Editor’s note for Wednesday, January 6, 2021

My thoughts today:

China is not letting the World Health Organization’s investigators in: Yesterday, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus “expressed ‘disappointment’ that China had yet to finalize permissions for the trip — his most pointed criticism of China to date,” per the Washington Post.

Aside from delaying the WHO trip, no doubt to ensure that visitors don’t find anything that would contradict Beijing’s story, there is more COVID news from China today: Xinhua News Agency’s top story today (in Chinese) is about the personal attention Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 is paying to new COVID-19 outbreaks — you can read more about the hotspot of Hebei below.

Hotspot is a relative term: the province, which is now on a “wartime” footing, has confirmed 39 cases while the current 7-day average for the U.S. is 214,223 per day.

Upcoming events:

• On January 12, join the China Corner Office Podcast for a live interview with James Chou, managing director and CEO of Microsoft for Startups, North Asia.  
• On February 4, celebrate with us at the virtual Serica Annual Gala.

Our word of the day is Hong Kong mass arrests (香港大逮捕 xiānggǎng dà dàibǔ).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief