NATO Sponsored Global Poll finds Chinese the Most Saying their Government had the Right Policy on COVID 19

The NATO sponsored 2023 “Alliance of Democracies” polls in 53 countries found that the country that in 2022 had the highest percentage marking “Disagree” with “their country has limited freedoms too much during COVID” was China. The country where the “Agree” percentage on that was the highest was India.

The question asked there was “Q22 Do you agree or disagree with the following statemen ‘My government has done too much to limit people’s freedoms during the Corona Virus Crisis’?” Of the Chinese respondents, 16% more said “Disagree” than said “Agree” with that statement. Of the Indian respondents, 67% more said “Agree” than said “Disagree.”

In US, 27% more said “Agree” than “Disagree.” In Russia, 20% more said “Agree” than “Disagree.”

According to the most comprehensive scorecard about COVID 19 figures to date, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries, China has had only 347 cases per million residents, which is the world’s lowest; India has had 31.192, which is the world’s 67th lowest; America has had 32.577, which is the 174th lowest (out of 228 countries); and Russia has had 159.118, which is the 104th lowest. On that measure (cases), the rank order of COVID 19 performance in those four countries was China, then India, then Russia, then US.

On deaths per million, China was the 3rd lowest at 4. India was the 64th lowest at 379. US was 214th lowest at 3.531. Russia was the 197th lowest at 2.746. The rank order on deaths performance was the same as on cases performance.

On “limit[ing] people’s freedoms during the Corona Virus Crisis,” China was the most restrictive of the four; America was the least restrictive.

China’s unemployment during COVID peaked in 2020 at 5%. America’s peaked in 2020 at 8.05%. Russia’s peaked in 2020 at 5.59%. India’s peaked in 2020 at 10.2%. The view by libertarians (= neo liberals) that the nations which were the strictest in their anti pandemic policies would get the most unemployment, turned out to have been more wrong than right.

This isn’t to say that strict enforcement of ANY anti pandemic policy is good, but ONLY that strict enforcement of EFFECTIVE anti pandemic policies is good, and will save lives, and will also be best for the nation’s economy. We are now far enough into the COVID 19 pandemic so that no rational person any longer can deny that China was exemplary in this regard. More than enough data are now in so that the case on this question can reasonably be considered to be closed with an opinion that is extraordinarily favorable to China’s Government and that is highly unfavorable to US and allied Governments.

In October 2019, shortly before COVID 19 hit, Johns Hopkins University published their “Global Health Security Index” rating and ranking 195 nations on their preparedness for a global pandemic, and their top rated country was the US, which was actually among the worst of all nations (174th on cases, and 214th on deaths) at dealing with the COVID 19 global pandemic. They ranked China (the best country on both) as N° 51. India was 57. Russia was 63. Czech Republic, which was actually one of the world’s 40 worst performers, was ranked by JHU as N° 42. In other words JHU (the most cited COVID 19 ‘authority’ by America’s ‘news’ media) actually were more wrong than right about pandemics, though none of the ‘news’ media ever pointed that out, and they continued citing JHU as the ultimate authority on this.

https://theduran.com/nato-sponsored-global-poll-finds-chinese-the-most-saying-their-government-had-the-right-policy-on-covid-19/

¶

American Propaganda against China, versus the Reality

The US regime (including its ‘news’ media, think tanks, and other propaganda organs) is taking advantage of wars and global stresses that it had actually led in producing throughout the world, in order to focus on their harmful effects specifically upon China, as if these were China specific problems, instead of as reflecting harms that are being experienced in many, if not most, countries (and that were largely initiated by the US Government itself).

Two recent examples of this anti China propaganda are from NATO’s public relations agency, the Atlantic Council’s, 17 August 2023 article, “The Chinese economy’s moment of macro weakness – in charts”, and from the Rhodesist (or “neo conservtive”) Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) ’s article “The Root of China’s Growing Youth Unemployment Crisis”.

“The Chinese economy’s moment of macro weakness – in charts” says:

Here are five charts that illustrate China’s multi dimensional moment of macro economic weakness:

(1) Plunging property sales (…)

(2) Manufacturing malaise (…)

(3) Youth unemployment in select major economies [China, US and EU] (…)

(4) China’s deflationary dilemma (…)

(5) China’s declining trade (…)

It concludes with “Revisiting China’s Macro Story”, which opens “While an extended downturn in any one of these indicators would be a cause for concern for economic policy makers in Zhongnanhai [China’s mini version of The Kremlin], taken together they point to serious, structural issues within China’s economy that go well beyond the cyclical problem caused by COVID.”

“The Root of China’s Growing Youth Unemployment Crisis” opens:

China’s exports fell in August for the fourth month in a row, putting yet more pressure on its government to boost domestic consumption, something it has pledged, but thus far failed signally, to do. 

Reviving a flagging economy is of great political importance for the Chinese Communist Party, not least because of the risk that the younger generation will question the legitimacy of a system that cannot meet its basic aspirations for gainful employment.  Yet the signs are that their prospects will continue to deteriorate. 

The youth unemployment rate (for those aged 16 to 24) hit a record high 21.3 percent in June, following which the government announced that it would no longer publish the statistic.  To juice the economy and create jobs, it is pulling the levers it knows best: home buying incentives and infra structure investment, the latter of which expected to total $ 1.8 trillion this year. 

Unfortunately, the increasingly state dominated property and construction sectors are not only notoriously unproductive, but virtually irrelevant to the prospects of the young and the educated.  Young Chinese look overwhelmingly to the service sector, which employs half the national workforce, for jobs.  And so new stimulus driven opportunities in fields such as carpentry and bricklaying hold no interest for graduates in areas such as literature and computer science. (…)

The CFR is advocating for China to pump up youth employment in “the service sector” (like in the United States: flipping hamburgers at McDonalds, and loading store shelves and tending cash registers at TJ Maxx stores), instead of in, as they characterize it, “fields such as carpentry and bricklaying.”

By contrast with those two articles (presenting fake analyses of bogus or micharacterized options) is the 27 September 2023 article in the far-less propagandistic scientific journal Nature, “How does digital transformation relieve the employment pressure in China? Empirical evidence from the national smart city pilot policy”, which opens with this:

Abstract

The impact of digital transformation on employment has been increasingly noticed by the academic community, while the internal mechanism still remains as a black box, especially in terms of specific pilot policy, such as the national smart city pilots policy in China. Based on the city level and firm level panel data, we investigate the impact of China’s national smart city pilot on the employment pressure of urban job seekers using difference in differences model. The results show that the national smart city pilots significantly reduces the employment pressure in the pilot cities. In addition, by bringing configuration optimization and technological upgrading, smart city pilots affect firm selection at the micro level, generating siphoning effects, factor substitution effects, and efficiency gains, and further affect the macro economy by promoting urban economic agglomeration, industrial structure transformation, and regional innovation thereby affecting employment pressure. Furthermore, the reduction effect of China’s national smart city pilot on employment pressure are heterogeneous in terms of cities, firms, and workers’ education levels. Finally, conclusions and policy implementations are provided to highlight the theoretical and practical values.

It says that,

We consider the smart city pilot policy [SCP] as a natural experiment and measure the average treatment effect of SCP on employment with time-varying DID [unfortunately not defined in this article, but that acronym refers to “the Difference in Difference methodology”] using panel data of Chinese cities and listed companies from 2003 – 2019, with pilot cities as the experimental group and non pilot cities as the control group, to measure the average treatment effect of SCP on employment using difference in difference model (DID). (…)

Its “Conclusion” says:

The results show that the three batches of smart city pilots established from 2012 – 2014 significantly increased employment in pilot cities, resulting in a 7.43% increase in employment in pilot cities compared to non pilot cities, alleviating the employment pressure of the pilot cities, and a 16.9% increase in employment in listed companies in pilot cities compared to non pilot cities. Parallel trend tests showed no significant differences between the experimental and control groups before the pilots began, ruling out systematic differences, and placebo tests confirmed that the results were not coincidental, while a series of robustness tests were also passed.

As is, by now, amply clear from the relevant empirical data, China’s Government is vastly more focused on long term success than are the Governments in the US empire, and so the latter group of Governments have, ever since 1980, sunk so steeply in their economic performances as compared with all of the world’s Governments, and ESPECIALLY as compared with China’s Government, so that, as I headlined on 13 November 2023, “America and its allies are CLEARLY declining powers” The long term data make unequivically clear that ever since 1980, the Chinese Government has led its nation to spectacular economic success so that by around the year 2015, China became. and it now has clearly become. the world’s leading economy.

The US regime’s constantly feeding propaganda instead of 100% truthful reporting and analysis to the public, is, in and of itself, just another example of its short termism. It helps to predetermine its own continued, and continuing, failure, ever since 1980. This reality is displayed unequivocally, right there, in those numbers, which come from the World Bank.

All that the US Government knows how to do is to deceive its public.

China is already the nation that leads the world in its human capital, and Russia is already the nation that leads the world in its physical capital. But in the US and its colonies, such facts are hidden from the public, instead of being reported to the public.

¶

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to US and allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’, duping the public.
Eric Zuesse blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/

https://theduran.com/american-propaganda-against-china-versus-the-reality/