US loses focus by inserting anti-China in infrastructure plan

 

Only a US domestic revitalization plan that can forget about China will have any promise

-When developing infrastructure, the internal driving force of society should be far greater than the resistance from interests. But this is not the case in today's US: Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin-

A woman walks at a platform of a subway station in Chicago, the United States, January 17, 2020. Photo: Xinhua

 

US President Joe Biden unveiled a roughly $2 trillion American Jobs Plan focused on infrastructure and the climate crisis in a speech in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. To win support, he said that the "once-in-a-generation" investment would "put [the US] in a position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years."
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Much of infrastructure in the US has been old. Both Democrats and Republicans are on the same page on this matter. US former president Barack Obama in September 2010 proposed his ambitious plan to renew the US' transportation infrastructure, but failed to achieve it in both of his terms. Neither did Donald Trump. Biden launched the third round of such attempt. His plan contains the greatest details and seems to be the most serious one.
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However, the Biden administration's infrastructure plan was met with opposition from Republicans when it was announced. Trump slammed the infrastructure plan as a "giveaway to China" in a statement on Wednesday, and said that the proposed tax increases designed to fund the $2 trillion proposal would end up backfiring by sending American jobs overseas. Biden may once again have mired himself down in a situation where everyone agrees that it was the right thing to do, but no one can agree on how to do it or where the money will come from.
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US society has been gravely divided. The more interests involved in carrying out a big plan, the more opportunities for political struggles to be created, which will hinder the goal to be achieved. This is the root of the US' problem. To engage in infrastructure construction, the internal driving force of society should have been far greater than the resistance from disputes by different interest groups, but this is not the case in the US. Exploiting "defeating China" as a thrust to push the plan sharply deviates from the appropriate track. This makes the plan hard to achieve.
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Has China ever thought of competing with the US as it builds high-speed trains, widen the highway network and build network base stations? They are entirely China's own national agenda. The incentive to invest is strong, and the general public is very supportive. We can say that China's infrastructure advances with ease. Our concern is often that we should not work lavishly on these projects in case they lead to interim waste or debt.
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The US now has China everywhere in its mind with regard to its domestic policy, attaching labels of national security randomly, and blaming China for any industrial imbalance in the US. Apart from instigating nationalism, this would do little to solve the problem. Over time, the US will not only be down with an anti-China syndrome and strike at anything Chinese, but will also only be able to make its policy with anti-China elements. This will lead to the misdirection of its goal time and again and cause it lose its way in development.
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The US should force itself to forget about China more often. What the US needs to do is struggling with itself. It has been more than a decade since it has called for the construction of the high-speed railway. Why hasn't a single kilometer been built? What does this inefficiency have to do with China? Trump overturned many of Obama's policies and now Biden overturned Trump's policies. Is this what China seduced the US to do?
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It is quite impressive that Washington is beginning to value some important lessons from China. Conflict is also a way to learn from each other. China's key experience is to mind its own work well. Biden's determination to improve infrastructure and increase investment in technology seems to have taken something from China's direction. We hope that the US could adhere to this idea. It is the right way forward.
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If the US really initiated a new investment in infrastructure, it is believed that Chinese society in general will be optimistic about its success. More of this kind of engagement by the US will increase its market demand, which is a positive factor in the expansion of China's economic growth. After all, the contest between China and the US should have been focused on the competition of domestic development, rather than playing chess on the diplomatic front.
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If Washington had refocused its attention, it might not have exaggerated the "China threat" theory as much as it does now. They will find that the benefits of China-US cooperation may outweigh the zero-sum competition with China "from a position of strength." China could be a partner, not a rival, in Biden's plan to revitalize US infrastructure, if Washington so desires.
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Obsessive focus on making enemies or confrontation is narrow-minded and an exhausted strategy. It is an unwise one. This is true of a person, and it is also true of a country
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WHO-China joint report on virus origins:Wuhan Lab-leak is "extremely unlikely", ‘more states should be probed’...

 

WHO-China joint report on virus origins:Wuhan Lab-leak is "extremely unlikely", ‘more states should be probed’...

 

The headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland

Highlights from WHO-China joint report on coronavirus origins: -A lab leak was "extremely unlikely" -Huanan seafood market was NOT the original source of the outbreak -It’s important to investigate “potential early events” of COVID-19 cases in different countries

Peter Ben Embarek (center) talks with Liang Wannian (left) and Marion Koopmans (right) after a press conference to wrap up a visit by an international team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) in the city of Wuhan, in Central China's Hubei

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If WHO scientists cannot find the answer in China regarding coronavirus origins, maybe it's time for scientists to dig somewhere else and test more hypotheses to solve the mystery, Chinese scientists from the WHO-China virus tracing team suggested, after a joint WHO-China report on tracing the origins of coronavirus was released on Tuesday, which still leaves the virus origins question unanswered.
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The report, generated after WHO experts visited Wuhan, the Chinese city first reporting a COVID-19 case, dismissed the "lab-leak" conspiracy theory, and recommended transmissions between animals and humans, and transmissions through frozen food, which is consistent with what WHO experts said in a February conference in Wuhan. It also suggested the 7th Military World Games, which was held in Wuhan in October 2019, two months before the first case in this city was reported, is worth digging into.
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Before official release on Tuesday, Western politicians and media once again cast the report, pre-leaked to media earlier, in doubt, questioning the investigation's transparency , impartiality and the involvement of Chinese government in the writing of the report. Chinese experts in this joint team refuted such baseless claims, saying the Chinese side has provided what it could, and it is willing to assist any further origins investigation in other places since it has mature technology on virus detecting and tracing.
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The report pointed to a possible path of transmission between animals and humans and transmission through frozen food. It also said that the lab-leak theory is "extremely unlikely", which is consistent with what Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish food safety scientist leading the WHO team, said in Wuhan in early February, when wrapping up the WHO visit.
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The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday night it appreciates the scientific, diligent and professional spirit of the WHO-China expert team and calls for further investigation in other countries and places to trace the virus origins as it is a global task after WHO released the joint report.
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Politicizing the tracing work will only seriously hamper global cooperation on virus tracing, undermine global anti-epidemic efforts and lead to more loss of life. This runs counter to the desire of the international community to unite and fight the epidemic, FM said in a statement released on Tuesday night.
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The WHO report also touched upon the hypothesis of the 7th Military World Games regarding virus origins, a possibility previously raised by a Chinese epidemiologist. The WHO report said that "no appreciable signals of clusters of fever or severe respiratory disease requiring hospitalization were identified during a review of these events," but recommended a further joint review of the data on respiratory illness from on-site clinics during the games.
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"The hypothesis was raised by foreign experts during our communication," a Chinese expert from the joint team's animals and environment group told the Global Times. He said that large international events need to be considered as an option during origins tracing work of an epidemic.
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The Chinese expert, who asked for anonymity, said that they obtained records from the Wuhan government, which show many countries had transported food to Wuhan during the event, many via cold chain route. "But now we only have records, no samples, so it will be difficult for us to find the evidence," he admitted.
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The scientist also said it is highly probable that the virus was transmitted via cold chain, given the fact that cold chains triggered most of the later outbreaks in China after the one in Wuhan. "But at the early stage, all eyes were fixed on animals, so not enough samples were connected in the cold chain environment," said the expert, suggesting further research in this area.
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The WHO report further suggests that animals in livestock farms in Southeast Asia could be "linked to early human cases" and that further study on these farms is needed.
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The anonymous expert said that given the geographic adjacency and frequent exchanges between China and Southeast Asia countries, such a proposal is reasonable.
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"Yunnan borders Southeast Asia, and bats travel frequently, which gives rise to the possibility of passing the virus to other animals and between each other," he said, noting that a batch of pangolins, which tested positive for coronavirus, were smuggled from other countries.
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At a Friday conference, Feng Zijian, Deputy Director-General of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China's CDC), who is also the expert of the WHO joint team, said that there is a virus highly similar to COVID-19 in bats and pangolins in terms of virus sequencing. However, it's proven not to be a direct ancestor, while more animal species, including minks and cats, are worthy of inquiry as likely potential natural hosts of the virus.
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According to the report, data suggests that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where large clusters of infections were found, was not the original source of the outbreak.
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"The place which saw the first outbreak does not necessarily make it the origins of the virus," another member of the joint expert team, who preferred anonymity, told the Global Times.
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The expert said there's nothing strange about the fact that a scientific conclusion about the virus has yet to be found. On the other hand, it implies the difficulty in tracing virus origins. "Virus origins tracing work of previous large-scale epidemics was conducted by scientists in different countries and regions," said the scientist, urging global virus tracing, especially since mounting evidence suggesting that there were positive coronavirus samples found in other countries before the Wuhan outbreak.
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He suggested further study of positive coronavirus samples found in human and environment before January 2020.
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China has done what it can do in helping find the origins of the virus. If the answer could not be found here, maybe it's time to find it in other places, and test more hypotheses, according to the expert from joint team's animals and environment group. China is willing to assist virus origins tracing work in other places, as it has already grasped such technologies and methodologies, the expert said.
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Doubt from West
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Western media and politicians could not wait to fire torrents of criticism toward the report, which was leaked to some media before its publication.
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Among the most vocal critics were US media outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post, which questioned the report's impartiality as they hyped that WHO experts weren't given full access in Wuhan and the Chinese government exerted pressure on the UN body.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN last week that he had concerns about "the methodology and the process," including "the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped write it."
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Such accusation was slammed by Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday.
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"The US kept showing its 'concerns' over the report. Is it attempting to exert pressure on WHO experts?" Zhao asked. "Please ask the experts which parts of the report the Chinese government helped them to write. Does China's facilitation on traceability research also behind-the-scenes manipulation?"
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"What they needed, we gave them, including files," said the expert, explaining certain documents were restricted because it involved patients' sensitive personal information.
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In an exclusive interview with the Global Times, Liang Wannian, team leader of the Chinese side of the WHO-China joint expert team, said that the Chinese side showed the WHO experts raw data one by one, such as the early case database and epidemiological survey forms of field use.
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Foreign experts, including Peter Daszak, a British-born zoologist, who is president of the NGO EcoHealth Alliance in New York City, and Peter Ben Embarek from the WHO team, have repeatedly denied accusation of limited access in Wuhan.
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Those Western countries only want WHO to pinpoint Wuhan as the origins of the virus, and better prove the virus was leaked from lab; if not, they just launched a smear campaign at China, said experts.

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Row over cotton and human rights

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Anger brews in China over brands boycotting Xinjiang cotton, linking it to claims of forced labour..

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CHINA is the biggest cotton user and second largest producer in the world.
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It produced nearly 5.2 million tonnes of cotton last year, and some 87% came from Xinjiang, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
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This commodity has in recent years been “politically tainted” following accusations of forced labour at cotton fields in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
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The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) – an influential non-profit organisation to promote sustainable cotton farming – has stopped issuing licences to cotton producers in the region since early last year.
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Without the certificate, cotton farmers could not sell their goods to retailers, suppliers and manufacturers, who have to follow the BCI standards.
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The organisation has nearly 2,100 members, of which nearly 500 are from China.
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This issue resurfaced again in the wake of the rising tension between the Dragon nation and the West
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after the United States, European Union (EU), Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on several Chinese officials over human rights issues in Xinjiang.
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There were non-stop claims of China detaining Muslim Uyghurs at concentrated camps, stripping off their religious rights and forcing them into hard labour at mass cotton fields.
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China has denied all accusations and retaliated with sanctions on the individuals and entities from the EU.
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Fashion giant H&M was the first to come under fire in a series of propagated plots.
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The Swedish retailer had in October last year said on its official website that it did not source products from Xinjiang due to “reports on forced labour and discrimination of ethno-religious minorities” in the region.
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This statement came to light again last week, fuelling anger of netizens, who called on a boycott against the brand.
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The flame quickly spread to Adidas, Nike, Uniqlo, Muji and some others, and old statements they made in relation to the ban on Xinjiang cotton resurfaced.
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Extreme citizens have carried out verbal attacks on workers at both the physical outlets and online stores, calling them traitors and asking them to resign while urging purchasers to burn or throw away their products.
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This prompted the rational ones calling for such “stupid” acts to be stopped.
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A hashtag on “Do not make workers’ lives miserable” was read 250 million times and generated 57,000 discussions.
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“It is your choice to tear or burn your stuff, but don’t see others as not patriotic if they don’t follow what you did, ” wrote one netizen named Yisuo.
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Another netizen said it was shameful to bully their own countrymen, adding that: “Life is not easy, these workers have mouths to be fed.”
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An online campaign on Sina Weibo, #IsupportXinjiangcotton, has also been launched in support of the major commodity in Xinjiang.
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It gained 4.2 billion views as of early Friday.
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On the other hand, over a dozen Chinese companies have stood by the northwestern region of China.
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Among them, sportswear company Anta announced its withdrawal from BCI, winning the hearts of the Internet users, who said they would only buy Made-in-China products in the future.
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Some people viewed that such support would not last long.
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“I could foresee that these people who shouted the loudest boycott calls will go into a buying frenzy when the brands offer huge discounts, ” said one of them.
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Chinese celebrities have also acted swiftly to distance themselves from the controversial brands.
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Actor Huang Xuan, the spokesperson of H&M, was the first to announce ending his cooperation with the brand, followed by some 30 others including idol Wang Yibo, who terminated his contract with Nike.
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Hong Kong star Eason Chan and Chinese singer-actor Yi Yangqianxi, a member of TFBoys, had cut off ties with Adidas.
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Others include Xinjang lass Dilraba Dilmurat, actresses Yang Mi and Liu Yifei as well as model Liu Wen.
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Last Thursday, training photos released by Shanghai Shenhua Football Club showed no sign of the Nike logo, leading to speculations that the pictures have been photoshopped to remove the logo from the right chest area of the players’ jerseys.
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Nike is the sponsor of all Chinese Super League teams.
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China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Xinjiang cotton is among the best worldwide and it would be a loss for companies not using it.
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Beijing also clarified that forced labours and other allegations on the Uyghurs were malicious lies in an attempt to smear the country.
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She also showed a picture of the modernised cotton field, saying over 70% of the cotton was picked with machines.
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“There is no forced labour in hand-picking cotton. It’s ridiculous that some enterprises actually believed in such rumour, ” she added.
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Asked if the issue involving the international brands resurfaced as China’s move to pressure and intimidate them into voicing supports for the country’s position on Xinjiang-related issues, Hua said these enterprises can be their own judges.
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“Given the size of Chinese market, we don’t need to pressure anyone, ” she added.

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