Editor’s Note for Monday, April 4, 2022

My thoughts today:

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba spoke by phone to his Chinese counterpart Wáng Yì 王毅 earlier today. Kuleba tweeted:

Had a call with State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Grateful to my Chinese counterpart for solidarity with civilian victims. We both share the conviction that ending the war against Ukraine serves common interests of peace, global food security, and international trade.

Brussels-based journalist Finbarr Bermingham commented: “Second time Wang and Kuleba have spoken. Again, Ukrainian FM couches it in very positive language — no criticism of China’s rhetorical support for Russia in official fora.”

It’s smart for Kyiv to try to keep Beijing as happy as possible. It also shows that — despite all of the hilarious failures in China’s expensive soft power propaganda attempts — Beijing has actually begun to fulfill its dream of building global “discourse power.”

Back in China, people are straining under strict COVID rules in Shanghai and other cities. But for all the online moaning about quarantines, and even the separation of parents from their babies because of positive COVID test results, it does not seem likely that the government will relax any of its pandemic prevention measures. The popular WeChat account of Rèn Yì 任意, a.k.a. Chairman Rabbit, a man who knows his way around the elite political circles of Beijing, says Shanghai will stick to the COVID-zero policy no matter how much people gripe.

According to state media (in Chinese), vice premier Sūn Chūnlán 孙春兰, who happens to be one of only a handful of women in top leadership roles in China, rushed to Shanghai from Jilin on the morning of April 2 “to investigate the epidemic prevention and control work.”

During her trip she vowed that China would stamp out the current outbreaks, and mentioned a new-ish COVID prevention slogan, which gives us our word of the day:

Four “musts” and four “do as much as possibles” [to stop the spread of COVID-19]

四应四尽

sìyīng sìjǐn.