Analysis: Is China’s Donations or Supplies of Masks a Game?

By Xuefei Chen Axelsson

On Page 14 of Swedish Daily DN’s World page, there was a documentary called China and the Game around the Czeck’s masks. A Green Post reader also mentioned that Swedish Radio talking about China’s donation of medical goods to the western world as a kind of game.

Someone called it diplomacy, I am not opposed it. But call it a game, it is with a kind of negative mentality in it. I think it is exactly this problem that we need to learn from each other about how we thought and why we did what we had done.

Suppose China weren’t attacked by cover-19 and had a lot of medical goods and they donated the suffering Europe, then you could suspect if China was sincere or selfless because they didn’t suffer anything.

But now the fact is that China had suffered from this virus themselves severely. But they worked so hard that they finally controlled the spreading of the virus. And with the breakout in Europe, many students flew back to China and about 45 new cases took place among the returned people from abroad. Most of them were Chinese.

We should feel good that China now can resume to work and produce more medical goods. While Wuhan was severely attacked by the virus, many other areas were much less attacked because of the isolation policy. Therefore resumption of production took place in most of northern areas and Guangdong province, Zhejiang province and Jiangsu province and Henan province.

While the big industrial cities such as Dalian produce masks production machines, many factories in the south produce masks.

There are many kinds of masks. One is common masks, ordinary people can use them for several times. The other kind is daily used or single use surgical masks. That is used for doctors in normal cases. And N95 or KN95 are used for treatment or taking care of covid-19 patients.

In China, they even tried the robot to send food to the patients in order to avoid contact. But in light symptom treatment place, the patients got a lot of extra care such as singing or dancing or playing Taiji or Baduanjin.

The report about buying and selling of masks is like this. At beginning, when China suddenly on Spring Festival issued such a call to need N95 masks or gloves and other protective material, it was like an order or a strong call in which overseas Chinese immediately collected money from their own purse and then bought the masks and tried all means to send them to China with various efforts to save lives.

It was quite understandable that they did that. And with such an effort China stopped spreading of virus. Now Europe needed the masks because we knew that a lot of them were bought by Chinese, so China either donate or sell back to European countries.

At beginning they also bought everything from here, so now they will sell back. Donation also happens so that people understand what kind of products they need and whether it will be accepted by people. With Swedish experts and media talking a lot about wearing mask useless, people didn’t have a desire to buy it and I heard the doctor said even they wanted to buy, they could not get it because the apotek ran out of masks.

As for the price, it is negotiable. The price went with the demand. The goods are some for donation and some for selling, everything should be under negotiation.

When needed, the government should allocate resources to protect the doctors and nurses. The market should also allow the apotek to import some ordinary masks so that those who need them can buy from the apotek.

To say it is a game, it is too much. Many Chinese felt Swedish acted slowly but cannot help thinking of helping. On the other hand, without your consent, it is difficult to act. With all the negative news, it is hard for Chinese to act. Should they really donate? or should they keep silent and do nothing? All the sharp words made people think whether they should take action or not.

Also about the mentioning of certain areas people, it will raise the issue of discrimination. Actually Qingtian people are good business people and they have been serving as a bridge between China and European countries.

It is difficult to do business with governments, they began to do business among themselves and surrounding people.

China intended to help European countries especially which are friendly.

Meanwhile, recently there were also reports about the quality. I like to say that it showed another difference between Chinese and westerners. In China for some people they also tested three times. Only by three times negative, that would be negative. Some people could not be tested as positive, Chinese doctors thought their infection was not serious. While in the west, one said it was quality problem immediately. But the truth was that those people didn’t use them properly.

I think we should trust China because it didn’t make mistake by purpose. They always have good intentions. It was the west who always had such critics all the time against China.

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