priorities.

Often enough significant events and key issues are neglected, bypassed by the saucy, the sensational and the scandalous – all that glitters is not gold, much that matters may never be told.

Without exception, Western news agencies have doggedly promoted the so-called Arab Spring to the point of tedium.

The standard bogeymen of Western storytelling – Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar Assad – are going or gone, so jubilation in Occidental newsrooms may be expected. But there should be limits and other (news) priorities too.

Elsewhere, countries that succeed outside Western norms, dictates and development models may seem unimportant or “politically incorrect”. So they are routinely ignored or underrated.

Worse, the changes said to be wrought by “Arab Spring” uprisings are said to be positive when the exact opposite is happening.

In virtually all these countries, living conditions have deteriorated rather than improved.

But the nine countries of Latin America and the Caribbean that came together in 2004 as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba) have been making great strides in every critical area of national development.

Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela have raised standards of living for their people in social, economic and political terms.

Standards in housing, health care, education and employment have risen. These countries have also scored a high 0.721 in the UN Human Development Index, which measures national achievements beyond economic growth and material development.

On Dec 14, 2004, Venezuela and Cuba signed the joint declaration for the establishment of Alba. The alliance is based on humanist principles that place the citizen rather than the state or the corporation at the centre of national policymaking.

This people-centred alliance soon attracted the interest of other countries. Next to join were Bolivia, then Nicaragua, and Dominica, with Ecuador, Antigua and Barbuda as well as St Vincent and the Grenadines joining together – followed by St Lucia.

Grenada and St Kitts and Nevis will be the next members. Other countries attending Alba summits as Participants are Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, St Kitts and Nevis, and Uruguay.

With a proud record of a decade’s achievements under its belt, Alba marked the passage of its first decade at a forum in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.

Ambassador Lourdes Puma Puma of Ecuador explained Alba’s background and objectives, including the use of the Sucre (Unified System for Regional Compensation) as a virtual currency in trade among member nations.

There is also a Bank of Alba with regional integration as its core purpose. The bank encourages and offers financial support for projects that promote the social development of all the peoples of the continent regardless of race, religion, politics or other background.

The areas that Alba covers in promoting regional integration are comprehensive and ambitious. There are medical schools and a health sciences university with scholarships, and a pharmaceutical company and a drugs regulatory centre with free access to medication.

There are plans for a new financial architecture and an emphasis on science and technology, without neglecting the arts.

There are also awards and scholarships for literature, culture, research and cinematography.

Alba is also working with the People’s Trade Agreement that lobbies for the social, cultural and environmental rights of the region’s peoples. It also works with Petrocaribe, an alliance of nations over oil purchases, as well as Mercosur, a regional customs union for advancing free trade and the movement of goods, people and currency.

The guest speaker at the Kuala Lumpur forum was Dr Chandra Muzaffar, president of the Interna­tional Movement for a Just World.

Dr Chandra identified the significant distinction between Alba and other regional organisations in the way it places priority on the human being, the individual person, in public policymaking.

This humanist aspect of a caring regional society that Alba seeks to build is widely cherished by the national leaders of its member countries. And despite a priority on economic development, Alba is also conscious of environmental needs and emphasises sustainable development.

In pursuing technology, Alba also seeks independence of telecommunications content in programming. Telecoms and broadcasting community services will also be provided to rural and other marginal areas.

Despite their achievements, Alba countries are still developing nations with much to do to achieve full development status. In the meantime basic needs have not been forgotten, with a food fund that has cut malnourishment to under 5% in four Alba countries and eliminated illiteracy in five countries.

More broadly, Alba seeks a more multipolar world that avoids war as a matter of policy. It much prefers human development that addresses the real needs of real people, particularly the most disadvantaged members of society.

Alba is named after the great 18th-19th century Venezuelan leader and liberator Simon Bolivar, hailed as a Latin American independence hero and a regional beacon of progress and development.

Bolivar is the only person in history to have two countries named after him: Bolivia, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Bolivar’s goals for Venezuela and its neighbouring countries labouring under the Spanish colonial yoke may be summed up in four basic priorities: a popular and participatory democracy for the people, economic independence for real development, fairer wealth distribution and elimination of corruption.

In the Latin America of his time, Bolivar led territories that included Bolivia, Colombia (then including Panama), Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. As a political and military leader he fought many private and public battles against slavery and for the liberation of his people.

Bolivar died in 1830 at the age of 47. He had paved the way for democracy in many countries in Latin America, but much else remains to be done.

After an era of cruel dictatorships, Latin America is again ready to embrace its history of decency and human achievement. But obstacles remain in the way of Alba countries, particularly when they seek their own way to development.

They prefer a more direct way that impacts positively on the people, particularly the most vulnerable in society such as the poor and the weak. Thus they avoid the customary assistance from powerful transnational institutions that comes with strings, cables and levers attached.

And yet when the UN established the Bretton Woods aid organisations the World Bank and the IMF, they were also supposed to help the poorest without encumbering them. But a problem with institutions is that their practices become institutionalised and worse.

Alba has been established with much goodwill and its achievements have been impressive.

Alba countries deserve support and admiration for their record so far, and encouragement on their promise.

Alba emerged from Venezuela’s rejection of the proposed Free Trade Area for the Americas, which would heighten inequality by enhancing the power of transnational corporations at the expense of the poor.

Neither the World Bank nor the IMF may want to call Alba’s achievements a “miracle”, but they are miraculous nonetheless.

Holding court: Chinese President Xi Jinping's (centre, right) meeting with members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Some have argued that anxieties about China's dominance of the new bank would be dispelled with more founding members. - EPARelated article:

Sound policies require maturity - The Star Online

Oct 26, 2014 - When major international policies are based on short-sighted self-interests and emotive impulses, problems are never far away.
Behind The Headlines By Bunn Narara

Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia. The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.

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