Podcast discussion on Huawei, TSMC and Meng Wanzhou

https://podur.org/2020/06/18/aep-55-the-meng-wanzhou-case-part-3-with-george-koo/

US and HK, a study of two protest movements

First posted in Asia Times.

Last summer when the peaceful protest in Hong Kong morphed into violence and protesters turned into rioters setting metro and police stations on fire, the U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi gushed that it was a beautiful landscape, a fight for democracy and freedom.

Now the beautiful sight has been exported to America so that Ms. Pelosi can enjoy watching police precinct buildings set on fire closer to home. Of course, America is the home of democracy and freedom, so the looting and burning can’t be for that. 

And, the Republican Party will need to revise their campaign handbook and find a creative way to add race riots in American cities to the compilation of grievances to blame China.

"The riots in America are nothing like Hong Kong and comparing the two is bloody disgraceful.” Said Jimmy Lai in his Donald Trump inspired tweet. Indeed, he should know, since he was one of the leaders and prime movers of the protest movement in Hong Kong.

Perhaps in response to Mr. Lai’s observation, it would be timely and appropriate to compare the two protest movements while the images and disturbances are still relatively fresh and to find where if there were any commonalities and where the differences lie.

When the Hong Kong government attempted to rectify a missing part of its internal security by enacting an extradition regulation to prevent criminals from escaping justice by jumping jurisdiction, it became a cause for the protest. 

HK government withdraws, protesters advance

The protest began ostensibly peacefully. When the government agreed to review the statue, which they subsequently withdrew, the protestors rather than subsiding felt that they had gained the upper hand and turned violent to increasing their list of demands.

In America, a horrified nationwide audience watched as a burly white policeman in Minneapolis slowly squeezed the life out of George Floyd, a black man lying on the street with his neck under the pressing knee of the cop. Three other cops watched and became accessory to murder.

Spontaneous protests took place in America’s major cities under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” and the victim’s last words, “I can’t breathe” became a marching slogan. Looting and arson quickly ensued.

By and large, America’s finest upheld its duty to protect law and order with clubs, tear gas and rubber bullets. In three days of peaceful marches and not so peaceful riots, more were arrested than the total arrested in Hong Kong after more than three months of disturbances and mayhem. By the end of the week, thirteen people had been killed.

Members of the media in the U.S. cities covering the protests became deliberate targets of police harassment with tear gas and rubber bullets. One female photojournalist lost her left eye to a direct hit by a rubber bullet. She expressed being “thankful” that it was not her camera shooting eye, which would have been career ending.

In Hong Kong, the western media were free to roam, run interference for and select the protest scenes that met their needs to report on police brutality while ignoring the rioters and arsonists doing the destruction.

While looters in American cities were indiscriminate and included the random destruction of shops owned by ethnic minorities, the looters in Hong Kong were careful and selective and targeted stores with mainland owners. 

The rioters in Hong Kong seem to have been professionally trained. They know how to make Molotov cocktails to deadly effect and use the umbrella to fend off tear gas.

The rioters in Hong Kong were led by experienced advisors that knew how to create mass disturbances. The protests that led to riots in the U.S. were spontaneous and driven by rage.

Since Hong Kong was handed to China in 1997 and the formal name became Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, there was a strong undercurrent of discontent and agitation undergirded by a smug white superiority that presume that Hong Kong can only go downhill after becoming part of China.

To their chagrin, Hong Kong did not collapse but found economic synergy with the mainland by becoming a real property and service economy.  Thus, a movement began to undermine the Hong Kong story. 

When a young couple from Hong Kong visited Taiwan and the young man murdered his girlfriend and returned to Hong Kong free as a bird, that ironically became the seed to sow discontent.

Extradition to prevent cross border crime

To prevent future criminal acts, the Hong Kong SAR government responded to a popular petition for justice by proposing a carefully crafted, duly vetted, safeguard loaded extradition provision. The anti-government and anti-China faction saw the proposal as the opportunity to histrionically allege a threat to their freedom and an excuse to restart a movement calling for “democracy.”

The anti-government forces were helped by a Hong Kong government that has not been particularly effective or ruthless, by the residual influence of colonial mindsets in Hong Kong, and by the generous financial support from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy.

The NED was spun off from U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to bring down governments that displease Washington. Having “democracy” in its organizational name was a cover for regime change. However, it’s by no means certain that NED would succeed in Hong Kong.

The roots of racial unrest in America go back centuries, not just decades as is the case with Hong Kong, derived as they were from the violent assertion of supremacy by whites over the blacks and all other ethnic minorities of color.

A long history of random lynching, Jim Crow and being brutalized for the slightest provocation were supposedly rectified by civil rights and hate crime laws enacted by Congress. Nevertheless, even today blacks continue to be much more likely to be arrested and killed by police. 

A NED like organization in America would not have helped. Police brutality against persons of color is deeply ingrained. The most recent incident in Minneapolis is just the latest of a long series of atrocities that Americans can expect. There is no need for outside agitators. 

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s current Chief Executive, like all her predecessors is not made of the stuff of “when looting starts, shooting starts.” Her failure to implement an extradition statute reflects the flaw in her leadership.

Hong Kong needed legal framework for national security

One of key missing elements of the Basic Law, in effect Hong Kong’s constitution, hammered out by Beijing and London was to deal with national security. In the end, both parties agreed to leave writing the provisions for national security to the SAR government. 

Henry Litton, a retired judge of the SAR Court of Final Appeal, described various attempts to write the laws subsequent to 1997 that were stymied by a series of circumstances and obstructions. Now, he observed that the disruption has reached the point where no laws can be passed in Hong Kong.

“In the meanwhile, internal security has worsened, with increasing evidence of terrorist activities aimed at bringing the HK police to its knees and overthrowing the government. The anti-government movement seems well-funded and this raises the question as to the source of funds,” he said.

Thus, it was by default that the draft of the national security laws was submitted to the National People’s Congress for enactment. As Greenville Cross, former Director of Public Prosecution for the SAR government, pointed out a full set of laws in place is needed to prosecute sedition and agitator for secession.

The negotiated handover in 1997 was to return Hong Kong as a rightful part of China. Nothing in the “one country, two systems,” implicitly or explicitly commits a right to autonomy or independence for the people of Hong Kong. State Secretary Mike Pompeo by withdrawing Hong Kong’s special status will facilitate enforcement of Hong Kong’s security and ejection of the likes of NED by the SAR government.

Hong Kong has been consistently ranked among the top three freest places in the world. The 2020 ranking by World Population Review places HK number 3 while UK came in no. 8 and the US no. 17. If Jimmy Lai and his fellow protesters in Hong Kong would rather enjoy the peace and quiet of London or Washington, they should be allowed, nay encouraged, to move there. 

Boris Johnson supposedly commit to welcoming 3 million Hong Kong people to live and work in the U.K. He can’t be serious. Johnson needs to find a way to give the depressed UK economy a real boost. Playing host to young professional protesters with no real employable skills would add to his problems. Those thinking of taking advantage of generous Boris, better read the fine print carefully before flying to the U.K.

At least Johnson can look back to the negotiations between Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping as a basis for his butting in. The United States has no such justification to claim a say on the future of Hong Kong. 

As of June 1, more than 50% of eligible voters in Hong Kong have signed the petition in support of the national security legislation. Anyone hoping to invite in the U.S. Marines to “liberate” Hong Kong is smoking a pipe dream and faces the reality that Hong Kong will no longer tolerate traitors or acts of treason.

Trump's war on Huawei is self defeating

First posted on Asia Times.

When the U.S. Trump Administration’s recently attempted to slam the door on Huawei, China’s leading telecommunication and technology loaded company, he and his China advisors broke the heretofore gold standard in international collaboration; and that has been the world’s semiconductor industry.

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently announced that henceforth, any semiconductor chips made with equipment built by American companies cannot be sold to Huawei without prior approval and license from the DOC.

This new regulation is unprecedented and in violation of normal sales contract between the buyer and seller of the equipment. And difficult to know if the DOC has any legal ground to stand on.

Depending on the complexity of integrated circuit, the manufacturing process could easily take a dozen steps or more. Many of the critical steps use high precision equipment designed and manufactured by American companies. In effect by requiring a license in order to sell to Huawei is to threaten the supply of semiconductors to Huawei. 

Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area gave birth to the semiconductor and American companies continue to dominate the manufacturing of equipment needed to fabricate the increasingly complex semiconductor devices. There are five major semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) companies in the world and three of them are American.

The mantra of the semiconductor industry is to make successive generations of integrated circuits that are faster, smaller, cheaper and more powerful, doubling in performance roughly every 18 to 24 months. To keep this trend going, the fabrication equipment has to become more intricate and more powerful and therefore more expensive.

Writing off an obsolete fabrication line and investing in the next generation technology became a hurdle only highly capitalized multinational companies can play. Along came Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company with a new and unique business proposition.

TSMC revolutionized the semiconductor business

They announced that they will invest and keep investing in the state-of-the-art equipment to make the semiconductor chips as a “foundry” service to anyone that wishes to take advantage of such “toll” fabrication.

Thus, TSMC irrevocably altered the business model for the industry. No longer having to invest in a “fab” (industry lingo for a production line), companies can concentrate on designing new chips to perform new functions and tasks. A million dollars for computerized design tools can now launch a startup with an idea to meet a market opportunity; whereas to own a semiconductor fab, the company would be looking at minimum investment well north of $1 billion around a decade ago to now north of $10 billion.

For the last 30 years, “fabless” companies proliferated. Some, such as Nvidia, concentrated on proprietary chip designs to be sold on the market. Others, such as Huawei, can afford to design specialized chips for their own internal use. 

With no exaggeration, the independent foundry model enabled the recent boom in the economy driven by high technology companies.

The entire world benefitted from the virtuous circle made up of innovative chip designs by fabless companies, to be made by independent foundries and then sold to gadget makers such as Apple and Huawei. 

Advances in chip design take advantage of advances in the semiconductor manufacturing equipment which are then incorporated into new end-uses and novel applications. Each step on the chain goads the next to stretch and attain the next level of technological advances.

Digital currency, autonomous driving and applications on the drawing board based on artificial intelligence are all waiting for the introduction of the next generation of semiconductor devices. 

That is, until the Trump administration abruptly changed the rules of the game. Suddenly, American made SME cannot be used to make semiconductor chips for Huawei.

In the process, TSMC became an unwitting victim caught in the squeeze play between the Trump White House and Huawei. Huawei has been one of the most important clients for TSMC accounting for as much as 20% of its annual revenue. 

TSMC may have decided to finally yield to the White House pressure and agree to locate a fab in Arizona to help Trump look good and hopefully in exchange for the good will that would allow the company to protect its business with Huawei. 

TSMC outsmarted by Trump?

Surprise, surprise. Just the day after TSMC signed the agreement to invest $12 billion and build a fab in Arizona, the DOC made the announcement that could force TSMC to stop selling to Huawei.

Less than two weeks earlier, the DOC also gave Huawei a head fake by signaling that American companies will be allowed to participate in organizations along with Huawei to set industry standards for 5G, the latest wireless technology. 

This action suggested that DOC had finally recognized how far Huawei has come to dominate the development of 5G. By agreeing to work with Huawei would seem to hint that some sort of peace agreement was in air.

Not so. It seems double dealing and in bad faith has become the hallmark of the Trump Administration.

Of course, the estrangement with Huawei will materially impact sales of all semiconductors to China. America has remained the world’s leader and biggest supplier of semiconductors and China has been America’s largest customer. Before the pandemic in 2018, US sold $75 billion worth of semiconductor chips to China or about 36% of the U.S. output.

When China retaliates by buying less from the U.S., the generous trade surplus enjoyed by the American side will shrink. Lower sales mean less profit and less funds to spend on R&D and that will erode America’s leadership in this high-tech sector. 

Chips suppliers from Japan and Korea will be happy to fill the void left by the U.S. and China will be more determined than ever to invest in the development of semiconductor technology that will break the dependence from the U.S.

The short-term outcome is lose-lose, but the long-term consequences will be disastrous for both sides. The virtuous circle where everybody gains will be replaced by vicious competition and market fragmentation. 

At the so-called Rose Garden press conference on Friday, Trump read a statement on his position on China, World Health Organization (WHO) and Hong Kong. He didn’t specifically threaten to tear up the phase one trade agreement signed in January with China, but it would be difficult not to conclude that the bilateral relations are heading toward decoupling.

Painful future awaits both parties

Once Beijing gets weary of continuing to be conciliatory and hope for reconciliation, their retaliation will be nasty and directed to where it would cause most pain. It won’t just be not buying soybeans and Boeing aircrafts. 

As Macau News Agencypoints out, gaming licenses are up for renewal over the next two years. By merely starting rumors that the renewal for Sands China is problematic and it would devastate majority owner, Sheldon Adelson’s net worth.

Adelson has been Trump’s most important underwriter of his political fortune, to the tune of over $100 million for each election cycle. Trump will feel the sting of Adelson’s pain.

What will the world look like, when the bilateral relations split into an American sphere of influence and a Chinese sphere of influence?

The U.S. sphere is best represented by the “charm” of smooth-talking top diplomat, State Secretary Mike Pompeo. He struts around the world offering no carrot, just the threat of sanctions if the hapless country doesn’t go along with whatever is in American interest that he dictates. 

Some small nations do get intimidated and fall in line because they fear the might of U.S. sanctions. Under Trump, these sanctions can be arbitrary and at the whim of Trump.

Others fall in line because they feel the need for the security promised by the presence of American military, as for example the case for Taiwan. Despite the feckless nature of the Trump Administration, the Taipei government willingly submit to being violated by letting Washington coerce TSMC and their crown jewel to Arizona.

However, there is no reward to be an economic ally with the U.S. If you, such as Vietnam for example, sell more to us than buy from America, we get upset and put a tariff on your goods. If you happen to have a comparative advantage that we don’t have, we will ask Congress to enact a regulation to erase your advantage. We are the hegemon and we can do whatever we want.

Trump’s majority of one not looking great

But America’s presumption as the leader of the world is starting to breakdown, brick by brick. Whether the issue is climate change, weapon non-proliferation, open sky inspection, covenants with Iran and others, European Union nations resent having no say in America’s decision. They are expected to abide by whatever Washington decides as in America’s best self-interest, sometimes without so much as a courtesy consultation. 

Doesn’t matter to Pompeo if the interests of EU and the U.S. are not aligned. But with increasing regularity, when Pompeo makes a declaration, the EU members pretend to be hard of hearing.

As Asia Timespointed out, China and the Asian countries are far ahead of the West in recovering from the coronavirus epidemic and well on to economic recovery. China’s trade with Asian countries is three times what China has with the U.S. The writer goes on to say that the long-term driver of Asian growth is China’s emergence as a tech superpower. 

Certain members of Congress along with Trump seem to think that China desperately needs to send students to the U.S. to steal American technology. They probably don’t know that China is already first in the world in supercomputing, quantum computing, 5G telecommunications, hypersonic weaponry, civil engineering, high speed rail, electric vehicles, self-drive cars and buses, along with a myriad of other disciplines.

At the Friday press conference, Trump announced that he will sever the relationship and stop funding the WHO because, he claimed, WHO is in China’s pocket. He was not fooling anyone, of course. He has to double down on blaming WHO so that he doesn’t have to explain why more than 100,000 Americans have died from Covid-19.

At the World Health Assemblywith representatives from 194 nations that convened just 10 days earlier, every member expressed support for the WHO as essential to safeguard world’s health, except the U.S. 

China’s President Xi addressed the assembly. He didn’t know at the time that the U.S. was going to withhold more than $400 million per year of financial support to the WHO. He announced that China would contribute $1 billion per year for two years to help WHO fight the pandemic.

Xi also reported that China has five potential vaccines undergoing clinical testing. Should any emerge as a safe and effective vaccine, then he pledged that China will make the vaccine available to everybody. 

The U.S. also has vaccines under development. However, their position is that the owner of the intellectual property for that vaccine will decide. Asia Times has an excellent analysis of the vaccine “war” here.

If you are one of the 190+ nations having to decide which sphere of influence to become a part of, which would you choose?

Never forget sexual slavery as part of Japan's WWII history

First posted in Asia Times

By Mike Honda, Lillian Sing and Julie Tang

“Comfort Women” is a euphemistic term for the hundreds of thousands of girls and women who were kidnapped and sexually enslaved by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. From 1931-1945, Japanese military forced young women from over 13 countries into sexual slavery for the “comfort” of Japanese soldiers. 

For the first time in 1991, a former Korean “comfort woman” victim, Hak Soon Kim overcame a lifetime of shame to speak up publicly about her personal experience of sexual enslavement by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces. Her testimony shocked the world.  

This is the first time in modern history that a government is accused of systematic implementation sexual violence and sex trafficking.  Many more “comfort women” victims followed Hak Soon Kim’s courageous example and told their stories and experiences to the world.  

Their testimonies helped move the world community to declare that using sexual violence as a weapon of war constitutes a crime against humanity for which governments must be held accountable.    

In 2007 the United States Congress passed House Resolution 121 which urged the Japanese government to “formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery.” 

The Japanese government heavily lobbied against the resolution, arguing it was a Japan-bashing propaganda, rather than an important human rights issue of institutional sexual violence against women during wartime.  

So that the atrocity these women suffered would not be forgotten, a multi-ethnic non-profit organization consisting of more than 38 organizations called “ComfortWomen” Justice Coalition (CWJC) was established in San Francisco in 2015 with the purpose to install a “comfort women” Memorial in US and to demand Justice for the “comfort women” victims.

Lee Yong-soo, a former “comfort woman” survivor from South Korea came to give the movements in the US a tremendous boost.  Grandma Lee, as Americans fondly called her, came and personally testified before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2015 in support of a resolution to allow a public memorial to be built in San Francisco as she did in 2007 before the United States Congress.  

Her testimonies were crucial in getting both the Resolutions successfully passed.  She put a real face to the issue, became the soul of the movement, and was the living testimony of what happened to the “comfort women” victims.   

Her message was that the history of the “comfort women” should not be forgotten, and the government of Japan must issue a sincere, unequivocal and legal apology and pay reparations to the “comfort women” victims.   Her goal was to educate the history of “comfort women” to the world.

On May 9^th, 2020, Grandma Lee made news again.  She accused the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (JDH) and its former head, Yoon Mi-hyang, of financial impropriety over funds that were donated for the benefit of the “comfort women” survivors.  

She also accused the organization of straying from the goals and purposes of the movement by focusing too much on demonstrations and not on education, especially for the Korean and Japanese youth

It is never easy to speak up when one sees wrongs and injustices.  Grandma Lee is very courageous to do so.  She has nothing to gain for doing this.  We understand the prosecutors in ROK are already conducting an investigation into the allegations.  We urge the investigation be full, and thorough without any political considerations.  

However, we are also concerned that Japan under Prime Minister Abe is attempting to use this financial irregularity to dishonor our righteous fight for justice for all “comfort women” victims and survivors.  

The media in Japan is reporting on the financial scandal in Korea as if to discredit the movement and argue that the Peace Monuments around the world should be dismantled.  

Japan to this date continues to deny its role in the “comfort women” atrocity, refuses to teach their young people the history of the “comfort women” and claims the issue has been resolved. 

The victims and the peace memorial communities continue to insist on a sincere and official apology from Japan, one that necessarily needs to be ratified by the Japanese Diet. 

Instead, Japan’s official efforts to block memorials from being built and objections to inclusion of “comfort women” documents into the UNESCO registry of records is admission that Japan is not ready to face history and atone for its war crimes against the “comfort women”.  

The grandmas who started this movement urged us to pursue justice and fight sexual exploitation everywhere.  Grandma Lee reminded us the job is still unfinished.  Let’s pay attention to her message and work in solidarity to restore justice and honor for the “comfort women” victims and survivors. 

                        #                                              #                                              #   

Mike Honda is a former Congressman from California and author of HR 121, 2007. Judges Lillian Sing and Julie Tang are both retired judges from San Francisco who retired to build the San Francisco “Comfort Women” Memorial and have co-chaired the “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition since 2015 

Lives of Cliff Dwellers now Solidly Grounded

First posted in Asia Times.

China's poverty alleviation program will end their need to make a death-defying journey to and from their homes

By GEORGE KOOMAY 18, 2020

Access to the cliff village of Atulieer, Zhaojue county, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan province. Photo: IC Photo via AFP

A three-minute video that went viral showed up in my e-mail inbox. The video, a version of which was posted by the British Broadcasting Corporation among others, showed cliff dwellers clambering up and down a steel ladder in the mountainous southern region of China.

There were women carrying heavy appliances on their backs, elderly women being piggybacked by younger men, a young mother with an infant on her back and a rope on her hand tied to a toddler, all making their way up the vertical ladder. At the top, they stepped on ledges narrower than the length of their feet as they negotiated the cliffside path to their homes.

Just seeing the sheer drop turned my legs to jelly, but the villagers sauntered with casual aplomb as if taking a routine stroll through the park.

The clifftop village called Atulieer is at the southern edge of Sichuan province. At a 1,600-meter elevation, the village consisted of 84 households belonging to the Yi ethnic minority. Four years ago, a newspaper showed photos of schoolchildren going up and down an 800-meter network of rattan ladders with no handrails. 

Their school was located at the bottom of the cliff. One couple would not let their daughter attend school until she was 11, when they felt she was strong enough to “walk” to school safely.

After the national publicity, the local government built a 2.8-kilometer network of steel ladders with handrails along the face of the cliff. The new ladders made it much easier for the villagers to take their produce to market, cutting the travel time from three hours to one.

This year, as part of China’s poverty alleviation program, the 84 households are being relocated to new apartments about 70km from the cliff dwellings. The residents will have kitchens, toilets and running water for the first time in their lives. They will purchase their apartments at less than one-thirtieth of market rate. 

They will also participate in the local economy without the disadvantage of having to scale the cliff, and their children can attend school on level ground.

Because of the national publicity on the village, it will be turned into a tourist attraction with a cablecar for the tourists. Some of the cliff homes have been converted into guest houses. In case you’re interested, if is located in Zhaojue in Sichuan province. Tourism will become an important source of income for these Yi minority people.

Some time in history, the Yi people found rich farmland at the top of the cliffs and have settled there since the Yuan dynasty (800-900 years ago). For generations, they enjoyed a life of self-sufficiency and feeling of security free from the dangers of marauding soldiers and bandits. But the modern economy has passed them by and their location became a severe handicap as they were not able to keep up with modern development and progress.

This year is the turn of the clifftop village to be part of the national poverty alleviation program. According China’s State Statistics Bureau, by the end of 2012, there were nearly 100 million people in rural areas living below the poverty line. By the end of 2019, there were only 5.5 million such people. 

By end of this year, the headcount of those still living in poverty will be fewer by at least the 84 households that moved to their new quarters.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/asia/china-cliff-top-village-relocation-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-05/14/c_139056868.htm

http://www.cnfocus.com/descending-the-ladder-one-last-time-relocating-china-s/

7/9/20 China Daily gives an update on th cliffside village:
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202007/09/WS5f02dbd8a310834817257826.html

Tom Cotton leads the China attack

First posted in Asia Times.

Part 2: The Republican senator's accusations are not supported by facts on the ground, or by science

Politicocalled Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas the No. 1 coronavirus China hawk. This was not an honorific title but well-earned and well deserved. He has been the most vicious attack dog on State Secretary Mike Pompeo’s blame Chinateam. 

As early as January, when the world was just beginning to grasp the full significance of the novel coronavirus, Cotton charged that the virus came from the virology lab in Wuhan. He planted the seeds of accusation without providing any supporting evidence, but that’s how propaganda is supposed to work.

Sometimes he shared with the media that it may have been an accident that the lab let the virus loose. Other times he hinted that the lab may have created the virus to let loose on the world. His allegations were carefully vague so that he could not be pinned down. 

Pompeo and President Donald Trump play the same blame game even though the US Director of National Intelligence issued a press releasestating: “The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.” (Of course, this statement is subject to withdrawal, if the boss threatens to fire the Director.)

Cotton follows Ferguson

.

Cotton also accused China of deliberately letting the virus loose on the world. He was drawing on Niall Ferguson’s assertion that China let international flight depart from Wuhan, which was factually incorrect. Daniel Bell, a fellow academic showed Ferguson that the Wuhan airport shutdown all flights, not just domestic on January 23. Ferguson would not retract but stand by his lie.

It’s widely recognized that every lie diminishes the reputation of the perpetrator, but Cotton has an ulterior motive. He wants to sue China for compensation for the economic damages and lives lost due to Covid-19. Of course, he would never call the contagion by the official name. To him, it’s always the “Chinese” virus.

Cotton cleverly thought he could lead a lawsuit to cancel the trillion-dollar IOU the US government owes China. Frankly, that’s a lot of trouble to weasel out of a trillion-dollar debt. It would be much easier for the fed to simply print one or two or three trillion dollars with the snap of Congressional fingers. Larry Kudlow, President’s economic advisor, also shuddered at the thought of what such a default would do to the credit worthiness of the dollar.

More recently, Cotton thought out loud on Fox News that it was fine for students from China to come to the US to study Shakespeare but not for quantum computing or artificial intelligence. That was a strange juxtaposition.

Study football at Arkansas

Of course, if Chinese students aspire to become Shakespeare scholars, they would surely apply to Oxford and Cambridge. University of Arkansas might be a back-up choice if the student couldn’t get into University of Alabama to study college football.

Cotton appears to be under the notion that Chinese students majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) come to the US to steal secrets. Quantum computing and artificial intelligence happens to be two disciplines that Americans scholars are just as likely to go to China to study as vice versa. In some ways, China is as up to date and may be even ahead of the US.

It’s apparent that Cotton doesn’t understand much about STEM education in the college and post-graduate level. There is a bit over 1 million international students studying in the US and slightly over one-third is from China. Most of them are self-funded by their families. Since Beijing is not paying their way, there’s no need to spy for their tuition. 

More importantly, foreign students pay full tuition and represents a significant source of revenue for American colleges and universities.

Especially at the graduate school level, university STEM departments depend on the quality of the students to maintain the quality of the research output and thus maintaining their reputation for excellence. A recent surveyshowed that among nations, students from China ranked second highest in I.Q. while the American students came in at No. 28. That’s why top tier schools such as MIT, Stanford and others aggressively recruit students from China.

Another surprising revelation was that the top five most popular majors among the Chinese students were respectively business management, computer science, finance, mathematics and economics. This suggests that students from China are not just coming for STEM but just as interested in learning how to manage businesses the way it is done in the West.

Students from China have discovered that they are four times more likely to be a victim of a violent crime while in the US (and this was before the coronavirus induced xenophobia) than if they stayed home. In addition, with Trump’s randomly arbitrary granting of student visas and visa renewals, interest in studying in the US is flagging. A decade ago, enrollment in the US increased by nearly 30% every year. For the academic year of 2018-19, the increase was only 1.7%.

Lancet: the U.S. screwed up

Cotton was also part of the chorus accusing China of covering up the seriousness of the virus. Not so, said Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of Lancet, who praised China’s international cooperation and pointed to five papers published in January. It was U.S., U.K. and other countries in the West that squandered February and March, he lamented. 

Lancet is world renown, peer reviewed, medical research scientific journal. An open statement signed by 27 scientists from around the world was published on February 19in Lancet declaring their solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China.

Their open letter in part said: The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumors and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.

At the end of April, the world was greeted with the news that the first double blind, international study has found Remdesivir made by Gilead to be 30% more effective in helping a patient recover from Covid-19. Not a miraculous cure or vaccine to be sure, but a step in the right direction and the stock market responded positively.

The paperwas published in Lancet and the title of the paper included the words: “a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial.” The clinical trials were performed in China and the investigators were Chinese. It’s an example of the benefits of international collaboration and cooperation.

“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, was often attributed to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. Even if Pompeo, Cotton et al., succeed in blackening China and obscuring its contribution, how will the world and the American people benefit from the absence of cross border collaboration? How will lies cure America of the Covid-19 epidemic?

Trump’s Nazi-style propaganda on Covid-19

First posted in Asia Times.

“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, was a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was Hitler’s minister of propaganda from 1933 to the end of World War II. Whether Goebbels actually said that or not doesn’t matter anymore. It had been attributed to him so often and for so long, it might as well be true.

Same rule applies today. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has been busy acting as President Donald Trump’s chief minister of propaganda blaming China for every conceivable and inconceivable action and non-action as related to the novel coronavirus.

Although Pompeo comes to his current job with impressive qualifications for fabrication, drawing on his tenure as former head of CIA, he is not just lying for self-amusement. He has to orchestrate the maximum blame game on China to cover up for the fumbling incompetence of the Trump administration in dealing with Covid-19.

Just as the latest announced death toll from Covid-19 in the U.S. exceeded 26% of the world’s total, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, triumphantly proclaimed that combating the epidemic was an “American success story.” Since the U.S. represents less than 5% of the world’s total population, it’s hard to imagine what a less than success story would have looked like. 

But no, Kushner’s boast should not be regarded as an amateur attempt at propaganda. It was simply blatant bloviating baloney. Pompeo has much more capable core of adjutants to carry out the Nazi like tactics of misinformation.

One prominent example comes to mind is Niall Ferguson. He put his considerable academic reputation behind his assertion that that China deliberately contaminate the world by permitting international air travel from Wuhan even as domestic travel was locked down. Needless to say, this revelation caused quite a sensation, perfect for Pompeo’s blame game.

As propaganda goes, Pompeo could not have been given a more powerful cudgel against China. Unfortunately, it was not true.

Another scholar, Professor Daniel Bell, did fact check on Ferguson’s claim. To save Ferguson from public embarrassment, Bell privately contacted him to tell him that the Flightstats from Wuhan airport showed that all the flights, domestic and international, were shutdown from Wuhan at noon on January 23. Therefore, the charge that China deliberately let air passengers contaminate the world was untrue.

Ferguson could have admitted to making an error and issued a retraction, but that’s not how Nazi style propaganda works. He didn’t back down but went public with his reply. He said, in his blog, “Even if, as seems on balance likely, no flights left Wuhan for domestic or foreign destinations after January 23.…” He goes on to contend that enough people had been allowed to leave Wuhan because of the Chinese New Year before January 23, and thus his claim was not wrong. How lame can he get?

Both Bell and Ferguson own first rate academic credentials and have published many books. Bell is teaching in China while Ferguson is currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution on Stanford University. The one blemish on Ferguson’s record was for teaming with a Republican student group in attempting to uncover dirt on a progressive student activist whose pointed criticism was annoying him. As a result of the scandal, he had to resign from a conference chairmanship.

Ferguson’s affiliation with Hoover has a consequential multiplier effect. His notoriety from his China attack set a precedent for other rightwing colleagues in Hoover to join the chorus castigating China. Lanhee Chen, formerly a young staffer for Mitt Romney and now also at Hoover, has been especially energetic making the media rounds adding his voice to the lies scripted by the chief minister of propaganda. It’s not for certain that he knows much about China, but he knows how to take the cue from Pompeo, Ferguson et al.

Next installment: profile of another adjutant minister of propaganda, Senator Tom Cotton.