Journey to China 2021: My China Activism Factfinding & Medical Solidarity Working Trip
PART TWO: September 11, 2021
Lee Siu Hin
September 11, 2021
Greetings from the Southern Chinese city of Foshan!
I just flew back to China from LA on September 5th arriving in the Southern Chinese coastal city of Guangzhou where I immediately transferred to the nearby city of Foshan to begin our 14-days of quarantine life.
This is my second return trip to China this year.
Early this year I returned to China to discuss the translation and publication of our upcoming Chinese edition of “Capitalism on a Ventilator.” It was also a working trip for factfinding and medical solidarity to investigate several aspects of China's success story in the fight against COVID: the rapid post-pandemic economic and social recovery, a report to expose the bogus anti-China story advanced by some U.S. neocons about COVID's origins, and the broad-based community and activist outreach that is being implemented in China.
And once again I returned to China to continue my China-U.S. activism solidarity work, as well as to promote our upcoming official release of the book in China.
This should be the critical time to build international solidarity for peace and justice, when the U.S. has just been badly defeated and has left Afghanistan; the total failure of U.S. and western countries' fight against COVID with new surge underway; and the massive printing of money, the so-called “stimulus” giveaway that is causing an upsurge in inflation and the possible economic crash on the horizon. Biden’s failure is no different than Trump’s failure.
This is the time when the international community should focus on working together to fight against the pandemic and economic recovery. Yet the U.S. is continuing to increase its racist hegemonic military obsession against China and Russia. Sadly the U.S. is increasing its military budget and doesn't care about spending to meet the people’s needs.
China vs. U.S.
Numbers don’t lie.
United States hospitals are full-to-bursting, in the richest country in history, with coronavirus infections spreading at the rate of 150,000 new cases a day, an average daily increase of 130% over the last month. Some thirty thousand children entered hospitals in August, and 250,000 children recorded testing positive just in the past week, a figure that coincides with the reopening of public schools; according to the International Action Center.
The rising U.S. COVID death toll is well over 600,000 in a country of 350 million. By contrast, the number of COVID deaths in China, a country of 1.4 billion, has remained below 5,000.
Over the past 17 months, since April 2020 when China successfully beat the pandemic, there have been only a few thousand additional COVID cases, and almost all these cases were international travelers who were found to have COVID when they were tested on arrival at Chinese airports; there has been only one death. China is also the first country which successfully contained the surge of the Delta variant when a small outbreak happened in July. In China, an outbreak can be under total control.
In the event that there is even a small outbreak of community-spread COVID involving a few people, the local government will quickly organizes several hundred medical personnel to quickly seal-off the area and conducts the massive community testing of a few hundred thousand people within just 24-48 hours. They identify and fully isolate the patients and contain the spread within 3-5 days.
China has successfully organized the world's largest vaccine drive. According to the latest report from the government as of September 6th, over 2.1 billion doses have been administrated, 1.1 billion or 77.6% of the population have taken the jab, with 970 million or approximately 70% people fully vaccinated (I was fully vaccinated with the SinoVac vaccine last May in Shanghai).
In addition, as of early September, China has provided more than one billion doses of finished and bulk vaccines to over 100 countries and international organizations, and will strive to provide a total of two billion doses by the end of this year, according to Chinese President Xi Jinping said at the 13th BRICS online Summit on September 9th, adding that China will donate an additional 100 million doses of vaccines to fellow developing countries within this year on top of the $100 million donation to COVAX, the World Health Organization (WHO)-led global COVID vaccine distribution organization.
By comparison the vaccine imperialism of the U.S. and other western countries has only provided 150 million doses, only 15% of their promised stock-piled vaccines to the low- and lower-middle income countries early this year, according to the WHO.
U.S. has spent $2 Trillion USD to invade and occupied Afghanistan for the past 20 years, so far only approx. 2% Afghans had able to vaccinated.
Economically, China is quickly recovering with most conferences and trade shows reinstated last summer (For the past year I attended many conventions and trade shows across the country). According to the latest report from the Global Times, China’s 2021 GDP growth is forecast to stay above 9%, boosted by strong exports and industrial outputs. By comparison, the U.S.’s 2021 growth has been pumped-up by printing bottomless supplies of money and the massive stimulus give-away.
The Chinese public is highly satisfied with their government. Back-to-back opinion polls from China and other countries show the Chinese government and its socialist system continue to enjoy over 90 per cent approval rating (by comparison, the latest opinion polls in early September shows less than half of the U.S. approves of Biden's handling of the COVID fight and the direction the country is going in).
On July 1st China celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC). From my trip across China I can clearly see that people are enjoying their life and are proud of their country – especially the younger generations. It’s a totally different picture in the U.S. where there is widespread racism and China phobia from left to right; over 9,000 anti-Asian American acts of violence have taken place across the country. There is Fascist QAnon madness with the anti-vaxx movements and protests every weekend, and the ultra-selfish “America-First” anxiety from liberals to neocons.
Chinese Right-Wing vs. American “Left”
A wise old Chinese saying goes, “To travel around the world is better than to stay at home reading many books.” So in the spirit of this saying, a factfinding trip around China and the U.S. can give us first-hand eyewitness accounts; to make a direct comparison, it is a good mirror in which to reflect ourselves.
Through my interviews across China the Chinese public finds it hard to believe the level of ignorance that many average Americans have shown in the face of the heavy casualties caused by the pandemic. It is equally hard to believe the level of anti-science ignorance across the country displayed by top government officials against the simple, science-based measure of wearing a mask to prevent the spread of the virus.
Furthermore it is hard to believe the extreme selfishness shown by young Americans, claiming COVID is just a “flu,” and willing to sacrifice the lives of old and vulnerable people in order to return to the joys of their mask-free pre-lockdown partying life-style. Chinese culture is based on mutual support, especially young people taking responsibility to take care of our elders, by means of a massive national mobilization in the time of the crisis; most believe the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (the PLA) will save them from any crisis. The CPC-led PLA is always in the frontlines of rescue operations, as happened during the February-April, 2020 Wuhan lockdown, so it is held in high respect across the country.
However, on the other hand, the U.S. troops in Afghanistan are clearly viewed as an invading army by the Afghan people; the U.S. has spent 2 trillion U.S. dollars over twenty years of invasions and occupation, with only killings and destruction of the Afghan economy to show for it. U.S. and western governments don’t care about the life of Afghan people, since Taliban took power at late August, U.S. quickly impose de-fact-to sanction against Afghanistan by frozen up to $10 Billion USD Afghan reserve, the much need money to food and medicine for the coming winter. Furthermore; many Afghan hospitals will be force to close in coming days because U.S. and western countries had cut-off their funding, according to the WHO.
Last week, China quickly offered millions of dollars of emergency aids, includes: medicine, winter clothing, COVID vaccines and food to Afghanistan; according to the Chinese media.
Many Americans don’t know China shares a border with Afghanistan. The direct distance from the historic Silk Road city of Kasghar, XinJiang, China, to the nearby Afghan border is just 168 miles (270 KM) approximately the distance from New York to Baltimore, or that Kabul is 510 miles (820KM) from the Kasghar, approximately the distance from LA to Tucson, AZ.
U.S. is currently launching bogus “genocide” claims against China focusing on XinJiang. These are organized by Biden liberals, the U.S. left, and labor movements alongside far-right neocons. Most Chinese accused the U.S. and many on the “left” of being sick and hypercritical when just across XinJiang’s border with China, Afghanistan has been totally trashed by the U.S. which then left chaotically without taking any responsibility. Some Chinese net citizens produced a short Tiktok video to compare U.S. occupied Afghanistan with XinJiang, China.
Overall most Chinese opinion supports U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan, and the Afghan Taliban takeover of the country. They consider today’s Taliban are much different from the Taliban of 20 years ago. A Taliban takeover could possibly bring peace, economic recovery and tolerance to the country (it could be like Saudi Arabia), as long as the U.S. and the western countries don’t launch covert operations. Chinese news says the Afghan Taliban government wants to work closely with China as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and has invite China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Qatar to join their country’s rebuild—except U.S. and western countries.
Although the U.S. military has left Afghanistan, it doesn’t mean it is giving up on imperialist military hegemony around the world. Chinese and Russian military observers have pointed out that Biden liberals are continuing to carry out former President Trump’s neocon policy, just shifting their military resources from Afghanistan to East Asia. There will be more U.S. cold war military intimidation against China and Russia in the coming months.
“Many people act like Afghanistan has been disaster for the United States.” U.S. stand-up comedian Lee Camp at his Russia Today (RT) “Redacted Tonight” show says: “for the psychopaths who make up the ruling elite, it has been exactly what they wanted,” where the war has taken trillions of dollars over two decades, “from the U.S. taxpayers, and given it to the elite,” the disaster in Afghanistan “is not a surprise, it’s exactly the standard operating procedure for the assholes who rule our country,” he concluded.
The new U.S. policy is to engage in a cold war against China on every front from military to terrorism to color revolution. According to the Global Times investigation, last April the U.S. Embassy in China announced grants of a maximum $30,000 USD each to fund “public diplomacy programs”; this is a program to recruit Chinese citizens to organize people to attend embassy events and to promote U.S. “values.” Any peace activists will immediately understand this is a U.S. grant program to recruit color revolution foot soldiers, a payout for Chinese right-wingers. In addition, the U.S. will allocate $300 million USD annually to recruit opinion leaders to launch media campaigns (“bots”) against the Chinese Peoples Republic.
Photo: U.S. Embassy “public diplomacy programs”
From the left to the right, the U.S. anxiety about China comes from their fear of losing world dominance as the “No 1” power. While the U.S. is hyping the idea that China intends to be a “super power,” neither the Chinese public nor Chinese officials consider this has been their goal – it is a matter of U.S. stereotyping and labeling nonsense. Also, according to the latest opinion poll by the Global Times, besides feeling proud of their country, 48.3% of China's younger generation consider their country as strong as western countries and only 8.1% believe China is still under the sway of the western powers—similar to U.S., where more young Chinese (under 30 years old, the so-call 1990 90s and 2000 00s generations) are left-wing pro-socialist China. The 35-60 years old in China, refer as 1970 70s, 60s and 50s middle-age generations, are more likely produce right-wing pro-western conservatives.
It reflects the anxiety level of these Chinese right-wingers; they often label themselves “liberals” and “public intellectuals” and organize cultural salons (a fancy elite way of calling MeetUp events) to fantasize about the beautiful western society; they anxiously complain that China’s “dark side,” and China will never be as advance, or “free” as like western countries. Their delusive right-wing anxiety meeting room talk-shows are exactly where the U.S. wants to recruit.
“US is no longer exceptional, but it takes time to accept this fact” Martin Jacques, the senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University and visiting professor at the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University says, “The US learnt the hard way that its power was not infinite, that it could not do whatever it wanted, that there were severe limits to what it could achieve. And it has paid a huge price in terms of lives and dollars, and how it is regarded in the world.”
That’s the reason why I travel to China, to introduce the U.S. peace and justice community activists to Chinese activists to build grassroots community peace and justice activism.
I believe it’s important for justice activists from China, the U.S. and beyond to come and work together to build a solidarity movement and learn from each other’s positive experiences, to think locally act globally, to build a community and a global solidarity movement to fight against imperialism, greedy capitalists, the pandemic, racism, terrorism, climate change and hunger; together we can build a better future.
Another report from China will be coming when I finish my quarantine and am again free to move around in late September.
My work doesn’t happen without the help of my friends, including: Sara, Paddy, Chuck, Eric, Tony, Ted, Li and others – I sincerely thank you!
About Lee Siu Hin
Lee Siu Hin, a Chinese-American immigrant activist from Los Angeles, CA, is the founder and national coordinator of the China-U.S. Solidarity Network (CUSN) and the National Immigrant Solidarity Network (NISN). He is a long-time community, labor, antiwar and immigrant rights activist for grassroots struggle. He's also a long-time Pacifica Radio KPFK Los Angeles unpaid reporter and producer and war correspondent who has worked in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.
NISN, a grassroots-based national immigrant activist network; and CUSN, a network of academia and community activists in both countries committed to building a China-U.S. grassroots activist dialogue.
Lee holds a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) and a Masters of Engineering (Aerospace) from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, loated in Pomona, CA.
He is currently working on community medical big data technology and a COVID-19 AI medical analytic platform for the inner-city community and the global south.
His latest book “Capitalism on a Ventilator” co-published with Sara Flounders in September, 2020; Chinese edition will be coming later in 2021.
National Immigrant Solidarity Network http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org
ActionLA Network http://www.ActionLA.org
Activist Video Service http://www.ActivistVideo.org
China-U.S. Solidarity Network http://www.ChinaSolidarity.org
China Delegation Project http://www.ChinaDelegation.org
e-mail: ActivistWeb@gmail.com
Lee Siu Hin: 8/19/2021: Chinese and U.S. Activists Say NO to the Biden's Virus Origin Investigation! To read the full report: https://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/ChinaSolidarity/COVID/index.html
The book “Capitalism on a Ventilator”, a book comparing COVID responses by capitalist and socialist governments, co-published by Lee Siu Hin and Sara Flounders, can be found online at these locations:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/capitalism-on-a-ventilator
https://world-view-forum.myshopify.com/products/capitalism-on-a-ventilator
https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ventilator-Impact-COVID-19-China/dp/0895671964
Lee lives and works between Los Angeles, California, and Shanghai, China. e-mail: ActivistWeb@gmail.com WeChat: 16266953405
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