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Caught in a superpower struggle: the inside story of the WHO's response to coronavirus
Caught between the US and China, the world health body has been unable to enforce compliance or information sharing
Julian Borger in Washington https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/caught-in-a-superpower-struggle-the-inside-story-of-the-whos-response-to-coronavirus
When a pandemic strikes, the world’s leading experts convene – physically or virtually – in a hi-tech chamber in the basement of the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization.
It is called the “strategic health operations centre”, or SHOC, an appropriately urgent acronym for a place where life and death decisions are taken, and it is where critical choices were made in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak.
“We’re mostly like a 1950s, never-been-upgraded place, except for the SHOC room, which was built with all the screens everywhere and the desks with computers that rise up. The whole thing does look like something that Hollywood set up, imagining a pandemic,” a WHO official said.
“You sit there and you hear these experts from all over the world and they’re really leading people. The best expertise available to get the best advice possible, it’s a very impressive sense that hey, this is really how it is supposed to work.”
On 22 January, it was in this setting that the WHO emergency committee convened to make a pivotal decision on whether to advise the organisation to declare a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) – a formal red alert for the world.
The WHO had been sharing information with member states constantly since the first cluster of pneumonia cases was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of December, but declaring a PHEIC still had huge symbolic importance.
The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, sat in the SHOC with his top advisers watching as a succession of speakers gave their views on the screens in front of them.
First there were reports from China, and then Japan and Thailand where cases had been recently confirmed. Then it was the turn of the 15 members and six advisers on the emergency committee, drawn from around the world.
The debate was highly technical but it had one critical issue at its heart. It was known by then that the virus had spread from person to person, but the question was how easily?
If human-to-human transmission was only happening in close quarters, in families, or between patients and health workers, then perhaps it could be largely contained without a worldwide alert, and all the global economic disruption that entailed. If the virus was spreading freely among communities, there was not a moment to lose.
The emergency committee was split down the middle on the question. So Tedros told it to convene again the next day, in the hope new data might create a consensus.
“Tedros’s only obligation under the law is to convene a committee but not to follow it. But he feels that politically he needs to get a unanimous decision before he acts or at least an overwhelming majority,” Lawrence Gostin, a professor of public health law at Georgetown University, said.
The second day’s meeting however, changed no one’s mind, and the impasse remained. Tedros had the committee adjourn pending further study and put it on notice to reconvene at short notice. A international health emergency was declared a week later, on 30 January, after clear evidence of community spread of Covid-19 had emerged.
WHO under fire
The events of January were always destined for scrutiny. The WHO conducts an after-action report in wake of every pandemic. But by seeking to make the global body the scapegoat for the debacle of the US response, Donald Trump has ensured each detail will become exhibits in a highly-politicised show-trial, likely to last as long as the election campaign.
Furthermore, the president has used claims of WHO’s dysfunction to justify cutting off US funding to it, worth over $400m a year, and hindering the organisation’s ability to help counter the spread of the pandemic in fragile and poor countries around the world.
In a hail of accusations hurled at the WHO in recent days, Trump has accused it of withholding critical information about the danger of Covid-19, and being under the control of China.
None of the accusations are supported by the facts.
China argued against declaring an emergency on 22 January, but could not have carried the argument alone. The other emergency members and advisers were experts from the US, Thailand, Russia, France, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Australia, Senegal, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and New Zealand.
Their advice is confidential, but for the vote to have been split, several western, or western-aligned, representatives must have voted with Beijing.
While the emergency committee took a week to decide to declare a PHEIC, Trump spent more than a month after that playing down the threat to the US, during which the country fell weeks behind the rest of the world in diagnostic testing and stockpiling essential equipment.
There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that the WHO hid information at China’s behest. The US is well represented in the top ranks of the organisation.
There were more than a dozen officials from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) embedded in the WHO in January and February.
US health leaders were part of regular conference calls, weekly or twice weekly, beginning on 7 January. From 10 January those calls included warnings about the risk of human-to-human transmission.
Trump’s Taiwan angle
Trump’s most recent line of attack has been that the WHO ignored vital warnings from Taiwan.
“Why did the WHO Ignore an email from Taiwanese health officials in late December alerting them to the possibility that coronvirus could be transmitted between humans?” the president asked in a tweet on Friday, echoing a claim made by Taipei.
However, the Taiwanese email appears to have made no such warning. It was sent from Taiwan’s CDC to its WHO liaison officer on 31 December, hours after the first official report of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan were published online.
According to the text provided to the Guardian, the email said: “News resources today indicate that at least seven, atypical pneumonia cases were reported in China.”
It restates the details of the Chinese report, adding “I would greatly appreciate it if you have relevant information to share with us.”
The email did not contain new information, and certainly nothing about human-to-human transmission. The WHO had picked up the same report on the night of 30 December and was urgently seeking more information. On 1 January it activated its incident management support team, putting the organisation on an emergency footing.
The Taiwanese government has claimed that it did not receive a reply to its inquiry and was generally shut out from WHO deliberations. Since the UN voted to recognise the People’s Republic as the sole representative of China in 1971 and the World Health Assembly followed suit in 1972, Taiwan has not had full member status in the WHO, but it is involved in the organisation’s work.
It is one of 15 non-state entities that have access to expert deliberations through an information network established by the International Health Regulations (IHR), a pact on collective action against infectious disease with roots stretching back to the nineteenth century. The latest version was agreed in 2005 by 196 countries, and it provides the legal framework for the work of the WHO.
However, Taiwan says its participation is fragmentary and selective, largely because of Chinese obstruction. A Taipei government statement pointed out that it reported its first confirmed coronavirus case on 21 January through the IHR system, but was not invited to participate in the three emergency committee meetings held in January, where its voice may have made a difference.
“The Covid-19 outbreak is a reminder to all the world once again, that politics has barred Taiwan from contact and communication with WHO and global public health experts, and this can only gravely damage global cooperation in epidemic prevention and control,” the statement said.
Tedros has also drawn criticism for his tireless praise of China and Xi Jinping’s leadership, hailing Beijing’s transparency despite the critical early weeks left when the authorities tried to cover up the extent of the problem in Wuhan. The director general’s defenders say such diplomatic flattery is the price of ensuring Chinese cooperation with information and WHO site visits. Tedros also complimented Trump in a March 23 tweet, claiming he was doing “a great job in the fight against Covid-19”, and Trump was also effusive in praising Xi in the first weeks of the pandemic.
“They’re making it seem like he’s a crony of China, but he’s caught in the middle of a super power struggle competition,” Gostin said.
The WHO also provided ammunition to its detractors when, on 14 January, it put out a tweet citing preliminary Chinese studies finding “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”.
It was issued on the same day the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, Maria Van Kerkhove (a US immunologist) gave a press briefing in Geneva warning of precisely the opposite – the potential for rapid spread. Concerned that her briefing conflicted with the initial Chinese findings, a middle-ranking official told the social media team to put out a tweet to balance the Van Kerkhove briefing. In so doing, the WHO exposed itself to the charge of contributing to an air of complacency. But the tweet was factually true and does not appear to have been part of a deliberate strategy.
Again and again, the events of January reflected the difficulties Tedros and his organisation faced in negotiating a path between two hostile superpowers, and the egos of their leaders, without any independent powers to enforce compliance and information sharing.
However, what mistakes that may have been made in charting that course have little to do with the lethal fiasco that unfolded in the US in the two months after the WHO raised an international alarm.
Caught between the US and China, the world health body has been unable to enforce compliance or information sharing
Julian Borger in Washington https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/caught-in-a-superpower-struggle-the-inside-story-of-the-whos-response-to-coronavirus
When a pandemic strikes, the world’s leading experts convene – physically or virtually – in a hi-tech chamber in the basement of the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization.
It is called the “strategic health operations centre”, or SHOC, an appropriately urgent acronym for a place where life and death decisions are taken, and it is where critical choices were made in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak.
“We’re mostly like a 1950s, never-been-upgraded place, except for the SHOC room, which was built with all the screens everywhere and the desks with computers that rise up. The whole thing does look like something that Hollywood set up, imagining a pandemic,” a WHO official said.
“You sit there and you hear these experts from all over the world and they’re really leading people. The best expertise available to get the best advice possible, it’s a very impressive sense that hey, this is really how it is supposed to work.”
On 22 January, it was in this setting that the WHO emergency committee convened to make a pivotal decision on whether to advise the organisation to declare a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) – a formal red alert for the world.
The WHO had been sharing information with member states constantly since the first cluster of pneumonia cases was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of December, but declaring a PHEIC still had huge symbolic importance.
The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, sat in the SHOC with his top advisers watching as a succession of speakers gave their views on the screens in front of them.
First there were reports from China, and then Japan and Thailand where cases had been recently confirmed. Then it was the turn of the 15 members and six advisers on the emergency committee, drawn from around the world.
The debate was highly technical but it had one critical issue at its heart. It was known by then that the virus had spread from person to person, but the question was how easily?
If human-to-human transmission was only happening in close quarters, in families, or between patients and health workers, then perhaps it could be largely contained without a worldwide alert, and all the global economic disruption that entailed. If the virus was spreading freely among communities, there was not a moment to lose.
The emergency committee was split down the middle on the question. So Tedros told it to convene again the next day, in the hope new data might create a consensus.
“Tedros’s only obligation under the law is to convene a committee but not to follow it. But he feels that politically he needs to get a unanimous decision before he acts or at least an overwhelming majority,” Lawrence Gostin, a professor of public health law at Georgetown University, said.
The second day’s meeting however, changed no one’s mind, and the impasse remained. Tedros had the committee adjourn pending further study and put it on notice to reconvene at short notice. A international health emergency was declared a week later, on 30 January, after clear evidence of community spread of Covid-19 had emerged.
WHO under fire
The events of January were always destined for scrutiny. The WHO conducts an after-action report in wake of every pandemic. But by seeking to make the global body the scapegoat for the debacle of the US response, Donald Trump has ensured each detail will become exhibits in a highly-politicised show-trial, likely to last as long as the election campaign.
Furthermore, the president has used claims of WHO’s dysfunction to justify cutting off US funding to it, worth over $400m a year, and hindering the organisation’s ability to help counter the spread of the pandemic in fragile and poor countries around the world.
In a hail of accusations hurled at the WHO in recent days, Trump has accused it of withholding critical information about the danger of Covid-19, and being under the control of China.
None of the accusations are supported by the facts.
China argued against declaring an emergency on 22 January, but could not have carried the argument alone. The other emergency members and advisers were experts from the US, Thailand, Russia, France, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Australia, Senegal, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and New Zealand.
Their advice is confidential, but for the vote to have been split, several western, or western-aligned, representatives must have voted with Beijing.
While the emergency committee took a week to decide to declare a PHEIC, Trump spent more than a month after that playing down the threat to the US, during which the country fell weeks behind the rest of the world in diagnostic testing and stockpiling essential equipment.
There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that the WHO hid information at China’s behest. The US is well represented in the top ranks of the organisation.
There were more than a dozen officials from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) embedded in the WHO in January and February.
US health leaders were part of regular conference calls, weekly or twice weekly, beginning on 7 January. From 10 January those calls included warnings about the risk of human-to-human transmission.
Trump’s Taiwan angle
Trump’s most recent line of attack has been that the WHO ignored vital warnings from Taiwan.
“Why did the WHO Ignore an email from Taiwanese health officials in late December alerting them to the possibility that coronvirus could be transmitted between humans?” the president asked in a tweet on Friday, echoing a claim made by Taipei.
However, the Taiwanese email appears to have made no such warning. It was sent from Taiwan’s CDC to its WHO liaison officer on 31 December, hours after the first official report of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan were published online.
According to the text provided to the Guardian, the email said: “News resources today indicate that at least seven, atypical pneumonia cases were reported in China.”
It restates the details of the Chinese report, adding “I would greatly appreciate it if you have relevant information to share with us.”
The email did not contain new information, and certainly nothing about human-to-human transmission. The WHO had picked up the same report on the night of 30 December and was urgently seeking more information. On 1 January it activated its incident management support team, putting the organisation on an emergency footing.
The Taiwanese government has claimed that it did not receive a reply to its inquiry and was generally shut out from WHO deliberations. Since the UN voted to recognise the People’s Republic as the sole representative of China in 1971 and the World Health Assembly followed suit in 1972, Taiwan has not had full member status in the WHO, but it is involved in the organisation’s work.
It is one of 15 non-state entities that have access to expert deliberations through an information network established by the International Health Regulations (IHR), a pact on collective action against infectious disease with roots stretching back to the nineteenth century. The latest version was agreed in 2005 by 196 countries, and it provides the legal framework for the work of the WHO.
However, Taiwan says its participation is fragmentary and selective, largely because of Chinese obstruction. A Taipei government statement pointed out that it reported its first confirmed coronavirus case on 21 January through the IHR system, but was not invited to participate in the three emergency committee meetings held in January, where its voice may have made a difference.
“The Covid-19 outbreak is a reminder to all the world once again, that politics has barred Taiwan from contact and communication with WHO and global public health experts, and this can only gravely damage global cooperation in epidemic prevention and control,” the statement said.
Tedros has also drawn criticism for his tireless praise of China and Xi Jinping’s leadership, hailing Beijing’s transparency despite the critical early weeks left when the authorities tried to cover up the extent of the problem in Wuhan. The director general’s defenders say such diplomatic flattery is the price of ensuring Chinese cooperation with information and WHO site visits. Tedros also complimented Trump in a March 23 tweet, claiming he was doing “a great job in the fight against Covid-19”, and Trump was also effusive in praising Xi in the first weeks of the pandemic.
“They’re making it seem like he’s a crony of China, but he’s caught in the middle of a super power struggle competition,” Gostin said.
The WHO also provided ammunition to its detractors when, on 14 January, it put out a tweet citing preliminary Chinese studies finding “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”.
It was issued on the same day the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, Maria Van Kerkhove (a US immunologist) gave a press briefing in Geneva warning of precisely the opposite – the potential for rapid spread. Concerned that her briefing conflicted with the initial Chinese findings, a middle-ranking official told the social media team to put out a tweet to balance the Van Kerkhove briefing. In so doing, the WHO exposed itself to the charge of contributing to an air of complacency. But the tweet was factually true and does not appear to have been part of a deliberate strategy.
Again and again, the events of January reflected the difficulties Tedros and his organisation faced in negotiating a path between two hostile superpowers, and the egos of their leaders, without any independent powers to enforce compliance and information sharing.
However, what mistakes that may have been made in charting that course have little to do with the lethal fiasco that unfolded in the US in the two months after the WHO raised an international alarm.
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Of course, the usual suspects will not bother to read this article simply as a result if its source.
They will not bother to attempt to understand how the WHO arrives at decisions and who contributes to the decision making process.
They will not bother because knowing the truth is an inconvenience to their predetermined concept of reality in any given situation.
They will not bother to attempt to understand how the WHO arrives at decisions and who contributes to the decision making process.
They will not bother because knowing the truth is an inconvenience to their predetermined concept of reality in any given situation.
Read the Guardian and you will know the truth? In that case why is it not the most widely read publication on Earth, as opposed to an agenda based comic for pseuds?
Which parts of the above article are factually incorrect ?
Please feel free to educate me, I am always willing to learn
Please feel free to educate me, I am always willing to learn
Explain to the forum your detailed knowledge of the process used by the WHO to arrive at decisions in regard to the status of outbreaks of diseas.
We are all ready and waiting to learn from you, please inform us.
We are all ready and waiting to learn from you, please inform us.
Alternatively, you can choose to delight us with some more of your narrow minded bigoted views, The choice is yours. 
china and the WHO have massive blood on their hands imo
everyone by now must have seen the WHO's shameful Taiwan video
^What has that got to do with:
According to the text provided to the Guardian, the email said: “News resources today indicate that at least seven, atypical pneumonia cases were reported in China.”
It restates the details of the Chinese report, adding “I would greatly appreciate it if you have relevant information to share with us.”
The email did not contain new information, and certainly nothing about human-to-human transmission. The WHO had picked up the same report on the night of 30 December and was urgently seeking more information. On 1 January it activated its incident management support team, putting the organisation on an emergency footing.
According to the text provided to the Guardian, the email said: “News resources today indicate that at least seven, atypical pneumonia cases were reported in China.”
It restates the details of the Chinese report, adding “I would greatly appreciate it if you have relevant information to share with us.”
The email did not contain new information, and certainly nothing about human-to-human transmission. The WHO had picked up the same report on the night of 30 December and was urgently seeking more information. On 1 January it activated its incident management support team, putting the organisation on an emergency footing.
i wouldn't class China as any superpower ...just very good at knocking out cheap crap .... the Del Boy of nations
total amounts generated are only because of the high populace working at peak efficiency
total amounts generated are only because of the high populace working at peak efficiency
same as this
'A superpower is a state with a dominant position characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological and cultural strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers.'
so you stop buying cheap crap from China and find someone else to produce it (efficiently) ...wasn't their economy on the wane anyway ?
'A superpower is a state with a dominant position characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological and cultural strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers.'
so you stop buying cheap crap from China and find someone else to produce it (efficiently) ...wasn't their economy on the wane anyway ?
So you don't think that China has a dominant position and is able to exert influence or power on a global scale 
As I've always said, hating China will stay in fashion for some time. Politicians will be milking that hatred once the dust settles.
China is a superpower. If you think otherwise, then you are clueless.
People keep thinking that the next superpower has to be like America. No they don't. Just because China doesn't meet your standards of a superpower doesn't undermine their influence throughout the world. They are even installing Europe's 5G network! A company banned in the US for spying is controlling Europe's telecommunication. And possibly technologies for decades to come. Does that sound like cheap crap to you?
China is a superpower. If you think otherwise, then you are clueless.
People keep thinking that the next superpower has to be like America. No they don't. Just because China doesn't meet your standards of a superpower doesn't undermine their influence throughout the world. They are even installing Europe's 5G network! A company banned in the US for spying is controlling Europe's telecommunication. And possibly technologies for decades to come. Does that sound like cheap crap to you?
Apr 18, 2020 -- 5:18PM, Coachbuster wrote:
same as this 'A superpower is a state with a dominant position characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological and cultural strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers.'so you stop buying cheap crap from China and find someone else to produce it (efficiently) ...wasn't their economy on the wane anyway ?
I see. You are indeed clueless.
But he is able to cut and paste a definition from Wikipedia
They have unlimited cheap labor. The west hasn't even been able to make them improve their labor standards. What does that tell you about their influence and our influence at WTO?
not really no ... they're totally reliant on the west
economically they will remain a superpower because it's in everyone's interests
They have unlimited cheap labor. The west hasn't even been able to make them improve their labor standards
there it is
there it is
There is someone on the forum who keeps posting similar stuff, saying China doesn't produce any heavy machinery like US and Germany. That is true. But US and Germany rely a lot on China to produce that heavy machinery. It is only a matter of time before China starts producing those things on their own. Germany is a sitting duck in that regard. We may beat them at technological advancement but there's simply nothing else we can compete in.
You can read about Made IN China 2025.
You can read about Made IN China 2025.
'But he is able to cut and paste a definition from Wikipedia'
because i couldn't be arsed to write out an essay ....
because i couldn't be arsed to write out an essay ....
Apr 18, 2020 -- 5:27PM, Coachbuster wrote:
They have unlimited cheap labor. The west hasn't even been able to make them improve their labor standardsthere it is
Didn't get what you mean.
A definition of superpower requires to expand to an essay
I'd not say I hate China. I just hate the way the Chinese government go about achieving their ultimate goal eg paying scant regard for democracy/human right/intellectual property, etc, to be the world number 1 superpower. At the moment this is "only" being achieved by selling in large quantities cheap, low quality fakes/tacks to the rest of the world.
China will overtake the USA and become no 1 superpower if they can manufacture eg heavy equipment for industries, aircrafts, vehicles, consumer white goods, etc; they have an abundance of liquid cash, but they do not have the intellectual properties yet. When (not if) they do these will replace the cheap tacks, and China could rule the world.
And, democracy in the world will be negated and replaced by nationalism and autocracy.
China will overtake the USA and become no 1 superpower if they can manufacture eg heavy equipment for industries, aircrafts, vehicles, consumer white goods, etc; they have an abundance of liquid cash, but they do not have the intellectual properties yet. When (not if) they do these will replace the cheap tacks, and China could rule the world.
And, democracy in the world will be negated and replaced by nationalism and autocracy.
China is clearly a very dangerous superpower, in fact could be argued to be THE superpower.
To think otherwise is just farcical and plain blind ignorance, stupidity of the highest order.
To think otherwise is just farcical and plain blind ignorance, stupidity of the highest order.
Apr 18, 2020 -- 6:13PM, GRANTCKING wrote:
sup det
Everything. Up my arse
Just kidding. My life has hardly changed. I work online and have stopped following the news since mid Feb. Life's good.
they may well be in time ...they will import the greatest minds ..isn't this how the USA got going ,mass production of cheap goods ...(in fact most things america produces is cheap and low quality) .. then hire a few clever guys and bingo ...
you just need a few million people behind you
you just need a few million people behind you
Germany is the smartest nation but lacks the workforce
Apr 18, 2020 -- 6:28PM, detraveller wrote:
Just kidding. My life has hardly changed. I work online and have stopped following the news since mid Feb. Life's good.
im missing sport a great deal, my alcohol consumption has also increased, bad times
The WHO : Caught In A Superpower Struggle
superpower? didn't know it was still the 1980s
superpower? didn't know it was still the 1980s
China has to import 83% of the transistors used in the products it assembles. The 17% it's able to make itself are presumably the ones in the Made in China goods which stop working the second time you switch them on.
Just about every single chip in every phone and tablet assembled in China is designed in the UK. Which makes sense. A nation like China without a semiconductor industry is hardly going to be able to solve all the quadratic equations and calculate the integrals for tens of thousands of them arranged in a chip.
It's not a superpower. It's not even a manufacturer. It's the world's assembly shop, thanks to the slave labour which goes hand-in-hand with a socialist government.
Just about every single chip in every phone and tablet assembled in China is designed in the UK. Which makes sense. A nation like China without a semiconductor industry is hardly going to be able to solve all the quadratic equations and calculate the integrals for tens of thousands of them arranged in a chip.
It's not a superpower. It's not even a manufacturer. It's the world's assembly shop, thanks to the slave labour which goes hand-in-hand with a socialist government.
One which knows how to design an iPhone.
If you have to broaden the definition, then it's hardly a superpower, is it?
Let me give you an alternative definition for your consideration that considers a single specific criteria but not an iPhone.
How about we define a superpower as a country that is able to become the technological leader in 5G technology and is able to use that technology to spy on foreign powers.
How does that definition grab you ?
How about we define a superpower as a country that is able to become the technological leader in 5G technology and is able to use that technology to spy on foreign powers.
How does that definition grab you ?
Well they can't spy on uks core installations so still not a superpower.
The moment the outside world stops sending them chips to build their 5G equipment they can't build any more. They have no capacity or knowhow of their own.
The only thing they have to offer the world is socialism: i.e., slave labour and zero concern with environmental standards. So, the rest of the world sends them orders and components, and they assemble them on the cheap. Their world leadership in 5G is not in technology. It's in cost.
They're a cheap-power, not a superpower.
The only thing they have to offer the world is socialism: i.e., slave labour and zero concern with environmental standards. So, the rest of the world sends them orders and components, and they assemble them on the cheap. Their world leadership in 5G is not in technology. It's in cost.
They're a cheap-power, not a superpower.
Aren't Taiwan Semiconducter the third largest manufacturer of semi-conductors in the world
Christ almighty. You're agreeing with the Chinese Communist Party that Taiwan is part of China?
Where is your funding coming from, Angoose? Seriously. Who is paying you to spend all day every day on here typing out anti-western propaganda?
Where is your funding coming from, Angoose? Seriously. Who is paying you to spend all day every day on here typing out anti-western propaganda?
Apr 19, 2020 -- 11:14AM, screaming from beneaththewaves wrote:
Christ almighty. You're agreeing with the Chinese Communist Party that Taiwan is part of China?Where is your funding coming from, Angoose? Seriously. Who is paying you to spend all day every day on here typing out anti-western propaganda?
Perhaps you need to surface for some much needed oxygen.
China supplied 80% of the rare earth elements imported by the United States from 2014 to 2017.
China is home to at least 85% of the world’s capacity to process rare earth ores into material manufacturers can use, according to research firm Adamas Intelligence.
It would take years to build enough processing plants to match China’s processing capacity of 220,000 tonnes - which is five times the combined capacity of the rest of the world.
Alternative processing plants would struggle to compete with China’s low costs in the future, should trade tensions abate.....
Rare earths are used in rechargeable batteries for electric and hybrid cars, advanced ceramics, computers, DVD players, wind turbines, catalysts in cars and oil refineries, monitors, televisions, lighting, lasers, fiber optics, superconductors and glass polishing.
Several rare earth elements, such as neodymium and dysprosium, are critical to the motors used in electric vehicles.
Some rare earth minerals are essential in military equipment such as jet engines, missile guidance systems, missile defense systems, satellites, as well as in lasers.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-rareearth-explainer/u-s-dependence-on-chinas-rare-earth-trade-war-vulnerability-idUSKCN1TS3AQ
You can't build the chips you are talking about without China.
China is home to at least 85% of the world’s capacity to process rare earth ores into material manufacturers can use, according to research firm Adamas Intelligence.
It would take years to build enough processing plants to match China’s processing capacity of 220,000 tonnes - which is five times the combined capacity of the rest of the world.
Alternative processing plants would struggle to compete with China’s low costs in the future, should trade tensions abate.....
Rare earths are used in rechargeable batteries for electric and hybrid cars, advanced ceramics, computers, DVD players, wind turbines, catalysts in cars and oil refineries, monitors, televisions, lighting, lasers, fiber optics, superconductors and glass polishing.
Several rare earth elements, such as neodymium and dysprosium, are critical to the motors used in electric vehicles.
Some rare earth minerals are essential in military equipment such as jet engines, missile guidance systems, missile defense systems, satellites, as well as in lasers.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-rareearth-explainer/u-s-dependence-on-chinas-rare-earth-trade-war-vulnerability-idUSKCN1TS3AQ
You can't build the chips you are talking about without China.
Father Ted was right. We should've turned racist in the 90s :)
Why do people keep mentioning slave labor? That's the way China is. They can be a cheap superpower, but they still are a superpower. They are behind in tech, but still a superpower.
The next superpower does not have to be like America. It just has to be good enough to feck the superpower of the time. China holds a lot of cards. America does too. At some point it becomes a game of holding enough cards and not holding more or good cards. Like with nuclear weapons. 1000 or 10000, what's the difference. You'll only need them once and even 100 are enough.
The west will spend a lot of years blaming the Chinese for how they run their country. But they don't give a feck what you think, because they know you'll work with them anyways. It's time people accepted that fact.
The next superpower does not have to be like America. It just has to be good enough to feck the superpower of the time. China holds a lot of cards. America does too. At some point it becomes a game of holding enough cards and not holding more or good cards. Like with nuclear weapons. 1000 or 10000, what's the difference. You'll only need them once and even 100 are enough.
The west will spend a lot of years blaming the Chinese for how they run their country. But they don't give a feck what you think, because they know you'll work with them anyways. It's time people accepted that fact.
Taiwan is a de facto independent country, pay no taxes to mainland China and have their own constitution, can't give China credit for anything Taiwan makes or produces.
There are also different types of superpowers be it economic or military, then broken down into military budget, personnel, equipment (nuclear, naval ships, aircraft etc), China on balance probably can be considered a superpower but are superpower midgets compared to the USA, dwarfed in the department that really matters, the skies.
There are also different types of superpowers be it economic or military, then broken down into military budget, personnel, equipment (nuclear, naval ships, aircraft etc), China on balance probably can be considered a superpower but are superpower midgets compared to the USA, dwarfed in the department that really matters, the skies.
China doesn't hold 85% of the rare earth metals. They're distributed all over the planet.
It's just that China is a communist country, so has no pollution controls, which means they're cheaper to mine and process there than anywhere else. Hence 85% of them get purchased from there.
It's just short-sighted stupidity on the part of the Chinese Communist Party. Apart from poisoning its people and their land, they're simply extracting the stuff to sell cheaply now, and when they've extracted the lot, the US will re-open the mines they've had to close and sell the products expensively to China.
It's one of the ways the US had become so rich, and remained so: it's clever at cheaply exploiting other nation's resources while retaining its own.
It's just that China is a communist country, so has no pollution controls, which means they're cheaper to mine and process there than anywhere else. Hence 85% of them get purchased from there.
It's just short-sighted stupidity on the part of the Chinese Communist Party. Apart from poisoning its people and their land, they're simply extracting the stuff to sell cheaply now, and when they've extracted the lot, the US will re-open the mines they've had to close and sell the products expensively to China.
It's one of the ways the US had become so rich, and remained so: it's clever at cheaply exploiting other nation's resources while retaining its own.
China is cruel & heartless tyranny
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Apr 19, 2020 -- 9:40PM, screaming from beneaththewaves wrote:
China doesn't hold 85% of the rare earth metals. They're distributed all over the planet. It's just that China is a communist country, so has no pollution controls, which means they're cheaper to mine and process there than anywhere else. Hence 85% of them get purchased from there.It's just short-sighted stupidity on the part of the Chinese Communist Party. Apart from poisoning its people and their land, they're simply extracting the stuff to sell cheaply now, and when they've extracted the lot, the US will re-open the mines they've had to close and sell the products expensively to China.It's one of the ways the US had become so rich, and remained so: it's clever at cheaply exploiting other nation's resources while retaining its own.
nobody said they held 85%. You said they were a cheap power only, when the reality is we'd be back in the 80s technologically for at least the best part of a decade without their rare earth elements.
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