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Is China hiding its real numbers?
SomeApe:
--- Quote ---Sending afflicted countries equipment that's faulty, or worse yet, contaminated with the virus.
--- End quote ---
Where did you get that from?
Vanto:
--- Quote from: SomeApe on April 06, 2020, 05:59:23 am ---
--- Quote ---Sending afflicted countries equipment that's faulty, or worse yet, contaminated with the virus.
--- End quote ---
Where did you get that from?
--- End quote ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52092395
SCarpelan:
--- Quote from: Vanto on April 06, 2020, 05:48:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: SomeApe on April 06, 2020, 05:59:23 am ---
--- Quote ---Sending afflicted countries equipment that's faulty, or worse yet, contaminated with the virus.
--- End quote ---
Where did you get that from?
--- End quote ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52092395
--- End quote ---
According to the article there are Chinese products that the countries buy directly from manufacturers and then there are other products that the Chinese government sends as aid. Majority of the products bought from Chinese companies work as intended but the amount of faulty products endangers lives and I wouldn't be surprised if it has caused unnecessary deaths. The Chinese government claims that the faulty products are ones that are directly bought from one particular company that doesn't have an official licence to produce this equipment. This claim should be suspected (and even if true, it is just more evidence of the serious corruption problem in the Chinese system) but the article doesn't provide any further context about how believable the claim is.
While I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese play down the extent of faulty products being made by Chinese companies I think the claim about the government provided products being more reliable is believable. Like the article points out, the the government sends this this aid to create goodwill and propaganda, for an individual company the point is to make money and for a shady one to make it as fast as possible. When you think about this in terms of propaganda, being vague about the difference between these two - intentionally or not - is also a way to counter the Chinese propaganda without directly lying.
By the way, there is no mention of infected equipment, just faulty ones.
Vanto:
--- Quote from: SCarpelan on April 06, 2020, 10:29:33 pm ---
--- Quote from: Vanto on April 06, 2020, 05:48:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: SomeApe on April 06, 2020, 05:59:23 am ---
--- Quote ---Sending afflicted countries equipment that's faulty, or worse yet, contaminated with the virus.
--- End quote ---
Where did you get that from?
--- End quote ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52092395
--- End quote ---
According to the article there are Chinese products that the countries buy directly from manufacturers and then there are other products that the Chinese government sends as aid. Majority of the products bought from Chinese companies work as intended but the amount of faulty products endangers lives and I wouldn't be surprised if it has caused unnecessary deaths. The Chinese government claims that the faulty products are ones that are directly bought from one particular company that doesn't have an official licence to produce this equipment. This claim should be suspected (and even if true, it is just more evidence of the serious corruption problem in the Chinese system) but the article doesn't provide any further context about how believable the claim is.
While I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese play down the extent of faulty products being made by Chinese companies I think the claim about the government provided products being more reliable is believable. Like the article points out, the the government sends this this aid to create goodwill and propaganda, for an individual company the point is to make money and for a shady one to make it as fast as possible. When you think about this in terms of propaganda, being vague about the difference between these two - intentionally or not - is also a way to counter the Chinese propaganda without directly lying.
By the way, there is no mention of infected equipment, just faulty ones.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I think I misremembered an article about some tests that were contaminated with the virus. I've seen some claims that the parts that were infected may have been made in China, but it seems like that's merely a theory since we don't know how it happened yet. There's also a viral video that purports to show a worker in a Chinese mask factory deliberately wiping his shoes with masks meant for export, but that hasn't been confirmed as genuine yet, IIRC.
Not sure where you're getting the "Chinese government aid isn't having these problems", though. To quote the article:
--- Quote ---On Saturday, the Dutch health ministry announced it had recalled 600,000 face masks. The equipment had arrived from a Chinese manufacturer on 21 March, and had already been distributed to front-line medical teams.
Dutch officials said that the masks did not fit and that their filters did not work as intended, even though they had a quality certificate,
"The rest of the shipment was immediately put on hold and has not been distributed,” a statement read. “Now it has been decided not to use any of this shipment.”
Spain’s government encountered similar problems with testing kits ordered from a Chinese company.
It announced it had bought hundreds of thousands of tests to combat the virus, but revealed in the following days that nearly 60,000 could not accurately determine if a patient had the virus.
The Chinese embassy in Spain tweeted that the company behind the kits, Shenzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology, did not have an official license from Chinese medical authorities to sell its products.
It clarified that separate material donated by the Chinese government and technology and retail group Alibaba did not include products from Shenzhen Bioeasy.
Turkey also announced that it had found some testing kits ordered from Chinese companies were not sufficiently accurate, although it said that some 350,000 of the tests worked well.
--- End quote ---
All I'm seeing is Chinese government claims that some faulty testing kits bought by Spain were made by a company that didn't actually have a license to sell them. Since Turkey says Chinese companies, plural, we can't assume Shenzhen is the only problem.
SCarpelan:
I misread a bit. The Chinese claim about one particular company being at fault was specifically about the unreliable testing kits, not all the faulty equipment as I first understood. Even considering that, I said that the claim should be suspected and criticised the article for not giving other context - like asking the buyers if the faulty kits really were from that company or not.
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