Yes, my bad. Sorry for misrepresenting that. The current stats are 2.3 million infections and 160,000 deaths. But Wuhan deaths are acknowledged to be under-reported. And there’s large swathes of the planet with curiously low or absent numbers, while at the same time hosting some of the most densely populated urban areas. I’m thinking India, most of Africa and lot of South America. The point I’m making is that the absence of testing does not equate to an absence of infections or deaths.

I’m just waiting for the inevitable mention of George Soros, Pizzagate, Deep State Globalists or Qanon on this thread. You really can’t have a good conspiracy theorist thread these days without mentioning one of those....

Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself...

Role of the media?

Two News Corp papers, the Herald Sun and the Courier Mail have covered the ‘China’ story. However, Fairfax papers really haven’t touched it, and The Australian (arguably the choice of the most educated right wing) has been relatively mute and have preferred to extensively cover the Brisbane Government story and private equity investors.

So, why?

Is the China story just that, a story, designed to evoke strong reactions from the Australian ‘patriots’ to further pressure the local/federal governments?

If it is a genuine story, why aren’t the pre-eminent business papers covering it extensively? I doubt Virgin would give accurate exclusive information to the above publications and not their mates in the Fin Review etc.

I’m not convinced this is a China investment story, rather a story playing on a population with a China bias and fear. I’ve said before, if a takeover offer was announced by China, it would be politically too hot and the Federal Government would come to the party and join forces with the private equity interested parties.

This makes too much sense for this thread, and China is not dumb enough to "rescue" VA, just wait with everyone else and buy the good bits without the associated debts when and if VA goes into administration. And realistically, voters are more worried about how much rescue they get from centrelink and ATO in this crisis, than to change their votes to Labor and Greens just because they are calling for a VA rescue. In a crisis, oppositions really have limited issues to oppose about, and VA is one of those issues.

.........and you my friend have hit the nail fairly & squarely on the proverbial head

On an Australian domestic front we were bound to be in trouble sooner or later anyway. Before corona retail was in recession, GDP was in per capita recession, wage growth had flat lined, employment figures were masked by high levels of casualisation and underemployment, interest rates were on a path towards zero, personal debt was almost the world’s highest paying off millions for poorly built shoebox apartments, the bushfires harmed the economy and now corona will officially put it in a recession.

I have noticed a lot of government figures are starting to play up the “China lied, our countries suffered” position, IMO to distract from what was their poor handling of the economy to begin with.

From VA’s point of view was their ever any need for two full service airline groups in a nation of 25 million when plenty of much larger nations only have one? Especially when one hasn’t been profitable for a decade?

There is more then enough blame to be shared around here.

However, as a WHO member state, China had a responsibility to report what it knew to the WHO in a timely manner. It would appear China crossed this reporting threshold well before the WHO was informed.

As the OP, I'm pleased that a lot of comment has been generated. Even though I used VA as an example, this is not a story about a dysfunctional airline. It's much bigger than that (thanks to Global Aviator, Delta Sierra and Lambswool, and others for recognising this). China is a communist regime run by a dictator who has awarded himself a lifetime position in power. There's no such thing as a free market economy in China. When you buy or sell from/to any Chinese company, you are dealing directly or indirectly with the Chinese state, which of course runs the Chinese military. You can be sure that every time you buy a Chinese product, you are funding their military and their quest to dominate the world. It's called economic colonialism. And it's working because we (the West) are too PC to stop it.

Back to VA, civil aviation in Australia must be seen as a critical national resource. You can't ride a bike between Sydney and Perth. Do we really want the Chinese government controlling the domestic air travel of Australians? Think about that. Do we want them leasing strategic ports, owning prime Australian agriculture production, controlling our internet (kudos to Aus Govt - they did block Huawei, but not so the for the Brits), buying into Pacific islands (more ports, uplifted to military standards), displacing our influence in PNG, this list goes on and on. And let's not even get started into what China is doing in Africa (building multi-lane military grade freeways to Chinese owned ports in countries where the most common mode of transport is a donkey and cart).

Covid should now focus all of us on two things: a) we have lost the ability to manufacture anything ourselves. The entire world is dependent upon China for anything and everything that must be produced. And b), the world is allowing the Chinese state to purchase and run critically important sovereign assets such as power stations and water supplies. This is absolute madness, and we must stop it.

So you say there’s no such thing as a free market in China, but then wish to see manufacturing returned to Australia.

The the high labor costs and need to re-equip and build factories and restore expertise in each sector it is unprofitable to bring manufacturing back to Australia without massive government intervention. Which is also against the free market.

Call for a return to “Aussie made” as you please, but you’ll be paying for it with higher prices, increases in taxes, and cuts to services.

And the one more thing, has anyone looked at the work conditions of the average factory job in China? You want that to become the standard work conditions in Australia? Be thankful it’s mostly China and Asian nations making our goods.

I'm happy to buy what I can locally and pay a premium. Tassal is a good example; more than double the price of John West et al but it's an Australian product with Australian manufacturing and Australian employment.
My family also boycotted "Bonds" and "Huggies" when the usual greed driven western mentality management sent these brands to China, throwing hundreds of Aussies out of work.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/bond...0225-8hmt.html

https://7news.com.au/business/huggie...-shift-c-41792

I'm sure that just one family thinking this way makes no difference in the overall scheme of things but I know that I can sleep well at night knowing that I've at least tried!

Well said lazyload. It is about time we all call a spade a spade and call out China for its abuses of human rights and active dislike of free thought and democratic principles: Democracy and freedom of thought are anathema to it. We allow China to get away with things here and elsewhere in the Western World that would never be permitted within China.

We need to stop caving in to oppressive regimes in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

Lets' stop selling away our principles of freedom and justice. Principles that we have fought long and hard for over the centuries and made a cornerstone of our democracy. Freedom is precious but so easily given away. The price of democracy is constant vigilance.

China reacted quicker than the US did to the 2009 H1N1 virus and notified the WHO quicker. I didn’t hear any criticism of the US then. Besides it’s up to other countries on how they prepare and how they react to gauge their response.

The countries that would’ve had a greater amount of Chinese travellers are the ones that it borders like South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Thailand and have done much better in controlling their outbreaks rather than Europe and the US who would’ve received a lesser number of travellers. And there was a break. Wuhan was locked down on the 26th of January but infections in Europe and the US didn’t begin to dramatically rise h til March. That means China bought the West at least 5-6 weeks of spare time for them to prepare but they collectively squandered it. South Korea and the US had their first infections confirmed on the same day, but the response of SK has undoubtedly been better than the US.

[QUOTE=The Bullwinkle;10755018]I'm happy to buy what I can locally and pay a premium. [QUOTE]

The vast majority of society disagrees. We live in a consumption driven service economy. People want, want, want for less, less, less. They won’t be paying double for tuna or anything else if a comparable product for half the price is sitting on the same shelf.

“Patriotism” counts for nothing. In fact a lot of consumers will view foreign made goods as better.

I agree 100%. Still, it doesn't stop me trying!

And therein lies the problem..
we’re a bunch of hypocrites.
Societally, we have an expectation of an average wage around $50,000 pa (last time I looked). Yet we do not want to pay that sort of rate for most things we buy.
Washing machine made in Oz? Sure, no problem, 4,000 bucks. T-shirt from a department store? no, not $8, try $80.
Many people will say they are happy to support the wages they expect themselves but come time to hand over the cash, it suddenly doesn’t go very far.
Actually the wages in China are starting to get ‘beyond our means’ already. So now the search is on for the next bunch of slaves who can work for us- Cambodia? Laos? Even Vietnam is reasonably developed now and stuff made there is rising in price.

Well said. Even China is looking outside China to set up manufacturing because they have created a consumption-hungry middle class that expects more for toiling in the factories. They want the fancy stuff and bling that they make for the rest of the world. Hence we see China building infrastructure in Africa that will support soon-to-be-built factories. Why plunder the African continents' raw materials then drag them half-way across the world to pollute your backyard when you can do that in-situ with a cheap labour force? Africa, of course, is rotten with corruption, but China is no stranger to it either and can undoubtedly work it out to their advantage.

The entire Anti China narrative that is building as a result of the Corona virus is simply playing straight into the hands of the corrupt Governments that we have elected.

You can argue until you are blue in the face as to how much the Chinese Government was aware of the virus before broadcasting it to the world.

But the virus will go away and no longer be a factor in our daily lives.

The economic consequences of fractional reserve banking, the unlimited credit creation by central banks and worthless fiat money are going to haunt us for decades.

The bottom line is this. The Chinese manufacture goods for Australian and German and English and American companies at incredibly low cost because they have such low incomes and poor health and safety standards.

We benefit from these poor wages and conditions and in fact demand that they continue. We have adopted a neo-liberal economic principal the core of which is price stabilization and the only way to achieve this is with off shore manufacturing in low wage countries.

The US and by extension its western trading partners, including Australia, can only continue this debt driven growth if countries such as China buy US debt in the form of Treasuries and most importantly if the US Dollar maintains its position as world reserve currency, something which may be changing.

So to suggest we move manufacturing back to the US or Australia is to undermine the very mechanism that fuels this entire system.

And our Governments are keenly aware that this relationship will continue despite the rhetoric from the likes of Trump promising to return manufacturing back home.

Jobs will not come back to the US (or anywhere in the west) but it is an appealing promise to the AVERAGE worker who has not seen their purchasing power increase in over 40 years.

You can call China communist, or socialist, or an abuser of human rights but like most things these labels could also apply to many of our close “allies” and indeed to our own countries as well so be careful.

haha you made my day

No, no...

The Chemtrails have been protecting everyone, now we’re not flying and distributing Chemtrails, the whole world is not protected and thus gone to 💩

#TrueStory

OMAA