TWENTY-TWENTY will go down as a significant “Year of the Protest,” among other milestones. Perhaps lost in the headline grabbing political protests and riots are the demonstrations about governments’ response to the pandemic that are going global.
The traditional press/media is caught between a rock and a hard place on the subject. When the press favors a government/administration, the response was “adequate even if not perfect.” If the government and the press are at odds, then that government—even with a similar response to the pandemic—failed miserably.
Belgium has the highest Covid-19 deaths per 1 million population of any country, with the exception of San Marino with a minuscule population of 34,000. I have said repeatedly that comparisons between countries are silly as there are too many factors—age distribution, population density, etc.—to make evaluations valid.
Nonetheless, the number of deaths in Belgium is a fact. However, the European press has spent countless pages and headlines explaining why “Belgium: Successful Crisis Management.” The press/media applauded the Belgium Health Minister when she wrote about the reason why the death count was so high—“Careful counting, not mismanagement, explains the country’s death toll.”
Belgium is a dutiful and obedient member of the European Union and is home to the EU’s headquarters. When the Belgium government has any sort of dispute with another member nation, its response is usually that the other country is not acting in “the spirit of the European Union.”
While other EU nations—France, Germany, Italy and Poland—have seen protests against local quarantines and lockdowns, Belgium has not.
Protests have erupted from Russia to India to Australia and the Philippines. Seven African countries have also had street demonstrations against the lockdowns. But some have been coupled with other objections against their respective governments, as in Iraq with regard to violence against women and in the Philippines in opposition to the Anti-Terrorism Law.
Notably in China one publically reported “protest” was a female “ringleader” who tried to rally about 100 supporters. The protest was about shopkeepers that were overpricing goods in Yingcheng in eastern Hubei province. She was arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” That is the Beijing way.
The Chinese government is different than the rest of the world, and you have to give it credit for problem-solving even if the methods are “unusual.”
China’s official second quarter growth rate was 3.2 percent, almost a miracle. Well, maybe it was a miracle. Economic growth was supposedly up but the combined revenues of China’s largest industrial conglomerates shrank 7.8 percent. Chinese government fiscal revenues fell 10.8 percent.
Maybe the GDP growth was fueled by vehicle production. In fact, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the country produced 2.33 million autos, an increase of 22.5 percent year on year and saw the highest production and sales in history. Of course, “Auto sales growth also was helped by supportive local government, said CAAM official Chen Shihua.” Apparently, there’s a large number of “supportive local government” officials driving around in new cars. Problem solved.
China has been hit by an “unprecedented” surge in bank runs, which forced regulators to “vouch for the soundness of lenders as the police halted the run.” The next day the government took over four insurers, two trust firms, and three securities companies that managed a combined one trillion yuan ($143 billion) in assets. Another problem solved, the Beijing way.
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