Before he noticed that China was staging a Silent Invasion of Australia, academic Clive Hamilton was claiming that the communist nation might well be the model state to tackle climate change. While democracies are hamstrung, supposedly, by the stupid ‘denying’ masses, authoritarian states like China can just snap their fingers and get it done. (Which, oddly enough, were the kinds of arguments made for fascism in the 1920s.)
Yet Hamilton also, ludicrously, claims that China “have reached their peak and will now decline. Possibly reasonably rapidly”. Which suggests that he may be far more immune to evidence than the ‘deniers’ he sneers at.
The failure of the communists with regard to COVID-19 is likewise evidence that his faith in authoritarian states’ ability to deal with crises is ridiculously misplaced.
We can be sure the Chinese Communist Party will deny any responsibility for the coronavirus outbreak until its dying day, since autocratic elites are incapable of acknowledging mistakes, let alone learning from them[…]From the transmission of the virus from wild animals to humans, to the suppression of information that might have allowed it to be contained, everything about this story is stamped Made in China.
The authoritarian, top-down model of society that Beijing outrageously claims is the solution to the crisis was the reason it started.
China’s first instinct in a crisis is to lie, obfuscate and censor. Yet its useful idiots in the media and academe eagerly spread its lies – ironically using the very social media banned and censored in China.
The Chinese live-streaming platform YY began censoring key words related to the coronavirus outbreak on New Year’s Eve, a day before the Wuhan Seafood Market was shut down and three weeks before Chinese health officials admitted human-to-human transmission.
Researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto demonstrated the effectiveness of social media censorship by sending sample messages on WeChat.
The message “Hello. US Centre for Disease Control says hand washing is more effective to prevent catch coronavirus than face masks” turned up in the recipient’s inbox as simply “Hello”.
On the other hand, China’s near-neighbours such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan – relatively open and free – are dealing far more successfully with their respective outbreaks.
China’s efforts to persuade the world that it is on top of the crisis are believed by almost no one.
The figures announced by the Hong Kong health department, on the other hand, are believed by almost everyone. As of Sunday there were 114 confirmed cases in the territory and two deaths, remarkable given Hong Kong shares a land border with China and is among the most population-dense places in the world[…]
Singapore (138 cases) has also managed to control the virus without resort to unnecessary repression. Taiwan (45 cases) is doing particularly well. The authorities invested heavily in prevention measures for pandemics after SARS killed 181 Taiwanese in 2003.
Taiwan’s response — low on compulsion, high on voluntary compliance — is so far the most successful of any country.
This has been China’s model from the very instant it arrested the first doctor to even admit that something was going wrong. Nothing else symbolises China’s flaws, perhaps, than the fate of one of its treatment centres. Just a week ago, the communist bosses were flooding social media with boastful stories that they had built a “coronavirus hospital” in a week. This week, a hotel converted into a quarantine facility collapsed.
China’s determination to blow its own trumpet would be laughable if it were not being accepted so unquestionably by those who should know better, including the World Health Organisation.
Reliable reports from inside China are becoming rarer. Li Zehua, who quit his job at state-run TV station CCTV to expose the reality of life inside the Wuhan lockdown zone, live-streamed his own arrest two weeks ago and hasn’t been heard of since. At least two other citizen journalists in Wuhan suffered the same fate.
theaustralian.com.au/commentary/coronavirus-there-are-lies-damned-lies-and-the-chinese-communist-party/
Once again the brute facts give the lie to the authoritarian fantasies of those who insist that democracy is ‘weak’ and let down by the ‘stupidity of the masses’. The only thing authoritarian states like China excel at is secrecy and repression. No wonder the globalists are so bewitched by China.