Editor’s note for February 15, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
My thoughts today:
COVID fallout is in the news today. Our top story is about pensioners protesting in the streets of Wuhan and Dalian against changes to local health insurance plans. The changes seem to be the result of local government financing shortfalls after three years of exorbitant spending on lockdowns, COVID tests, and makeshift hospitals.
Do two protests a revolution make? Not likely, but they are another sign of growing discontent with the country’s direction and the increasing difficulty of just getting by in China.
In our News Briefing below there’s another piece of news on the aftermath of COVID: The World Health Organization is reported to have given up on the next phase of its investigation into the origins of the pandemic, because researchers cannot get answers or access from Beijing.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, TikTok is spending a fortune on lobbyists in Washington D.C., but is it wasting its money?
Our word of the day is: (The Internationale 国际歌 guójì gē)
Earlier today, protesting pensioners sang the The Internationale, a communist anthem written in 1871, to protest against cuts to their health insurance
