Exclusive: Source reveals US intelligence tricks in making up ‘virus origins’ and next move of taming 消息來源揭示了美國在編造“病毒起源”和馴服世衛組織的下一步行動方面的情報技巧 WHO by Cao Siqi, Chen Qingqing and Bai Yunyi Aug 10 2021
As US President Joe Biden approaches his deadline for intelligence agencies to hand over reports on the origins of the novel coronavirus, a source close to the matter told the Global Times on Tuesday that the US’ push for the probes on virus origins was aimed at consuming China’s diplomatic resources. The US is trying to find “loopholes” in China’s epidemic control policy, and planning to continue pressuring the WHO and collude with its allies to pressure China in an attempt to discredit the Chinese government for “covering up the truth about the origins of the virus.”
In May, Biden ordered intelligence officials to “redouble” efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19, including the theory that it came from a laboratory in China. He said the US intelligence community was split on whether it came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal, and he asked the groups to report back to him within 90 days.
The source said that US intelligence officials are trying to find some witnesses or insiders during the initial stage of the epidemic in Wuhan, the city that first reported the outbreak in China, prying into the “lockdown measures” and “restriction areas,” with people who work in the medical system, biological research institutes or those who live in Wuhan being their targets.
The officials are also collecting evidence to prove the loopholes in China’s anti-epidemic work, eyeing detailed information about COVID-19 patients, the lives of residents under lockdown, the timing of diagnosis, and patients’ movements before infection, the source said.
According to the source, the next step for the US government is to continue pressuring the WHO and Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to make sure they would lean on the US.
The US government will also collude with its allies such as Australia and media outlets to suppress China, in an attempt to accuse the Chinese government of “concealing the truth of the virus’ origins.”
Chinese virologists, as well as experts on US affairs, believe that the probe into the virus’ origins has become an important tool for the US to attack, discredit and suppress China politically. For the US, it has nothing to do with science.
The steps taken by intelligence officials show that Biden’s intention to trace the virus’ origins is entirely political, not scientific, Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist at Wuhan University, told the Global Times.
The probe should be a technical issue that requires genetic analysis of the virus. Scientists in Asia, America and Europe should analyze the genetic profile of the virus that has emerged in the region and then discuss the information together to confirm the next steps of the investigation, Yang said.
However, what Biden’s intelligence agencies are looking for can only serve as part of the evidence for him to fabricate a report to blame China, so that he would show his people that he is better than former US president Donald Trump, Yang said.
A foreign expert close to the WHO-China joint team previously told the Global Times that the 90-day probe by the Biden administration on the virus’ origins is a coordinated political campaign.
“If former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had actual intelligence that would convince people, he would have released it,” he said, noting that Biden has to address it because the Republicans are aggressive, pushing him to go down this path.
Yang Xiyu, a former Chinese diplomat and senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, said the intelligence probes fully expose the fact that the US aimed to manufacture some materials to prove China is guilty, and the so-called probes that insult and discriminate against China will not stop.
“The intelligence officials’ actions showed the US has launched a ‘political war’ against China through the probe of the virus’ origins,” Lü Xiang, a research fellow on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
The US is trying to give the world the impression that the country could find the origins of the novel coronavirus in China by virtue of its powerful intelligence abilities and secret means, so as to “prove” the Chinese government should shoulder responsibility for what the US has suffered from the epidemic, Lü said.
This is a “sick political war” that the US has waged, facing an unprecedented health crisis, Lü said.
The expert said that it is a tradition for the US to launch a “political war” against countries it does not agree with. The US has seasoned organization, experience and planning prowess. Its purpose is to consume China’s diplomatic resources, but the US should know that the “political war” is also a huge drain on US political and social resources, which is far greater than the actual loss of China.
Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, also pointed out that the US has adopted similar strategies against other countries, and now it’s on China, and the possibility that US intelligence agencies are making up material for ill-intentioned political motives could not be excluded.
US on her fake freedom democracy and human rights and rules of laws at UN and that includes her vassal states like UK, Australia, Canada, Israel, France, Germany, Netherlands. 美國就她在聯合國虛假的自由民主、人權和法律規則在聯合國表露無遺. 其中包括她的附庸國，例如英國、澳大利亞、加拿大、以色列、法國、德國、荷蘭.
UN introduced a bill that called for global action against racism and discrimination*
Nikkei Asia: INTERVIEW – China’s yuan likely to become Asia’s central currency: Kenneth Rogoff
Fifty years after Nixon shock, US risks overconfidence, Harvard professor says
Harvard University economics professor Kenneth Rogoff predicts that Asia eventually would coalesce around the yuan if China ceased to stabilize the currency’s exchange rate based on the U.S. dollar. By MASAHIRO OKOSHI, Nikkei staff writer August 10, 2021
BOSTON, U.S. — At a secret gathering at Camp David in the summer of 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon and his top economic advisers made the historic decision to suspend the dollar’s convertibility into gold, unilaterally changing the global monetary system.
Fifty years after the event dubbed the “Nixon shock,” the U.S. dollar still retains its status as the world’s key currency. But will this last for the foreseeable future?
Nikkei sat down with Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics and Thomas D. Cabot professor of public policy at Harvard University, to discuss the future of the monetary system. Edited excerpts of the interview follow.
Q: You have raised the possibility of China no longer pegging the yuan to the dollar some day.
A: Right now, the dollar is overwhelmingly the dominant currency in the world, much more so than the euro, which is mainly a regional currency in Europe. The dollar, in terms of reserves, invoicing practices, how much countries stabilize around the dollar, financial markets — just everything — it’s overwhelming. It’s more dominant than it was in the 1950s.
However, a significant piece of this is that China has decided to stabilize their exchange rate around the dollar. We don’t know what would happen if someday China went to a more normal inflation-targeting regime, and even had an exchange rate more like the yen — which has been very stable against the dollar in recent years, but it can move.
It wouldn’t happen overnight, but my guess is that over time Asia would coalesce, not around the dollar but around the RMB [Renminbi, the Chinese yuan]. Then we’d be in a world where the RMB would be a regional currency in Asia, the euro would be a regional currency in Europe, and the dollar would have everything else.
That would be a loss of an enormous part of the global economy. It would certainly have an impact on the ease with which U.S. corporations can borrow. The U.S. gets benefits from the fact that Asia is so dollar centric.
Q: The dollar is still dominant.
A: The power of the dollar is not just that so much of the world uses it as a unit of account and for invoicing [and] for reserves, but the fact that, because of the power of the dollar, the U.S. has a lot of control over information.
Any time there is dollar clearing, anywhere in the world, a lot of it happens in the U.S. It’s very difficult for a foreign central bank, a foreign clearinghouse, to compete with a U.S. clearinghouse because the U.S. clearinghouse has the Federal Reserve behind it. If something goes wrong, they just have an infinite supply of dollars.
If clearing happens in the U.S., that means someone in the U.S. knows what the trade was, what happened. Now, I’m not saying that [President] Joe Biden looks at this every day, but he could.
Q: When you look at history, has the global monetary system usually been multipolar or unipolar?
A: Unipolar is the usual. Multipolar is usually transitional. It’s not a stable equilibrium, because there are networking effects that are very powerful, and that tends to prevail. So, if we see China become as important as Europe is today, I suspect there would be a transition to where someday it became the center.
The dollar could last a long time, after the U.S. economy had diminished.
There’s an incredible advantage to being on top. Like in anything, if you’re a powerful monopoly, you can deliver a mediocre product for a long time before you lose your monopoly. But I think Americans underestimate the fact that it could happen.
The progressives especially just say, “Well, let’s make everything free for everyone, and we can just borrow. Interest rates will never go up.” You see that argument a lot. That’s basically close to modern monetary theory.
Everyone is treating that like that’s forever. If the U.S. political system believes in itself too much, [then it takes] a big risk.
Q: What is the time frame we are talking about?
A: It will sort of come over years. China could make a sudden move to inflation-target, but I don’t think that would necessarily lead to a sudden move in everything. That would really shake up markets, but it might take 10, 20, 30 years before everyone’s following China.
The risk is that interest rates start rising and the U.S. decides not to do anything about it, and it just waits too long — like in any financial crisis.
[Americans] think they can borrow, and borrow, and borrow, and nothing will ever happen. The history of these things is nothing ever happens ’til it does. The progressives do not sufficiently value the U.S.’ geopolitical role. They’re interested in the next two years and redistributing as much money as possible.
If I were the U.S., I would be interested in the next 200 years, and trying to remain culturally and politically and economically dominant for as long as possible.
By the way, I favor redistributing income. Why not raise taxes, if you want to provide more benefits? But right now, in Washington, they are very reluctant to raise taxes on most people, and they want to raise benefits a lot, and it’s a slippery slope.
Q: What will the future global currency system look like?
A: It’s a little bit of prediction about the geopolitical system, of who’s going to be controlling the internet in a hundred years, and who’s the global superpower. If you extrapolate China’s growth and divide by three, it’s still going to be the global superpower in a hundred years. And it’s very hard for the dollar to withstand that indefinitely.
I’ve been very surprised China has not had a deep recession — that it reports, anyway. If you asked me 20 years ago what were the odds that China would have 20 years without even a significant growth recession, I would have been wrong.
It could turn out that their system is very good for dealing with good times, and very bad for dealing with bad times. We don’t know.
Political science scholars argue that if China were to continue to ascend, it’s going to expand its sphere of influence across Asia.
The most likely [scenario] is that we have a multipolar system for quite a while, maybe up to 2100, with China becoming much more significant. I don’t see how China can put up with the current system indefinitely, and they’ve made small steps.
At some point they’re going to see it’s not working and make a change. It really depends on when China decides that it wants to do that. And it also depends on the rest of Asia, of who follows.
Hopefully this is something positive. They should be inflation-targeting, as they get bigger. They should open up their country. So that’s not necessarily a warlike outcome. It would be a natural outcome.
Q: Do you think that a multipolar system will be better for the stability of the world economy?
A: Probably not more stable. It’s very stable to have a dominant currency that’s run well and where the hegemon is responsible and looks at the goal. That’s the most stable system, because a multipolar system is not a natural equilibrium, because there are network effects. The natural equilibrium is for one currency to be much bigger than the other currencies.
However, in the U.S., if you have leadership that goes this way, then that way, then this way, then this way — it’s not very good for the world. Right now we have President Biden, who is — whatever else you want to say — very stable and sane, and tries to be responsible. Who knows what the next person [will do]?
What happened on January 6th [regarding the attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump] was kind of incredible. Who could have predicted that? That’s just beyond belief.
Trump, I don’t think he was wrong about everything, but he tried to reverse the election. He really did. He really wanted to.
And, in a way, the progressives, now, want to grab much more power than the voters gave them, and that’s also destabilizing. These very fast changes at the top are not something you want to see in the leadership. [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel is just the same every year, little changes, and that’s what you’d like to see in the global leader.
Q: What do you think are the minimum conditions for the Chinese renminbi to be the world currency?
A: You have to have some kind of very clear rules of law, which [Chinese leaders] don’t have right now. At least they don’t have [rules under which] others would trust them. When the U.K. was the central currency, it was also the banking center and the financial center. All the business was done there. You can’t be the world currency if nobody trusts doing business in your country.
They would certainly have to greatly strengthen their institutions, their trust. Obviously, everyone had thought the only way that could happen was becoming more democratic. That doesn’t seem to be happening.
Maybe they have another way of doing it. I don’t know. Eventually if they become two-thirds of the world, they can do anything. But, if you don’t trust [Chinese] institutions, you’re not going to want to do financial contracts there, you’re not going to want to just do your Chinese business in China. You’re not going to want to do anything that you don’t have to.
So, they have a lot of work to do to get there.
Professor Ling-chi Wang of UC Berkeley: Hi, Johnson:
Very interesting interview with Prof. Kenneth Rogoff. He is surprisingly candid and non-ideological.
The trajectory and timeline he outlined for RMB to become Asia’s central currency seems logical and reasonable to an economic illiterate like me. Political stability in leadership is one important prerequisite. For this, he cites Angela Merkel in the Euro zone. Another important precondition is trust. On this he appears to have some doubt about China in this department. I am surprised he did not cite Xi Jinping along with Merkel for stability. The sustained growth without recession for China surprised him. It certainly meets his criterion for stability. I am also surprised by his doubt about China’s trustworthiness. To him, there appears to be two kinds of trust: trust in one’s country and trust among nations. No leadership is trusted more in its own country than Xi Jinping, according to various global comparative opinion polls. I think Rogoff would agree with that. The problem for China is its trust among other countries. That problem is the result of incessant ideological indoctrination by Western governments and media on their people. He seems reluctant to say that. To him, the lack of trust appears to be based on China’s lack of “the rule of law.” He obviously has a very different idea of what constitutes the rule of law. (In this sense, he is ideological). Without the rule of law, China would have long descended into chaos and anarchy. This suggests that China and the Chinese people have a very different idea of trust, the rule of law, and the legitimacy of the government, at their root is “the mandate from heaven.” As long as the government can provide its people with the basic necessities of life – 衣食住行 (clothing, food, shelter, and travel) – the government would have legitimacy and therefore, the mandate from heaven.
The above sounds simplistic or common sensical. It also highlights the difference between China and the rest of the world.
As for the likelihood of RMB becoming Asia’s central currency, I think it is inevitable and Rogoff appears to think so as well. China will defend its values and system as needed. China is neither a bully nor a predator like the U.S. and the rest of the West. If RMB succeeds, it will happen in an orderly manner over time. The U.S. appears to be unwilling to accept China’s approach. So, the U.S. government will continue to undermine and contain China, by hook or by crook, including demonizing China by any means necessary.
Video: Our beloved baby Daodao has passed away on Friday August 6 2021 (Feb 8 2008 – August 6 2021). She gave us all her love and affection cheering up our daily lives. She will be missed. 我們心愛的寶貝豆豆已於2021年8月6日星期五（2/8/08 – 8/6/21）回到極樂世界。 她給了我們她所有的愛和感情，讓我們的日常生活充滿活力。 我們永世不會忘記她, 乖乖女兒. Background Music: Great Compassion Mantra 大悲咒 https://vimeo.com/584671427 https://youtu.be/CStRU7jo6Q4
🇨🇳 China rank#1 (China, Chinese territories of Taiwan Province and Hong Kong SAR) got 41 Golds, 38 Silvers and 27 Bronze for a total of 106 Olympic Medals 🏅 Olympic ranking always based on Gold Medals (ignore New York Times and other US medias rankings, they are mouthpiece of US Government. it is not accurate)奧運中國排名#1 (中國, 台灣省和香港特區)一共拿下41金, 38銀和27銅合共106片獎牌.不要看紐約時報和其他美國媒體排名, 他們是美國政府的喉舌亂攪報導並不准確). When you add Hong Kong and Taiwan, both are Chinese territories, the total medals surpassed US by good margins. 加上香港和台灣，這兩個都是中國領土，獎牌總數遠遠超過美國. Now you understand why Western Empire want to engage in subversive activities and paying off HK foreign agents and English Tsai to break off Hong Kong and Taiwan Province from the motherland. 現在你明白為什麼西方帝國要搞顛覆活動，資助香港漢奸和台灣省蔡英文要把香港和台灣省從祖國分裂出外. China rise is inevitable and Unstoppable. 中國崛起是必然，勢不可擋.
Johnson Choi Biz 