Video: Real-World COVID-19 Vaccine Safety & Effectiveness Comparison In China, Mexico And Hungary. 中國、墨西哥和匈牙利的COVID-19 疫苗安全性和有效性比較.
It is not fair to compare them without considering age, health status and vaccination time. And we have to say some deaths may not be vaccine-related. Vaccination time is a critical factor as it takes time for the vaccine to trigger the generation of antibodies. After the vaccination, one shot for Cansino and Johnson and Johnson, and two shots for other vaccines, it usually needs several weeks to generate enough antibodies. https://vimeo.com/556847765 https://youtu.be/8XPXsNimHco https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/501547834401880/?d=n
‘Come to mainland to get vaccinated!’ says former president of New Party of Taiwan as island faces severe vaccine shortage by Fan Lingzhi May 30 2021
Residents of the island of Taiwan take rapid test for COVID-19 on Tuesday. The island reported 281 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and six deaths, bringing the death toll to 35, on Tuesday and local authorities decided to extend Level 3 Alert until June 14.
“Coming to the mainland to get vaccinated against COVID-19” has become a major consideration for many Taiwan residents given the grave epidemic situation and shortage of vaccines there, said Yok Mu-ming, former president of the pro-unification New Party of Taiwan. Yok told the Global Times in an exclusive interview on Sunday that he was impressed by the strict quarantine and anti-epidemic measures in the mainland while staying at a hotel in quarantine after coming to Shanghai to take the jab.
Mainland cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in South China’s Guangdong Province have started to administer vaccine doses to Taiwan compatriots living in the mainland for free, and those whom Global Times talked to said that there have been no adverse effects, and that they went through the exact same process as local residents in the mainland.
Yok earlier announced through a video that he was about to depart from the island to Shanghai to get vaccinated. Starting from April 19, the municipal government in Shanghai included local Taiwan compatriots aged 18 to 75 who live in Shanghai into the scope of those eligible for the Chinese-made vaccine jabs. The former president of the New Party of Taiwan told the Global Times that when the Taiwan residents most need help from the mainland, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities still focus on ideological battles, using the epidemic to serve its political goals and seek “secession.”
“I would rather go through the quarantine process to get vaccinated in the mainland, and I don’t waste time anymore,” he said, noting that he came to the mainland with his wife, and underwent quarantine in different rooms.
When he arrived at Shanghai, he also experienced strict but reassuring arrival anti-epidemic tests, Yok noted. “Before departure, I took the nucleic acid test, which was negative. When I arrived, I took the tests again with both nasal and throat samples,” he said.
“I think they did the tests more carefully here in the mainland,” Yok said, noting that the swab tests were also taken deeper as he felt he was about to throw up.
Also, it was a long and rigorous procedure from the airport to the hotel where he is undergoing quarantine, but everything was done in an orderly way. For example, professional staff in protective suits guided him to the room, and there were staff accompanying during the whole process, he told the Global Times.
Yok also urged Taiwan residents who are able to come to the mainland to get vaccinated here, as he knows many of them are very interested in this plan.
The island reported 493 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, including 486 domestic infections and seven imported ones, in addition to 21 deaths, according to local media reports. The DPP authority has been widely criticized by experts for rejecting mainland vaccines and ignoring officials’ calls to purchase those via local retailers, as the island faces a vaccine shortage.
Cheng Po-yu, executive director of the cross-Straits Youth Exchange Association who recently took the vaccine in Beijing, told the Global Times there were no adverse effects, Taiwan residents are treated the same as others, and the process is very fast.
“The information for Taiwan residents vaccinated in Beijing could be accessed on the e-health certificate on smartphone, which can be updated simultaneously,” he suggested.
Mahbubani called out the racism underlying the China Threat narrative in 2019, before the pandemic Mahbubani 在新冠病毒大流行之前就在 2019 年的中國威脅論中指出了種族主義
East Asia Forum: A ‘yellow peril’ revival fuelling Western fears of China’s rise 5 June 2019 Author: Kishore Mahbubani, NUS
Do we arrive at geopolitical judgements from only cool, hard-headed, rational analysis? If emotions influence our judgements, are these conscious emotions or do they operate at the level of our subterranean subconscious? Any honest answer to these questions would admit that non-rational factors always play a role. This is why it was wrong for Western media to vilify Kiron Skinner, the director of policy planning at the US State Department, for naming racial discomfort as a factor at play in the emerging geopolitical contest between the United States and China.
Chinese and US flags are set up for a meeting in Beijing, China, 27 April 2018 (Photo: REUTERS/Jason Lee)
Skinner was correct in saying that ‘the Soviet Union and that competition, in a way it was a fight within the Western family’. Referring to the contest with China, she said: ‘it’s the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian’. That China is not Caucasian is a factor in the geopolitical contest and it may also explain strong emotional reactions in Western countries to China’s rise.
Take the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China as an example. Critics of China are rational and correct when they state that China has stolen intellectual property and occasionally bullied US firms into sharing their technology. But a calm, rational description of China’s behaviour would also add that such behaviour is normal for an emerging economy.
The United States also stole intellectual property, especially from the British, at a similar stage of its economic development. Equally important, when the United States agreed to admit China into the WTO as a ‘developing country’, it agreed that ‘under the WTO’s agreements on intellectual property, developed countries are under “the obligation” to provide incentives to their companies to transfer technology to less developed countries’. This is a point that Yukon Huang, a former World Bank economist, has pointed out.
Most Western portrayals of China’s emergence as a great power lack balance. They tend to highlight negative dimensions of China’s rise but omit the positive dimensions. When US Vice President Mike Pence gave a comprehensive speech on China on 4 October 2018, he said: ‘Over the past 17 years, China’s GDP has grown nine-fold; it’s become the second-largest economy in the world. Much of this success was driven by American investment in China’. This is a factually incorrect statement. China’s economic success has been primarily driven by the rejuvenation of the Chinese people, not US investment.
Though Washington prides itself as a centre of calm and rational strategic thinking, such an unbalanced speech was not attacked in the liberal media. Instead, many cheered the US Vice President for attacking China.
This virulent anti-China atmosphere is reminiscent of the mid-1980s when Western media attacked Japan ferociously. The distrust of yellow-skinned people has resurfaced again. As former US ambassador Chas Freeman has observed: ‘In their views of China, many Americans now appear subconsciously to have combined images of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, Japan’s unnerving 1980s challenge to US industrial and financial primacy, and a sense of existential threat analogous to the Sinophobia that inspired the Anti-Coolie and Chinese Exclusion Acts’.
The people of the United States need to question how much of their reactions to China’s rise result from hard-headed rational analysis and how much are a result of deep discomforts with a non-Caucasian civilisation. We may never know the real answer as these titanic struggles between reason and emotion are probably playing out in deep subconscious terrains. Still, we should thank Kiron Skinner for alluding to the fact that such subconscious dimensions are at play here. The time has come for an honest discussion of the ‘yellow peril’ dimension in US–China relations. As Freud taught us, the best way to deal with our subconscious fears is to surface them and deal with them.
Kishore Mahbubani is a Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the author of ‘Has the West Lost It?’
ASSOCIATED PRESS – Is China More Democratic Than The U.S.? 美聯社 – 中國比美國更民主嗎? By Hu Angang Dec 06, 2017
Hu Angang is director of the Center for China Studies, a joint research center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University. This article is distributed by the Guancha Syndicate and its Chinese original was published in Guancha.cn.
SHANGHAI — After the iron curtain had come down more than two decades ago, many non-western countries got rid of their old political systems and replaced them with Western democracy. Instead of assimilating such foreign systems with their own political cultures, many simply transplanted the presidential system of the United States to their own soil. Back then, it was widely believed that democracy was the “panacea” that would cure all Soviet dysfunctions. And the new democracies would march with the West on a convergent path to the end of history. However, in merely 20 odd years, almost without exception, these new democracies — and to some extent the West itself — have all run into deep structural predicament.
Political stalemate, social malaise, economic stagnation, worsened by the latest global financial crisis, outline a depressing picture of the democratic West. Meanwhile, China has leapfrogged the West to become the world’s second largest economy, and it is projected to overtake the U.S within the next decade.
How could China, a country that, in as late as 1978, was three times poorer than an average African nation in terms of income per capita, succeed in the Herculean task of poverty reduction and general improvement of living standard for its people, without converting its political institutions to the western orthodox?
This remains a perplexing case to many in the West. The answer lies in China’s social stability. This is a lesson the Chinese learned it the hard way throughout their history. It is also the single most important factor behind the country’s enormous success. A growth-enabling macroeconomic environment is safeguarded by well-maintained social order and stability; which are in turn made possible by mature political institutions.
If one wants to study China seriously, then one can’t just group China among other East Asian authoritarian regimes without any differentiation. Otherwise, it would be a grossly vague and ineffective simplification. While it is true that, to a limited extent, China’s reform resembles earlier reforms in other East Asian economies, they are not the same. In Taiwan and other East Asian countries, authoritarian governments oversaw industrial upgrading; they incentivized and led the transition away from primary to secondary industry as the growth-generating sector.
PRAGMATIC INSTITUTIONS
However, in the case of China, in addition to the sheer size of its population and the abundance of its natural resources, the socialist government established pragmatic institutions that encourage learning best practices from around the world. This enabled China to go beyond the East Asian Model.
In 1980, Deng Xiaoping proposed three criteria for judging whether the government of any developing country, particularly China, is legitimate and qualified to govern or not: firstly, can its economic governance put the country on the right track to catch up with the most advanced capitalist economy, namely the U.S.; secondly, can its political governance produce more genuine democracy than the American institutions; and lastly, does the government play well its enabling and facilitative role in grooming ever more talents for the colossal task of modernization?
If one were to follow the antiquated paradigm of autocracy versus democracy and apply such labels to all five generations of Chinese leaders, one would invariably overlook some very crucial facts that are unique features of China’s political system. Many in the West still mistake China for a Stalinist totalitarian state. But the truth is, arguably, the distribution of power and accountability within China’s “Collective Presidency” is more sophisticated than the separation of power between legislative, executive and judiciary branches in the western political context. As early as in the Republican Period, Sun Yat-sen went beyond the West in terms of checks and balances within political institutions, by envisioning the separation of five powers. And the Communist Party of China (CPC) took an innovative step even further by first dividing and then reintegrating power into “super-institutions”, a practice vaguely resembled by the European Union, where the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Central Bank, and other organizations jointly share power on different fronts.
In a humble effort to illustrate the case of China, I have put together historical experience and lessons since the naissance of the People’s Republic in my recent book Democratic Decision-making: China’s Collective Presidency (China Renmin University Press, March 2014). I want to explain why the collective leadership of seven to nine Politburo Standing Committee members is superior to the system of singular presidency. China did not just stumble upon collective presidency by accident, nor did it happen by random invention. China has gone through laborious processes of innovation, trials and errors, rectification, and institutionalization to become what it is today. I have identified in the book the five major mechanisms of China’s collective presidency: collective collaboration, collective power transition, collective self-improvement, collective research, and collective decision-making.
COLLECTIVE COLLABORATION
“The collective wisdom of the masses humbles any individual prodigy”— this time-tested Chinese proverb aptly reflects how this ancient civilization traditionally values collectivism. In fact, shortly after the Long March of 1938, the founding fathers of the People’s Republic had seen clearly the need for division of responsibilities. In other words, the decentralization of the centralized power. Important issues relating to military, land reform, intelligence, party organization, mobilization and publicity were divided among five members of the Central Secretariat according to individual expertise.
Today, as domestic and international affairs grow ever more complex, there is an increasing need for collaborative governance. For the Chinese top leadership, such collaboration manifests on multiple levels: firstly, most Politburo Standing Committee members have assistant roles to play apart from his major area of responsibility; secondly, Politburo members are each in charge of different policymaking organizations which exchange information on a regular basis, and brief the top leaders on matters of strategic importance; thirdly, a plethora of internal think tanks, in collaboration and competition with each other, form the brain of CPC central leadership, and serve as essential means to gather intelligence and advise on policies.
In the Western political context, while the separation of powers effectively prohibits ill usage of authority, it also produces political gridlocks and mutual detachments that prevent ambitious leaders from introducing much needed fundamental reforms. Whereas for China, top leaders and the respective organizations they represent not only facilitate but also supervise each other in a unified system, which gives rise to accountable governance and encourages leaders to do good.
COLLECTIVE POWER TRANSITION
Frequently dubbed as opaque by western media, leadership transition is one of the most misread modus operandi in Chinese politics. In nearly half a century’s time, China abolished personal appointment of heirs, and moved to a system of collectively selecting, evaluating, and grooming future leaders.
An important factor differentiating China from the West is that Chinese leaders compete on meritocratic basis alone, unlike their Western counterparts whose ascendance is dependent upon the merits of election campaigns rather than performance assessment. In electoral democracies, political parties literally represent various partial interests, and the right for any party to hold office is directly derived from winning periodical elections. In the case of the CPC’s, however, the Party is not meant to be “partial,” it represents the interest of the mass majority in society. Legitimacy for a CPC leader comes from performance and solid track record. It would be unthinkable to have an incompetent leader with scant experience in public affairs, such as the likes of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, running the government.
There are at least two major meritocratic thresholds that any mid-level CPC cadre must meet before they can move into the Party’s top echelon. First, they must have served at the level of provincial Party leader. In a way, these positions represent an elite training program for governance and public administration that few countries can offer. In a prolonged, competitive, and stringent process, capable candidates must tackle all kinds of regional / sectoral challenges. They need to keep themselves well informed and have various resources ready at their fingertips at all times. They need to be able to consistently demonstrate that they have what it takes to lead the world’s most populous country to an even better future. Put it bluntly, only the best and fittest survive, the rest would retire. For example, Meng Jianzhu, now a central government high-ranking Party official, began his career as a county Party Secretary and then Vice Mayor of Shanghai. Subsequently, he headed the provincial government and Party Committee of Jiangxi, a province in eastern China with over 45 million people and a GDP equivalent to that of Pakistan, before he was able to serve on the Central Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs.
Once a member of the Central Committee, a second threshold is for a potential future leader to demonstrate that he or she has the tenacity and commitment to make their way to the top. They need to serve as alternate members of Politburo Standing Committee for several years. In this preparatory phase, current leaders would put these candidates to tests, and screen the most competent and well disciplined for subsequent collective power transition.
Since the CPC is meant to be a guardian, if not the only guardian, of the overall interest of the Chinese people, the Party bears the ultimate responsibility for the betterment of the country, the nation, and the state. For obvious reasons, transition of such leadership must be handled with care. Such collective mechanism not only keeps potential dictators at bay, but also prevents the likes of Gorbachev from taking power in China and undoing China’s great achievements so far.
COLLECTIVE LEARNING
The CPC has a long tradition in collective learning, a multi-faceted practice that entails expert consulting, information-sharing, international exchange, and learning from best practices. Without exception, generations of Chinese leaders all called attention to continuous learning. In 2003, collective learning became a codified practice in the Second Plenum of 16th Central Committee.
The Politburo regularly and frequently organizes lectures, seminars, symposiums, where Standing Committee members would consult top Chinese minds on matters of economic and social importance. Through this mechanism, constructive interaction between various decision-making and policy-consulting bodies would help the central government take fitting actions on even the most delicate issues.
In my capacity as a professor at Tsinghua University, I teach high-level cadres customized courses on contemporary China studies and China’s reform. Such courses were first offered in Central Party School and Chinese Academy of Governance; top Chinese Universities soon followed. Today, collective learning has already become a highly institutionalized mechanism with broad participation.
To be sure, CPC officials learn far beyond from books and in classrooms, from their rotational career postings through different sectors, namely Party Committee, State-Owned Enterprises, and other social organizations. On average, the current members of Central Politburo Standing Committee each have 43.6 years of experience in civil service, and 38.9 years of Party membership. Born in 1953, President Xi Jinping, for instance, joined the civil service in 1969, and joined the CPC in 1974 – that adds up to more than four decades of learning and experience in public administration, organization and management.
COLLECTIVE RESEARCH
“He who carries out no research and investigation shouldn’t be entitled to his opinions”, said Mao Zedong in 1930.
Having adequate and relevant information is the foundation to any successful public policy making. This is particularly true for China, a country with vast territory and the world’s largest population. It is extremely unlikely that any individual would possess well-rounded and in-depth knowledge on all aspects of society. Therefore, no one, however capable, could act appropriately on such gross information deficit. In the case of Chinese collective presidency, each member of the Politburo Standing Committee stays well informed by a good number of subcommittees, internal research institutes and independent think-tanks in various fields. At the same time, they also conduct plenty primary research and investigations. Such effort not only strengthens local implementation of central government’s policies, but also provides preventive measures to deal with contingencies, such as natural disasters and social hazards.
Once an export-driven economy with complex domestic disparity, China was highly susceptible to external shocks from the international economic environment. It requires tremendous amount of knowledge and prudence to devise macro-level policies for the whole nation. When the latest financial crisis hit the world in 2008, while many governments were either gridlocked on the effective cause of action or taken by surprise due to internal unpreparedness. In China all nine members of the 17th Politburo Standing Committee promptly conducted field investigations and soon reached unanimous decision on the launch of a timely 4 trillion yuan stimulus package to boost the economy. This highly institutionalized collective decision-making process can effectively prepare China for any possible challenges that arise externally.
In the latest edition of China’s Collective Presidency, I attached a chronological record showing in detail that by the end of 2013, how President Xi spent nearly 10 percent of his time on 14 inspection trips that covered one third of China’s provinces and all seven military regions. Prior to the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee meeting of the CPC, topics such as rural land reform were most controversially debated. In order to have a better understanding on those key issues, in addition to official reports, Xi Jinping purposefully visited farmers in Hubei province and gathered firsthand information from the grassroots level.
COLLECTIVE DECISION-MAKING
After more than six decades of ups and downs, it is increasingly clear to Beijing that making the right strategic decision is the greatest success, and failing to do so would result in national calamity. In fact, China had learned its lessons from the chaotic late years of Mao — If China had stood firmly against Mao’s personal leadership and held on to collective decision-making mechanism from 1958 to 1976, as it had during the civil war and in the first decade of communist rule, catastrophic movements such as the Cultural Revolution could have largely been prevented.
A common hindrance to efficient decision-making and good governance stems from the asymmetry of power. The loss and restoration of balance in China’s political power structure explain respectively Mao’s failure and Deng’s success. After seeing Mao’s grave mistakes, Deng Xiaoping openly stressed in 1980 that ‘important issues must be discussed collectively; each Party committee member should be entitled to one vote, and decision-making should strictly follow the rule of majority’.
Contrary to western stereotypical views on China’s democratic centralism, democratic procedures from information exchange to consensus seeking are in fact the backbones and lifeblood of the country’s collective decision-making.
With more than 85 million members, the Communist Party of China is the world’s largest ruling entity. It has seen the struggles and ambitions of earlier regimes, and explored on itself various institutional possibilities over the course of its history. China is a civilization with profound regional differences. Only collective presidency is able to capture such diverse interests of the Chinese people, and coordinate among different levels of the government to strike a balance between the Party and the state. It takes collective presidency to unify and mobilize social forces on all fronts, and continuously propel the nation forward.
Hu Angang Director of the Center for China Studies, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University.
(csgboston Moderator’s note: Ever since I met Hu Angang several times while he was doing research at Harvard University in the late 1990s I have followed many of his articles. Below is a 2017 reprint of an earlier piece discussing the collective nature of China’s leadership style. A brief background, for those unfamiliar with him, can be found on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Angang )
US interested in arms sales, not COVID-19 vaccines, to Taiwan by Li Qingqing May 27 2021
Although US hawks have been exaggerating tensions in the Taiwan Straits and even hyping the possibility of military conflicts, when the Taiwan people are struggling with an uphill COVID-19 battle, the US, as the so-called reliable partner of of Taiwan, has not offered a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine to the epidemic-hit island. What disappoints Taiwan people is the US is in no rush to deliver vaccines.
Brent Christensen, director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s Taipei office, said on Wednesday that he was confident Taiwan could control a spike in COVID-19 cases. “Taiwan’s infection numbers are still among the lowest in the world,” he said.
Taiwan has reported 6,091confirmed COVID-19 cases and 46 deaths as of press time, according to Johns Hopkins University. The island reported 11 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, a record high reported for one single day. A netizen from Taiwan asked angrily: “Is the US waiting for more people to die from the COVID-19 in Taiwan?” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je also asked, “We ate ractopamine pork, bought arms, so [Christensen’s] meaning is ‘you’ve only had 11 deaths and that’s not too many’?”
Fewer than 1 percent of Taiwan’s residents have been vaccinated, making it the least vaccinated population in Asia, according to data gathered by The New York Times. However, the US has stocked a large number of COVID-19 vaccines and restricted the export of vaccine raw materials. These acts fully reflect the “America First” policy. According to a report published by a team of Duke University health experts, the US could have 300 million excess doses of the COVID-19 vaccines by the end of July.
In 2020 alone, the US sold $5.1 billion in arms to the island of Taiwan, according to Reuters. The Trump administration authorized more than $15 billion in its 11 cases of arms sales to Taiwan. The US’ enthusiasm for offering COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan is far less than its enthusiasm for selling weapons to Taiwan.
Yet some people in Taiwan have not seen this clearly, stubbornly looking forward to the US’ assistance. Although the Chinese mainland had offered twice within one week to provide COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan, the Taiwan-based Mainland Affairs Council let politics in and claimed that the mainland was pretending to be well-intentioned.
Politics should have given way to life and health, but Taiwan authorities are allowing the loss of more lives.
“No matter how solid the so-called US-Taiwan relationship is claimed to be, the COVID-19 vaccine is a touchstone. The US is not so concerned about the epidemic in Taiwan, and it believes many US allies have more serious epidemic conditions than Taiwan. This also helps Taiwan people understand the true face of the US-Taiwan ‘friendship,'” Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for US Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Some Taiwan people always have a wishful thinking that the US will do everything to protect the island’s interests and security. They must realize that as Taiwan authorities are clinging to Washington’s China policy, the US has regarded Taiwan only as a prominent pawn in its strategy to contain the Chinese mainland.
“This COVID-19 vaccine assistance issue shows that the US always puts its own interests first. This being the case, can anybody imagine that the US will engage in a military conflict with a nuclear power for the sake of Taiwan? This is sheer fantasy,” Xin said.
Some US lawmakers who clamored for the so-called defense of Taiwan, such as Marco Rubio who took the initiative in reintroducing the “Taiwan Relations Reinforcement Act” in March, have not even come out to call on Washington to provide vaccines to the island. Isn’t this a huge embarrassment for Taiwan regional leader Tsai Ing-wen and the Democratic Progressive Party authorities?
“Admit nothing, deny everything, counter-accusations” — that’s how they are trained. When they accuse others of producing the virus in a lab, chances are it was indeed produced in lab but by themselves. “什麼都不承認，什麼都否認，反指責” – 他們就是這樣被訓練的。當他們指責別人在實驗室生產病毒時，很可能它確實是在實驗室生產的，而是他們自己生產的。
New York Times: WASHINGTON TALK: BRIEFING – WASHINGTON TALK: BRIEFING; Tribute to C.I.A. June 12, 1987
Representative Stephen J. Solarz, a Brooklyn Democrat who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tells this story about a recent fact-finding trip to Honduras: At a camp for the Nicaraguan insurgents, a United States intelligence agent introduced the Congressman to a contra officer. The officer was wearing a baseball cap with a pyramid design in front. On each side of the pyramid was a legend: ”Admit Nothing -Deny Everything – Make Counter-Accusations.” ”I asked him where he got the hat,” Mr. Solarz said, ”and he answered that it had been run off at the special effects shop in Langley,” the Virginia district where the Central Intelligence Agency is based.
Washington Post: CIA challenge coins: Secret symbolism, dark humor can be had for a price on eBay
A CIA Special Operations group coin at Coin Squadron, which buys and sells the CIA-issued mementos known as challenge coins. (Kyle Grantham/for The Washington Post) By Ian Shapira September 21, 2016
The coveted coins are cloaked in secrecy, just like the spy agency that produces them. So what are CIA-commissioned mementos — brass “challenge coins” most commonly associated with the military — doing up for sale on the Internet and by private dealers?
The unclassified coins represent something rare in agency culture: tangible and often darkly humorous acknowledgments of specific CIA stations abroad and operations divisions. Some coins contain symbols whose meanings are known only to insiders.
For such coins to disseminate widely — via eBay, no less — appears to fly in the face of the CIA’s tight-lipped and proudly cryptic culture. The agency, after all, doesn’t let ordinary people tour its museum or visit its Memorial Wall honoring slain officers. In some cases, employees can’t invite their own relatives to their own awards ceremonies.
Yet nearly 200 miles north of the CIA’s headquarters, a small business called Coin S quadron buys and sells pieces of Langley lore from the cramped basement of a converted church in Washington Crossing, Pa., right by the banks of the Delaware River.
This summer, Coin Squadron sold coins for the Iran operations division, the covert influence group within the agency’s Special Activities Division, and one that said, “Pipe Hitters Local 391” — 3 representing C; 9 for I; 1 for A. The coin’s back shows a smiling clown with an often-heard military slogan: “Be Polite, Be Professional, But Have a Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet.”
Joe Wallace holds a pair of CIA challenge coins that he is selling. He has gotten to know many current and former spies through his business. (Kyle Grantham/for The Washington Post)
“I got that one from a guy thinning his herd. He was retired. They made 50 of them. It was for some Special Operations group,” said Joe Wallace, Coin Squadron’s co-founder, whose shop has introduced him to current or retired members of the intelligence community. “Because of the business I’m now in, I get to talk to people I’d never get to talk to. They’re so proud of what they did. You feel it in them.”
One of Wallace’s favorites is still available: a coin issued by the Mexico City station showing eight menacing skulls.
“The number of skulls represents something,” Wallace said, “but I can only tell you off the record.”
Coin Squadron advertises its offerings heavily on its eBay page and through its Twitter account. Wallace says the spy currency comes directly from present or former employees or contractors. His freshest batch: a coin honoring the Tel Aviv station, another for the Pakistan operations group, and a third for a surveillance technology group that was staked out near Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.
The going price can soar into the hundreds of dollars, sometimes exceeding $1,000. For each one.
Other rare ones reveal a sense of humor: One CIA coin offered shows a green Yoda from “Star Wars” aiming a sniper rifle and naming a specific location in Virginia. “May the Force of 7.62 Be With You,” the back reads, referring to a bullet size. Another from the Khost base in Afghanistan shows a bearded skull and says: “Admit Nothing, Deny Everything, Make Counter Accusations, Khowst OGA.” (OGA stands for “other government agency.”)
A CIA challenge coin specific to the agency’s U-2 spy plane group. The coins often contain insider jokes and dark humor. (Kyle Grantham/for The Washington Post) In a statement to The Washington Post, the CIA didn’t express concern that its challenge coins are being traded in the public domain. A spokesman said the agency uses the coins as a “non-monetary award” to recognize exceptional employees. Agency employees in offices across the United States and world are free to design whatever coin they’d like, the spokesman said.
But eBay is also rife with fakes — coins that didn’t originate with agency people or that were copied by outsiders. In an interview, one former CIA security protective officer said he only buys and sells online with a few trusted sources.
“You also don’t want to sell it to a guy who’s going to start reproducing it and make 1,000 fakes off the one legit one,” the former protective officer said.
His personal collection’s best coin? A gold “Lethal Covert Action” coin featuring a skull and cross bones with “CIA” on the skull, crossed daggers underneath, and the letters “K” and “B” on each side.
“That stands for ‘Kill Bad Guys,’ ” he said. “It also has ‘D’ ‘O’ and ‘A’ in little red triangles next to the bones for ‘dead on arrival.’ ”
How’d he come to acquire it? The players in this world have a tendency to redact.
“I got it a couple years ago in a trade with someone still active,” he said. “It’s sort of comical and funny that this super secret agency has coins with all this symbolism floating out there.”
Many rare CIA coins are given to slain officers’ widows. The wife of an operative killed in Afghanistan said she was given a funny-looking coin by one of his colleagues after the funeral. It’s gold and has a green gecko on the front, standing up and leaning on a rifle.
Initially, the widow, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, didn’t want to describe even the type of creature on the coin, fearing she’d reveal something too sensitive. But then she was told the coin was for sale on eBay and could be purchased for $250. The coin honors “Gecko Firebase” in Kandahar, and contains the Latin phrase, “Aut Concilio Aut Ense,” which means “Either by meeting or by the sword.”
“It would make me really sad if the coin came from someone posted there and then was trying to make a profit off a memory,” she said. “I will never do that.”
Former spies say they usually keep coins given to them under serious circumstances. A former member of the agency’s Special Activities Division said his favorite in his collection came from former CIA director George Tenet. He’d just debriefed with the spymaster after the death of Johnny “Mike” Spann, a paramilitary officer and the first American killed in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“I was with Mike when he was killed,” said the former officer, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “Afterwards, Tenet gave me his personal coin — a simple bronze colored coin, with the company logo on the front, on the back, the director’s seal that says ‘Director of Central Intelligence.’ When he handed it to me, it was still in the manufacturer’s plastic wrapper. I can’t bring myself to open the bag.”
The one he’d really like? A coin nicknamed “Bush X” or “Maya.” But that coin is hard to find on the open market.
One Maya coin is kept in the collection in New York City at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It was donated by “Maya,” the alias of the CIA operative whose tenacious hunt for bin Laden was dramatized in the 2012 movie “Zero Dark Thirty.” The coin features a red X on the front and the date of the bin Laden operation on the back — May 1, 2011. The 9/11 Memorial Museum said former president George W. Bush always drew a big red X through each al-Qaeda operative whenever they got killed or arrested.
Another “Maya” coin is on eBay.
But how did the eBay seller “rolyat11” acquire it in the first place? Denise Taylor, of Panama City, Fla., the person behind “rolyat11” declined an interview through her husband.
Its condition: “Unused, and in nice shape,” the eBay write-up says. It’ll only cost you $975.
China administers over 600m doses of COVID-19 vaccine with record 100m shots achieved within 5 days by Global Times May 29 2021
The Chinese mainland has administered more than 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine as of Friday, and with an ever-accelerating speed, it took China only five days to bring the number from 500 million to 600 million.
Since the Chinese mainland administered the first 100 million doses on March 27, the pace of the world’s largest vaccination drive has been accelerated constantly. Finishing the second 100 million doses took China only 25 days, but the sixth 100 million only took five days, according to figures released by the National Health Commission (NHC).
Since May 12, more than 10 million doses have been administered every day in China, and on May 26, the daily number rose to 20 million.
The US has only administered around 1.4 million doses on a daily basis in the past few days. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US administered 292.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine as of Friday, and the number on Thursday was 290.7 million doses.
China’s top respiratory disease specialist Zhong Nanshan said on Friday that China needs to inoculate 80 percent of its residents in order to develop herd immunity, the China News Service reported on Saturday.
Zhong said vaccine coverage will reach 40 percent by early July, and will reach 80 percent by the end of this year. He urged Chinese vaccine developers to further expand annual production capacity.
US mounts ‘forced labor’ lies on fishing firm to serve strategy of containing China following attack on Xinjiang industries by Ma Jingjing May 29 2021
While the US’ groundless allegations of “forced labor” in Xinjiang’s industries including cotton, tomatoes and solar energy did not achieve its goals of containing China, the US is turning to another Chinese industry by imposing a new import ban on seafood from a Chinese fishing company.
Experts said that the US aims to further suppress China by imposing bans on a wider range of Chinese industries and enterprises, but the wrong calculations from the US scapegoating China for its own inadequacies and internal problems will only accelerate its decline.
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Friday issued a withhold release order against Dalian Ocean Fishing Co, citing “the use of forced labor” in the company’s fishing operations, according to a statement on the bureau’s website.
Many workers on the vessels are Indonesians, Reuters reported, citing CBP officials.
The CBP said it will immediately detain tuna, swordfish and other products from the entity at US ports of entry. It’s worth noting that it’s the first time that the CBP banned an entire fleet of fishing vessels, as opposed to individual vessels targeted in the past.
Established in 2000, Dalian Ocean Fishing Co is a leading ultra-low temperature long-line premium tuna fishing company headquartered in Dalian, Northeast China’s Liaoning Province. It operates a fleet of 33 ultra-low temperature long-line fishing vessels, according to an introduction on the website.
“The US’ latest move indicates that it would impose bans on a wider range of Chinese industries apart from Xinjiang industries in a bid to further weaken and suppress China in the competition between the two,” Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations at China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.
The US aims to draw a third party in to confront China over the issue of “forced labor” by claiming “abuses” against Indonesian workers, Li said, noting that this is in line with the Biden administration’s consistent policy on China by drawing partners into strategic competition against China.
Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University, told the Global Times on Saturday that it’s already widely known that the US’ ulterior purpose is hindering China’s national rejuvenation by seeking decoupling with China in technology and industrial chains, with issues like “forced labor” and privacy protection being major excuses.
“China’s national rejuvenation is in line with market and globalization rules,” Wang said. He said Washington’s wrong actions of targeting China as a scapegoat for looming domestic social and economic contradictions will only allow the US to miss a golden opportunity to launch internal reforms, serving to speed up its decline.
The US has been confronting China with the excuse of “forced labor” for some time, which China has repeatedly denied with abundant evidence.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying reiterated at a regular press briefing on May 12 that the allegations of “forced labor” in Xinjiang are an outrageous lie, and those in the US and the West who hype the issue in order to harm Chinese companies and industries are following a malicious agenda to destabilize Xinjiang and contain China.
Johnson Choi Biz 