A Bear in the China Shop

A Bear in the China Shop

Right now there is an area of central China that is quarantined with its residents “blocked” from exiting and all entrances and goods for it are closely monitored to and from the province of Hubei and specifically the large cities of Wuhan and Huanggang. Over twenty million people are inside the quarantined zone. To put that into perspective, that is more than the population of the entire country of Chile or the Netherlands.

We have now crossed the official threshold (there is good cause to suspect that the Chinese government is understating the statistics) of 1,000 deaths and a suspected 100,000 people infected. On a recent day we hit a new high (maybe better termed a “low”) of 97 deaths. That is now breaching the levels set by various prior epidemics including SARS and bird flu. Of course it pales by comparison to the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic that did in an estimated 50-100 million people. Just the fact that the range of reported deaths is so broad gives us a clear reminder of how far we have come with public health management. It’s hard to claim we are worried about every soul on the planet if we can’t even count them. As the business expression coined by management guru Peter Drucker goes, “what gets measured, gets managed”.

The economic impact of the crisis is getting lots of attention in an ever-increasing set of corners of the world. The cruise ship industry, a business that has been booming of late, taking advantage of the aging Baby Boomer population of the world who wants to see it from a safe and comfortable distance from their onboard suites. Previous shipborne epidemics of Legionnaires Disease and other nasty viruses can and have run through the closed-loop systems of onboard food preparation and onboard ventilation and air management systems. We’ve taken a few cruises (three ocean cruises through the Baltic’s, Coastal Alaska and to Australia/ New Zealand and one Blue Danube River Cruise) and the one thing I recall vividly is the number of hand sanitizer stations that there are at every dining and drinking location as well as when you are getting on and off the boat. The cruise industry understands the devastating cost to business and reputation of having epidemic problems associated with their service.

China has already seen its growth miracle slow from prodigious 9% levels to 6% of late. Some are suggesting that this Coronavirus Pandemic is likely to bring that growth level for the first half of 2020 and perhaps all of 2020 down to zero. Given that China is now the third largest economy in the world and gaining steam fast on Japan for the runner-up spot to the U.S., this growth collapse is a major problem for the entire world. Markets are already reacting well beyond the obvious affect on the Chinese markets themselves. Add to that the hidden bomb in the China economic future, the dramatically slowing population growth (thank you one-child policy), and you have a recipe for a difficult future for the Sino-Giant.

We see Donald Trump beating his chest about hammering Huawei for national security reasons and slamming the trade imbalance by foisting tariffs onto the sleeping giant. What we should be worried about is what China is likely to be forced into doing now that it’s leaders cannot so dependably rely on the economy as their salvation with an over-controlled and put-upon electorate. I heard an analogy that struck me as quite poignant. It is said that China as a geopolitical power is quite brittle. I like that term because it envisages a delicacy that goes with fine china and crystal. By brittle, they mean that beneath the surface of an apparently placated 1.3 billion Chinese lies a group of people only calmed by the benefits of massive economic growth. Imagine the robust Hong Kong riots and now imagine them across all of China. Now dust off that old course in Far Eastern History (oh, that’s right, you didn’t ever take that course because we Americans focus ethnocentrically on Western Civilization courses) and remember the Taiping Rebellion that took place while we were busy Civil Warring ourselves. We killed off 620,000 of our own while the Manchu and Qing Dynasties with their Xiang Army waged the bloodiest war in human history, killing 20 million Chinese. We know about the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 when we Westerners got cast out of China and think that was bloody (remember the movie The Sandpiper with Steve McQueen?), but that was like an aftershock following the 9.9 Richter scale event of the Taiping Rebellion. That’s how brittle China can be.

President-for-Life Xi is venturing out into mainland China, wearing his mask and admonishing people to forego handshaking. What he is not doing is what all autocrats and dictators are good at not doing, and that’s taking responsibility (a.k.a. Blame) for the current fiasco despite comments from the World Health Organization (Who? No, WHO) that this contagion could have been much better controlled if the government had not taken a “shoot the messenger” approach to management of the country. Meanwhile, of course, we are learning nothing from this in our country as Donald Trump takes no blame for anything and doubles down by saying everything he and his team do is perfect. Oh, yes, and he has started his very own “shoot the messenger” program starting with Lt. Colonel Vindman and his completely innocent brother. Have we, as a country, no ability to look around at the mistakes and warnings of others and learn from them? Apparently not.

It is being suggested that we are at risk of Xi taking the “wag the dog” program to a whole new level. It’s one thing for Trump to move into threatening Syria and Iran in order to distract from his impeachment inquiry and trial, but wait until we see what a fully-fledged autocrat like Xi does when confronted by 1.3 billion mad Chinese who can no longer buy the G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip that their one darling child desperately needs. Xi is all too likely to start by calling up his pal in Pyongyang, Mr. Kim Jong-Un and saying something like, “you start a diversion to focus the South Koreans (now that they are flush with their Oscar glitter) and the Japanese (who are too old to fight anyway), and I’ll screw with Trump’s head by taking off tariffs and moving into the South China Sea to blow up something and give a big Belt & Road loan to the Ayatollah for Russian missiles.” That is a very big tail on a modest-sized dog that will nonetheless bite Donald in his not insubstantial ass. And all in an election year to boot. What could be finer for the man who has everything, but wants to get 1.3 billion people off his back.

Yesterday I heard that the first reported case of Coronavirus has hit San Diego. Oh, goodie. And NYU, my prior medical provider, has sent me an email telling me all about the virtues of virtual urgent care. In other words, if you have a cough and a fever, send us an email but DON’T come in here. They say that the Coronavirus came from bats and then went to something called a pangolin (looks like a Komodo Dragon). The hoi palloi of Wuhan apparently eat pangolins. Yuuck. As for me, given the coming economic storm from the East, I like to think of this all as a Bear in the China Shop. The trick is not to try to wrestle the bear or shoot it or chase it (Don Jr. and Eric please put your elephant guns down) This is the time for diplomatic coaxing and feeding of that nasty bear until we are sure our brittle china is safe from harm. Donald has learned to mollify the Russian Bear, so maybe he can learn how to handle the Sino Bear.