【Article/Observer Network Columnist Wang Rui】
Since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic last year, there have been three places where the cumulative number of confirmed cases in various parts of China has exceeded 10,000: Hubei, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The number of deaths due to the epidemic is also the largest in these three places.
As the first large-scale outbreak of the epidemic, it is not difficult to understand that Hubei has sacrificed the most. However, because of the investment in effective control and adequate treatment, the epidemic situation is almost locked in Hubei, making the epidemic situation in other provinces relatively mild. This not only ensures that the provinces can spare energy to support Hubei's fight against the epidemic, but also ensures that the entire territory of the mainland can be unsealed and production can be resumed as soon as possible.
However, Taiwan and Hong Kong, which are on the edge of the mainland and far away from Hubei, have achieved the lowest anti-epidemic results in the country.
However, capitalist Hong Kong has stopped the epidemic because of the mainland's medical resources, especially the support of the mainland vaccine. This can be seen from the fact that Hong Kong people in Taiwan have left Taiwan and returned to Hong Kong. On the contrary, Taiwan, which takes "the superiority of democratic elections" as its political call, has accumulated an epidemic prevention myth for a year and a half and has become a joke on epidemic prevention ridiculed by foreign media groups, which is surprising.
Backward results ahead of schedule
In terms of the cumulative number of deaths from infection, except for Hubei, the number of deaths in the mainland has reached more than double digits, only Henan and Heilongjiang, while the number of deaths from epidemic infection in Taiwan has exceeded 600, which is 18 times that of the combined deaths in Henan and Heihe provinces, and the multiple still has a tendency to increase.
Changes in the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Taiwan every day (Photo/ Taiwan's United News Network)
Statistics on daily new deaths in Taiwan (Photo/ Taiwan United News Network)
Hainan and Taiwan are both islands on the edge of the mainland, and they are also far from Wuhan, which is about 2.5 times the population of the former. However, as of June 26, the cumulative number of confirmed cases in Hainan was 188 and the cumulative number of deaths was 6, while the cumulative number of confirmed cases in Taiwan was 14,545, a difference of 77 times that of Hainan, and the cumulative number of deaths was 623, a difference of 104 times.
As the financial center of the mainland, Shanghai has a permanent population of 24.87 million in 2020, 1.3 million more than Taiwan. But as of June 26, the cumulative number of confirmed and cumulative deaths in Shanghai was 2199 and 7, respectively, and the number of confirmed cases was 1/7 of That of Taiwan, and the number of deaths was 1/89 of that of Taiwan.
The outbreak of the Delta variant virus in Guangzhou in late May began slightly later than the outbreak in Taiwan, and it was menacing, spreading the virus for five or six generations in 10 days. However, due to the widespread vaccination and nucleic acid testing for 18.67 million people in the city, the expansion of the epidemic has been effectively blocked. In total, it took less than a month to unseal, and only 1 person died of the epidemic.
No matter how it is compared, from the epidemic data, the severity of Taiwan is far greater than that of provinces and cities outside Hubei, and the number of infected deaths is more than that of provinces and cities outside Hubei combined. Moreover, Taiwan's data is reflected in the epidemic situation without comprehensive screening and insufficient vaccine, so there is no end in sight.
"Elected government" has no democratic accountability
Unlike government officials who have not met the anti-epidemic standards in the mainland, who will step down, the epidemic in "democratic Taiwan" has so far plagued, but no official needs to take political responsibility.
The Taiwan authorities have so far been unable to stop the epidemic, and without democratic consultation, they have simply used the bailout money of "taking from the people" to save themselves, or used the excessive tax budget to purchase vaccines and produce vaccines that have not been internationally recognized. Today, the scandal of abuses is rising in tandem with the epidemic data, and there is no corresponding effective democratic accountability.
In contrast, the mainland has successfully developed two who-approved vaccines, in addition to free supply to more than one billion people, including Hong Kong, but also more than 400 million doses of vaccines. Countries around the world have received a total of 290 billion masks, 3.5 billion protective clothing and 4.5 billion test reagents from the mainland. At the same time, the "Spring Seedling Action" to give priority vaccination to overseas Chinese citizens has also been launched in more than 150 countries, including Taiwanese who hold Taiwan compatriot certificates overseas, and more than one million people have enjoyed this service.
Medical workers vaccinate Chinese citizens at the Phong Lat District Vaccination Centre in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 20. (Data Chart/Xinhua Net)
Compared with the two, the people on the mainland would certainly not have been able to achieve such anti-epidemic results in a year and a half without the government under the leadership of the Communist Party of China; while the people of Taiwan could not enjoy adequate medical treatment, could not meet the peace of mind vaccination, and even needed entertainers, entrepreneurs and monks to donate to the people who called for help, which was caused by public opinion pointing to a corrupt and incompetent elected government.
For Taiwanese, if the epidemic is not a government factor, but in accordance with the law and efficiency of market supply and demand, then the mainland vaccine or the foreign vaccine represented by the mainland enterprise is undoubtedly the most affordable solution. But the current epidemic of mourning shows that Taiwan's neoliberal line has reached the end of the day.
To say that the sun is poor does not refer only to the ruling authorities in Taiwan, but to the corresponding mechanisms, people's hearts, and values that have reached the end of the day.
Reject the continental vaccine
As mentioned in the small discussion "Taiwan has no vaccine, but there is a spiritual victory law", the main reason for Chen Taiwan's ineffective epidemic prevention was Taiwan's bureaucratic culture and corresponding people's hearts. With the exception of a few small parties, individuals and self-media, no taiwanese official or public opinion agency is willing to confront the mainland vaccine, as if there were no WHO-certified mainland vaccine on the surface and accounted for 40% of the global share of domestic vaccination.
For more than a month, the people of Taiwan have seen and heard the endless blue-green-white new crown offensive and defensive battles every day. It seems that this epidemic is no longer their own personal affair, but a stage for the stars of party politics, and the people of Taiwan can only accept the spirit of "one life on the same island" in their own elected political personalities.
In fact, sufficient, effective and qualified vaccines are near Xiamen or Shanghai; and the combination of Chinese and Western dialectical treatment of medical prescriptions can also be taken from the experience of Wuhan in the past year and a half. But mainland medicine and vaccines are completely excluded from Taiwan's mainstream public opinion field. Clear-eyed people see that the introduction of mainland medicines and vaccines will disintegrate the anti-communist design that Taiwan has built for many years and directly hit the political foundation of the authorities - anti-communist authoritarianism.
Camus's Plague says, "The real misfortune is not despair per se, but the habit of despair." ”
Due to the long years of anti-communist authoritarianism and the spirit of the Cold War ideology, the average Taiwanese is accustomed to missing the historical, world view and values of the mainland homeland, to the political boundaries without Chinese sovereignty, and to the hierarchy of civilization in the post-colonial context. It has become a habit to ignore ignorance and not feel the misfortune of this spiritual confinement.
This habit is both the result of the anti-communist authoritarianism of the blue-green bureaucracy and the infiltration of democratic elections under the anti-communist authoritarianism. That is to say, Taiwan does not have the quality of China's political tradition, but also is limited by the Thinking of American Cold War democracy, and the Taiwanese who are unable to go to the colonial predicament can only repeatedly seek "small luck" from unfortunate habits, thus consolidating that misfortune.
A capital-driven, elected authoritarian system
Behind the anti-communist authoritarian system are both comprador capital and exclusive capital.
Since the 1970s, democratic elections with one person, one vote have gradually emerged in the United States, and the capitalists have controlled politics through this neoliberal mechanism, making elections cost more than one term, rather than the other way around. Thus, the government elected by the people serves only capital, not the people. The fact that the people have thus become slaves to capital is an alienation of "democracy".
It is worth noting that party politics under neoliberalism is only different from the messengers of capital, but capital as God and the people as slaves and believers have not fundamentally changed. Therefore, the two parties in the United States have been in power for many years, and they have not changed the tradition of American politics serving capital, and therefore have not changed the status of the people as slaves of capital, which can be best seen from the completely market-oriented medical system in the United States.
Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor who studies modern tyranny and the Holocaust, points out that under the control of private insurance companies, private hospital groups and other interest groups, the commoditized U.S. health care system is like an illegal lottery. The interests of the entire national policy serve only the few, not for the common prosperity of the majority. [1] Since the President of the United States is the messenger of capital, he naturally does not take the people and the royal way as his own responsibility, and his words are like the lines of stock price fluctuations.
The Taiwan authorities, which are the only ones to lead the United States, have also built the same "democratic" ecology. Taiwanese media found that when the stock prices of high-end vaccine companies fall, Tsai Ing-wen will inevitably come forward to shout, and the high-end stock prices have risen 10 times in a year, which is an example.
High-end vaccine stock price trend (Photo/Yahoo Chimo stock market)
Taiwan in 2021 almost replicates what Snyder described as the ecology of last year's epidemic in the United States: oppressors are always resisting the truth, and tyrants will weave sensational excuses to excuse themselves and blame others when facing disasters caused by themselves. [2]
Snyder said Trump, who refuses to screen the whole people, has moved toward authoritarianism, and authoritarian governments are characterized by concealment of the epidemic and disregard for human life. [3] These words remind people that the rejection of the screening is a manifestation of authoritarian governments concealing the epidemic and ignoring human life. This makes it understandable that after Trump's absurd performance, the number of deaths due to new crown pneumonia in the United States has exceeded 600,000 so far; in Taiwan, more than 600 people have died after the outbreak of the epidemic more than a month later.
Even so, the huge sums of money in authoritarian politics do not care for the health care and the sick as much as private fundraising; instead, authoritarian leaders allocate medical resources only according to the affinity of local chiefs and themselves, in order to demonstrate his/her power to decide the life and death of the people. Such an authoritarian government, on the other hand, comes from the result of democratic elections by one person, one vote.
Human rights in the politics of the pandemic
If there were such a government Chinese mainland 1.4 billion people, it would have caused millions of deaths in proportion to the epidemic in the United States. However, due to the Chinese government's efforts to treat those diagnosed, the total number of deaths has been cut to more than 5,000. Moreover, the number of COVID-19 vaccinations on the mainland has exceeded 1.1 billion doses so far, achieving the goal of maintaining life.
If you calculate the effectiveness of the average daily vaccination of 20 million people, it only takes one day to complete the vaccination of 85% of the people in Taiwan, without having to stage airport escapes, privileged vaccines or rushing vaccine residues.
But the reality is that Taiwanese are ordered to wait for a qualified or unqualified vaccine that will be available at some point, in accordance with the categories assigned by the authorities. The human rights of "one life on the same island" have indeed become a big obstacle that cannot be shouldered. The front page of Singapore's "New Ming Daily" features the words "500 lives are not as good as 1 dog", mocking the human rights values of the island.
Source: Social Media
Unfortunately, people accustomed to misplaced values can only trust their human rights to "elected dictatorships" governments. The votes are for the majority, and the banknotes are for the minority. The majority of the elected, the minority dictatorship, paradoxically combined on one island, forming a distorted political structure.
The bureaucracy and electoral system that serve capital use the anti-communist authoritarian power left over from history to dominate the words and deeds and three views of the Taiwanese people, so that the Taiwanese people believe that they live in the most civilized and progressive world, and the Chinese mainland is in the most backward and most authoritarian world, thus being loyal to the bureaucracy and the electoral system that serves capital. The latter can thus absorb the dividends of cross-strait exchanges, make it serve the logic of exclusive and comprador capital, and at the same time prevent the spiritual world of the Taiwanese from spilling over their political borders.
This is why the Green Camp won early last year with an excited "sense of subjugation".
The immunity effect of inner-volume democracy
Under the same bureaucracy and electoral system, the political borders of the participating parties are the same; the cheapest and most effective way to campaign is to intimidate the opponents of the political border defenses against voters. Therefore, the more the Blue Camp struggles against the "sense of subjugation", the more obedient it is to obey the operation of the Green Camp, and the result is just to take incense and worship. For more than a year, even if the "sense of doom" of the vaccine shortage comes, politicians who are obedient to party politics have not dared to make a mistake, and the Tsai government still has more than 40% of its supporters.
This political pattern and "democratic" ecology illustrate the dependence, profitability, shallowness, and cruelty of Taiwan's political character. Voters' limited political understanding and pattern, combined with a limited number of parties that can run and win, make any ruling party unwilling and unable to pursue long-term goals. The long-term political enemy is the Chinese Communist Party, but because he is not an opponent, he uses the external forces of the United States and Japan as pawns to make profits from it.
Therefore, the Taiwan authorities' usual routine is "internationalization of the cross-strait issue," and when foreign forces interfere in China's Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong issues, the Taiwan authorities are willing to lead the masses to cheer them up.
On the other hand, the internalized democratic election system and party politics itself have become mechanisms for the Taiwan authorities to exempt themselves from responsibility. Whether it is 4 years or 8 years, it is a short-term meal ticket. This has led to the ruling authorities, in a limited period of time, must first meet the interests of their own parties and minorities, without taking into account the needs of the majority, nor do they care about the long-term, overall, and popular development.
As a result, Taiwan has set aside huge budget expenditures every year, and in addition to purchasing arms and "friendship" to consolidate the spiritual fortress, the actual infrastructure construction and per capita salaries have stagnated or progress has been slow. The ruling party can arbitrarily set political issues that have nothing to do with people's livelihood and package them as achievements of democratic rule of the people, with the result that more money is spent indiscriminately and fewer people are available, which is once again spitting out in this epidemic. As for the issue of debt for future generations, it is up to the next ruling party to face it.
Therefore, in the same political structure, every election is a negation of the current ruling party, and the new ruling party also relies on the negation of the previous ruling party to win. Whether electors, candidates or political parties, they all periodically and mechanically deny the object in front of them, without having to face themselves as the object of negation. This negative exoneration mechanism guarantees elections without choice, guarantees the real negativity, and the anti-communist authoritarianism can become the political legacy of the electoral era.
The historical task of collective leadership
But what is rare in politics is affirmation and responsibility, and denial and exemption are nothing more than cheap democracy that harvests leeks. Lee Kuan Yew's political experiments in Singapore prove this.
Lee Kuan Yew, who despises Western democracy, once told the media that China's victory in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea was an important factor in his future decision to promote Chinese in Singapore. And that war also determined the different political experiments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, which has been more than 70 years old.
More than 70 years ago, the majority of the people on Chinese soil chose the young Chinese Communist Party, including Tian Fuda, Li Weiguang, Xie Xuehong, Yang Kehuang, Wang Tianqiang, and Lin Haosheng, who were invited to Tiananmen Square to pay their respects, and Taiwanese such as Xie Nanguang, a former Taiwan People's Party cadre who returned from Japan. For more than 70 years, in response to the people's choice, the people's government under the leadership of the CPC has shouldered the responsibility for the survival and development of the Chinese nation and undertaken this historical task that Taiwan society, which is accustomed to denial, is unwilling and unable to undertake.
Unlike "democratically elected dictatorship" or "authoritarian government," the CCP has chosen a centralized system of collective leadership, which is characterized by democratic centralism, which is different from the separation of powers and checks and balances and the rotation of political parties. This choice has both a historical process and a historical test, and gradually forms and perfects the collective leadership system under the specific conditions of a large number of people and a large number of people and a vast land.
Only from the facts and results can the achievements of a system be judged. Today's CCP does not sell the values or ideologies of collective leadership to the outside world, but focuses on Chinese mainland its own development. However, it is the continuous "five-year plan" under the collective leadership that can operate step by step and build the strength and effectiveness of the aforementioned anti-epidemic.
Taking the medical and health system as an example, the mainland adopts an inclusive and realistic approach to Chinese and Western medicine. The central government will collectively discuss and make decisions, uniformly dispatch manpower, material and financial resources, and be completely unaffected by domestic and foreign manufacturer capitalists or political forces. Just last year, when the traditional Chinese medicine of Wuhan Jiangxia Fangbin Hospital was effective, the combination of Chinese and Western methods was widely implemented through the mechanism of collective leadership, and no prejudice or self-interest could affect this governance decision.
It turned out that the rate of patients diagnosed with severe illness in hospitals had been significantly reduced. Thousands of years of medical tradition, through the collective leadership of a century-old political party, continue to radiate the wisdom of saving the world.
A few months later, the head of Taiwan's "legislative branch" delivered a speech at an academic forum on traditional Chinese medicine, saying that "traditional Chinese medicine" and "traditional Chinese medicine" should be renamed "Taiwan medicine" and "Taiwan medicine." This year, the outbreak of the epidemic in Taiwan has caused the number of confirmed serious cases and deaths to climb, and "Taiwan medicine" and "Taiwan medicine" are still silent.
The sound of silence should be the truest echo of this island to the CCP for a hundred years.
bibliography:
[1] Snyder, First Edition of Our Malady, translated by Liao Peixing, New Taipei City: Lianjing, December 2020, pp. 48-51.
[2] Op. 1, p. 164.
[3] Ibid., note 1, pp. 183-186.
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