Chinese coronavirus: senior US official accuses China of lack of transparency

Top White House official Larry Kudlow questions approach of Politburo as China brings in ‘wartime’ measures in more cities
By Lily Kuo and agencies

A senior White House official has called on Beijing to be more transparent over its handling of the Chinese coronavirus outbreak as Chinese authorities expanded “wartime” measures to limit its spread.
“We are a little disappointed that we haven’t been invited in and we’re a little disappointed in the lack of transparency coming from the Chinese,” said Larry Kudlow, the director of the US National Economic Council.
His comments came after Chinese authorities said they had altered how they count cases, resulting in confusion amid dramatic changes to the reported figures for two days in a row, and dampening hopes that the outbreak may peak later this month.
On Thursday, Hubei officials reported a large spike in cases after including those confirmed by CT scans, not just lab tests.

The revision added 254 deaths to the overall Chinese toll.
Then on Friday, China added 121 new deaths – but also removed 108 fatalities from the total, due to what China’s National Health Commission said were “duplicate statistics”.
In its latest update, the commission reported 121 new deaths and 5,090 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of people infected to more than 64,000 worldwide, with 63,851 of the cases in China.
The death toll stands at 1,383 – with three of those deaths outside of mainland China, one in Hong Kong, one in Japan and one in the Philippines.
The commission did not give further explanation of the double-counted cases on Friday.
“Based on the current trend in confirmed cases, this appears to be a clear indication that the fairly drastic measures Chinese have implemented to date would appear to have been too little, too late,” said Adam Kamradt-Scott, an infectious diseases expert at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

Chinese authorities also announced that 1,716 health workers had been infected as of 11 February. Six had died. 

Officials on Friday, responding to questions about how those cases are counted, said that when asymptomatic patients show symptoms during quarantine they would be included as confirmed.
While public health experts have greeted the change in reporting – in order to capture more cases and get more patients needed treatment – positively, others say it raises more questions about the data. The change in diagnostic criteria has been applied only to Hubei province.
“Is the politburo really being honest with us?” Kudlow asked, referring to communist China’s top leadership body. 

Kudlow said Xi Jinping had assured Donald Trump that Beijing would accept US help, but “they won’t let us”.
“I don’t know what their motives are. I do know that apparently more and more people are suffering over there,” he said.
At a meeting of senior leaders in Beijing on Thursday, officials called for other areas to “adopt quarantine and rescue measures equal to that of Wuhan”, which has been under lockdown for the past three weeks. 

The meeting, chaired by the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, called on Wuhan to speed up classifying and quarantining residents suspected or confirmed of contracting the virus.
In Huanggang, one of the worst-hit areas outside of Wuhan with more than 2,000 cases and at least 59 deaths, authorities issued an emergency measures for 14 days, “fully sealing” all residential areas and banning vehicles, except for those for emergency, medical or official purposes.
Checkpoints would be set up and public security deployed to enforce the measures. 

Local district committees are to organise residents’ food and supplies. 

“All residents must not enter or leave their communities without authorisation,” the notice said.

In Dawu county in central Hubei, home to more than 600,000 people, officials also issued an emergency notice on Thursday afternoon that residential areas and buildings would be sealed and vehicles banned. 

Those who violate the rules “will be detained, according to wartime regulations”. 

“In extraordinary times, extraordinary actions are needed,” the notice said.
In Zhangwan district in Shiyan city, authorities placed similar restrictions and said public security would help enforce the measures. 

Gucheng county and Yunmeng county also implemented the same measures for a period of 14 days.
On Friday, China’s ministry of finance said the country was earmarking 80.5bn yuan (£8.5bn) for fighting the epidemic. 

So far, about half of that has been spent.
Researchers at China National Biotech, a state-owned company, said that human antibodies from survivors had helped patients who were critically ill, prompting calls for recovered patients to donate blood plasma.


Michael Smith
✔@MikeSmithAFR
I have been put under Home quarantine for 14 days after returning to Shanghai. For my neighbours, only 1 person per household is allowed out once a day. Some renters are being denied access to their homes. This is a city increasingly in lockdown. #coronavirus
566
5:35 AM - Feb 14, 2020

The next few weeks are critical for judging whether quarantine measures have worked, and as residents return to work in major cities. 

Officials said this year would not see a “peak” in return journeys after the lunar new year holiday and that all parts of the country should “continue protection and control measures”.
Containing the coronavirus in Wuhan, where the virus emerged in December, is still of “utmost importance” in order to achieve “economic and societal development” this year, officials said.
Outside China, one person died in Japan from the virus on Thursday night. 

Japan’s health ministry said a woman in her 80s living in Kanagawa prefecture, west of Tokyo, had died. 

She had been transferred between hospitals as her condition worsened and she was confirmed to have had the coronavirus after her death.
Her death was the third fatality from the virus outside mainland China.
Meanwhile, the US state department expressed deep concern about North Korea’s vulnerability to the outbreak. 

The statement comes as Pyongyang scrambles to strengthen quarantine and preventive measures.
North Korea has yet to report a case of the virus, but state media reports have hinted that an uncertain number of people have been quarantined after showing symptoms. 

Experts say an epidemic in North Korea could be dire because of its chronic lack of medical supplies and poor healthcare infrastructure.
Passengers on a cruise ship that spent two weeks at sea after being turned away by five countries over coronavirus fears started disembarking in Cambodia on Friday.
The MS Westerdam, carrying 1,455 passengers and 802 crew, docked in the Cambodian port town of Sihanoukville on Thursday. 

US won't talk to China on trade until it gets specific plan to halt tech theft

• The U.S. demands a specific plan from China to halt technology theft.
• The impasse threatens a meeting in late-November between President Donald Trump and China's Xi Jinping

By Jeff Cox 

Trade tensions between have taken another negative turn, with the U.S. demanding that China come up with a specific plan to stop stealing technology.
Until Beijing does so, the U.S. will not resume trade negotiations, according to a report Thursday in the Wall Street Journal.
The latest impasse jeopardizes a meeting between President Donald Trump and China's Xi Jinping scheduled for the end of November at the G20 meeting.
There had been some hope that Trump and the Chinese president could make progress on the myriad trade issues between the two sides, a major focus being forced technology transfers.
China has sought to resume talks but the U.S. has refused until Beijing addresses the tech issue.
"If China wants [the G-20 session] to be a meaningful meeting, we need to do the groundwork," a senior White House official told the Journal.
"And if they don't give us any information, it's just hard to see how that becomes fruitful."
The U.S. has slapped tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, charging the country with unfair trade practices that have ballooned the deficit between the two.
President Trump has threatened to put duties on all imported goods from China.
A week ago, Larry Kudlow, the National Economic Council director, said the U.S. has let its demands be known but has not seen a satisfactory response.
"They are unfair traders. They are illegal traders. They have stolen our intellectual property," Kudlow said in Detroit.
"China has not responded positively to any of our asks."
The Journal reports that there are risks for China to tip its hand on its negotiation strategy.
In 1999, the Clinton administration made public an offer from China when it entered the World Trade Organization, sparking a crisis at home that nearly killed China's entrance into the group.

Sina Delenda Est

Steve Bannon: China will blink in trade war with US
By Carleton English

Steve Bannon

Trade wars, while perhaps nerve-wracking, are winnable, according to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“How [the trade war] ends is in victory,” Bannon said Wednesday at a Manhattan investor conference. 

“Donald Trump is not going to back off this. The Chinese are going to blink.”
Earlier this month the US and China levied tariffs of $34 billion on each other’s goods, with the Trump administration then threatening more tariffs in response to China’s theft of US intellectual property.
“I think the No. 1 thing you’re going to see out of the trade war is the reorientation of the complete supply chain of Japan, Western Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia,” Bannon added, noting that “the regime in China is in deep trouble.”
But for all his excitement over his former boss, Bannon conceded that he doesn’t speak directly with the president.
“I talk to guys in the White House all the time,” the 64-year-old said at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha Conference. 

“But with the president I make sure we go through lawyers.” 

Bannon said the ongoing Mueller investigation is why he leans on lawyers when reaching out to Trump.
Earlier at the conference, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow painted a rosy picture of the economy, saying: “There’s no recession in sight right now.”
Kudlow’s bullishness stems from the possibility of an unprecedented capital spending boom and the return of capital to US from Europe and China at levels unseen since the 1990s.
Those factors could contribute to GDP growth in excess of 4 percent for a quarter or two, Kudlow noted.
Kudlow’s remarks come as many from Wall Street to Washington have worried about a more volatile stock market and the brewing trade war between the US and China.
But when it comes to trade, the ball is now in Xi Jinping’s court to end the battle, Kudlow said, adding that his sources indicate that many in China want a deal to be made.

Trade War

Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow bashes China for decades of misdeeds on trade

By Berkeley Lovelace Jr. 

NEC's Kudlow says to China: "You're no longer a developing nation, act like it" 

White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow told CNBC on Monday that President Donald Trump is warning China about its trade practices with tariffs.
"This president's got some backbone, others didn't and he's raising the issue in full public view, setting up a process that may include tariffs. Hopefully, it will be mostly negotiations," Kudlow said on "Squawk on the Street." 

"I don't know if we'll have tariffs or not."
"[Trump] is responding to decades of misdeeds by China [on] trade," said Kudlow, an ex-CNBC contributor and a former Wall Street economist. 

"It's high time we did that."
"Somebody's got to do it. Somebody's got to say to China, 'you are no longer a Third World country. You are a First World country and you have to act like it,'" he said. 

"The president's got to stick up for himself and the United States."
In a tweet early Monday, Trump called out China again for what he has said are unfair trade practices by the world's second-largest economy.
The president unveiled a list of Chinese imports last week that his administration aims to target as part of its crackdown on China. 

Shortly after the announcement, China announced additional tariffs. 

China's Foreign Ministry blamed the United States on Monday for trade friction and said that it was impossible for negotiations to take place under current conditions.
Stocks were higher Monday as the Trump administration tried to soften its tone regarding trade relations. 

During a "Fox News Sunday" interview, Kudlow tried to calm trade war fears but added Trump was "not bluffing" on tariffs. 

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday he does not expect a trade war between the U.S. and China to take place.
Trump last month picked Kudlow to succeed Gary Cohn as director of his National Economic Council. 

Cohn, former No. 2 executive at Goldman Sachs, resigned from the White House role shortly after losing his fight to persuade the president not to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminum, an earlier move separate from the latest China tariffs over Chinese companies' theft of American intellectual property.
Saying he supports almost all of Trump's policies, Kudlow on Monday reminded viewers he did not like the across-the-board steel and aluminum tariffs announced last month. 

But he said Trump fixed that with the exemptions that included Canada and Mexico, pending a successful reworking of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.
"I have no specifics to offer this morning, but I will say progress is being made on renegotiating and recalibrating NAFTA. Good progress is being made on that," Kudlow added.

Larry Kudlow says China 'has earned a tough response' from the U.S. and other nations

Larry Kudlow, the new director of the National Economic Council, issued harsh trade rhetoric against China in his first public remarks.
By Jeff Cox 

Kudlow: China has not played by the rules for a long time 

China can expect the U.S. to take a tough stance when it comes to international trade, Larry Kudlow, the newly appointed director of the National Economic Council, said Wednesday.
President Donald Trump named Kudlow to the position Wednesday to succeed Gary Cohn.
Kudlow's first task will be to negotiate the administration around a ticklish issue over tariffs on steel and aluminum that Trump announced last week. 

The moves appear to be part of a get-tough strategy that will include an especially hard line against China.
"I must say as somebody who doesn't like tariffs, I think China has earned a tough response not only from the United States," Kudlow said on CNBC's "Closing Bell," the network where he has been an anchor and contributor for a quarter-century.
In his first public interview since the president offered him the job Tuesday evening, Kudlow had harsh rhetoric for China.
"A thought that I have is the United States could lead a coalition of large trading partners and allies against China, or to let China know that they're breaking the rules left and right," he said. 

"That's the way I'd like to see. You call it a sort of a trade coalition of the willing," an apparent reference to President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" in the war against Iraq.
Kudlow added that he opposed what he saw as blanket tariffs originally, but softened his position when he saw that the White House would offer exemptions to Canada and Mexico as well as other countries willing to negotiation more U.S.-friendly trade positions.
"I don't like blanket tariffs and I don't think you should punish your friends to try and punish your enemies in international affairs," he said.
In addition to discussing trade, Kudlow also addressed his well-known penchant for a strong currency — "King Dollar," as he calls the greenback. 

It's part of his broader economic view of limited government and regulation and free enterprise.
"If you keep rates minimal, if you keep regulations and government spending minimal, if you keep the dollar sound and steady, you're going to have a terrific economy, if government has a modest approach and lets people do what they need to do and allows the freedom to do it, we will do great in this country," he said.