Veteran China watcher Kaiser Kuo discusses at the Wilson Center what China wants. Does it want to topple global order, and trying to impose change on the outside world? A wide-ranging discussion, also including Jiayang Fan. Is it exporting its ideology of just pragmatic?

The ongoing coronavirus crisis has triggered off much racist behavior outside China and the qualification “Yellow Peril” raised its ugly head. Journalist Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus, a novel, on prostitution in China, dives into the history of Western racism towards China and the Chinese for the South China Morning Post.

While messages from the coronavirus are mixed, to put it mildly, the current economic crash course might only be over by April/May, in the most optimistic scenario. Numbers of infected people and deaths by COVID-19 still vary to much to support any scenario at this stage, while it is also unclear whether the rest of the world can contain the virus.

Footage from metro subways still show empty carriages, as the central government tries to encouraged migrant workers to return to their workplaces, local governments – including the big cities –  advise returning migrants to put themselves in a social quarantine for two weeks to be sure they do not carry the virus. The dilemma is obvious: different government make different choices when it come to prevent major economic damage or keeping their cities save from the virus. 

When you run behind social platforms, you always run behind the next generation consumers, says marketing guru Arnold Ma. You have to know what drives change, why China consumers have no legacy and – for example – while old-style supermarkets never took off in China.

Fighting the Covid-19 virus and saving the economy might not go very well together, says political analyst Victor Shih in Al Jazeera. While there is very little international supply chains can do at this stage, as Chinese governments make decisions, says Victor Shih, the message for the long run is: diversify.

China’s Hubei province shocked the world as the number of confirmed coronavirus patients spiked because it started to use different way to diagnose patients. Political analyst Victor Shih sees it as a proof that the government is using different sets of tools to manipulate the number of patients and deaths, he tells to Reuters.

Economic damage to China and the global economy has been limited up to now as two weeks in the Coronavirus crisis were anyway a holiday, and a week extension was doable. Apart from the consumption industries who go a firm hit during lunar festival, expectations were high most of the manufacturing and services would resume on February 10, although our event industry was expected to see longer delays as international flights, traffic and other operations need likely months to recover.

China is not yet one week back from lunar holidays, and the fallout of the coronavirus is not yet clear. We have seen major events being relocated, delayed or even cancelled, speakers being stuck inside or outside China, and potential audiences unable to move around. Meanwhile we are exploring an alternative option, that might help some event organizators: follow the lead from China, and get your speaker online.

Even when the virus might reduce its destructive path over the next two weeks, resuming events might be affected till the end of April, early May. Those are – with June – our most busy months in helping event organizers to get the right speakers in place, before the traditional summer break kicks in.

Not only high costs are stopping Chinese women from getting more children, as the government wants them to for offsetting the dramatic aging process of the country, writes journalist Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus, a novel, on prostitution in China,  in the South China Morning Post. “The reality is far more complex. One important reason, in my view, is that women have changed. They don’t care to be only the reproductive tool of the family or the state,” she writes.

China’ struggle against the coronavirus has been on the front pages worldwide on the past weeks. Western CEO’s of companies with operations in China have been calling for calm and try to convince their audiences all is well for those operations. The question is whether that is more than wishful thinking.

China has been into lunar festival mode over the past weeks and all offices and factories would have been closed anyway. Damage might have been obvious in the consumer industry as even outside Wuhan many inhabitants kept off the streets. But the major question is now, as the lunar festival holidays end, whether China’s massive work force returns to their workplaces.

Beijing-based Journalist Ian Johnson describes the governmental corona-action in Beijing and explains why it has more to do with lack of trust in the government than health, in the New York Times. “Considering the underlying distrust, it’s hard for the government to say what many epidemiologists are saying: This outbreak is serious but not catastrophic.”

Under normal circumstances we would now slowly move out of the hibernation of the lunar festival activities. But the coronavirus has made 2020 all different from normal. The virus is still spreading, large parts of China have come to a standstill and this week many of the rail and flight connections have been cancelled or limited at best.

Meetings have been cancelled, relocated and – to stay close to our core business – rosters for speakers have been rescheduled. While the effects of the virus are still developing, many expect the effects to be felt at least till April, and perhaps longer.