The U.S. and its allies are constantly scolded by Russia and China that they need to deal with them on the basis of “mutual respect,” as the two countries announced during a recent summit between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Well, OK, but these two leaders do not seem to have much respect for those of lesser means. Both are threatening the sovereignty of and territorial rights of neighboring countries, and both practice political and freedom of speech repression. In Russia, political opponents and exposers of corruption face the Gulag or assassination, while China—besides muzzling any criticism of its policies by the population in general—has been engaged in a far from subtle effort to make the Uyghur’s problem “disappear” through depopulation, whether through murder, “disappearances,” torture, sterilization and forced abortions.
Unless you are Tucker Carlson—a juvenile bully who confessed in an interview last fall that he has a habit of telling falsehoods when he is under stress from guests who expose him—“respecting” Russia and China is like being forced to “respect” a playground tough or a mugger with a gun to your head. If you don’t want to actually engage in combat with them, then you have find some other way to make them stop, making them feel “pain” after the fact. But unlike Russia, which doesn’t really have the economic leverage that the U.S. and the West does, the unfortunate fact is that China seems to make virtually every consumer product sold in America, and at least economically, the U.S.’ hands seemed to tied. The fact that the U.S. has been forming security alliances with China’s neighbors seems to suggest that the U.S. believes that China can be “contained” if it wants to continue the excessive trade imbalance it currently enjoys.
But being deserving of “respect” also means being truthful and not telling falsehoods, which of course China has obvious issues with since it has no free press and any hint of dissent from the population individually or on social media is quickly extinguished. Although its seems not to interest most people in this country, those who do take in interest in the world Covid-19 numbers cannot help but observe the simply unbelievable numbers coming out of China, where the virus is believed to have originated in the city of Wuhan, where seemly 90 percent of the original cases resided in and like percentage of the total deaths. There has been an assumption that China’s seemingly harsh lockdown policies have been a “success,” but given the lack of a free press to question its numbers (unlike in India, where many academics and journalists openly question that country’s “official” numbers), a Forbes report a few weeks ago which examined China’s lies in regard to Covid-19 was much needed.
While during the current surge caused by the Omicron variant, France—a country of 65 million—reported 500,000 new virus cases in just a single day, China with a population of over 1.4 billion, has reported barely over 100,000 cases total since the pandemic started. China claims to have fewer deaths (4,636) than Latvia, which has a population of 1.8 million. In fact China has not reported a new death on the mainland—meaning outside of Hong Kong—in 20 months. This is certainly the closest thing to impossible, and it certainly appears that the Chinese leadership has chosen simply not to report any more cases of death, and that it doesn’t want to know of any such cases. Local officials know this, and if the next district isn’t reporting any, then why would anyone else want to incur the “anger” of the leadership by reporting any?
George Calhoun writes in the Forbes report that while the U.S. has less than a quarter the population of China,
The difference in mortality rates is even more shocking. The Chinese government reports a Covid death rate overall of 0.321 per 100,000 population. The U.S. Covid death rate is 248 per 100,000 population – 800 times higher.
Yes, there are a lot of yahoos in this country—politicians, in the media and the ignorant who follow them—who are largely responsible for the now around 900,000 dead from the virus in this country, but can the numbers coming out of China be possibly “real”? Calhoun notes that the Chinese leadership is promoting this false narrative for propaganda purposes at home and abroad, and even the New York Times had been fooled by it. The Economist conducted a study of the “implausibility” of the intentional discrepancy with reality: “Its official statistics understate the Chinese Covid death rate by 17,000%. In fact, based on excess mortality calculations, The Economist estimates that the true number of Covid deaths in China is not 4,636 – but something like 1.7 million”—double the total U.S. deaths.
However, China is one of the only countries in the world that does not officially report “excess” deaths, which is a key metric in determining underreporting of virus deaths; those numbers have to be “ascertained” by other means. Also, “It is becoming clear that the suppression or deletion of data related to excess deaths in China began shortly after the pandemic started. As a result, most multi-country studies of Covid prevalence and outcomes are forced to omit China from their analyses.” China in fact stopped reporting deaths in Wuhan which suggested “excess” after April 2020, when it appeared that the actual death count in the city was at least triple what was “officially” reported. And outside of Wuhan, its immediate environs and Hong Kong, an impossible death count of 124 has been reported since the pandemic started.
Just as China’s economic numbers are not reliable, since they are the sum of what economic officials know what the leadership wants to hear, not what they really are, so too are the Covid-19 numbers which reflect what local officials know the leadership wants to hear, for fear of their jobs. Calhoun writes that “The most charitable interpretation of all this would be that China falls into the UN’s other ‘subset of countries where reporting systems are not functioning effectively.’ Mere sloppiness. But how likely is that? The more probable interpretation –- unfortunately – is that there has been a systematic campaign of data suppression and falsification, to sustain the Zero Covid claim which China’s leadership has embraced. There is a history in China of this sort of mindset – setting a target, and forcing the “facts” to fit the target number.”
China has chosen to be a user on the international stage, irresponsible and narcissistic. Thus the answer to the question of whether China deserves “mutual respect” from countries that may be underreporting their own numbers, but at least are giving a far better idea of the reality those numbers reflect rather than providing clearly implausible numbers and treating the international community like fools, is clear enough. It deserves none. You can’t respect someone who lies to you so blatantly that they don’t even care if you know they are lying.
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