Chinese suppliers raking in the cash from desperate buyers seeking medical equipment
Governments around the world including Australia are being forced to pay exorbitant prices to Chinese suppliers for medical equipment to battle COVID-19.
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Chinese medical goods suppliers are benefitting greatly from the global spread of coronavirus, demanding up to $A80,000 for much-sought ventilators needed to care for the most seriously ill.
The communist state’s supply chain for medical goods has turned into a chaotic mess for governments, hospitals and businesses around the world as they clamour to get hold of ventilators and masks and other protective gear.
Chinese factories know they are in the driver’s seat as the US and hard-hit European nations try to outbid each other in the race to get personal protective equipment (PPE) and other vital medical goods.
“In this environment, the key is doing all you can to get your goods,” Jeffrey Bernstein of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center told the Wall Street Journal.
“It’s very much a wild wild west scenario.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has long lamented the fact that the 50 states of the US and America’s federal government have all been competing against each other, as well as Europe, to get equipment from China - driving up prices to exorbitant levels.
Buyers are paying for almost everything upfront before they can get hold of the goods in the frantic jostle to get hold of medical equipment from China. In the pre-COVID-19 world, buyers usually pay for goods about a month after receiving them.
The hardest-hit countries such as the US, Italy, the UK and Spain are trying to outbid each other to get hold of ventilators that are going for as much as $A80,000.
One buyer in the US reported that he was required to put down a $A20,000 deposit before he was even given an address so he could visit a factory to inspect their goods.
In at least one case, Chinese suppliers provided addresses that turned out to be for empty warehouses.
The quality of goods coming out of China are also being questioned.
Canada is rejecting 1 million face masks purchased from China for health care workers because they did not meet filtration standards, government officials said.
The KN95 respirators - which Canadian officials consider to be a viable alternative to the N95 mask - won’t be distributed to frontline health care workers across Canada after being found to be less protective than N95 models, The Globe and Mail reports.
“To date, (the Public Health Agency of Canada) has identified approximately one million KN95 masks as non-compliant with specifications for health care settings,” spokesman Eric Morrissette said.
“These items were not distributed to provinces and territories for front-line health care response, and are subsequently being assessed for use in non-health care settings.”
Due to “intense global competition” for personal protective equipment, Canada has had to resort to buying vital medical equipment from new manufacturers. Shipments of purchased and donated supplies are then tested upon receipt, Morrissette said.
State governments in the US are not used to dealing in such a cut-throat market where speed is of the essence, usually taking part in negotiations that are transparent and can take months
to conduct in a prudent manner.
“You are often dealing with middlemen or a shell company within a shell within a shell,” Christian Mitchell, Deputy Governor of Illinois, told the Wall Street Journal.
“You have to accept the level of risk that you normally would not do on the taxpayer dollar.”
Even the federal government is finding itself having to put up huge amounts of taxpayer money in advance - without being sure of the quality of what they are getting, or whether they will actually get what they pay for.
In one case, Washington handed over $A170 million to largely unknown vendors to get hold of high-priced PPE and other equipment.
Making matters harder for buyers is that a chaotic black market is also booming.
A Chinese government spokesman said the country is providing urgently needed medical supplies to more than 150 countries and international organisations. China has introduced stricter customs regulations after complaints about low-quality Chinese PPE exports to some European countries.
WUHAN SCIENTISTS ‘DID CRAZY THINGS’ IN LAB
Wuhan scientists did “absolutely crazy things” in their laboratory which led to the creation of the deadly coronavirus, according to a leading Russian microbiologist.
But Professor Petr Chumakov said he did not think the Chinese scientists set out “with malicious intent” to create the killer virus COVID-19, reports The Sun.
“They did absolutely crazy things, in my opinion,” said Professor Chumakov, chief researcher at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow.
“In China, scientists at the Wuhan Laboratory have been actively involved in the development of various coronavirus variants for over ten years.
“Moreover, they did this, supposedly not with the aim of creating pathogenic variants, but to study their pathogenicity.”
He said the Wuhan scientists had given the virus the ability to infect human cells.
“The picture of the possible creation of the current coronavirus is slowly emerging,” he told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
“There are several inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome, which gave it special properties.
“It is interesting that the Chinese and Americans who worked with them published all their works in the open (scientific) press. I even wonder why this background comes to people very slowly.”
He said the Chinese scientists created “variants of the virus … without malicious intent’ possibly aiming for an HIV vaccine”.
CHINA FACING MULTIPLE LAWSUITS OVER COVID-19
A growing number of multi-billion dollar lawsuits are being filed against China in US federal courts over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with businesses, individuals and a state government seeking to hold Beijing liable for deaths and financial damages.
A major European newspaper has also said it’s time for China to compensate the rest of the world for the damage caused by COVID-19.
Class-action lawsuits have been filed in states including Florida, Texas and Nevada on behalf of US residents and businesses that claimed emotional distress and financial losses.
And this week, Missouri became the first state to file suit, alleging that China misled the world about how easily the virus can spread, silenced doctors who tried to sound the alarm, failed to respond adequately to the threat and then hoarded crucial medical supplies.
“COVID-19 has done irreparable damage to countries across the globe, causing sickness, death, economic disruption, and human suffering,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said, adding that Chinese leaders “must be held accountable for their actions”.
In Missouri, there are nearly 6,000 confirmed cases and at least 189 deaths.
One estimate says that coronavirus lockdowns in the state have cost Missouri $US44 billion, according to Fox News.
In Missouri’s lawsuit, it has accused China of hoarding masks and other PPE equipment.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang denounced the lawsuit as “frivolous litigation”.
“Based on the principle of sovereign equality prescribed by international law, US courts have no jurisdiction over the sovereign actions taken by Chinese governments of all levels in response to the epidemic,” he said.
While none of the lawsuits might succeed, Senator Ben Sasse, who sits on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, praised Missouri for calling attention to what he said was Beijing’s complicity in the crisis.
“The Chinese Communist Party did what authoritarians always do: they hid the truth to save their hides,” he said in a statement.
“After Americans beat this nasty virus, we’re going to hold China’s corrupt government accountable.”
Meanwhile, a leading German newspaper says China kept the “world in the dark” about the coronavirus — and should fork over $A260 billion in reparations to Berlin because of it.
Bild’s editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt questioned whether China “should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide”.
“You [President Xi Jinping], your government and your scientists had to know long ago that coronavirus is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it,” Reichelt wrote in the piece titled “What China owes us.”
CHINA ACCUSES DUTTON OF BEING US ‘PARROT’ OVER VIRUS COMMENTS
China has accused Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton of “parrotting” the US in criticising Beijing over the spread of the coronavirus as America’s standing in America fell to an all-time low in a new survey.
The response from China’s embassy in Canberra came after Mr Dutton - who was hospitalised with coronavirus last month - demanded China be more “transparent” about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask — it would certainly be demanded of us, if Australia was at the epicentre of this virus making its way into society,” Mr Dutton said.
He added: “I think it is incumbent upon China to answer those questions and provide the information, so that people can have clarity about exactly what happened because we don’t want it to be repeated.
“And, we know that this is not the first instance of a virus being spread from the wildlife wet markets and we need to be honest about that.”
The Chinese embassy in Canberra hit back, saying: “These days, certain Australian politicians are keen to parrot what those Americans have asserted and simply follow them in staging political attacks on China.
“Obviously he must have also received some instructions from Washington requiring him to co-operate with the US in its propaganda war against China. It is well known that recently some people in the US, including high-level officials, have been spreading anti-China ‘information virus’.
“Their aim is to shift blame and deflect attention by smearing China. What they have done is neither moral nor helpful to solve their own problems,” an embassy spokesman said.
Mr Dutton’s colleague Treasurer Josh Frydenberg returned serve, saying: “I think they’re unwanted and unjustified comments. And what is clear is that we maintain a good relationship at the commercial level with China.
“They’re our largest trading partner and we want that to continue. We obviously have some differences from time to time on the political and strategic levels. But, like with many countries, we make those points clear.
“But ultimately Peter Dutton’s role, the Prime Minister’s role, my role, and all our colleagues’ roles, is to defend the Australian national interest, and that’s what we’ll continue to do, and we’ll speak up about it as required.”
US CITIZENS HAVE LOWEST EVER OPINION OF CHINA: SURVEY
Negative sentiment in the US against China has risen dramatically in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a new survey has found.
And in a presidential election year, supporters of both the Republicans and the Democrats are united in their displeasure against Beijing as COVID-19 continues to cut a swath through the US.
A full two-thirds of Americans (66 per cent) have a negative view of China, according to a new Pew Research Centre survey.
This is the worst rating for the country since the Centre began asking the question in 2005 and is up nearly 20 per cent since the start of the Presidency of Donald Trump.
Americans also have no time for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
More than 70 per cent of people in the US do not have confidence in Xi to do the right thing when it comes to world affairs.
The survey also found that virtually every American - 91 per cent - see China’s power and influence as a threat to the US - and two thirds of Americans say it is a major threat.
A majority of Americans (61 per cent) says China’s environmental footprint is a very serious problem for the US and 57 per cent say that cyberattacks from China pose a very serious problem to the US.
More than half of Americans (52 per cent) say the loss of US jobs to China and the trade deficit with China (49 per cent) are very serious problems.
Asked to choose between the US, China, Japan and the countries of the European Union as the world’s leading economic power, 59 per cent of Americans choose their own country, up from 50 per cent last year.
When it comes to which country is the world’s leading military power, more than eight-in-ten Americans (83 per cent) agree that it’s the US, up 11 per cent since the question was last asked in 2016.
And more than 90 per cent say it is better for the US to be the world’s leading power than say it should be China.
Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention defended his country’s response to the pandemic, saying he never claimed there was no human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus.
“No, I never said [there’s] no human-to-human transmission in the public — never, ever,” George Gao Fu said.
“Even from the very beginning, I don’t think it’s good [to] put any scientists in a position to say there’s no human-to-human transmission because these viruses are unknown,” Gao said.
His comments come as President Trump and a number of world leaders have questioned whether China accurately reported the number of cases following the initial outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December and whether it was transparent about how the virus spreads.
Originally published as Chinese suppliers raking in the cash from desperate buyers seeking medical equipment