Increased investment in supply chain automation to lessen any future impacts.
A breakdown of the existing global economy and increase in closed and regional trading blocks.
More xenophobia, perhaps leading both genocide in some locations.
Increased investment in work place sanitation and sterilization (not of people) technologies that might become part of national/regional building codes for public buildings and areas.
Recognition that China has been grossly lying about the event and what the CPC knew about the timing and infection rates leading to further isolation in global politics, possible ending its belt and road, string of pearls plans.
End of Xi Jinping’s rule? I think it less likely that it would produce the demise of the CPC but that is likely more about the impact to the rank and file, and lower level officers experience the infections—thought could as easily go the other way and lead to a stronger hand in direct governance by the PLA.
Increased medical evaluation for vacations on cruse ships and pre-boarding checks for potential risks
Assuming that the outbreak is really just getting started outside China and the infection such that identifying the infected spotty (I’ve seen statements to the effect only 30 to 50 percent of the infected or currently being identified) the current global production structure will largely halt. This will produce a depression scenario that is likely worse than that of the housing crisis of 2009. Such an even will likely move production in two directions—one more generalize production when a number of the currently outsourced activities are brought in house, the other to seek production options that can be efficiently executed at smaller scales but geographically diversified. In cases were economies of scale can not be avoided increased monopolization but that monopolist will diversity geographically.
Last, nothing—in 3 years everyone will be acting exactly the same as they were in November 2019.
I would actually put the highest probability on the last possible result.
To what extent is the anti-China narrative simply a lot of people here collectively agreeing with the official Western news story that has been agreed on in the last three years, and how much of this is an actual assessment of how China has behaved/ How it will be perceived as having behaved?
I mean from my point of view, while clearly the low level people at the city level in Wuhan failed fairly badly when faced with a novel and very fast moving problem, at the national level though it looks like the Chinese government has reacted about as aggressively and as well as you could reasonably ask a government to respond to a situation like this.
Is there a reason everyone should be thinking of China as ‘ignoring signs for two weeks’ and not ‘shutting down everything everywhere for months, and building huge hospitals in ten days, and then all of these quarantine efforts actually worked’?
I think there is plenty of events reported in (English language versions) Chinese press and reports of events showing manipulation of the data to provide lower infections and death numbers by Chinese themselves to question the numbers. The fact that there might be a China-always-lies-about-data train that any number of people might be riding really has much to do with it.
They definitely have been taking some very serious actions. However they have also been using their dominant position in WHO to craft an international narrative that may well have allowed a greater international spread of the infection.
That said, clearly the existing meme and this outbreak seem very compatible with my bit above about xenophobic reactions. I do think it’s a risk, and certainly hope it does not play out, but as I said I think the end result in a few years is no one really remembers this any more than they do SARS and MERS.
[Things like this don’t help the case for believing China’s government. After releasing the first COVID-19 genome sequencing the Chinese lab was shutdown for “rectification” without any real explanation it seems.]
Increased investment in supply chain automation to lessen any future impacts.
A breakdown of the existing global economy and increase in closed and regional trading blocks.
More xenophobia, perhaps leading both genocide in some locations.
Increased investment in work place sanitation and sterilization (not of people) technologies that might become part of national/regional building codes for public buildings and areas.
Recognition that China has been grossly lying about the event and what the CPC knew about the timing and infection rates leading to further isolation in global politics, possible ending its belt and road, string of pearls plans.
End of Xi Jinping’s rule? I think it less likely that it would produce the demise of the CPC but that is likely more about the impact to the rank and file, and lower level officers experience the infections—thought could as easily go the other way and lead to a stronger hand in direct governance by the PLA.
Increased medical evaluation for vacations on cruse ships and pre-boarding checks for potential risks
Assuming that the outbreak is really just getting started outside China and the infection such that identifying the infected spotty (I’ve seen statements to the effect only 30 to 50 percent of the infected or currently being identified) the current global production structure will largely halt. This will produce a depression scenario that is likely worse than that of the housing crisis of 2009. Such an even will likely move production in two directions—one more generalize production when a number of the currently outsourced activities are brought in house, the other to seek production options that can be efficiently executed at smaller scales but geographically diversified. In cases were economies of scale can not be avoided increased monopolization but that monopolist will diversity geographically.
Last, nothing—in 3 years everyone will be acting exactly the same as they were in November 2019.
I would actually put the highest probability on the last possible result.
To what extent is the anti-China narrative simply a lot of people here collectively agreeing with the official Western news story that has been agreed on in the last three years, and how much of this is an actual assessment of how China has behaved/ How it will be perceived as having behaved?
I mean from my point of view, while clearly the low level people at the city level in Wuhan failed fairly badly when faced with a novel and very fast moving problem, at the national level though it looks like the Chinese government has reacted about as aggressively and as well as you could reasonably ask a government to respond to a situation like this.
Is there a reason everyone should be thinking of China as ‘ignoring signs for two weeks’ and not ‘shutting down everything everywhere for months, and building huge hospitals in ten days, and then all of these quarantine efforts actually worked’?
I think there is plenty of events reported in (English language versions) Chinese press and reports of events showing manipulation of the data to provide lower infections and death numbers by Chinese themselves to question the numbers. The fact that there might be a China-always-lies-about-data train that any number of people might be riding really has much to do with it.
They definitely have been taking some very serious actions. However they have also been using their dominant position in WHO to craft an international narrative that may well have allowed a greater international spread of the infection.
That said, clearly the existing meme and this outbreak seem very compatible with my bit above about xenophobic reactions. I do think it’s a risk, and certainly hope it does not play out, but as I said I think the end result in a few years is no one really remembers this any more than they do SARS and MERS.
[Things like this don’t help the case for believing China’s government. After releasing the first COVID-19 genome sequencing the Chinese lab was shutdown for “rectification” without any real explanation it seems.]
I agree—the fatality rate is just much too low to affect anything long term.