Thinking the Unthinkable in the 21st Century - Part 2
Back in July, I wrote Thinking the unthinkable in the 21st century: Who would use influenza as a biological weapon? in response to suggestions by the Health Minister of Indonesia, Siti Fadilah Supari, that the US has acquired H5N1 samples in order to create a biological weapon. I argued, instead, that if any country was planning to use H5N1 in this way that it would be China. To summarise:
4. Two of the reported cases of H5N1 in China were members of the People's Republic Army.
6. China expended great political capital to install Margaret Chan as DG of the WHO.
7. DG Chan is reported to have said: "...a "criminal in the WHO" who sent samples or data to the US government's secretive research laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, was "terminated". A statement which she has not denied making, to this day.
Although the preceding is not definitive proof that the Chinese government has been planning to use H5N1 as a biological weapon, they do raise suspicions about their intentions. What motivation would the Chinese government have for such a risky course of action? Back in July, I suggested that globalisation was breaking down and that although the Chinese economy might appear to be unstoppable, that it was in fact quite fragile. Since China is a dictatorship, angry unemployed peasants can express themselves in only one way - revolution. My fear was that the government of China would attempt to maintain power by unleashing a "natural" pandemic which they and the citizens of select cities would survive, but which many of those most inclined to revolt would not.
A lot has happened in world economics since July, none of it good. How has China faired thus far and what will be the likely effect of the global financial meltdown be in the future? An interesting opinion on this issue was written by David DuByne in On Line Opinion. Australia's e-journal of social and political debate. Some excerpts [emphasis mine]:
Number one on the priority list is domestic unrest caused by factory closures and owners declaring bankruptcy, thereby avoiding the troublesome task of paying their employees. In the last three weeks Dongguan Weixu Shoe Company collapsed and laid off 2,000, Chong Yik Toy Company shut leaving 1,000 without pay. The largest, Smart Union, locked its gates on 7,600 workers. Protesters descended on government buildings in Dongguan where hundreds of police were called out to quell violence.
Local public funds have been used to cover the back pay owed to workers, $7.6 million so far. This was to cover three factory closures. Imagine the bill when factories close across China in the tens of thousands. By the time you read the article “Govt foots collapsed shoe firm's wage bill”, from Xinhua News Agency many more factories will have closed along the east coast.
“Big deal”, you say. “The workers are paid and will return to the countryside where they can grow vegetables.” That is true, but the few thousand RMB in their pockets will run out after a few months and with very few other opportunities to secure an income, China’s stability is in question. These workers originally came to the city to support the family by sending back money every month, now they are returning to the countryside by the tens of millions across China. My question is, "When the money runs out what will they do?" I’m sure crime and violence will skyrocket - to what degree I can only guess - but most importantly to what degree can security be guaranteed by the central authorities outside the cities?
If there is a repeat of anything like the Great Leap Forward, where 40 million starved to death, or the Cultural Revolution, which ended barely two decades ago, it will become a society restructuring event. China today is quite a different place compared to the 1950s: the current pollution problems have made 98 per cent of water sources above ground unusable and the amount of arable land has shrunk dramatically as factories and cities now cover what was once farmland.
These bankruptcies and massive layoffs are not just single events in isolated locations, it is beginning to happen countrywide. The lag time between the events of the western banking system and the fallout here in China is approximately two months. With that said more trouble is on the way. If there is no contingency plan by the communist party for the global downturn within their own society, and if they are reacting to each event rather than planning for such events, then the China we have seen during the last 10 years will be an entirely different place in another two.
[snip]
Around Guangdong Province impromptu protests by disgruntled workers left jobless and without pay are becoming more common; they have resorted to petitioning local government officials for back pay because they have few other ways to be compensated. They will complain more and they will protest at local government offices, and you will see more demonstrations and picketing. Riots related to land grabs, bank failures, forced relocation and protests to close polluting factories were estimated at 70,000 last year, now add in this new “wave” of social movement and anything is possible.
[snip]
My gut feeling is that within three to six months we will begin to see events on a level no one has anticipated.
Clearly the situation in China is more serious than is portrayed on the financial chat shows. Large uprisings of angry Chinese citizens have already begun, the most recent last week in Longnan City, Gansu province:
Authorities in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu have imposed a curfew on some districts of Longnan city following two days of violence between security forces and local residents resisting eviction.
"The whole area is under curfew," a local official who declined to be identified said. "Any groups of more than three people will be beaten without mercy."
From: The Los Angeles Times
An angry crowd of about 2,000 rioted in China's impoverished Gansu province over a government plan to demolish a downtown area, torching cars and attacking a local Communist Party office, injuring 60 officials, state-run media reported Tuesday.
The violence 700 miles southwest of Beijing was one of the most marked instances of social unrest to grip China in recent months. It was sparked by government plans to relocate the city of Longnan's administrative center after May's devastating earthquake, according to the New China News Agency.
At one point, rioters met a surging wall of armed police officers with a hail of rocks, bricks, bottles and flowerpots. The crowd later confronted police with iron bars, axes and hoes as protesters tried to hijack a firetruck and smashed windows and office equipment in two government buildings.
Although termed a riot, insurrection against governmental mistreatment would be a more accurate term.
If the US and Europe slide deeper into recession (and perhaps even Depression) as most expect, imports from China will decline precipitously. The plunge in the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of global trade, suggests that this has already occurred. We can therefore expect more factory closings, more angry Chinese citizens and an increasingly desperate Chinese government. What will they do? What is their contingency plan?
No-one seems to know.
I don't know either, but I know what I fear: deliberate release of a biological weapon which they believe cannot be traced back to them: hypervirulent H5N1.
Monday, November 24, 2008
