During an appearance on FBN’s “Mornings with Maria,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) insisted the hypocrisy of so-called woke corporations like Nike, the NBA, Major League Baseball and some of the airlines, which all do business with an oppressive Chinese government while being critical of alleged injustices in the United States needed to be highlighted. While those companies have a “right” to believe or say what they wish, Rubio said they were operating on a double standard. “Look, first of all, let me be clear, I don’t want us to not be a free country,” he said. “These companies have a right to believe and say whatever they want to say. But we have a right to point out the hypocrisy. I think if you’re going to stand for human rights, if you’re going to stand for voting rights, if you’re going to stand for all these things and you’ve got to be consistent about it, and I think what’s happening here is very simple, it’s about money. It’s about the billions of dollars that they make from access to the Chinese market in some way, shape or form. And so what happens is, the price of having access to that market is their silence. Look, if you speak out against something the Chinese Communist Party is doing, they’ll kick you out of the country and — and you — and you’ll become a target of all sorts of things.” “Look at the — it’s not an American company, but H&M, as an example, is a company that dared to speak out against the, you know, cotton that’s coming from forced labor in Xinjiang, and they’ve been the target of boycotts,” Rubio continued. “They’re going to get run out of the country. It’s also why we have American companies who are — Nike and others — who are here in Washington lobbying against our Uighur forced labor bill. They don’t do it openly, but they’re doing it. Everybody knows they’re doing it because they are profiting from their business arrangement and part of that business arrangement, whether it’s the NBA or Major League Baseball or some airline, ...
Communist party
China Deleting Feminists from Social Media amid Birth Rate Collapse
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) internet censors have allegedly deleted dozens of social media accounts belonging to Chinese women’s rights groups ahead of the release of China’s latest ten-year census, expected to show a sharp decline in birth rates for the fourth consecutive year. “In recent days, more than a dozen accounts used by women’s-rights groups were deleted from the Weibo social-media platform as well as cultural-discussion site Douban.com,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on April 19. Weibo is a Chinese microblogging website often referred to as “Chinese Twitter.” It is one of China’s most popular social media platforms. Douban.com is another popular Chinese social networking service. Both Weibo and Douban.com., like much of the Chinese internet, are heavily censored by CCP authorities. “The deletions came as China awaits the results of a once-a-decade census, which had been expected by early April but have yet to be released. Demographers expect the data to show a sharp drop in births in 2020, the fourth straight decline following a brief rise in 2016, the first year after the one-child policy was lifted,” WSJ reported. “What are they afraid of?” one Chinese social media user allegedly wrote in the wake of the mass deletions, according to the newspaper. “Are they afraid of more women waking up? Are they panicking when seeing the fertility rates and marriage rates?” Weibo officials issued a statement via their own verified Weibo account saying the microblogging site had recently removed some accounts because they were “related to illegal or hurtful information,” but did not provide further details. “A spokeswoman for China’s National Statistics Bureau said in a Friday [April 16] briefing that the agency needed additional time on the census because there was more data to process than in previous ones,” WSJ reported. “Lü Pin, a Chinese activist based in New York whose Weibo account was taken down, says that women taking ...
Xi Jinping Still Absent from Coronavirus Vaccine Drive as China Lags Behind World
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has yet to inform the public if he has been inoculated against the Chinese coronavirus or if he plans to, and at press time has not participated in any public efforts to promote his government’s vaccination drive. Xi’s absence is particularly striking given that he is actively using his high profile for other efforts, such as promoting China’s Belt and Road Initiative and participating in President Joe Biden’s international summit on climate change scheduled for Thursday. Xi mentioned the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which began in China, during remarks to the Boao economic forum this week, urging countries to “strengthen global governance” to end the crisis. Elsewhere around the world, in nations with higher vaccination rates, heads of state and government have taken to publicizing their vaccines. Leaders like Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received their vaccinations in front of television cameras or published photographs of the event. More discreet leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin did not offer any proof of their vaccination but issued statements claiming to be vaccinated through their spokespeople. The Chinese communist regime has offered no information at all regarding Xi’s inoculation status or intentions regarding vaccination at press time. At age 67, Xi is in an age range that is at high risk for severe coronavirus complications. The Chinese Foreign Ministry fielded a question regarding Xi’s vaccination status in March, resulting in a spokeswoman answering, “I have no answer at this moment. Vaccine is our silver bullet for epidemic prevention and for our ultimate victory against the virus.” Beijing has offered no further clarification since. Xi aroused suspicions that he may have been vaccinated that month at the annual convening of the National People’s Congress (NPC), ...
Regime Admits: Bacteria Outbreak from Chinese Vaccine Maker ‘Worse’ than Believed
Chinese state media admitted Wednesday that a brucellosis outbreak in northwestern China caused by a state-run vaccine manufacturer’s negligent use of expired air filters was “worse than earlier revealed,” as the number of confirmed cases of the bacterial disease continues to rise. “A total of 3,245 people had tested positive for Brucellosis as of Monday in Lanzhou, Northwest China’s Gansu Province, after a local Brucella leakage in July-August 2019. The number is way more larger [sic] than expected and raised widespread concern over the disease’s spread and its consequences,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece Global Times reported . “More than 21,000 people had been tested [for Brucella bacteria antibodies] as of Monday, of whom 4,646 had initially been classified as positive, with 3,245 confirmed positive by the Gansu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention,” the China News Service reported on Wednesday. The report did not clarify what was meant by “classified as positive,” though it could mean that the patients presented symptoms of brucellosis. According to a report on the outbreak by Beijing-based news site Caixin Global on Tuesday, “Diagnosing brucellosis is complicated as it often presents symptoms similar to common diseases like flu and rheumatism. According to the brucellosis treatment standards issued by the [Chinese] National Health Commission in 2019, brucellosis should be diagnosed through epidemiological contact tracing, clinical manifestations, and laboratory tests.” A doctor at Lanzhou No. 2 Hospital who treated suspected brucellosis patients there after the outbreak told Caixin that the hospital admitted about 100 residents from the Yanchangbao neighborhood near the Lanzhou Biopharmaceutical Plant in late December “all with relatively severe symptoms.” He added that “the patients were confirmed with Brucella bacterium infection based only on antibody tests, rather than being diagnosed with brucellosis.” The ...
China to Flood World Market with Billions of Doses of Its Low Protection Rate Vaccines
Chinese officials announced Tuesday that Chinese companies manufacturing vaccine candidates against the Chinese coronavirus would significantly increase their production capacity to export billions of doses around the world. The announcement, made at the Communist Party-led Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), followed an admission by the director of China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), Gao Fu, this month, that Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates.” It also comes amid concerns that Chinese citizens are not receiving vaccinations at rates equivalent to other large countries, in part due to distrust of the country’s vaccine manufacturers, leaving China exposed to deadly coronavirus outbreaks. The Boao Forum is an economic summit meant to bring together Chinese allies to discuss the expansion of trade ties with Beijing. The Communist Party is expecting to attract 200 million tourists for concerts and other super-spreader events for May 1, the global communist holiday colloquially known as “May Day.” China expects to produce as many as 5 billion doses of multiple brands of Chinese vaccine candidates by the end of 2021, according to Zheng Zhongwei, director of the Development Center for Medical Science and Technology of the National Health Commission (NHC). The doses would reportedly meet both foreign and domestic demand. “After production is properly established in the second half of this year, China will provide doses to more people in need through multilateral and bilateral measures,” Zheng reportedly added, according to the state-run Global Times newspaper. To increase production, two of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies are planning to export vaccine technology abroad, the newspaper added. “Yin Weidong, CEO of Chinese vaccine producer Sinovac Biotech, said at the Tuesday session that the company will try to realize technology transfer to 10 countries as soon as possible,” the Global Times stated. “Yu ...
