Video: Beijing Olympics 2022: Eileen Gu wins gold again! Reports on China 2022北京奧運會：谷爱凌再奪金牌！ 中國報導

https://youtu.be/sbJyz2bN2_c
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/658905025332826/?d=n

Eileen Gu wins a second gold which will no doubt send ABC journalists into another screeching fit, COVID cases inside the Beijing bubble plummet, leading some Western media actually praise China’s COVID success, and Western media still aren’t seeing a correlation between hideous anti-Chinese reports and the huge uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes in the US. Let’s get reporting!

Follow me on Twitter: @AndyBxxx
Download as a podcast by searching “Reports on China” wherever you listen to podcasts

Eileen Gu has just taken her second gold and third medal of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, making history in the process. Congratulations to Eileen, her team, and Team China. Unfortunately, it’s too early for reaction from the US media covering the games, but I’m expecting some uplifting and empowering reports on the 18-year-old snowboarder. Ha!

Bloomberg reports that COVID cases inside the Olympics bubble have dropped dramatically following strict controls and quarantines on the 435 positive cases that began arriving in Beijing for the games last month. Their story which, tellingly, is filed under ‘politics’, says: ‘Virus cases in China’s Olympic bubble fall amid COVID zero curbs.’

They go on to say: ‘The number of Covid-19 cases at the Beijing Winter Olympics is dwindling as the closed ecosystem China developed to insulate the event from the virus succeeds in catching and containing them.’ Well, it needs to be said that this is only a surprise to those outside China, but hey, welcome to reality.

This is significant because foreign reporters and diplomats have been allowed inside China for the first time to witness zero COVID measures first hand, and are not allowed to fall back on the lazy “well, that’s what the Chinese government says” claims of falsified statistics.

This has led other US media to a point where they cannot further ignore China’s COVID’s successes, meaning they too need to stop with the propaganda and report reality.

The Wall Street Journal, in a shocking about face, announced: China’s ‘Zero-Covid’ Policy Holds Lessons for Other Nations. They say: Ever since China adopted its policy of stamping out every Covid-19 infection, outsiders have wondered whether it could last. With each new, more infectious variant, “zero Covid” has required more vigilant and frequent crackdowns on daily activity.

And yet it has lasted. And seen from inside China, the results are remarkable. Foreigners in Beijing for the Olympics may be confined to a dystopian bubble in constant fear of being quarantined. But outside the bubble, life in the city looks close to normal with stores, museums and offices operating and subway and road traffic in line with this time of year in 2019. Americans only now are moving on from the coronavirus. Most Chinese did so back in 2020.”

Despite having to sneak the “dystopian” word in there, the general message of the Wall Street Journal’s story is fair and honest.

US media are still drawing a blank when it comes to the uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes there, following the hideous murder of a Korean-American woman in New York’s Chinatown a few days ago.

The Guardian reports: SF police data shows 567% increase in reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans.

“Preliminary data from the San Francisco police department showed reports of incidents where police believe an anti-Asian bias played a role jumped from nine in 2020 to 60 in 2021, a 567% increase, in the city of 875,000 people.”

As usual, though, they fail to take into account the huge increase in anti-Chinese reports in US media and, in pure California style, lay the blame squarely on former President Donald Trump.

Last year the New York Times unironically asked: Why Has There Been a Spike of Anti-Asian Hate? Let’s take a quick look at some recent anti-China content in US media.

It is high time that the New York Times, and other US media, took a long, hard look in the mirror.

That’s all I have time for today you guys. Let me know what you think down below, and I will see you next time. Bye bye!

China reaches record high gold medal haul at Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 中國在 2022 年北京冬奧會上獲得創紀錄的金牌 by Deng Zijun Feb 17 2022

Video: San Francisco born Gu Ailing won 2 Gold 1 Silver for China Team at 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics 舊金山出生的谷爱凌在2022北京冬奧會上為中國隊奪得2金1銀

What a sweet victory!
I think the Chinese American community should either plan a victory rally in her honor or hold a welcome home to SF when she return. Such a rally or reception will show how proud Chinese Americans are of her accomplishment and let the world know she has the whole-hearted support of the Chinese American community. Those who think they can take her victory away by smearing her decision to represent China will not be tolerated. She should be welcome home by the city of her birth and the city she grew up in.
She is the pride of Chinese America! Her accomplishments should be honored and celebrated.

多麼甜蜜的勝利！

我認為華裔美國人社區應該為她計劃一場胜利集會，或者在她回來時為舊金山舉行歡迎儀式。 這樣的集會或招待會將顯示華裔美國人對她的成就感到多麼自豪，並讓世界知道她得到了華裔美國人社區的全心全意支持。 那些認為可以通過抹黑她代表中國的決定來奪走她的勝利的人是不會被容忍的。 她出生的城市和長大的城市都應該歡迎她回家。

她是美國華人的驕傲！ 她的成就應該受到尊重和慶祝。

In the women’s U-shaped field skills final of freestyle skiing at the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 18, Gu Ailing scored over 90 points in the first two jumps, showing Gu Ailing’s U-shaped pool dominance and adding another gold medal! So far, the Chinese team has won 8 gold medals in this Winter Olympics. Among them, Gu Ailing has become the player with the most medals in the current Winter Olympics 在2月18日的北京冬奧會自由式滑雪女子U型場地技巧決賽中，谷愛凌前兩跳得分均超90分，展現出了谷愛凌u型池統治力，再添一枚金牌！至此本屆冬奧會中國隊已經斬獲8枚金牌，其中谷愛凌2金1銀，成為目前中國隊在本屆冬奧會獲得獎牌最多的選手

San Francisco born Gu Ailing reacts after winning the women’s freestyle skiing halfpipe for Team China at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic on 2-18-22. 出生於舊金山的谷爱凌在 2 月 18 日 22 日為中國隊贏得北京 2022 年冬奧會女子自由式滑雪半管冠軍後做出反應

What a sweet victory!

I think CAAC should take the lead with the Chinese American community should either plan a victory rally in her honor or hold a welcome home to SF when she return. Such a rally or reception will show how proud Chinese Americans are of her accomplishment and let the world know she has the whole-hearted support of the Chinese American community. Those who think they can take her victory away by smearing her decision to represent China will not be tolerated. She should be welcome home by the city of her birth and the city she grew up in.

She is the pride of Chinese America! Her accomplishments should be honored and celebrated.

多麼甜蜜的勝利！

我認為華商總會應該帶頭和華裔美國人社區應該為她計劃一場胜利集會，或者在她回來時為舊金山舉行歡迎儀式。 這樣的集會或招待會將顯示華裔美國人對她的成就感到多麼自豪，並讓世界知道她得到了華裔美國人社區的全心全意支持。 那些認為可以通過抹黑她代表中國的決定來奪走她的勝利的人是不會被容忍的。 她出生的城市和長大的城市都應該歡迎她回家。

她是美國華人的驕傲！ 她的成就應該受到尊重和慶祝。

Video: Hula dance at Hawaiian Aurlines Honolulu International Airport departure gates on 2-17-22 檀香山國際機場的草裙舞
https://vimeo.com/678906268
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/658680348688627/?d=n

Video: Invasion allegations by Western Medias like NYT, CNN, BBC, WSJ, Fox & WP against Russia, China, are collapsing 紐約時報, 美國有線電視, 英國廣播公司, 華爾街日報, 福克斯新聞和華盛頓郵報等西方媒體對俄羅斯、中國的指控正在崩潰
https://vimeo.com/678881654
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/658629918693670/?d=n

Is this Russia’s Huawei moment? The Economist 2.17.22 by Ludwig Siegele – European business editor

When I started covering tech for The Economist nearly 25 years ago, I had no idea that it would become the centre of a high-stakes geopolitical contest. That struggle began in earnest in the mid-2000s with the rise of Huawei, a maker of telecoms gear that America’s security establishment became suspicious of: we ran a cover story in 2012 asking, Who’s afraid of Huawei? Roll on a decade and technology is at the heart of the nerve-jangling confrontation between the West and Russia over the fate of Ukraine, as our big read this week describes. America’s package of potential sanctions aimed at deterring Russian aggression includes not just financial measures such as cutting off Russian banks from the Western financial system, but also denying it access to American technology.

How serious would a tech embargo be for Russia? One clue is to look at the experience of China and specifically of Huawei, which has been the subject of an exquisite torture in the form of American sanctions and controls, limiting its access to cutting-edge chips and other services such as phone software. The cost has been severe: Huawei’s sales in 2021 dropped by 29%. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have blacklisted ever-more Chinese tech firms. A desire to escape America’s grip has in turn accelerated China’s drive to indigenise its tech industry. SMIC, the home-grown semiconductor champion, reported sales growth of 61% year on year in the most recent quarter, and this year its capex will be more than double the level in 2019.

Since the invasion of Crimea in 2014 triggered an earlier round of Western sanctions, Russia has sought to construct a fortress economy. In the financial realm this has involved de-dollarisation: shifting contracts, reserves and borrowing to other currencies. The share of cross-border invoices paid to Russia in dollars has dropped from 80% at the start of 2014 to 54%. Less well explored is how Russia, with one eye on China, has sought to indigenise its tech industry.

Our reporting on Russian tech sheds light on this other, virtual front in the conflict. Moscow is implementing a systematic plan to build what scholars of geopolitics call a “stack”: a sovereign digital space made of layers stacked atop each other like a tiered cake. These layers include hardware, the cloud, apps, identity and payments. In some areas it has made leaps. Six of the ten biggest cloud firms in Russia are now Russian, for example. The Mir payments system has a market share of 25%. Russia is building a national version of the global domain-name system. From telecoms networks to apps, more of the industry is owned by Russian firms than was once the case.

Whether the steps taken so far will insulate Russia from Western sanctions is doubtful. Last week my colleagues visited the boss of a big Russian tech firm in Moscow who said that the authorities “are trying to create an impression that [the industry] is self-reliant. This is not true.” His servers and systems still rely on Silicon Valley. Yet in the long run it seems likely that Russia will redouble efforts to reduce its dependence, by buying more components and software from China and by making more at home. That will lead to a less efficient but less vulnerable digital economy.

It also offers an augury of one way the global tech industry might evolve. China already has its Great Firewall. The European Union is developing its own regulatory system and increasingly trying to build up local production of semiconductors. India has the makings of its own tech stack, with its national digital-identity scheme and at least one wannabe home-grown digital champion, Reliance Industries. From a seamless global industry dominated by America, to today’s balkanising system, tech has come a long way since I wrote about the new version of Windows a quarter of a century ago.

We calculate that US exports of IT services to Russia rose by 183% in the five years before the invasion of Crimea in 2014, and by 0.5% in the five years after it.

---

This article made me think of the whole historical emergence of the Western doctrine of “free trade” in the late 18th century. Free trade is generally associated with Adam Smith and the ideas he set forth in The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Such ideas had been around in England and Scotland for a long time, though Smith gave them a somewhat more focused expression. Even after the publication of his book, however, free trade remained something of an outlier in British political economic thought, until the Industrial Revolution really got going in the early 19th century. Up to then the doctrine of mercantilism prevailed, in which the state played an active role in promoting and protecting capitalist enterprises, granting monopoly trading charters to the East India Company and other such regionally focused groups. At that time Britain really had no products which were competitive in global trade. It made sense for the state to provide protectionist support so at least some merchants could be ensured profits. But with the Industrial Revolution British goods suddenly dropped in unit price and became competitive. So then free trade made sense, from the British point of view. The rest, of course, is history, as Britain and the other European powers launched the era of colonialism and imperiaiism, forcing countries around the world to submit to their military power and become subordinate units in a global system in which the colonies produced raw materials for and consumed manufactured goods from the West, while local economies were hollowed out by the influx of cheap Western products.

We’re seeing the other end of that process now, as economies like China become the great centers of leading-edge manufacturing and technological innovation. American and other Western economies are having a hard time competing, so they are retreating to protectionism and trying to stall or stop the rise of China and other emerging centers of new development. The age of Euro-American economic domination, which was based on the monopoly in modern industrial productive technologies, is over. The panic in elite circles is plain to see, but the process will not be derailed by export restrictions or other interventions in the global interchange of ideas, research and development. American politicians continue to mouth the rhetoric of free trade while doing all they can to impose a regime of constraint on the developing world. This won’t win them any friends in the long run.

Along the way to “free trade”, you have “freedom of navigation” (“mare liberum“), a legal fiction concocted by Grotius authorizing piracy.  The classical tradition was “mare nostrum” (“our sea”), i.e. territorial seas.  
As the sea-faring colonial powers grew powerful, they engaged in piracy and privateering to steal and war with one another.It also seems to come up on the way down.  

Video: Danish Olympian Viktor Thorup – Things you didn’t know and NYT will not show you about the Beijing Winter Olympics! 丹麥奧運選手維克多·索魯普 – 你不知道的事情，紐約時報不會向你展示北京冬奧會的完美.
https://vimeo.com/678819559
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/658567838699878/?d=n

American policy inside and outside of US: “We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole” Chinese envoy: Afghanistan’s overseas assets should be returned quickly and in full. Afghanistan’s central bank criticized Washington’s plan last Saturday, saying its assets belong to the Afghan people. 美國內外政策：“我們撒謊，我們欺騙，我們偷竊” 中國特使：阿富汗的海外資產應迅速全額歸還。 阿富汗中央銀行上週六批評了華盛頓的計劃，稱其資產屬於阿富汗人民.

Video: Some HongKonger use mentally ill approach dealing with with COVID19 有些香港人精神病式抗病毒
https://vimeo.com/678709755
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/658438395379489/?d=n