The 11th Commandment

While in Vegas late last year I received a WeChat from a longtime friend of mine, whom lived in Shenzhen but was recently on business in Los Angeles.   He told me LA sucked.

I did not disagree.

Then awhile later, after the New Year, he posted an article about the Chinese viewpoint of the massive forest fires in Australia.  It was to the point:

"China would never have allowed such devastation.  We would have used all our manpower to simply put it out. "

It was condescending, but not really in a mean spirited way.  It was ignorant of such things as drought, the ludicrousness of using mere "MEN" to put out a fire, rather than fire retardant, helicopters, trained professionals, etc.   But I certainly admired his "Can do" attitude.

As I've said before, the supreme accomplishment of the Chinese Communist Party has been to play the role of psychologist to the fragile spirit and ego of the Chinese People.    For centuries it seems the Chinese People have been laying on the couch.  Of course the CCP had something to do with that, right?

It needed the Chinese People to focus on one thing, just one thing, in a united fashion, the better to organize them and control them.  And that one thing was that the Chinese People are great, but have been kept down by the West for oh so long.  (Right?)

I promise not to bring it up again, but the Chinese CP has made great progress molding the psyche of the People simply by controlling the narrative.  Staying positive, all the time.  The CCP has been China's 24 hour "Good News Channel".

And finally the Chinese People have gotten off that damn couch.

Then Crash! Boom! Bang!

Down came the house of cards.

Let's make no bones about it;  this new virus, the coronavirus,  is not only killing people, infecting them, etc.  But also challenging Beijing's ability to control that narrative.  Afterall, it is hard to be the GNC when people are dying.   Right now people are angry.  Pissed off.  Frustrated.  This virus couldn't have come at a worse time of year. 

And some folks of course play on that and thus blame foreigners for planting it(America!).

Apparently this virus was "discovered" in November/December timeframe.  I've read either month.  The fellow that brought it up was arrested, brought in for questioning("thou shall not spread bad news"),  and then forced to sign a confession.

In China one can call it the 11th Commandment.

And now he's dead.

There is so much to unpack.  So much going on.

First of all, we need to talk about the battle within the battle.

Yes, there is a battle to contain the virus.

Once Wuhan was shut down, the virus obviously continued it's deadly path downstream.    By following the path of closures one can basically follow its viral path.

Nanjing and Wuxi are under "partial shutdown"   I know this because my supplier told me.  Her words.

Hangzhou and Wenzhou are shut down.  And now so is Ningbo.  Apparently Taizhou is shut down as well.

The officials have moved quickly, perhaps even pre-emptively.

Are there other cities really shut down this quickly?

So that's one battle.  The race to contain this virus as much as possible.

But there is another "race", or "battle" taking place behind the scenes.  Looking at the geography above what other large city is missing?

Shanghai.

The Chinese are racing like hell to slow the virus down and prevent the politically disastrous decision should it come to that of closing Shanghai.    To me, this is the real reason why the government is closing all major cities downstream so quickly.  They are in effect trying to build a barricade around Shanghai itself.

Because if Shanghai gets affected in a major way, things will get ugly quickly.

I'll continue this later.