Mon, Mar 30, 2020 page6

• [ LETTERS ]

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  Deporting Chinese journalists

  As a former member of the Beijing-based Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC), I believe that US President Donald Trump’s administration did the right thing in expelling 50 Chinese journalists.

  While a member of the FCCC, I would often receive alerts that US or other foreign journalists were being detained or harassed by Chinese authorities. Bona fide press credentials issued by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered no solid protection against official intimidation.

  To give officials plausible denial, many times thugs were hired by local officials or power brokers to impede reporting. It was not uncommon for such intimidation to result in journalists sustaining physical injury or their cameras and other equipment being damaged or broken beyond repair.

  A tweet in early February from the FCCC tells it all: “Some telling stats from our 2019 report: 82% of reporters experienced interference or harassment or violence while reporting last year. 43% said digital/physical surveillance affected reporting. And 70% reported interviews canceled due to actions taken by Chinese authorities.”

  In such situations, foreign reporters were advised to contact a Chinese foreign ministry telephone number. Sometimes contact was able to be made, often times it was not. Even if contact could be made, it was no sure guarantee of help.

  The exact number is not known, but it is an open secret that China, like Russia, uses journalists posted abroad to collect intelligence detrimental to the security of the US.

  Deporting 50 Chinese journalists is a big step in combating Chinese penetration of the US.

  Bill Sharp

  Visiting scholar in the Department of History, National Taiwan University

  Beijing cannot be trusted

  There are efforts to spin and politicize the deadly outbreak of COVID-19.

  We Italians and Europeans are paying a heavy price because of our intense industrial and commercial contacts with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), particularly in Hubei Province.

  Our technicians, managers and entrepreneurs were shuttling back and forth between China and Europe until mid-to-late January when the virus was already unleashed in the environs; COVID-19 was already causing numerous deaths and sickness in the Wuhan-Hankou metropolitan area of China.

  The viral infection had already been noticed in mid-November by Wuhan’s local health professionals. The Chinese government was alerted in early December last year.

  It took nearly seven weeks for the Chinese government to officially admit and take action after brutal suppression of the whistle-blowers and after hundreds of deaths — including that of an early whistle-blower doctor — and thousands became critically sick.

  The communist government of China, which commands everything inside China with the great leader His Highest Excellency Mr Xi Jinping (習近平) at the core, was brutal in suppressing the early warning. It proved equally brutal in enforcing draconian measures (too late) to the common people.

  Here in Italy and elsewhere in western Europe we are under draconian measures for now, but they are not brutal — they are collaborative and human.

  Our governments are transparent and humble; unlike in mainland China, our government leaders do not dare demand or expect us to venerate them and express gratitude for their normal dutiful actions.

  Only in communist China, North Korea and Islamic states are government leaders venerated despite their incompetence, lies and brutality.

  C-hina O-riginated Vi-ral D-isease of 2019 = COVID-19.

  COVID-19 = China Originated Viral Disease of 2019.

  This is the fundamental truth, a concrete historical fact. No media spin can alter this truth. No nationalistic, patriotic chauvinism can remove it. No political profiteering can change it. No superpower rivalry or international gossip can add anything or subtract anything from this.

  Let us try to be compassionate toward Chinese and let us NEVER trust the announcements and numbers (statistics) provided by the communist totalitarian state of the PRC.

  Professor D. Raj Pant

  Former visiting professor and cofounder of the Center for Sustainability at Nanhua University, Taiwan,

  LIUC, Italy
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