https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/124324375891486310...
I think it's been interesting wave. When the cases first started, China got blasted. As it hit the US, Administration political opponents have criticized the US response, but many have gone to the point of praising China's response and forgetting about China's actions in December/January.
China also deserves criticism; its initial response was dysfunctional in some ways (albeit somewhat different ways than the United States dysfunctional response). Fortunately, as you say, it's been blasted in some discussion.
But recognition of ways in which its response has been respectable is less the mark of someone "carrying water" and more part of the process of learning things and having our political institutions learn things.
It’s a sad mix of propaganda and temporary faith in a shaky globally supply chain.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-08/china-s-g...
https://time.com/5811222/wuhan-coronavirus-death-toll/
etc
Why should any respectable journalist quote their statistics about COVID and conclude how effective their response was without mentioning that they've been known to fabricate statistics? Let alone calling them a 'Global Leader' in response. I've not seen this qualification mentioned once with respect to China's stats on this virus.
No one really cared that much because manipulation, risk, and uncertainty is baked into financial equations no matter what the country or government. Now that we're talking about lives, it's harder to dismiss.
I don't see it frequently in writing, but the majority of TV and podcast reporting from news sites has the disclaimer. And there's enough China bad articles out there that I feel like this is implicitly assumed.
Either way, no one trusts Chinese stats, including the Chinese public themselves, and the Chinese government most of all. The ability to collect accurate statistics when there's so many different development levels country-wide simply isn't there. For example, China doesn't use GDP internally, they use LKI, LiKeQiang Index which aggregates a value from measurable indicators like freight cargo volume, electric consumption, bank loans. There's also TSF, Total Social Financing. They can still be gamed, but physically (running empty trains), but much harder to fake via submitting fake excel sheets to central government. Chinese GDP is basically a back of the napkin estimate to appease foreign investors, it's also used to set growth targets instead of reflecting it. Most of the mainstream western reporting on Chinese GDP does not understand this. It's well understood among China watchers. The most comprehensive study on Chinese GDP so far, by CSIS, suggested China was under reporting their GDP.
As for stacked urns in Wuhan, the city is still under quarantine so urns would not be picked up. Also necessary to account for other sources of death. The article quotes 56K cremations in Q4 2019, so a few thousands urns especially as restock doesn't seem atypical. Like LKI, it's an useful oblique indicator, but should be considered in other context. If there's mass death, enough to measurably affect hysterical people in quarantine, it would be on Chinese social media which would leak to China watchers. There's many expats and Chinese people with VPNs, things that affect the public on a mass scale inevitably leaps over the firewall, it's not opaque like politburo politics. People need to stop looking at Chinese numbers and instead extrapolate from oblique indicators. When expats in China talk about things returning to normal, when Chinese diaspora aren't mourning about sick or dead family members en-mass, then you can assume that reflects ground reality.
Fully agreed on that particular point, that is commendable
Now, I suspect you wouldn't agree with that perspective either. But it's definitely not praise for China.
As far as the article to which it links... that's all factual stuff. The PRC absolutely has exported a ton of PPE equipment and assigned a bunch of well-documented medical personnel to hot regions. That's good, as far as it goes. It doesn't say anything about what they're doing inside the PRC, but it absolutely is helpful that they're doing it externally.
And historically, that was always one of the core roles played by America. So in perspective it's sort of notable, no?
You're contracting yourself and just being argumentative. The whole context is their international assistance work, and there is nothing but praise in that article. Meanwhile the article just brushes aside their initial deceit which greatly magnified the problem.
I genuinely thought you were talking about the tweet about the article being the praise. The article was just facts. Facts, to borrow a phrase, don't care about your feelings.