US Taxpayers are the biggest funder
of the World Health Organization
But it’s rife with corruption
And it’s done some sketchy things
When it comes to China’s coronavirus outbreak
This is China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
When the world is threatened by an outbreak
of a deadly coronavirus from China,
who you gonna call....
No, WHO. The World Health Organization.
I can see how that could be confusing.
Let’s just stick with “W.H.O.”
And I can see how the W.H.O.’s response to the coronavirus
could also be confusing,
because it’s hard to understand how
the main global organization charged with handling it
could have screwed up so badly.
The World Health Organization is a United Nations body
concerned with world health.
At least supposedly.
But it turns out,
corruption in the agency is putting lives at risk.
By now it’s a recognized fact the Chinese Commuinst Party
has used a two step solution to deal with the coronavirus.
Step One—cover it up.
They arrested whistleblowing doctors and journalists.
And state-run media
either kept numbers of infections impossibly low,
or didn’t report on it at all.
But after weeks of coverup
allowed the virus to spread across China
and around the world,
it became too big to cover up.
So then, step two: authoritarian crackdown!
The Chinese regime has quarantined much of Hubei province,
where the outbreak began.
It’s the largest quarantine in human history,
with tens of millions of people affected.
And now much of the rest of the country is under lockdown as well.
Now you might be thinking,
a quarantine makes sense right?
Except on this ginormous scale,
it doesn’t actually work well.
It’s been authoritarian,
heavy handed,
and often arbitrary—
varying from one village or city to another.
And this has made Chinese people lose trust in their government.
Some people look for ways to escape the quarantine zones.
And many don’t report to authorities when they get sick,
because the consequences could include
being put in a quarantine center
next to hundreds of other sick people.
In some cases people have said that the quarantine centers
don’t have enough medical staff or even food.
According to an expert at the University of Edinburgh,
“The way Chinese authorities have gone about it is quite dangerous
because you actually start to erode that trust in the government.
You want citizens coming forward and saying:
I feel unwell.”
The Chinese Communist Party is getting slammed
with international criticism
for how they handled the coronavirus.
But guess who hasn’t been criticizing them?
The World Health Organization.
In fact, the W.H.O. has been praising
how the Communist Party has handled it.
This is the director general of the W.H.O., Tedros Adhanom,
meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping three weeks ago.
At the time, Tedros said,
“We appreciate the seriousness
with which China is taking this outbreak,
especially the commitment from top leadership,
and the transparency they have demonstrated.”
He also said,
“China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”
Hmmm... Detaining activists who criticize Xi Jinping?
Technically, that is a new standard for outbreak response.
Anyway, Tedros lavished praise on China,
despite the fact that “it took nearly two weeks for the agency t
o get a go-ahead from China to send even an advance team,
which arrived in Beijing on February 10,
to discuss a joint mission.”
Tedros’s praise of China has been so lavish,
he’s been featured repeatedly in Chinese state-run media,
like this video from the People’s Daily.
China took actions massively at the epicenter,
at the source of the outbreak.
This is heroic.
The actions of China are making us safer.
Maybe it’s just me,
but I don’t feel a whole lot safer.
And, keep in mind,
Tedros was praising China’s authoritarian response to the virus
at the same time he was criticizing other countries,
especially the US,
for travel bans to and from China.
"There is no reason for measures
that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade.
We call on all countries to implement decisions
that are evidence-based and consistent."
Good thing no one listened to him.
Major world airports set up screening procedures
for travelers who had recently been to China.
Many airlines simply stopped flights to and from China.
You know, it’s not a great thing
when people ignore the main global organization
that’s meant to advise everyone on health crises.
Tedros also said in an interview
that the quarantine of tens of millions of people in China
is consistent with the WHO’s regulations
that call for “the least intrusive measures possible
and strong protection for freedom of movement
and other human rights.”
Least intrusive?
I would hate to see what the W.H.O. actually considers intrusive.
Incidentally, Tedros was a leader
in Ethiopia’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
That’s “a wing of the ruling Marxist-rooted
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front.
He served the violently repressive regime
as minister of foreign affairs
from 2012 to 2016,
after a stint as health minister.”
So I would really hate to see what Tedros considers intrusive.
Though he did say,
“I think that human rights and so on should be respected.”
Yeah, human rights and so on, yada yada yada.
But Tedros isn’t the only one in the W.H.O.
who’s praising the Chinese Communist Party’s
response to the coronavirus.
Another W.H.O. representative recently told a panel,
“The people of China feel protected...
We all need to take a step back and admire what’s happened.”
Remember Peter Humphrey,
the British private investigator
who was jailed in China in 2013?
“He had been drugged,
chained to a chair,
locked in a cage
and then made to read out a statement written by the police
in front of the cameras.
The anchor who presented the footage, James Chau,
is now a goodwill ambassador with the World Health Organization.”
This kind of praise for China has been going on for years.
This statement from former W.H.O. Director General Margaret Chan
says “In the eyes of the world,
China is increasingly seen as a model
for development at many levels.”
China has lifted, “millions of its people out of poverty.”
And “China is extremely fortunate to have a President
who has made health the centre of all government policies.”
And if the people don’t want to be healthy,
sometimes you just have to force them.
Incidentally, “Beijing backed the appointment of Margaret Chan,
a former director of health in Hong Kong,
as WHO director-general from 2006 to 2017.”
But beyond just praise,
the Chinese regime seems incredibly successful at
getting the W.H.O. to bow down to its claims over Taiwan.
In case you don’t know,
Taiwan is a sovereign country
with its own government, military, and currency.
But the Chinese regime considers it part of China.
And China has used its influence in the W.H.O. to keep Taiwan out.
Here’s a speech given at a W.H.O. meeting last year.
“There is simply no principled basis why Taiwan should not be here …
The only reason that it is not here now
is because the government in Beijing
does not like the current government in Taiwan.”
And yet Taiwan is not allowed to join
the World Health Organization as a member state.
Or even as an observer.
And that puts Taiwan’s population of 23 million people at risk.
“Taiwan’s exclusion from the W.H.O.
leaves its population vulnerable during this crisis—
a lack of direct and timely channels to the W.H.O.
have already resulted in inaccurate reporting of cases in Taiwan.”
Taiwan has repeatedly complained that China and the W.H.O.
aren’t sharing information about the coronavirus outbreak with them.
That’s also what happened back in 2003
when the deadly SARS epidemic broke out in China.
Besides putting 23 million Taiwanese lives at risk,
that also affects the 50 million foreign travelers
who pass through Taiwan’s airports every year.
They might assume the W.H.O. is taking care of things.
They would be wrong.
In fact, the W.H.O. can’t even figure out what to call Taiwan.
Last month a W.H.O. spokesman called it China, Taiwan.
And then “a February 4 report flipped it and listed ‘Taiwan, China,’
but got the number of cases wrong,
relying on data from Beijing not Taipei.”
Now the W.H.O. don’t even mention Taiwan.
They recently called it “Taipei and environs”
in a list of affected cities in China.
Why does China have this kind of influence
over the World Health Organization?
It turns out, the W.H.O. is horribly corrupt.
An audit revealed
“There has been a surge in internal corruption allegations
across the whole of the organisation,
with the detection of multiple schemes
aimed at defrauding large sums of money
from the international body.”
That included, an “upsurge of internal complaints of corruption,
fraud and even sexual harassment
from across the 7,000-strong organisation,
overwhelming an internal team
of four full-time investigators and two consultants.”
And yet, the division of the W.H.O.
responsible for handling the coronavirus outbreak,
“is so chronically underfunded it has repeatedly been found to pose
a "severe" and "unacceptable" level of hazard.”
Great! So some people in the W.H.O.
are scamming loads of money and getting rich,
while the coronavirus team is way underfunded.
Maybe that’s why the W.H.O. delayed issuing
a global emergency over the coronavirus—
even though human to human transmission
had already been confirmed.
Or maybe it’s because of China’s role as a donor to the W.H.O.
After this 2017 meeting between Tedros
and high-level Chinese leaders,
the W.H.O got a big new financial contribution from China.
China also wants to build an 80 million dollar headquarters
for the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Guess where they want to build it?
In Ethiopia!
Wow, what a coincidence that that’s Tedros’ home country!
The US is pretty sure it will be used for spying.
But “China’s importance to the WHO
derives not so much as a current donor
but as a future source of funds and a partner
with which to tackle the biggest global health problems.”
Well, China’s got the money.
And 20% of the world’s population.
But is the ruling Communist Party really a good
“partner with which to tackle the biggest global health problems?”
A lot of health experts are furious at the W.H.O.
for their praise of China’s response to the coronavirus,
and their delay in issuing a global emergency.
According to Lawrence Gostin,
a professor of global health law at Georgetown University
who also provides technical assistance to the WHO,
“We were deceived...
Myself and other public health experts,
based on what the World Health Organization and China were saying,
reassured the public that this was not serious,
that we could bring this under control.”
Allegations of corruption in the W.H.O. are nothing new.
In 2017, this exposé from the Associated Press
found that nearly half of the W.H.O.’s 2 billion dollar budget
went to first-class airfare and five-star hotels.
The United States is the largest contributor:
US taxpayers fund about quarter of the W.H.O.’s budget.
And get this—
that “doesn’t include costs often covered
by host countries seeking to curry favor,
which are off W.H.O.’s books.”
And if you know anything about the Chinese Communist Party
and how they buy influence,
it’s often by spending on lavish trips.
Now there’s no evidence that’s what happened with the W.H.O.
I’m just a bit concerned,
you know, what with all the corruption and boot licking.
Especially because the W.H.O. relies on
the “funding and the cooperation of members to function,
giving wealthy member states like China considerable influence.”
So I know right now you’re probably
pretty worried about getting accurate information
about the coronavirus outbreak.
Fear not!
“[The] WHO is also battling misinformation,
working with Google to ensure that people get facts
from the U.N. health agency first
when they search for information about the virus.”
And that’s why below this video on YouTube—
a platform owned by Google—
you’ll see a link to the W.H.O.,
the most trustworthy source of coronavirus information.
They put it there automatically.
I can’t remove it.
Of course, if that’s not enough
to point your opinion in the “correct” direction,
YouTube has also demonetized almost every video
I and everyone else on YouTube
has published about the coronavirus.
You know, to discourage us all
from even talking about it outside the official channels.
But what Google, YouTube, the WHO, and China
didn’t count on was the amazing support
of what I call the China Uncensored 50-cent army.
They’re fans of the show who contribute
on the crowd funding website Patreon.
Because of their financial support,
I can make an episode about how China,
the W.H.O., and Google
don’t have your best interests at heart
when it comes to the coronavirus outbreak.
They can demonetize China Uncensored all they want,
and I’ll just keep making episodes anyway.
So as a thank you to members
of the China Uncensored 50-Cent Army,
I answer questions from them at the end of some of my episodes.
Today’s question comes from Tony Chopkoski.
He asks, “Tedros...Tedros?
Really on the ball?
China has huge investments in Ethiopia,
where he hails from.
And their airline is still flying to China.
It makes Kenya, next door, very afraid.”
You know, I never even thought about that.
But it turns out that yes,
China is investing heavily in Ethiopia.
And since Chinese investment is called debt trap diplomacy,
it should come as no surprise that about half of all Ethiopia’s debt
belongs to China.
“The largest part of the debt was for
the construction of the $4bn Ethiopia-Djibouti railway.
The Export-Import Bank of China
backed the project with $3.3bn in loans.
The railway has so far been crippled by light loads,
electricity shortages and disruptions due to protests.”
But hey, it connects Ethiopia
to China’s first overseas military base in Djibouti,
so that’s worth it, right?
Chinese investment in Africa
has been called a new colonialism.
Could Chinese investment in Ethiopia
affect Tedros’ decision making
as Director in Chief of the WHO?
Obviously I can’t say for sure.
But let’s just say I feel extra comforted by the W.H.O. link
YouTube is putting below this video.
Take it away, Tedros.
The actions of China are making us safer.
Thanks for your question, Tony.
And thank you for watching.
Please be sure to subscribe to China Uncensored,
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Once again I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.