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Thursday 06th of February 2020 |
#Coronavirus Crisis Shows China's Governance Failure @nytimes @LiYuan6 #nCoV2019 Law & Politics |
Wuhan’s mayor blamed higher-ups. A senior disease control official blamed layers of bureaucracy. A top government expert blamed the public: The people, he said, simply didn’t understand what he told them. As China grapples with a mysterious coronavirus outbreak that has killed at least 490 people and sickened thousands, the country’s 1.4 billion people are asking what went wrong. Senior officials are engaging in an unusually blunt display of finger pointing. So many officials have denied responsibility that some online users joke that they are watching a passing-the-buck competition. (It’s “tossing the wok” in Chinese.) The Chinese people are getting a rare glimpse of how China’s giant, opaque bureaucratic system works — or, rather, how it fails to work. Too many of its officials have become political apparatchiks, fearful of making decisions that anger their superiors and too removed and haughty when dealing with the public to admit mistakes and learn from them. “The most important issue this outbreak exposed is the local government’s lack of action and fear of action,” said Xu Kaizhen, a best-selling author who is famous for his novels that explore the intricate workings of China’s bureaucratic politics. “Under the high-pressure environment of an anticorruption campaign, most people, including senior government officials, only care about self-preservation,” Mr. Xu said. “They don’t want to be the first to speak up. They wait for their superiors to make decisions and are only accountable to their superiors instead of the people.” The Chinese government appears to be aware of the problem. The Communist Party’s top leadership acknowledged in a meeting on Monday that the epidemic was “a major test of China’s system and capacity for governance.” Growing numbers of people are questioning the government’s decisions as China enters a period of virtual shutdown. As the virus spread, officials in Wuhan and around the country withheld critical information, played down the threat and rebuked doctors who tried to raise the alarm. A reconstruction of the diseases’s spread by The New York Times showed that by not issuing earlier warnings, the Chinese government potentially lost the window to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic. The outbreak has undermined the myth that the Chinese political elites win assignments and promotion purely on merit. China has sold this system as its own unique innovation. Developing countries have sent thousands of their government officials to China to learn its model of governance, a political system that offers security and growth in return for submission to authoritarian rule. People in China are now questioning that premise. They are focusing much of their anger on Xi Jinping, China’s top leader and the person many blame for creating a culture of fear and subservience within the Chinese government. Few people dare to question Mr. Xi openly, for fear of provoking censors or the police. But after Mr. Xi disappeared from public in recent days, some social media users began asking euphemistically, “Where is that person?” They are also posting online and sharing pictures of former leaders at the site of past crises. Critics say quietly that, under Mr. Xi, the party began promoting loyal political cadres over technocrats — the experts and skilled administrators who were the backbone of China’s bureaucracy in 1990s and 2000s, when the country grew the fastest. Those officials could often be corrupt, but even the party’s fiercest critics sometimes acknowledged that they got things done. Liu Zhijun, the former railway minister, is serving a lifetime sentence for taking bribes and abusing power. He also oversaw the creation of China’s high-speed rail system, which vastly improved life in the country. The wok tossing in China stems in part from the tension between the technocrats, who hold a large number of positions with China’s provincial and national disease control centers, and the political cadres — the mayors, governors and the provincial party secretaries. The outbreak and lack of disclosure suggest that the political cadres are winning. In fact, even the technocrats are becoming cadres because none of them had the courage to tell the public what they knew about the virus. Chinese officials are spending as much as one-third of their time on political studying sessions, a lot of which are about Mr. Xi’s speeches. Political loyalty weighs much more in performance evaluations than before. Now the rule of thumb in Chinese officialdom seems to be demonstrating loyalty as explicitly as possible, keeping everything else vague and evading responsibility at all costs when things go wrong. The Chinese people may be paying the price. The failures span the system. Zhou Xianwang, Wuhan’s mayor, said he didn’t disclose the scale and danger of the epidemic earlier because he needed the authorization from higher up. But he could have done something without sharing much information, including telling the residents to wear masks, wash hands frequently and stop big gatherings such as the potluck banquet attended by over 40,000 families just a few days before his city of 11 million was locked down. When information began to dribble out, it was vague and misleading. In a series of online notices issued between Dec. 31 and Jan. 17, local officials disclosed they were treating pneumonia patients but didn't say when or how many. The National Health Commission, the ministry with the authority to declare an epidemic emergency, didn’t issue its own notice about the outbreak until Jan. 19. But the notice essentially kicked blame back to the local authorities. The first sentence cited a rule that required the commission to work with local officials on epidemic prevention. A top government health adviser, Wang Guangfa, who had reassured the public that the disease was controllable only to be sickened himself, said in an interview after he recovered that he had limited information at the time. He also defended his phrasing as a “misunderstanding” by the general public, saying most outbreaks of infectious diseases are controlled in the end. Local officials don’t seem to have local people at the top of their list of priorities. In an interview with state television, Ma Guoqiang, the Communist Party secretary of Wuhan, acknowledged that Wuhan residents “are a little anxious and a little nervous” and said he would mobilize all party cells to comfort them. “But the most important comfort,” he added, “came from Party Secretary Xi Jinping.” Mr. Xu, the novelist, said Mr. Ma’s remarks demonstrated how officials had more concern for pleasing their bosses than taking care of the people they allegedly served. “If they can rearrange the order in their hearts," Mr. Xu said, “we’ll see a very different governance style.” As they try to contain the spread, local governments are showing that they are better at looking busy than they are at finding a solution. Many are now finding ways to track down and even expel residents from Hubei Province to keep the coronavirus from spreading. Tracking potential spreaders is sound policy, but punishing or persecuting them risks driving them underground, making it even harder to fight the outbreak. Even outside the hardest hit areas, local officials are showing they don’t make rules with the well-being of the people in mind. A video that went viral across China showed a couple stuck on a bridge connecting Guizhou Province to the city of Chongqing. The two governments had halted travel between them, and the couple — she from Guizhou, he from Chongqing — had no place to go. On social media, low-level cadres are complaining that they are receiving so many instructions from the higher-ups that they spend most of their time filling out spreadsheets instead of getting real work done. In a social media post headlined “The Formalism Under the Mask,” the author wrote, “Most people in the system don’t do things to solve problems. They do things to solve responsibilities.” After the epidemic, the Chinese leadership will have to punish a few officials, even severely, to save face and win back some credibility. But for people who are suffering from the epidemic and the failure of governance, the Communist Party may have a hard time winning them back. “I know before long this country will go back to being a peaceful, prosperous society. We will hear many people screaming how proud they are of its prosperity and power,” a Wuhan resident wrote on the social media site Weibo. “But after what I have witnessed, I refuse to watch the applause and commendation.”
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In Wuhan, one person has died for every 23 infections reported. That number drops to one on 50 nationally, and outside mainland China, one death has been recorded per 114 confirmed cases. Law & Politics |
“In an outbreak your really have to interpret fatality rates with a very skeptical eye, because often it’s only the very severe cases that are coming to people’s attention,” said Amesh Adalja, an expert in pandemic preparedness at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. “It’s very hard to say those numbers represent anything like the true burden of infection” said Adalja, who estimates current fatality rates are likely below 1%. As of Tuesday, 24,551 cases have been confirmed globally. A 1% fatality rate would put total cases at over 49,000, based on the current death toll of 492. “As the denominator is growing in terms of case numbers, and case fatality goes down and down... you start to realize it’s everywhere,” he said.
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@TencentGlobal Tencent may have accidentally leaked real data on Wuhan virus deaths says @TaiwanNews886 Law & Politics |
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As many experts question the veracity of China's statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures. On late Saturday evening (Feb. 1), Tencent, on its webpage titled "Epidemic Situation Tracker", showed confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure. The number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day. Moments later, Tencent updated the numbers to reflect the government's "official" numbers that day. Netizens noticed that Tencent has on at least three occasions posted extremely high numbers, only to quickly lower them to government-approved statistics. Netizens also noticed that each time the screen with the large numbers appears, it shows a comparison with the previous day's data which demonstrates a "reasonable" incremental increase, much like comparisons of official numbers. This has led some netizens to speculate that Tencent has two sets of data, the real data and "processed" data. Some are speculating that a coding problem could be causing the real "internal" data to accidentally appear. Others believe that someone behind the scenes is trying to leak the real numbers. However, the "internal" data held by Beijing may not reflect the true extent of the epidemic. According to multiple sources in Wuhan, many coronavirus patients are unable to receive treatment and die outside of hospitals. A severe shortage of test kits also leads to a lower number of diagnosed cases of infection and death. In addition, there have been many reports of doctors being ordered to list other forms of death instead of coronavirus to keep the death toll artificially low.
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a @Harvard epidemiologist says that it's likely as many as 100,000 are already infected @HarvardChanSPH Law & Politics |
“Many epidemiologists and people who are following this outbreak closely are assuming that it’s probably quite a bit more widespread than the case counts suggest,” said Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Many people also think that there’s probably over 100,000 in reality out in mainland China, for example. We just don’t capture all of those through the case reporting we have. … We can assume that this is growing at somewhat of an exponential rate, and it will continue increasing in scale.”
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More Than Pneumonia, The Potential Occurrence of Multiple Organ Failure in 2019 Novel Coronavirus Infection Ming Yang, Jinming Zhao, Zheng Zhang :: SSRN #nCoV2019 Law & Politics |
ACE2 also extensively expressed in the vascular endothelial cells of the heart, kidney, liver, intestine, and testis, etc. In other words, the new coronavirus may probably intrude on any tissues or organs as long as the needed number of ACE2 is available. Therefore, once exposed to the coronavirus (e.g. through the blood or other body fluid), these organs may also get affected especially for those the receptor has the direct-acting control.
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With Little Policy Room, Africa Central Banks Sound Debt Alarm @economics Africa |
Central bankers in Africa are joining a chorus of voices, which includes the International Monetary Fund, who are worried about surging public debt levels on the continent. Nigerian central bank Governor Godwin Emefiele warned last month rapidly rising debt and a lack of fiscal buffers could threaten economic growth. That same week Kenyan central bank Governor Patrick Njoroge said in an interview his country is running out of room to increase its credit load. For nearly two years the IMF and credit rating companies have admonished African governments about the dangers of accumulating too much debt as their revenues dwindle. Rising obligations are depleting the fiscal space the continent’s governments have to buttress economic growth, raising pressure on central bankers to do more to prevent a deeper slowdown in a region that is home to two-thirds of the world’s poor. Stubborn inflation and currency pressures also limit monetary wiggle room in some economies. “They are sending a warning to policymakers that if your debt levels become unsustainable, then it is going to have consequences on growth and the financial environment and that raises monetary risks,” said Colin Coleman, the former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in sub-Saharan Africa who now lectures at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. To pay for infrastructure and civil servants’ wages, African governments have tapped debt markets like never before to take advantage of investors’ appetite for high-yielding paper. Public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product in sub-Saharan Africa has doubled to more than 50% since 2008, IMF data show. While that’s below the average for emerging market and developing economies, the continent’s debt ratio rose faster than that of any other country grouping over the period. About 40% of governments on the continent face difficulties honoring their obligations, according to the IMF. The African Development Bank is less worried and said last week it doesn’t see a systemic debt crisis on the continent. Still, it complicates the job of central banks. Rising government debt crowds out lending to the private sector and weakens the transmission of monetary policy to boost demand, the IMF’s Africa department director, Abebe Aemro Selassie, said last year. Lowering interest rates in countries with rising debt levels could add pressure to local currencies by prompting foreign investors to leave in search of higher-yielding securities elsewhere. “Higher debt has clipped the wings of monetary policy,” said Andrew Roche, managing partner at Paris-based financial consultancy Finexem. “In Nigeria, if the governor wants to lower interest rates, that could weaken the currency and increase the debt burden, which creates another set of problems when you are trying to find a solution.” Faced with limited monetary space, Nigeria’s central bank has stepped in to help cover the government’s widening fiscal gap with cash advances worth 2.5% of GDP, which are more expensive than debt funded on the domestic market. Moody’s Investors Service warned against “opaque and costly options” to finance the government’s rising debt burden when it changed the outlook on the country’s credit rating to negative in December “High debt levels will lead to the expansion of these non-conventional policies,” said Adedeji Adeniran, a senior fellow at the Abuja-based Centre for the Study of The Economies of Africa. Central banks “will be expected to print money and become more activist in policy orientation,” he said.
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09-DEC-2019 :: Time to Big Up the Dosage of Quaaludes Africa |
This week Moody’s Investor Services downgraded Nigeria to negative and we learnt that Foreign Investors are propping up the Naira to the tune of NGN5.8 trillion ($16 billion) via short-term certificates. Everyone knows how this story ends. When the music stops, everyone will dash for the Exit and the currency will collapse just like its collapsing in Lusaka as we speak.
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@qatarairways to Buy @FlyRwandAir Stake to Gain African Foothold @business Africa |
Qatar Airways plans to purchase a 49% stake in Rwanda’s national carrier, stepping up its presence in the market weeks after taking a majority holding in the African country’s new airport. The Gulf airline is investing in Rwandair after identifying Africa as a market with significant potential, Akbar Al Baker, its chief executive officer, said in a briefing at the CAPA Qatar Aviation conference on Wednesday. The holding being negotiated will be its first in the continent after a string of deals elsewhere. Qatar Airways agreed in December to acquire a 60% stake in Rwanda’s new Bugesera International Airport, located south of the capital Kigali, where an existing hub is at full capacity. As part of the deal, the Gulf carrier will help build and run the $1.3 billion facility. “It will be a very efficient hub in a very stable country in the heart of Africa,” Al Baker said. “And we’re going to take a stake in their national carrier because we see that Africa is another region that has huge growth potential.” The CEO said that Qatar Airways remains intent on investing in InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., India’s biggest airline, but is waiting for the right opportunity and the resolution of a clash between existing shareholders. Al Baker praised China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, saying the Asian nation is doing a “fantastic job” in dealing with the epidemic, while suggesting that the global reaction has been “out of proportion.” The executive said he plans to attend next week’s Singapore air show regardless of the outbreak, and won’t be wearing a face mask.
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Kenya sees no conflict in pursuing close ties with both the US & China and has no interest in being drawn into some proxy war. @ReutersAfrica Africa |
Trump could send a formal notice to Congress as early as next week, paving the way for negotiations on a comprehensive, high-standard agreement with Kenya, said Scott Eisner, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Africa Business Center. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, who hosted a bipartisan meeting with Kenyatta on Wednesday, signaled support for a new U.S.-Kenya trade pact but said it would require measures to enforce worker rights, environmental protections and good governance. A U.S.-Kenya free trade agreement (FTA) would be the first such pact signed by Washington with a country in sub-Saharan Africa, and only the second FTA with any African country. An FTA was signed with Morocco in 2004. Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton in 2018 announced plans to expand U.S. economic ties with African nations to counter what he called aggressive efforts by China and Russia to expand their influence there. “Kenya can have several best friends - the United States, China, Great Britain, the European Union and others. They need to do what is best for them to progress their economy, build their infrastructure and push the country forward,” said Johnnie Carson, a former U.S. ambassador to Kenya. The country is keen to secure its economic future ahead of the expiry of AGOA in 2025.
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Uhuru: Kenya to evacuate students trapped in China @dailynation H/T @eolander @AtlanticCouncil #nCoV2019 Africa |
Kenya will evacuate its students trapped in Wuhan, the Chinese epicentre of the coronavirus epidemic, President Uhuru Kenyatta has said. However, President Kenyatta said Nairobi was putting in place stringent measures to ensure the virus does not enter Kenya. “We are also working; because we have got a good number of our students there, to see how we can support them and find out how we can also, when they do come and insist they are coming, ensure that they are put in quarantine for the required 14 days and ensure that they are not going to spread that virus around,” President Kenyatta told a forum at the Atlantic Council, an American think-tank on foreign policy, business and politics in Washington. At least 200 Kenyan students are based in Wuhan, the capital of Hebei Province in China.
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