Chinese Officials Covered up Disease Accident; Sun Rose at Dawn Today

Chinese officials admitted that thousands of people were infected with brucellosis last year after bacteria escaped from a vaccine factory in the Gansu Province's Lanzhou City, but the official story still has some loose ends that raise questions.

News media such as CNN are reporting the story spun by official Chinese news media: that the Lanzhou Health Commission confirmed 3,245 people contracted brucellosis and an additional 1,401 have tested positive. The infections were attributed to bacteria that drifted from a vaccine factory's exhaust to a nearby veterinary research institute. The factory was blamed for using disinfectant that was past its use-by date. Some infections occurred more than a year ago--in July-August 2019--but the crisis peaked and was first publicized in December 2019. 

Brucellosis is a bacterial disease that primarily affects livestock. It is not known to be transmissible from human to human. Brucellosis can have debilitating effects on humans if not treated immediately, and is sometimes called "lazy man's disease."

It seems an odd coincidence that the brucellosis bacteria happened to drift into a Chinese Academy of Sciences veterinary institute where research on livestock diseases like brucellosis are one of the chief activities. The official explanation is that the veterinary institute is 500 meters downwind of the factory. Does the wind always blow in one direction?

According to a Caixin news report published by Nikkei Asian Review, ten residential communities with 10,000 people are with 1 km of the vaccine factory. Caixin said positive test results were found for 2,500 people residing near the factory, 213 at the veterinary institute, just 8 at the factory, and 150 who lived further from the factory. Caixin interviewed a husband, wife and son at the institute who were all infected. A member of the cleaning staff said 6 of her 23 co-workers tested positive and others who became ill were not tested. A YouTube video interviewed infected people and displayed many papers showing positive test results.

Reporting on the brucellosis infections last December focused on the lab that conducts animal disease research. A story previously reported by Nature and Chinese news media in December 2019 said that 96 staff and students at the veterinary institute were infected with brucellosis. A second cluster of infections reported that same month at a veterinary lab 2600 km away in Harbin was linked to the Lanzhou lab. 

According to the Baidu description of the incident, four students working in the foot and mouth disease lab in the Lanzhou institute tested positive for brucellosis November 28-29, 2019. Nature reported a Beijing News article that said the brucellosis infection was discovered after large numbers of lab mice became infertile. Caixin also reported that concern was prompted by infections of mice and lab workers. How did mice in cages inside a laboratory get infected by bacteria floating in the air outdoors?

The December 2019 Beijing News article reported that testing to investigate the source of the brucellosis infections was focused on the laboratory, lab animals and the facility where the lab animals were housed. Beijing News faulted students for failing to wear masks and take other precautions. There was no mention of the vaccine factory.

Lanzhou pharmaceutical factory shown by a YouTube video.

Also in December 2019, Heilongjiang's health commission reported that 13 students at the Harbin veterinary research institute tested positive for brucellosis. Two students told Chinese news media outlet The Paper they had worked as interns at the Lanzhou lab during their summer vacation. Again, the infections were linked to the laboratory.

According to the U.S. CDC, brucellosis is most often transmitted to humans by consuming unpasteurized milk from infected cattle, sheep or goats. CDC says breathing in the bacteria is also a possible source of infection, and this risk is generally greater for people who work in laboratories. Nature said neither of the institutes in Lanzhou and Harbin responded to requests for comments on the infections and their safety procedures. 

In reporting the story last week, China's Global Times also noted that provincial and municipal health officials had declined to comment on the brucellosis incident. According to Caixin, "Patients said doctors seemed inexplicably reluctant to issue brucellosis diagnoses or to quickly order aggressive treatments." Lanzhou officials claimed the infections were from diluted bacteria counts that would have little impact on infected victims, but a local doctor interviewed by Caixin said his hospital received over 100 patients with "relatively severe" symptoms last December. Caixin said half of 40 people living near the Lanzhou vaccine factory they interviewed were suffering symptoms from brucellosis a year after the first infections. Only two had been officially diagnosed with brucellosis.

Chinese officials have displayed a clear pattern of covering up disease outbreaks. Why did Chinese officials cover up this incident? Perhaps a story about careless procedures by personnel working with dangerous pathogens would have reinforced the hypothesis that covid-19 was accidentally released from the lab in Wuhan by similarly careless procedures?

China's Ag Imports Up 13% Despite Pandemic, as of July

The Agricultural Trade Promotion Center of China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs reported that China's agricultural imports for January-July 2020 totaled $96.2 billion, up 13 percent from the same period a year earlier. The increase came despite an economic slowdown and logistics disruptions during this year's covid-19 pandemic. China's agricultural exports totaled $41.9 billion, down 3.3 percent from a year earlier. The Center did not report trade numbers for individual trading partners.

Livestock products were the largest component of agricultural imports reported by the Center. The $28.3-billion livestock total exceeded the $23.8-billion value of oilseed imports for the first time.

The 42.2-percent increase in livestock import value was stimulated by the country's huge meat supply deficit after last year's African swine fever epidemic decimated China's swine herd. China has a net trade surplus for vegetables and aquatic products, but imports exceeded imports for all other major categories of agricultural products. Imports of cereal grains are also up 45 percent so far in 2020, but their $4.2-billion value was much lower than that of livestock and oilseed imports.

Aquatic product imports fell 10 percent so far this year, reflecting a drop in trade during China's peak pandemic months and Chinese authorities' assertion that frozen salmon, shrimp and other seafood can transmit the covid-19 virus. The value of China's cotton imports is down 31 percent this year, due to a textile industry slowdown.

The quantity of meats and soybeans imported rose significantly. China imported nearly 2.5 million metric tons of pork in the first seven months of 2020, up 150 percent from a year earlier. Imports of pork offal totaled 837,000 metric tons, up a more modest 26.6 percent. Beef imports of 1.2 million metric tons were up 41.5 percent from last year. The Center did not report poultry imports. Mutton imports were steady and milk powder imports were down 3 percent.

Soybean imports totaled 55 million metric tons for January-July, up 17.6 percent from 2019. Imports of edible oils were steady at 6 million metric tons. The volume of soybean oil, sunflower oil, and rapeseed oil imports were up this year, but palm oil imports fell by nearly 20 percent. 

China's wheat imports more than doubled to near 4.3 million metric tons, and corn imports increased 30.7 percent to 4.57 million metric tons. Sorghum imports rebounded to 2.3 million metric tons, but imports of DDGS are just 31,000 metric tons so far in 2020. Cotton imports by volume were down 21.7 percent this year and imports of cotton yarn were down 12.3 percent. 

China's imports of major agricultural commodities,  January-July 2020
Commodity	Imports	Change
	1000 mt	Percent
Wheat	4,285	120.0
Corn	4,570	30.7
Rice	1,384	-2.6
Barley	2,855	-15.7
Sorghum	2,294	940.0
DDGS	31	-29.8
Cassava	2,227	1.3
Cotton	1,092	-21.7
Cotton yarn	1,037	-12.3
Sugar	1,557	3.5
Soybeans	55,135	17.6
Rapeseed	1,767	-14.0
Palm oil	3,104	-19.8
Rapeseed oil	1,069	19.5
Sunflower oil	1,113	70.4
Soybean oil	520	32.6
Pork	2,498	150.0
Pork offal	837	26.6
Beef	1,202	41.5
Mutton	243	-0.1
Milk powder	853	-3.3

China's collectives "at a low level of development" after 70 years

If you're thinking about starting a socialist country, you might want to take note: after 70 years of socialism, China's elite Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) has pronounced that, 

"the rural collective economy is still at a low level of development [italics added], its development is uneven, and it lacks sustainability and profitability."

The comments were made at a Beijing forum on CASS's Rural Development Report in preparation for writing the 14th five-year plan for 2021-25. 

The report's unusually candid assessment identified rural problems and "contradictions" that include weak farming incentives, difficulty achieving sustainable income growth, growing divisions within villages, and an aging population. CASS noted that a 135-million-metric-ton shortfall in grain supplies is projected for 2025, rural industry is unprofitable, business financing is inadequate, rural services are lacking, a rural garbage disposal problem is mounting, and soil and water resources are degraded by both industrial and agricultural pollution. The Chinese countryside lacks quality workers and business leaders, and rural youngsters are ignorant of both science and rural family traditions. Some villages are controlled by outsiders, and rural China has failed to develop a new value system to maintain a stable society, the CASS report said.

You may recall that the main selling point of the 1949 Chinese communist revolution was a "land reform" that seized land from exploitative landlords and gave it to poor peasants. Now the CASS report says China must "explore diverse types of rural collective economy reforms like land share-holding cooperative mechanisms...and forms of ownership that form alliances with society and capital." This means that village collectives need to adopt business forms that mimic capitalist corporations. In "alliances with society and capital" gargantuan urban-based businesses and banks are expected to take some of the billions they have been allowed to accumulate in cities and stock exchanges and sprinkle it over the villages. 

After 60-plus years of rural collectives, Chinese communists are now working on how to re-alienate villagers from the land. The Ministry of Agriculture is working on "pilot" programs to "clarify" rights to collective land and other village property in 442 counties. Their strategy is to make collectives operate more like capitalist companies by consolidating tiny family plots into large tracts, issuing shares to villagers, then inviting in companies to operate the assets and pay dividends to rural shareholders. The villagers, in effect, become landlords who rent out their land to be farmed by a company, but the deal is made by village officials or movers and shakers who often have a much larger financial interest in the venture than the common villagers. In many cases, the company hires the villagers as wage laborers. 

Village collective asset property right reforms facilitate leasing out land to companies. Source: Xinhua/CCTV.

"Farmer cooperatives," another favorite of socialists around the world, are described in the CASS report as "weak, small, and scattered." The CASS report echoes an earlier 2017 CASS survey of cooperatives with its complaints that many farmer cooperatives are empty shells, "zombies," or dormant, with a divergence of interests between cooperative leaders and the common members. The CASS survey--conducted a decade after the "farmer cooperative law" was enacted--administered questionnaires to over 600 cooperatives and to government departments overseeing them in 12 counties. The survey found that more than half of farmer cooperatives were empty shells in some regions. 

White-shirted horde of Beijing officials invaded Inner Mongolia last month to explain how agribusiness behemoths can "guide" farmer cooperatives. Source: China Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

The 2007 farmer cooperative law allowed farmer cooperatives to register as business entities, permitted companies to be members, and waived taxes for farm products sold by co-ops. The CASS task force found that in many instances an individual gathered up ID cards of farmers to set up a cooperative in order to collect subsidies and tax breaks. Some companies rebranded themselves as "cooperatives" to collect the subsidies. Many farmer cooperatives are branches of agribusiness companies that sell raw materials tax-free. Orders given to local officials to increase the number of cooperatives contributed to the "zombie cooperative" phenomenon. The CASS report found that cooperatives were easy to start but never shut down. The report called for a mechanism to close dormant cooperatives. Last year, Vice Minister of Agriculture Han Jun's new idea was to double down on the model that created the problem by choosing 30 counties where communist officials would set up lots of model farmer cooperatives with even more financial subsidies. 

In a manifestation of the "alliance with society and capital" model, last month the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced an initiative whereby gargantuan state-owned enterprises with lots of money but no practical farming experience adopt farmer cooperatives as village outposts of their businesses. The chairmen of State-owned behemoths Sinochem and COFCO and the sprawling postal savings bank joined Vice Minister Han Jun in Inner Mongolia to promote Sinochem's initiative to help farmer cooperatives by setting up village service centers that sell seeds, fertilizer and farm chemicals, offer training and financial services. Sinochem has turned 580 "farmer cooperatives" into its village service centers.  

Sinochem "cooperative service center" in Sichuan Province offers seed, fertilizer, farm chemicals and training. Source: Chuanbao Guancha.