Coronavirus: Washington Governor Jay Inslee personally appealed to Xi Jinping for PPE, on advice of Chinese-American entrepreneur

Outreach revealed in a trove of emails obtained by the South China Morning Post

Inslee’s move followed an intervention by software services entrepreneur Qiang Wan, a naturalised American born in Beijing


John Power SCMP
Published: 5:00am, 27, 2020

Washington Governor Jay Inslee. Photo: Reuters

A US state with close ties to Chinese President 

Xi Jinping’s alma mater directly petitioned the Chinese leader for protective clothing for its medical workers battling the coronavirus last month, leading to it receiving supplies from Sichuan province, Tsinghua University and other Chinese sources.


Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, wrote a personal letter to Xi on April 2 asking to “access the enormous productive capacity of China to obtain critically needed medical supplies” such as surgical masks, disposable gowns and gloves as state health authorities faced “extreme challenges” securing supplies.

Inslee’s letter to Xi Jinping.
The outreach by the state governor – a former Democratic Party candidate in the upcoming US presidential election – came after Beijing had tightened its vetting of exports of medical supplies, resulting in major delays of shipments of personal protective equipment to the
United States. The snag emerged as new cases were peaking in the state and as infections in the US approached 250,000 nationwide.

Beijing’s heightened screening followed complaints by some governments and hospitals that large quantities of PPE sent from China were below acceptable standards.

The governor’s plea also came as weeks of friction in
US-China relations at the national level briefly appeared to be subsiding after Xi and US President
Donald Trump agreed to a truce in their war of words over the origins of the coronavirus during a phone call in late March.

The plea came at a time when Chinese President Xi Jinping and US counterpart Donald Trump had agreed to a truce in their war of words over the origins of the coronavirus. Photo: AFP

The previously undisclosed outreach, revealed in a trove of emails obtained by the South China Morning Post through a public records request, was brokered at the urging of Qiang Wan, a Chinese-American entrepreneur who was born in Beijing but migrated to the US to study at the University of Southern California in the 1980s.

Now a naturalised American citizen, Wan, 58, is an entrepreneur in the software services industry based in Washington state, which in January recorded the first coronavirus cases in the US.

Wan also chairs Tsinghua GIX Institute North America, a non-profit organisation that provides “operational support” for programmes at the Seattle-based Global Innovation Exchange (GIX).

US state officials overruled expert advice on listing places visited by Patient 1
28 Mar 2020


GIX, a “multi-culture and open education-research platform”, was founded in 2015 as a partnership between Microsoft, the University of Washington and Tsinghua University, where Xi graduated with a doctorate in law in 2002.

The institute, which describes itself as a “milestone in the internationalisation of higher education in China”, received a tree for its campus as a gift from Xi during a visit by the Chinese leader to Washington state the same year.

Wan, whose father served as the Chinese ambassador to Morocco in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said he had been moved to act after watching the virus take hold in his home state while in China on business. Washington state, which has recorded about 19,500 coronavirus cases and 1,000 deaths, ultimately received donations of an unspecified quantity of supplies from several Chinese government and private sources following the letter appealing directly to Xi.





Emails obtained by the South China Morning Post.

“I grew up in a diplomatic family; to me, it’s normal,” Wan said. “Whenever there’s a crisis, diplomats do their best, through personal relationships or other channels to get things done, and this was sort of my way of trying to move things along.”

In emails to the governor’s office, Wan stressed how the university’s “very strong and influential network” could be the key to quickly getting supplies to the state despite “current tensions at the national level”.


“This requires diligent work and thoughtful planning, and I am aware of the sensitivities and intricacies around such tasks,” Wan wrote in an email on March 27. “But I am fully committed to line up the right resources on my side and will take full responsibility to reduce and minimise the risks associated with this effort while maximising the result.”

Caught between China and the US: why Hong Kong is the latest battleground
22 May 2020



In Inslee’s letter to Xi, delivered through the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, the governor said Tsinghua officials had “generously offered to assist” and an “expression of support from you in these efforts would have a very dramatic impact on our ability to successfully acquire supplies”.


“In this time of great need for our state, I am looking to our friends in China for help and support,” Inslee wrote.


On April 10, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai wrote to Inslee to tell him Xi had received his letter and “directed relevant government departments of China to provide needed assistance and facilitation”.

Ambassador Cui Tiankai's letter to Inslee. Click to enlarge.


Cui said Sichuan, Chongqing and other sister provinces and cities had mobilised to donate supplies to “show their sympathy and support to the people of Washington state”.


Chinese government agencies and other groups have donated tens of millions of masks abroad as part of a “mask diplomacy” push that Western critics have cast as an attempt by Beijing to deflect criticisms of its handling of the initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.


Trump administration officials spent weeks debating whether to accept donated masks from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, according to a New York Times report last month, fearing that doing so would aid Chinese propaganda efforts. In March, the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, warned that Beijing’s outreach included a “geopolitical component, including a struggle for influence, through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity’.”

United States Cui Tiankai. Photo: AFP

Mike Faulk, a spokesman for the Washington state governor’s office, said the state had been donated supplies by the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco, Sichuan Province, Tsinghua University and private individuals.


“Turbulent supply chain and shipping conditions meant that Chinese government action in support of PPE exports could be helpful,” Faulk said. “We greatly appreciate the support and being connected to the San Francisco Consulate General for assistance and coordination on logistics regarding shipments from China as needed, which is ongoing.”
Wan, who remains in Beijing after arriving in the city for a business trip in December, said he was troubled by the escalating tensions between the US and China, which have locked horns over the causes of the pandemic and a host of other issues ranging from the
unrest in Hong Kong to technology and trade.


Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday warned that “political forces” in the US were attempting to push the two sides toward a “new cold war”, after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo labelled Beijing’s proposed national security law for Hong Kong a “death knell” for the city’s autonomy.


Wan said he believed people-to-people exchanges could help “bridge the conversation”.


“I always believed that better understanding, better communication – between the people, between the cultures – is very, very important,” he said.


Wan said he couldn’t be sure of the letter’s impact but said it may have given manufacturers and officials the confidence to act on the state’s pleas.


Inslee launched his campaign as a Democratic candidate for president in the 2020 election on March 1, 2019. Throughout his campaign, he was a frequent critic of Republican president Trump. He ended his presidential campaign last August, citing low poll numbers, but said he would seek a third term as governor in the November elections.

A dodgy dossier? How News Corp hyped a US government reading list into a China coronavirus 'bombshell'

A Murdoch media exclusive about China covering up the origin of Covid-19 appears to be based on an unclassified US state department reference paper

Daniel Hurst in Canberra
Wed 27 May 2020  

News Corp tabloid the Daily Telegraph carried this report on 2 May 2020 claiming it had a ‘bombshell dossier’ revealing China covered up the origins of coronavirus. Photograph: News Corp


It was touted as a world exclusive – a “bombshell dossier” that exposed China’s “batty science” and backed up Donald Trump and US claims that Beijing was covering up the true origin of Covid-19.

Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, went big with a Saturday morning splash and six pages of reporting attributed to “a dossier prepared by concerned western governments” – and the story was quickly amplified and exaggerated by Trump’s media backers in the United States.

It gathered steam in subsequent reporting as something even more weighty: the New York Post called it “a damning dossier leaked from the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance” while Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked why it was so hard for some people to accept “objectively that the evidence suggests [coronavirus] came from a lab” in Wuhan, China. Carlson’s program contained a graphic that claimed: “Dossier was compiled by intel agencies of the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/08/murdoch-media-china-coronavirus-conspiracy-trump-kevin-rudd
The Murdoch media’s China coronavirus conspiracy has one aim: get Trump re-elected
Kevin Rudd


But there was a problem: the document at the heart of the reporting did not contain any genuinely new information, it did not outline any direct evidence of the lab leakage theory, and it wasn’t culled from intelligence gathered by the Five Eyes network.

Instead, the material – now reported to have been authored by the US State Department – was a fairly straightforward timeline and summary of publicly available material. A source likened it to a “reading list” or “reference paper”.

The Guardian understands from a source who has read the 15-page document that the material relevant to the Wuhan lab leakage theory makes up only a small portion of the file, and it does not include any conclusive findings.


The Australian Broadcasting Corporation first reported on Tuesday that the original paper was a background research report compiled and widely distributed by the US state department. The ABC went on to say that the US embassy in Canberra has held private meetings with Australian government officials to clarify the matter.

The embassy declined to respond to these claims when contacted by the Guardian on Tuesday.

But the former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, a longstanding critic of Murdoch’s News Corp empire, told the Guardian: “These revelations should be utterly humiliating to the Murdoch media, except that the Murdoch media has zero shame.”

Rudd says the damage has already been done. He believes the document “was leaked to News Corp in Australia with the clear intention that it would be funnelled back into the American media, giving the appearance that Australian spies were backing Trump’s claims”. In reality, though, “Australian intelligence officials don’t believe Trump at all”.
Origins of a suspect scoop

The saga began on 2 May when the Saturday version of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph trumpeted a “WORLD EXCLUSIVE” under the headline “CHINA’S BATTY SCIENCE: Bombshell dossier lays out the case against the People’s Republic”.

The journalist, Sharri Markson, noted in the original story that the dossier included a raft of criticisms of China’s “assault on international transparency’’ and concerns about practices at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but she also referred in other paragraphs to an ongoing investigation by Five Eyes intelligence agencies.


Those two elements got conflated when the story was picked up and amplified by rightwing media in the US and elsewhere, with many reporting that it was a joint report by western intelligence partners.

When Markson was interviewed a few days later on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, the graphics referred to a “leaked intel dossier” and the US host declared that “this is the most substantial confirmation of what we suspected that we’ve had so far, and because it’s a multinational effort I think it would be hard to dismiss it as a political document”.

Markson told Carlson everything in the document was “factual” but there were “leftwing sections of the media that don’t want to believe that this virus may have leaked from a laboratory”. She added: “Of course we don’t know that yet, that’s being investigated, but they don’t want to even think about it.”

I would attach no significance to it whatsoever. It’s just a listAllan Behm, Australia Institute

Markson was also interviewed about the story by rightwing Trump backers Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon. In the Bannon interview, Markson herself clarified that it was not an intelligence document that formed the basis of her report. “This isn’t an intelligence dossier,” she told Bannon. “This is a factual report that builds the western case against China’s cover-up over this virus and it’s a case that China is denying.”

It came against the backdrop of claims by Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, that there was “enormous evidence” the coronavirus came from a lab – a view that is at odds with the mainstream scientific view about the likely origins.

The resulting media coverage in the US was part of a “boomerang effect”, according to one Australian official.
What is the ‘dossier’?

The Guardian understands the 15-page research paper doesn’t have any markings on it showing who authored it, and nor does it contain any classification markers, but it includes a chronological list of relevant public open-source reporting from 2013 to late April.

The document points to published news reports and journal articles about a range of issues including the Chinese officials moving to silence doctors and whistleblowers and the delays in acknowledging human-to-human transmission of coronavirus. The ABC reported it had the status of a “non-paper”, a document that can be used to trigger discussion or debate with foreign governments.

Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former defence department deputy secretary for strategy, says a “non-paper” usually means a document that does not have “policy weight” behind it.


“It seems very clear that this is not classified intelligence product. It seems to have been a summary of publicly reported information about the outbreak of the virus,” Jennings says.

“I would expect that our own departments would be doing precisely the same thing. Often these things are compiled as reading lists for senior officials. This is absolutely routine business for bureaucracies anywhere.”

Allan Behm, the head of the international and security affairs program at the Australia Institute and a former senior defence official, says the reporting had made “a mountain out of a molehill”.

“I would attach no significance to it whatsoever. It’s just a list,” Behm says.

“I think the net result was to build up a nothing into something and that fed into the kind of shrill hysteria we saw a few weeks ago, and it still echoes.”

Behm says from what he knows about the document he doesn’t believe it was created maliciously or represented an attempt “to set Australia up” with dodgy intelligence. Instead it was “hyped” up in media reporting.

Jennings doesn’t write off the labs theory as a possibility to explain what happened, saying it should continue to be explored, and he argues China’s lack of transparency over the issue “doesn’t help”.

“But equally I think a major concern that does seem to have been lost in the discussion of the labs has been about China’s handling of wet markets,” Jennings says.

Prof Rory Medcalf, the head of the Australian National University’s national security college, played down the significance of the fact the document was leaked to media, telling the ABC all governments were likely to be “trying to persuade media organisations of their world view, their policy positions, their perspective”.
‘Overreach’ to help Trump

Rudd, the former prime minister, says the version of reality repeated in news reports around the globe had the side-effect of “politicising and discrediting western intelligence”.

He argues the dossier was never intended to put pressure on China, but to bolster Trump’s re-election campaign and distract from the US president’s failures to manage Covid-19 at home.

“While it may have helped Trump, the Daily Telegraph’s overreach has only helped efforts by China to wriggle off the hook for the questions they actually must answer – including the role of wildlife wet markets, failures to control the virus early on, and dealings with the World Health Organization,” Rudd says.


Markson declined to comment, saying she had no intention of speaking about confidential sources, while News Corp Australia did not respond to requests for a response. Markson responded to the ABC report by retweeting her original piece:
Sharri Markson(@SharriMarkson)

You can re-read my original story on the dossier that details the factual case of cover-up against China over the COVID-19 pandemic by concerned western governments here! https://t.co/gnVZNmQivWMay 25, 2020

The Guardian reported earlier this month that the Australian government had pushed back at US claims the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab and had determined that the supposed “dossier” was not a Five Eyes intelligence document.

The saga is one of several to cause tension in the relationship between the US and Australia in recent times. On Sunday, the US embassy moved quickly to clarify comments by Pompeo that communication channels may potentially be severed because of the state of Victoria’s involvement in China’s belt and road Scheme.

The speed of the walk-back of Pompeo’s latest comments suggests, according to one Australian source, that the embassy had learned lessons from the dossier episode.

Tory privatisation is at the heart of the UK's disastrous coronavirus response

George Monbiot

From PPE failures to care home tragedies, this crisis has exposed the pernicious role of corporate power in public policy


Wed 27 May 2020

‘Private monopolies have either failed to meet their contracts, or have provided defective gear to the entire NHS, like the planeload of useless surgical gowns that had to be recalled.’ PPE from Turkey arrives in an RAF plane at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

Amid the smog of lies and contradictions, there is one question we should never stop asking: why has the government of the United Kingdom so spectacularly failed to defend people’s lives? Why has “this fortress built by Nature for herself against infection”, as Shakespeare described our islands, succumbed to a greater extent than any other European nation to a foreseeable and containable pandemic?

Part of the answer is that the government knowingly and deliberately stood down crucial parts of its emergency response system. Another part is that, when it did at last seek to mobilise the system, crucial bits of the machine immediately fell off. There is a consistent reason for the multiple, systemic failures the pandemic has exposed: the intrusion of corporate power into public policy. Privatisation, commercialisation, outsourcing and offshoring have severely compromised the UK’s ability to respond to a crisis.

Take, for example, the lethal failures to provide protective clothing, masks and other equipment (PPE) to health workers. A report by the campaigning group We Own It seeks to explain why so many doctors, nurses and other hospital workers have died unnecessarily of Covid-19. It describes a system built around the needs not of health workers or patients, but of corporations and commercial contracts: a system that could scarcely be better designed for failure.

Four layers of commercial contractors, each rich with opportunities for profit-making, stand between doctors and nurses and the equipment they need. These layers are then fragmented into 11 tottering, uncoordinated supply chains, creating an almost perfect formula for chaos. Among the many weak links in these chains are consultancy companies like Deloitte, whose farcical attempts to procure emergency supplies of PPE have been fiercely criticised by both manufacturers and health workers.

At the end of the chains are manufacturing companies, some of which have mysteriously been granted monopolies on the supply of essential equipment. These private monopolies have either failed to meet their contracts, or provided defective gear to the entire NHS, like the 15m protective goggles and the planeload of useless surgical gowns that had to be recalled.

Instead of stockpiling supplies, as emergency preparedness demands, companies in these chains have been using just-in-time production systems, whose purpose is to cut their costs by minimising stocks. Their minimised systems could not be scaled up fast enough to meet the shortfall. Where there should be a smooth, coordinated, accountable programme, there’s opacity, byzantine complexity and total chaos. So much for the efficiencies of privatisation.

The pandemic has also exposed the privatised care system as catastrophically unfit and ill-prepared. In 1993, 95% of care at home was provided publicly by local authorities. Now, almost all of it – and almost all residential care – is provided by private companies. Even before the pandemic, the system was falling apart, as many care companies, unable to balance the needs of their patients with the demands of their shareholders, collapsed, often with disastrous consequences.

Now we discover just how dangerous their commercial imperatives have become, as the drive to make care profitable has created a fragmented, incoherent system, answerable sometimes to offshore owners, that fails to meet basic standards, and employs harassed workers on zero-hour contracts. If there is one thing we have learnt from this pandemic, it’s the need for a publicly owned, publicly run National Care Service – the care equivalent of the NHS.

It could all become much worse, due to another effect of corporate power. A report by the Corporate Europe Observatory shows how law firms are exploring the possibility of suing governments for the measures they have taken to stop the pandemic. Many trade treaties contain a provision called “investor state dispute settlement”. This enables corporations to sue governments in opaque offshore tribunals, for any policies that might affect their “future anticipated profits”.

So when governments, in response to coronavirus, have imposed travel restrictions, or requisitioned hotels, or instructed companies to produce medical equipment or limit the price of drugs, the companies could sue them for the loss of the money they might otherwise have made. When the UK government commandeers private hospitals or the Spanish government prevents evictions by landlords, and stops water and electricity companies from cutting off destitute customers, they could be open to international legal challenge. These measures, which override democracy, have already hampered attempts by many governments, particularly of poorer nations, to protect their people from disasters. They urgently need to be rescinded.

The effectiveness of our health system is also threatened by the trade treaty the UK government hopes to sign with the US. The Conservatives promised in their manifesto that “the NHS is not on the table” in the trade talks. But they have already broken their accompanying promise, “we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards”. Earlier this month, they voted that measure out of the agriculture bill. US companies are aggressively demanding access to the NHS. The talks will be extremely complex and incomprehensible to almost everyone. There will be plenty of opportunities to give them what they want while fooling voters.

Boris Johnson’s central mission, overseen by Dominic Cummings, is to break down all barriers between government and the power of money. It is to allow private interests to intrude into the very heart of government, while marginalising the civil service. This helps to explain why Johnson is so reluctant to let Cummings go. The disasters of the past few weeks hint at the likely results.

• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Hong Kong crisis: riot police flood city as China protests build


Pro-democracy groups gather to protest against national anthem bill


Helen Davidson, and Verna Yu in Hong Kong

Wed 27 May 2020

Thousands of armed police have flooded the streets of Hong Kong in a show of force to prevent protests against a law criminalising ridicule of China’s national anthem.

At lunchtime rallies, police fired pepper bullets into crowds, and arrested at least 180 protesters.

Protests have also been fuelled by growing anger at Beijing’s increasing interference in the semi-autonomous city, with the National People’s Congress expected to rubber-stamp national security laws on Thursday.

Roads around the Legislative Council building (LegCo), where lawmakers have begun a second reading debate on the anthem law, had been blocked off since at least Tuesday, and pedestrian walkways were cordoned off to all except those with work passes. Shops near LegCo were closed.


In the morning rush hour police in riot gear stopped and searched mainly young people outside Hong Kong’s MTR railway stations, and lined walkways as commuters shuffled past, prompting accusations on social media that the city had become “a police state”.

On social media, protest organisers urged people to “be water” and keep moving throughout the city, but acknowledged it would be difficult to stop the anthem debate without high risk of arrest. “But you can at least make a statement,” said one post.

Crowds regrouped from lunchtime in Mong Kok, where people including schoolchildren were detained; in Causeway Bay, where police arrested at least 180 people for unauthorised gatherings; and Central, where officers fired pepper ball rounds to disperse crowds, and repeatedly charged at protesters.

Police said people had put rubbish on the roads and thrown objects at officers.

“Police had no other option and needed to employ minimal force, including pepper balls to prevent the relevant illegal and violent behaviour,” the force said.

The Guardian view on Hong Kong’s future: China’s doublespeak

Read more

The crowds remained, swearing at police and chanting: “Hong Hong independence, it’s the only way.”

“I’ve come for something I care deeply about – ultimately it’s freedom,” said a 40-year-old lawyer who wished to remain anonymous, citing the national security laws, Beijing encroachment, and a recent report clearing police of wrongdoing.


“If we keep quiet, they can get away with it. I don’t think we can change things but need to make sure our voices are heard.”
Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪(@XinqiSu)

Rounds of pepper ball were fired at protesters on D’Aguilar St in Central. pic.twitter.com/NCmgspwI0TMay 27, 2020

Shortly before midday, crowds led by thee former legislator Leung Kwok-hung gathered at Admiralty station, near LegCo, where they were told by police to leave or they would be prosecuted. Shouting back, protesters told the police to “be Hongkongers”.

They chanted: “Human rights are higher than the regime” and “Five demands, not one less”, and demanded the government withdraw the national anthem bill and national security legislation.
Pak Yiu(@pakwayne)

Protesters have now gathered in Hysan Place chanting slogans instead of surrounding legco due to heavy security pic.twitter.com/udjzq7hiT4May 27, 2020


“Of course I need to make my voice heard. They’re forcing this upon us and we can’t fight against them,” said Mrs Lam, a 74-year-old woman.

A 73-year-old woman who gave the surname Cheung said she swam to Hong Kong from China to “escape the dictatorial rule of the CCP [Chinese Communist party]” when she was 15.

“The Communist party is not trustworthy,” she said. “When they say you’re guilty then you’re guilty. Is there still ‘one country, two systems’? Of course we need to fight.”

A district councillor, Roy Tam, said police had pointed pepper spray at him. “Police use force to intimidate people to disperse gatherings,” he said. “Freedom of assembly has gone.”

Elsewhere, protesters gathered in Hysan Place shopping centre shouting slogans, including some calling for independence – a demand previously on the fringe but now growing in popularity.

Police said they had arrested several young people and teenagers for possession of weapons, including petrol bombs. On Facebook police said protesters had thrown barriers on to rail lines, driven slowly to hold up traffic and set fire to rubbish bins.

Opponents say the anthem bill is another step towards authoritarianism, and could be weaponised against pro-democracy activists and legislators.

Under the proposed law, a person commits an offence if they take various actions with “intent to insult” the anthem, such as changing lyrics or music or singing in a “disrespectful way”. It carries financial penalties and jail time of up to three years.

March of the Volunteers is the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau, but booing of the anthem at Hong Kong football marches has previously embarrassed Beijing.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Riot police check a pedestrian in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP


Macau enacted laws in January 2019, but Hong Kong’s stalled amid political gridlock which later descended to violence. The government said it had a constitutional responsibility to enact the law quickly, and has declared it a priority.

It has denied the bill would suppress freedom of speech, and said an offence would occur only if someone expressed their views by publicly and intentionally insulting the national anthem.

Several days have been set aside for debate, and the vote is scheduled for 4 June – the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and another source of controversy given Hong Kong’s vigil this year won’t be allowed.

On Sunday thousands joined an unauthorised protest against both the anthem bill and Beijing’s plan to impose national security laws, which was quickly cracked down on by police.
Trump ‘displeased’ with proposed national security law

Hong Kong media reported on Wednesday that Beijing had expanded the scope of the draft security law legislation. “Mainland lawyers who have handled national security cases in the past say this change could bring not just individuals, but also organisations under the scope of the law,” RTHK said.

On Tuesday, the US president, Donald Trump, warned he would take action against China if it imposed the laws. Trump didn’t say if it involved sanctions or changes to the city’s special trading status but his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said the president was “displeased”, and it was “hard to see how Hong Kong can remain a financial hub if China takes over”.

The president’s vague warning came hours after his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, said China’s military must increase its preparations for armed confrontations.


“It is necessary to step up preparations for armed combat, to flexibly carry out actual combat military training, and to improve our military’s ability to perform military missions,” he told military officers on the sidelines of the country’s annual Two Sessions political gathering.

The comments, which did not refer to Hong Kong directly, came just a day after the commander of the People’s Liberation Army garrison stationed in Hong Kong said his troops – estimated to number around 10,000 – stood ready to “safeguard” Chinese sovereignty in the city and support national security laws.



Hong Kong crisis: protesters and police clash over new anthem law – video

Coronavirus origin research hit by political agendas, China’s ‘Sars hero’ says

Respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan says project with US epidemiologist Ian Lipkin to find source of virus is at risk

International scientific cooperation ‘vital’ to prevent future pandemics


Guo Rui in Guangzhou and Zhuang Pinghui in Beijing  27 May, 2020

Renowned Chinese respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan says international scientific cooperation is essential. Photo: Xinhua

In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with the Post, veteran Chinese infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan shares his insights into the global battle to control the Covid-19 pandemic. In this third part of a four-part series, Zhong says the blame game between the US and China is putting important research at risk at a time when the world’s scientific community needs to join hands and work together.

The politicisation of the Covid-19 pandemic could stall vital global scientific cooperation into an investigation of its origins, according to China’s most respected respiratory expert.

Zhong Nanshan, 83, known as a “Sars hero” for his role in fighting the 2002-03 severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic, said scientists around the world needed to team up to establish where the new coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, had come from.
Zhong, from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a senior adviser to the government in its drive against Covid-19, said he had been approached by
Ian Lipkin, the US epidemiologist, to use molecular tools to establish how the virus jumped to humans but the endeavour could be stalled for fear it would be distorted by political agendas.


Lipkin, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, was an adviser on the film Contagion and himself contracted Covid-19. His association with Zhong dates back 17 years when they worked together on the Sars outbreak in China.

Lipkin has been working since 2018 with professor Lu Jiahai’s team at Sun Yat-sen University’s public health school in Guangzhou, southern China, on emerging infectious diseases. They have been trying to establish the origin of the new coronavirus since February. Zhong, Lu and Lipkin met in Guangzhou in January and are in regular contact.

“Professor Lipkin has a very good technology, called molecular capture, which can capture and analyse the key gene to identify the source of the virus,” Zhong said. “It will be a large amount of work that involves not only drawing [human] blood but also blanket investigation into animals.”

But Zhong said US politicisation of the pandemic, which aimed to lay blame on China, was putting the project at risk. “[Origin tracing] should have been an important scientific issue that called for joint research and I am all for it but now, with the political labelling, it is very difficult to do so,” he said.

US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have claimed, without evidence, that the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan — the central Chinese city where the first cases were reported — and called for an investigation into the outbreak.

They have also blamed China’s initial handling of the outbreak for causing the spread of the disease around the world. China has rejected the claims and accused the US of spreading unfounded conspiracy theories.

Beijing has repeatedly said it opposes politically-driven investigations into the origin of the coronavirus and would accept objective and science-based probes within the framework of the World Health Organisation, when the epidemic has waned.

Zhong said the Chinese government had investigated the claims about the Wuhan laboratory and found no improprieties. “After the US made the allegations, the Chinese Centre of Disease Control and Prevention and the National Health Commission sent a special team to investigate the Wuhan Institute of Virology for two weeks,” he said.

“The investigators found nothing improper and there was nothing that could show [the coronavirus] was manufactured by the laboratory. We also know that, based on their manpower, technological capability, and finance, it is just impossible for them to have manufactured it (the virus).”

Available evidence suggests bats were the reservoir host for the new coronavirus which then possibly passed through an animal intermediary host to humans. Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market – where wild animals were traded and which was linked to 27 of the 41 early cases – was initially believed to be the source of infection.

However, epidemiologists had found only traces of the virus in samples taken at the market. In addition, Zhong said, the first known case of the coronavirus in Wuhan, as well as most of the 1,099 cases treated in the city, had no links to the market at all.

Zhong said investigations into the origins of the coronavirus were important for preparing for the next outbreak, as there had already been three this century – Sars in 2002, Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) in 2015 and now Covid-19. But, he said, investigations should cover other countries as well as China.

“We need to find out exactly how the virus transmitted,” he said. “It’s a process of evolution and that can happen anywhere. Data showed it happened in China, France and the United States. We really need to find out how this happened.”

Zhong said it was now established that the earliest cases had occurred in September and November. “It occurred in November in the US and also in France and Italy, so it’s a world problem that the virus might have existed long before [it was reported in China],” he said.

Zhong said that, even though animals at the market had been disposed of as part of the Wuhan government’s initial response to curb the spread of the virus, an investigation could still figure out it’s role in the pandemic if scientists joined hands and worked together.

Shao Yiming, chief expert on Aids at China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told the journal Science last week that, even though the market had been disinfected and animals disposed of, there were still ways investigate. Shao said records of where the animals had come from were still available and could be used to trace those sold in the market.


Guo Rui is a China reporter covering elite politics, domestic policies, environmental protection, civil society, and social movement. She is also a documentary filmmaker, recording modern Chinese history and social issues through film. She graduated from Nankai University with a master degree in Modern Chinese History.

Noam Chomsky’s take on America’s coronavirus response, in hands of ‘megalomaniac’ Trump

Left-wing thinker Noam Chomsky says we will recover from pandemic, but not deleterious effects of global warming
He warns of ‘enormous’ amount of potential control and surveillance in the future

Agence France-Presse 25 May, 2020

US linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky. File photo: AFP

The United States is on a chaotic path with no federal plan against the coronavirus pandemic as it reduces public health funding and ignores the advances of climate change, according to activist scholar Noam Chomsky, considered the founder of modern linguistics.

What follows are extracts, edited for clarity, from an AFP interview with the 91-year-old leftist intellectual:, who has authored more than 100 books and is currently a professor at the University of Arizona.

For two months he’s been confined in Tucson with his Brazilian wife Valeria, his dog and a parrot who can say “sovereignty” in Portuguese.

Question: How do you read the current situation in the United States, where coronavirus has killed more residents than any other nation in the world?

Answer: There’s no coherent leadership. It’s chaotic. The presidency, the White House, is in the hands of a sociopathic megalomaniac who’s interested in nothing but his own power, electoral prospects – doesn’t care what happens to the country, the world.

The president himself has said that it’s none of his business. He’s said that the federal government can’t do anything.

Nothing really matters except his personal power and gain. Of course he has to maintain the support of his primary constituency, which is great wealth and corporate power.

There’s 90,000 deaths and there will be a lot more … There’s no coordinated plan.


Q: How do you view the political landscape emerging from this crisis in the US and elsewhere?

A: As soon as Trump came in, his first move was to dismantle the entire pandemic prevention machinery. At the start, defunding the Centre for Disease Control, which would deal with this. And cancelling programmes that were working with Chinese scientists to identify potential viruses. So the US was singularly unprepared.



It’s a privatised society, very wealthy, with enormous advantages – far more than any other country – but it’s in the stranglehold of private control.

It doesn’t have a universal health care system … It’s the ultimate neoliberal system, actually.

Europe in many ways is worse, because the austerity programmes just amplify the danger, because of the severe attack on democracy in Europe, the shifting decisions to Brussels … So Europe has its own problems, but at least it has the residue of some kind of social democratic structure, which provides some support, which is what I think is lacking in the US.

As severe as this pandemic is, it’s not the worst problem. There will be recovery from the pandemic at severe cost … but there isn’t going to be any recovery from the melting of the polar ice caps and the rising of sea levels and the other deleterious effects of
global warming.

Q: Several countries are using technology to track citizens, storing DNA to fight the virus. Are we entering a new era of digital surveillance, and what does this mean for privacy?

A: There are now companies developing technology which make it possible for the employer … to look at what’s on your computer screen and to check your keystrokes and if you get up and walk away for a minute, they’ll send you a warning.

That’s being installed right now … It’s not the future.

The so-called Internet of Things is coming along. It’s convenient. It means if you’re driving home you can turn on the stove – but it also means that that information is going to Google and Facebook, to the government, the American government, the French government, it’s an enormous amount of potential control, surveillance and invasion. But this has happened. It’s not the future.

If we allow the huge tech companies, the state, to control our life that’s what will happen. They’ll turn it into something like China, where you have social credit systems and in some cities you get a certain amount of credits, there’s face recognition technology all over the place and everything you do gets monitored.

If you cross the street in the wrong place, you can … lose some credits, and so on.

It’s not inevitable, just like global warming, that it’s going to happen – unless people stop it.

Q: Could it be justified to halt the virus’ spread?

A: It might be – during the period of threat. There’s controls needed during wartime, you have rationing. But it doesn’t have to be permanent … ‘Yes, we’ll let you have this authority now, but it can be revoked at any time’.”

150,000 seafarers sign virtual global petition on crew stagnation

By Sulaimon Salau
27 May 2020 | 3:49 am

There is an ongoing global petition aiming to draw the attention of the general public to the problems of over 150,000 seafarers that cannot leave or cannot join ship crews due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The initiative is from the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Goodwill Maritime Ambassador for Bulgaria Capt. Andriyan Evtimov.

The purpose is to have the document signed online by at least 150,000 people – the same number of seafarers locked in by the COVID-19, and then send it to the IMO member-state governments with an appeal for immediate and urgent measures to facilitate the movement of seafaring personnel.


Recalled that the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), had issued a marine notice, designating seafarers as essential duty workers who should be granted free movement despite the lockdown in some states.

Currently, only a few countries permit crewmember exchange in their ports, which has a direct negative impact on seafarers’ wellbeing, on the safety of navigation, and the global supply chains.

The petition aims to draw the governments’ attention to the fact that the maritime industry is the backbone of world trade, and continuation of the restrictive measures currently in place against seafarers would lead to detrimental effects for the global economy.

More than 90 per cent of world trade takes place by the sea, and seafarers are those who constantly, and in personal deprivation, carry out their mission ensuring the operation of the supply chain, including such for medical supplies to combat the pandemic.


The petition insists that: designate seafarers and other maritime personnel as “key workers”, which should be done by the adoption of new and clear national definitions and rules and procedures duly notified to all national authorities – maritime, immigration, health, and port authorities.

It also seeks to ensure free access and movement of seafarers to and from the ships, as well as for persons employed in shipping-related activities; permit a sufficient number of airplane flights related to embarkation and repatriation of seafaring personnel and movement of maritime transport specialists.

It requested that IMO and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) member-states develop and implement a unified simplified plan for the realisation of the above measures as soon as possible, and not to subject seafarers to mandatory quarantine upon debarkation from ships where it is possible to promptly make COVID-19 tests and the test results are negative.

Nigerian Forces accused of torture and illegal detention of children – report

Amnesty International alleges that at least 10,000 died while being wrongly held – some of them in a centre part funded by the UK

BOKO HARAM NOT THE ONLY THREAT TO CHILDREN

Global development is supported byAbout this content


Emmanuel Akinwotu
Wed 27 May 2020

Nigerian soldiers guarding civilians who had fled the fighting in Bama in 2015. The country’s military had retaken the northeastern town from Boko Haram, but about 7,500 people were displaced by the fighting. Photograph: Nichole Sobecki/AFP

Widespread unlawful detention and torture by Nigerian security forces has aggravated the suffering of a generation of children and tens of thousands of people in north-east Nigeria, according to a new report.

At least 10,000 victims – many of them children – have died in military detention, among the many thousands more arrested during a decade-long conflict with jihadist groups, according to Amnesty International.

Many left their homes to flee violence from Boko Haram, whose deadly jihadist insurgency began in 2009. Yet displaced people were wrongly arrested by civilian militia forces and soldiers on suspicion of being connected to or supporting the insurgency, the report said.

In allegations strongly denied by the Nigerian army, victims suffered torture and years of detention without charge, trial or medical treatment, in “inhumane” conditions at three centres. One is the Giwa barracks detention centre where rights groups have for years reported endemic human rights abuses.


Another of the centres hosts a reintegration programme for alleged jihadists and their supporters, funded by the UK government and international donors, where conditions were not as severe but abuses were widespread, the report said.

Joanne Mariner, the acting director of crisis response at Amnesty International, called for authorities to investigate the “appalling” treatment of victims.

“From mass, unlawful detention in inhumane conditions, to meting out beatings and torture and allowing sexual abuse by adult inmates – it defies belief that children anywhere would be so grievously harmed by the very authorities charged with their protection,” she said.

“The past decade of bitter conflict between Nigeria’s military and Boko Haram has been an assault on childhood itself in north-east Nigeria,” Mariner added. “Boko Haram has repeatedly attacked schools and abducted large numbers of children as soldiers or ‘wives’, among other atrocities.”

Among the 230 people Amnesty interviewed was 10-year-old Ibrahim, who said his family had fled their village after an attack by Boko Haram when he was five and were arrested several days later by the military.

“We said we escaped from Boko Haram, but the military did not believe us,” he said. “They said that we were part of Boko Haram. They hit us children with a rope of animal skin and slapped our parents with the flat end of a long knife. They beat us every day.”

Nigeria detained children as young as five over 'Boko Haram links' – report
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/sep/11/nigeria-children-as-young-as-five-boko-haram-links-report

Another 14-year-old boy was also arrested after fleeing abduction by Boko Haram, and then detained at Giwa barracks: “The conditions in Giwa are horrible. They could make you die. There’s no place to lie down,” he said. “Up to now, nobody has told me why I was taken there, what I did, why I was in detention.”

Col Sagir Musa, the director of public relations for the Nigerian army, dismissed Amnesty’s report as “mere claims”.

“There is no basis for the accusation. The Nigerian army has strongly debunked such malicious claims and no group has convincingly refuted our position,” he said.

The findings add to a litany of abuse allegations that have dogged Nigerian security forces, intensifying during its war with Boko Haram and a jihadist offshoot, the Islamic State West African Province.

More than 36,000 people have died and almost two million are displaced within north-east Nigeria, in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Operation Safe Corridor, an army-run deradicalisation programme of mostly men and boys, which receives funding from the UK, has released thousands of jihadi suspects. Fourteen hundred Boko Haram suspects were released earlier this year.

Former detainees were positive about conditions at the Safe Corridor site yet said a number of human rights violations frequently occurred there.

Detainees were made to produce items such as shoes and soaps in training programmes which amounted to forced labour, Amnesty said. Some detainees suffered serious injuries working with caustic soda without protective equipment. At least seven detainees at the site died.

Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International, said: “The UK’s support of a military-run detention centre that is unlawfully imprisoning people, including children, and subjecting them to unsafe conditions is particularly worrying.

“The UK government must work with the Nigerian authorities to ensure that the military is protecting the population, and that absolutely no UK support is contributing to the vile abuses taking place in the context of the conflict.”

The children left behind in West Africa's conflict-torn regions

Human rights groups say children in conflict regions aren't receiving enough support. Children who have escaped from Boko Haram are treated with suspicion in Nigeria, while schools are closing in Burkina Faso.



A generation of children in West Africa risk missing out on vital education and health care amid ongoing conflicts in the region, human rights organizations warn.

A new report released by Amnesty International on Wednesday detailed failure on the part of Nigerian authorities to protect and provide education to children in the country's northeast, which has been devastated by more than a decade of conflict between the Nigerian government and the Boko Haram armed insurgency.

Another report released by Human Rights Watch on Tuesday found an increase in Islamist extremist attacks in Burkina Faso since 2017 has had a horrific impact on children's education. Armed groups aligned with al-Qaida and the so-called Islamic State have repeatedly attacked teachers and schools in the country in opposition to Western-style education and government institutions, the report said.

Similarly, extremist-driven violence is rife in Mali and Niger, where schools are also being forced to close, leaving children without access to support and making them more vulnerable to recruitment by extremist groups.


A Nigerian soldier with women and girls rescued from Boko Haram in 2015

Boko Haram ravages northeastern Nigeria

Amnesty International's report, entitled 'We dried out tears': Addressing the toll on children of Northeast Nigeria's conflict, accuses Nigeria's military of unlawfully detaining children who escaped from the armed extremist group.

"The past decade of bitter conflict between Nigeria's military and Boko Haram has been an assault on childhood itself in Northeast Nigeria," said Joanne Mariner, Amnesty International's Acting Director of Crisis Response, in a press release.

"The Nigerian military's treatment of those who escape such brutality has also been appalling." 

The Nigerian military has been repeatedly accused by diverse rights groups of holding thousands of children in squalid conditions for years. In Amnesty's latest report, interviewees described being held in inhumane conditions while being subject to beatings, torture and sexual abuse by adult inmates. The vast majority of the children are never charged with a crime.

Nigerian authorities have consistently denied any allegations of mistreatment.

"The state government has been on top of the situation in ensuring that the [Boko Harm] insurgency does not destroy the dreams and aspirations of [these] children by providing adequate educational facilities, vocational training centers and free education centers to give them equal opportunities," Hajiya Zuwaira Gambo, the Borno State Commissioner of Women Affairs and Social Development, told DW.

Read more: Boko Haram – Nigeria moves to deradicalize former fighters


The training sketch drawn on a wall for new recruits to Boko Haram

An unwelcome return

Despite the trauma they have faced, many children who have escaped or been rescued from Boko Haram are treated with suspicion, with some classified as 'combatants' and transferred to military detention facilities, according to the report.

Former child soldier, 12-year-old Idris Muhammad, told DW how he and other boys were trained for potential combat by the extremist group.

"We were abducted form our village and they took us to their base in Sambisa Forest," he said. "Whenever they went to the battle field they normally carried us along. They taught us what they did on the battleground and they even killed people in front of us."

While the majority of girls are kidnapped to be used as brides for the fighters, 13-year-old Maryam Umar Kirawa says she and other girls were still trained to fight if necessary.

"They taught us how to kill a person with a knife, or a gun with bullets," she told DW. "They also taught us their own type of religion. In fact, they told us they were going to teach us all the methods of war before we escaped."

More support needed

Zariyatu Abubakar, a children's rights activist in northeastern Nigeria, says returnee children should be given more protection and support by authorities.

"They are only children, so somebody has to take responsibility to support them, educate them, feed them and provide shelter for them," she told DW. "We need to place these children into homes to that they will feel secure and protected."


Children abducted by extremist groups require support and education to recover from a traumatic past

UNICEF official Geoffrey Ijumba says the children need to be viewed first-and-foremost as victims if they are to be properly rehabilitated.

"We need to make sure they are integrated [back into society] because this is the only way they will rediscover their dreams and be able to contribute positively to their own personal development and to the development of [Nigeria]," he told DW.

Education suffers in Burkina Faso

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch finds attacks by armed extremists on schools are on the rise in Burkina Faso, severely damaging children's long-term access to education.

Since the emergence of the Burkinabe Islamist group, Ansar ul Islam in 2016, violence has steadily increased, primarily in the country's northern and eastern regions, according to report by the organization entitled 'Their War Against Education': Armed Group Attacks on Teachers, Students, and Schools in Burkina Faso.


Many children in Burkina Faso are missing out on an education due to extremist violence

A surge in attacks in 2019 forced more than 830,000 people from their homes.

The extremist groups have abducted and killed education professionals, including teachers, and damaged or destroyed existing schools, the report says.

"Armed Islamist groups targeting teachers, students and schools in Burkina Faso are not only committing war crimes, but are undoing years of progress in improving children's access to education," said HRW's children's rights researcher, Lauren Seibert, in a press release.

"The Burkinabe government should investigate these attacks, ensure children regain access to schooling and provide needed support to education workers who experienced attacks."

Watch video02:57

Thousands flee violence in Burkina Faso

While some positive steps have been taken, such as reopening some schools and expanding distance-learning programs alongside its COVID-19 response, observers say the traumatic impact of the attacks will be compounded if the conflict continues.

"Armed Islamist groups have cost teachers their lives, livelihoods and physical and mental health, and they are costing hundreds of thousands of children their futures," said Seibert. "These attacks need to stop."

Children without access to education or social services are also at higher risk of being recruited by extremist groups, perpetuating the cycle even further.

Children also affected in Mali and Niger

Ongoing attacks by Islamist extremists in the Sahel region have also spilled over into Mali and Niger. UNICIEF says over 8 million children have been forced out of school.

Almost 3,000 schools were forced to close in the region between April 2017 and December 2010, including 1,261 in Mali and 354 in Niger.

Once considered a buffer zone against violence in neighboring Nigeria and Libya, the tri-border region, which includes Burkina Faso, has devolved into a hotbed of conflict, despite international military support.

According to UNICEF, the crisis in the Lake Chad region has forced over 3 million people to flee their homes.



FREED BOKO HARAM HOSTAGES: 'THE PAIN IS STILL THERE'
Traumatic experiences
"You notice one thing straightaway - the children here hardly ever laugh," says a helper at Malkohi camp, close to the Nigerian city of Yola. The camp now accommodates almost 300 people who were liberated in early May from Boko Haram captivity. About half are under 18 years old. Every third child is malnourished.
MORE PICTURES 12345678

Mohammad Al-Amin contributed to this article.


Date 27.05.2020
Author Ineke Mules
Related Subjects The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Human Rights, Boko Haram, Niger, Nigeria, Amnesty International
Keywords Africa, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, West Africa, Boko Haram, Islamic extremists, child soldiers, Borno State, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), UNICEF, human rights

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3coTc