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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/world-leaders-must-demand-answers-on-covid-19-origins/

G7 leaders should use their collective power to demand answers from the Chinese Communist Party on the coronavirus.

After a year and a half of stonewalling, destruction of evidence, and lies by the Chinese government, a growing chorus of international opinion is demanding a full and transparent investigation into the origins of COVID-19. As G7 leaders gather in Cornwall this weekend for the annual summit, they have the opportunity — and arguably an obligation — to use their collective power to demand answers from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and prevent future pandemics.

Early in 2020, a three-line whip was essentially imposed across the scientific, public-health, and political establishments, holding that the novel coronavirus likely emerged through zoonotic transfer. Despite the many scientific and circumstantial holes in this explanation, the alternative hypothesis that COVID-19 may have spread via a lab accident from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — located at the epicenter of the initial outbreak — was dismissed as a fringe theory. The zoonotic hypothesis also happened to be the preferred explanation of the CCP, which vigorously pushed this narrative while silencing its scientists, destroying evidence, and stage-managing the World Health Organization (WHO) investigation.

Now that an increasing number of scientists, reporters, and political figures are finally taking the lab-leak hypothesis seriously, elected leaders owe their citizens answers about the who, when, where, how, and why of the origins of COVID-19.

The G7 countries should launch a joint investigation into the origins of the virus to complement the ongoing Five Eyes inquiries. Countries such as Japan, Germany, France, and Italy with world-class intelligence services and medical-research institutions can share the benefits of their expertise and their insights on China. France’s cooperation is particularly important. After all, the French built the BSL-4 laboratory for advanced pathogenetic research on viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Undoubtedly, the French know many of the most sensitive secrets regarding this facility and the personnel inside the WIV, with whom they previously collaborated, and can do a great deal to help solve this mystery.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/06/china-can-help-us-out-of-its-inflation-trap/

NEW YORK – “Goods produced by China’s hundreds of millions of workers are a strong anchor for stabilizing global inflation” read the banner headline at China’s “Observer” (guancha.cn) website June 10, quoting People’s Bank of China official Guo Shuqing, the Communist Party representative at the central bank.

The “Observer” site frequently floats trial balloons for China’s top policymakers.

Guo dismissed the reassurances of Western central bankers and offered an alarming assessment of inflation risk: “Inflation is coming as scheduled. Moreover, the magnitude is higher than the expectations of central bankers in the United States and Europe, and the duration of inflation does not seem to be as short as many experts predict.”

He added, “When fiscal expenditures are already largely supported by the central bank’s printing of money, it is like an airplane entering tailspin, and it is difficult to pull out of the dive. Before 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet was only more than US$800 billion, and now it is nearly $8 trillion, and the ratio of US federal debt to GDP has surpassed the highest record created during World War II.”

Nonetheless, Guo argued, China can help: “For a considerable period of time, China has supplied about half of the world’s finished goods, and on the whole has not increased export prices, laying a solid foundation for global epidemic prevention and control, and for economic recovery. If the large amounts of currency issued by the most developed countries have been the driving force for global inflation, then the goods produced by China’s hundreds of millions of workers are the anchor for stabilizing global inflation.”

Beijing is sending a message to Washington: You have a big problem with inflation, and we can help – in return for other consideration. China and the United States had a tacit deal during the 2000s: You buy our goods, and we invest the proceeds in US Treasury securities. That kept US interest rates artificially low during the housing bubble years.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-new-power-play-more-control-of-tech-companies-troves-of-data-11623470478?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Shortly after rising to power in late 2012, Xi Jinping made his first company visit in his new job as China’s Communist Party chief, to Tencent Holdings Ltd. There, he raised a topic that has become both an opportunity and a challenge for his rule: the vast troves of personal data being gathered by the country’s technology companies.

Mr. Xi complimented Tencent’s founder, Pony Ma, on the way the company was accumulating information from millions of users, and harnessing that data to drive innovation. He also suggested that data would be useful to Beijing.

“You have the most sufficient data, then you can make the most objective and accurate analysis,” he told Mr. Ma, according to state media accounts. “The suggestions to the government in this regard are very valuable.”

More than eight years later, those suggestions are becoming demands. The government is now calling on big tech companies like Tencent, online retailing giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. to open up the data they collect from social media, e-commerce and other businesses, according to official documents and interviews with people involved in policy-making.

The complex new web of laws and regulations around sharing digital records is being driven by the huge growth in data held by China’s tech giants—and a belief that the government should be able to access it. The efforts are also part of Mr. Xi’s quest to rein in the increasingly powerful tech sector, which has pushed back on some of Beijing’s previous data-sharing efforts. The most recent law, passed Thursday, will make it harder for companies to resist such requests.

China’s leaders worry that the country’s tech giants could be using their extensive personal and corporate digital records to build alternative power centers in the one-party state. That concern led Mr. Xi to halt a planned initial public offering by Jack Ma’s financial-technology behemoth Ant Group Co. late last year.

Chinese government entities involved in the effort to regulate data, including the State Council and the Cyberspace Administration of China, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Beijing is also intensifying the pressure on foreign firms operating in China to keep records gathered from local customers inside the country, so the government has more authority over the records. Western companies have long complained such “data-localization” requirements could stifle innovation in their global operations or enable Chinese authorities to steal their proprietary information.