[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/masayoshi-son-breaks-twitter...
No good deed goes unpunished, i guess.
Son has long been criticised in Japan of deception via selective facts. The reputation may or may not be justified (he might just not be good at expressing himself and never felt the need to clarify), but his recent tweets are very on-brand with a bold claim and little detail, and it’s understandable for the Japanese to express the same doubts based on his persumed track record.
The United States government spends far more on healthcare than any other nation on Earth. That's not including private health costs.
South Korea has the capacity to test 20,000 per day and has 1/6th the population.
Yes. Roche just got FDA approval on a SARS-COV-2 test that will take four (4) hours that works with two of their (whatever you call the machine) models. Per Roche there are around 110 of those machines in the United States. Bloomberg had estimated throughput numbers and also indicated that Roche has tests that work with some of their other, slower equipment (that I assume is in the US as well).
Mayo Clinic recently developed a 2 hour test.
The limits on testing are, from my POV, entirely political at this point.
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/13/815522836/u-s-coronavirus-tes...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-13/roche-get...
The CDC, in a press conference, explained that tests in places like South Korea are producing 3% to 4% false positives. Our tests are in the 1% to 2% range.
This difference in false positives can have massive consequences as infection spreads. Doubling your false positives could easily overwhelm the medical system. Which in turn, could increase fatality.
And then there's the secondary effects, which Italy is sadly experiencing, as the medical system overloads doctors are having to choose who they simply let die. There are reports of stroke patients going without much attention in Italy because of precisely this issue.
If hospitals can't take care of people because they are overloaded due to administering large numbers of tests with double the false positive outcomes, more people die.
When things truly matter there is no substitute for quality and performance. Quantity and speed are not always the most important factors.
There have been longstanding concerns about strategic food - and even Oil supply, I don't see how the US or any nation can reasonably not have the domestic demand to meet an emergency.
China has been engaging in a form of systematic dumping on a variety of industries for quite a long time - most of us enjoyed the benefits of lower prices while local producers went out of business.
The nefariousness of their strategy is that it's often difficult to tell the difference between simple 'low-cost advantage' vs. actual dumping strategies, and who in the business world is going to argue against lower prices? Nobody.
The US military certainly wouldn't have 99% of their ammunition 'made in China', well, war is much more than bullets, moreover, there's much more to life than war ...
It's definitely time to have national regulations on a lot of such goods. A simple ban on the import of strategic goods would work really well - America is large enough that there'd be several domestic providers.
Americans would end up paying more for certain items, but does it really matter when the surpluses are so large? So it costs $4 per mask instead of $2? The price is not as important as availability. It would be a very natural and synergistic way to increase wages as well.
This could be done in concert with a few key allies on a product by product basis.
I think this epidemic is pretty much solved, don't you?
I.e., it's surely capable of making its own virus test kits and face masks, if it could be bothered.
Unfortunately, it's also a country where the rich like to keep their riches to themselves, and are averse to government action in general.
> I.e., it's surely capable of making its own virus test kits and face masks, if it could be bothered.
They're just outsourcing, like they do for everything.
American manufacturing industries are dying. We know how to make software but making hardware is slowly fading out. Most of our stuff comes from China. China knows how to make the world.
The US historically rejected aid from many other countries
Literally anyone can send aid to anyone, often for political gains.
How are they administered? I've Googled and haven't found a simple answer. Is it spit?
I hate all the cynics and conspiracy theories here. It's a generous move, and deeply appreciated.
Jack didn't spend that much money to be a douchebag. He spent it because this will save countless lives.
It also doesn't help that the current administration has bungled the testing from day 1; in the past we would have ramped up testing when the disease was spreading in China. Whether it's lack of leadership, incompetence, or deliberate we don't know. But Dear Leader certainly won't take responsibility for it and isn't interested in solving the problem so lack of leadership is definitely a factor. My guess is at least some in the administration were dumb enough to believe it wouldn't spread in the US.
[1] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/22/c_138807761.htm
The CDC is probably not the most agile organization, but I'm hoping that they will scale.
I'm not even sure it's incorrect.
Guess how native English speakers sound when they're trying to speak Chinese?
Chinese unis don’t have the best reputation, but I would expect him to be able to speak the language decently well at least.
He didn't believe AI could be smarter than the smartest human (IIRC).
It's a different point of view.
You can disagree. But calling him an idiot makes you an asshole, tbh.
The interview was cringey as fuck because of his English skill. He couldn't deliver a joke properly like the joke about Alibaba Intelligence. Musk also didn't handle the joke well (not his fault.. he isn't a professional MC).
Jack Ma knows very well what is AI and all such things. You can look at Alibaba Group's hiring frenzy for AI talents as a signal.
In the end, Jack wants to be an approachable power figure to common (Chinese) people. He shows up in Alibaba's annual corp party wearing weird dresses and sing in front of 100k+ live audience. People call him the "Daddy Ma" in reference to his influence on their buying activities online.
He behaves in this fashion, which the so-called philosophy (or Daoism/Zen-like thinking) trumps the hard reasoning. That gives him an aura of an elevated figure above scientists, engineers, and alike.
The point is, powerful people listen to each other because of the power they wield. Must has to listen to Jack, because Jack can influence the Chinese government in a much more effective way than himself. If it was an actual AI expert on that stage, Must probably wont show much interests in that discussion anyway...
OMG this is so racist. The vast majority of surgical masks sold in USA in last several decades were made in China. If they were shitting on them we would have noticed. The majority of items sold in USA stores are manufactured in China. They're not intentionally infecting them before selling them to us. Chinese manufacturers sensibly shut down in the most heavily affected areas, in contrast to those in USA. The people dumb enough to look this gift horse in the mouth are all toilet paper hoarders.
Original poster was talking about masks not meeting some specification. And I'm pretty sure most of your stuff has been coming from China for a long time.
I really am mindblown by both your, and original poster's negativity on this. The guy is almost certainly trying to help. So thanks. And I say this as someone who disapproves very strongly of the CCP.
Your refutation to my logic is "cmmon man" ?
It would lead to what action precisely?
I'm not a pessimist. I'm trying to be pragmatic.
Potential Chinese client state
>Italy
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47679760
Italy joins China's New Silk Road project
>Japan
Par East Asia competition and nose thumbing
>SK
Ibid.
>Spain
"Does the EU really mean anything to you in times of crisis?"
It's the usual astute PRC maneuvering.
Jack Ma doing this is also a political move. I'm sure that part of the motivation is just to help, but it seems clear to me that this is also intended to show that China is in a position to help the US, and the optics of that are that the countries are on equal footing. Remember, China as a country does have a bit of a complex about their status, which is completely understandable considering the rapid changes they have been through. This aid shows that, rather than being a 2nd-class citizen, the country is in a position to help America with something.
That being said, this is a great thing, these are much needed supplies for which there isn't a large domestic manufacturing capacity (as it was offshore). However charitable acts can also have additional political motivations, and that does seem to be a factor here.
That's why when Cuba is struck with a hurricane, they reject American aid [1], despite being a relatively poor country who could obviously benefit from it.
[1]https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=943791...
I'm not saying it's unacceptable, I'm saying that China and the U.S. are direct rivals in a way that China and Europe are not, and that it will appear a certain way to the world, and that the way it appears will be advantageous to the CCP.
This is a global adversary, and a global response is required.
Perhaps when we dance this dance again, global health expertise and transparency will be the default from the beginning.
The American are people like you and me. Yes their government needs a lot of work, but people are people and we need to remember that more
I'm not saying it's evil or that we shouldn't accept it, I'm just observing the optics and the fact that there's no way the CCP didn't consider it from this perspective beforehand, regardless of any other motives.
For whatever reason, the US lacks the ability and/or the capability of responding effectively to this crisis.
The assistance is valuable and should be respected and appreciated accordingly.
And if people in the US feel uncomfortable about what this assistance implies about the US -- well, there will be time to consider why that is so and what can be done about it at a future date.
With complete lack of freedom and privacy, you can achieve a lot. They're doing better than any western country would: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-slowed-coronavirus-lo...
Like:
- censoring alarming posts in social networks for weeks
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/china-censored-cov...
- threatening medical staff with prosecution in case of warning other people on early stages of pandemic
https://qz.com/1798859/chinese-doctors-coronavirus-death-uni...
- flooding internet discussions with crowds of state trolls spreading disinformation
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/fee3ct/chinese_t...
Good news is that now all eyes are on the medical supply chains, and introduction of the medical supply drug act bill, we should see some supply chain move back to US.
Especially since Chinese government has threatened to withhold drug supplies to US https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... and has started a disinformation campaign suggesting US inserted coronavirus in Wuhan, brought up by the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-official-says-us-arm...
If it was purely humanitarian, there would be no press release, but there's nothing wrong with him getting a thumbs up for this.
Most rich guys like to get some 'brownie points' while they give money away, which is fine.
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/wuhan-doctors-sa...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us...
1. CIA created the virus and released the virus in China as a test.
2. (In Chinese there's no word for 'flu', only 'cold', or 'transmissible cold'.) The 'cold' virus originated in US last year and killed more than 10k Americans before US sent special force to Wuhan to infect us Chinese! Even the head of CDC admitted it (see article).
3. A 5 member US special force went to Wuhan in November. They returned to US and all died in suspicious circumstances.
4. Now all the western countries are sending infected agents into China to blow the epidemic again.
You might notice a common theme that US is the enemy, and they are the originator of all bad things that happened to China. This is not a coincidence.
To the downvoters - explain.
Elon and Jack Ma debates in Shanghai, just listen this guy talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3lUEnMaiAU
Edit: I am not defending the United States. Just look at what our president said this afternoon. Couldn't even string a cohesive sentence together. If Jack Ma is genuine and wants to help - who knows? To me it feels like a huge power move as the OP said - it feels "correct" to me. This news is trending big time on Twitter.
When the immediate crisis is over, the world needs to hold the CPC accountable. You don't get to set a fire and show up with a bucket three months later expecting to be declared a hero.
So, Jack Ma donating masks around the world can be a positive thing for the people affected by the virus right now, but it can also be a cynical political move at the same time.
When countries from around the world sent urban SAR specialists to Christchurch following the earthquake, was that a signal that, say, Taiwan, thinks they're superior?
When we send our victim identification specialists or rural firefighter volunteers to countries that need them, is that flexing? Or is it just, I dunno, countries helping each other?
You can even ignore how badly the US government has bungled it. The simple reason is that China is the second largest economy in the world and has had more time to deal with and tackle the virus.
The problem is that the US federal government has so thoroughly messed up the situation that this looks really bad. If the US government hadn’t done such a bad job of testing this donation may have maybe added 50% or doubled the number of available tests and it would simply look like a generous donation, rather than also shining light on the embarrassing US response.
Powerful people have their sphere. They cannot just doing things without staying in their community.
But that's not a novel conclusion, humans are social animals...
So what? Even if it was, no-strings-attached charity is no-strings-attached charity.
[0] https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/feb-6-...
Denmark is of course doing well, as are Sweden and Norway.
It is very convenient blaming your adversaries/competitors for your own f..ups. We could've easily shut the borders at first sign and be protected and safe. Have somebody to blame for that hole?
Is the Gates Foundation an organization devoted to making power moves around the world?
Is it because I'm in Europe?
Got to love the oil reserves idea to help Saudi Arabia in its price war against Russia. Ah fuck, that's why he declared national emergency: so he can get 40 billion dollars to bail out the Saudis.
That lady was so proud of her 6 node flow chart too. She was beaming when she took it out...
Ultimately it's going to be a slightly more complex variant of "Do you have a fever?" with a map showing nearby testing locations when someone clicks yes.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-coronavirus-screening...
They don't. The drive through stations send samples off to a lab that uses a 5–6 hour process. If memory serves, a Hong Kong company devised a 45 minute test otherwise in most places you're looking at hours not minutes.
They're so at odds they agreed to give the Pentagon $100B more this year than last, in addition to loosening accounting rules so they can hide even more of their shenanigans from the taxpayer. They're so at odds that Gitmo is still open, we're still fighting in a dozen nations, we're undermining the democratic governments of several more, and they just gave the next appointed coup leader a unanimous standing ovation at the state of the union ("it's not good!") speech. They're so at odds that to contest an election with a loud-mouthed incoherent corrupt old person with shady Ukraine connections, they've chosen... a loud-mouthed incoherent corrupt old person with shady Ukraine connections.
They're so at odds that when the government decided they needed to destroy a journalist for doing journalism, for revealing to the USA voter and tax payer the evil shit done with their votes and taxes, not a single journalist anyone had ever heard of spoke up in his defense. Oh yeah, that MSM is speaking "truth to power" now. Good grief.
Yes, the American media isn’t perfect, but deriding it as “fake news” while CCTV a somehow put on a pedestal just seems really wrong. The fact is that it is at least independent of the government and doesn’t have to act in the interest in the ruling executive (and in fact, depending on who is president, there will always be plenty of media that isn’t friendly to their agenda).
The first thing authoritarians do when they gain power is to try and delegitimize the free press so they can get rid of it. That is exactly wha it is going on now, and whenever someone uses the term MSM, that is what I know their agenda is.
Studies as of now suggest that the virus can last for 3 days on a surface. So if you ship fly them over here from China, say a half a day flight, you have a good 2.5 days to potentially accidentally infect people.
Are you going to "cmmon man" me now?
1. Mask / test kit made in China.
2. Presumably, it came in contact with the hands of the people making it, in China.
3. If any of those people making the masks and test kits were infected, then there's a chance that the virus itself will be actually sitting on the masks and test kits themselves.
So, we just ignore that?
But once you realise they're sending them everywhere, it makes it look more like they've ramped production up to stupifying numbers (which is China's speciality afterall), and have realised their value in goodwill is far beyond their dollar value.
(or, yes, propaganda - there's not a lot of real difference between PR, propaganda and goodwill. Ultimately, doing something good because the optics benefit you, is still doing something good.)
There’s no way the leadership has thought out all the angles.
The translation you are looking for is "dick swinging" :)
I have no doubt his intention really is to save lives, but a secondary motive is surely also PR. Perhaps the Chinese state had some role in this, as well. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I could see a possible benign conspiracy like them using Jack as a proxy to distribute these.
If they did it officially, it could be trusted less and the motive would seem more blatant. And Jack of course has enough money to do this himself, but such a big international move might require the approval of the government.
Of course it's PR. It's always PR, probably regardless of what superpower's government is involved. The only difference here is that the Chinese government has more control over and knowledge of what private citizens are doing, so it can be difficult to disentangle private and governmental action.
1. WeChat is heavily patrolled and monitored by the PRC censors. If the PRC doesn't want these rumors to circulate, these rumors would not last more than a hour (or seconds. It's very enlightening to see the sensitive terms get filtered in real time.)
In fact, in the last week or so, I've been getting more conspiracy forwards. The spread of rumors on this topic on WeChat is speeding up.
2. I don't see US' Secretary of State accusing China of intentionally creating the virus.
Reddit tries to stop conspiracy theories with quarantines and bans. But they're rapidly spreading anyway.
> 2. I don't see US' Secretary of State accusing China of intentionally creating the virus.
It really is symmetric: Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas, has been on Fox saying exactly this.
Fox also has other people on saying it was a joint North Korean and Chinese bioweapon, made solely to attack America, but released initially in China as a decoy. Fox is the most watched cable news channel in America.
The CPC knew about this virus for over a month before they took any action to contain it. In fact, they arrested people who were sounding the alarm. Xi is claimed to have been steering the ship for weeks before any lockdowns were put into place in Hubei province. The CPC own this global crisis. If it was not for their epic mismanagement, there would not be a pandemic.
You are trying to blame politicos for being who they are. Other governments behaved exactly the same. They knew very well what is coming and still kept flow of goods and people. They are just as guilty in ignoring pandemic.
Sure they did not arrest their people for "spreading panic". But that is human rights issue and is totally separate from the subject. Nobody's saying that China is the beacon of freedoms.
But sure it feels much better when one can ignore their own screw ups and pin the blame on somebody else.
We have evidence that acting earlier was an option, because the party chief of Qianjiang (a city in Hubei) unilaterally decided to do just that. He went against the prevailing wisdom from Beijing and quarantined all coronavirus patients in that city back on January 17 - ten days after Xi Jinping claims he was on top of things and over a week before the party ordered other cities in Hubei (including the epicenter of Wuhan) to lockdown. Qianjiang is now the only city in Hubei that has lifted their lockdown, and infections have been an order of magnitude less than other cities in the province.
And that's only one case that Caixin was allowed to report on. If we had a free press here maybe we'd hear more about the abject failure of party leadership to follow the advice of specialists, but unfortunately we do not.
However, that is beside the point. The point is, this outbreak was grossly mismanaged by the CPC, and now the entire world is suffering. No matter how many lavish gifts wealthy party members bestow upon the rest of the world, it's important that we do not forget how this crisis started and who was responsible for it. Otherwise, how will we learn to avoid the next one?
For all that they caterwaul about surface controversies like is it worse to arrange corrupt positions at foreign firms for one's children or is it worse to investigate such positioning, Fox and MSNBC agree about everything important to the rich bastards who own both the media and the government. For instance, China: we're told constantly by both (all) news firms to fear China. In this very thread there is evidence of a widespread derangement stemming from that constant gaslighting. ("What if the masks are pre-impregnated with virus?!%?") After all, China is an independent nation with a military! USA military-industrial complex might make a lot of money losing a war with China! They must all be evil bastards bent on destroying us! Oh but they're not as bad as Russia! Or Iran! Or Venezuela! Or some random goat enthusiasts in some desert somewhere! When the topic is a war into which we haven't yet blundered, there is unanimity in the war media. (Since you're language policing, tell me: is "war media" better or worse than "MSM" that you derided upthread? On the one hand, it's evocative and focused on the bottom line. On the other, it is one more syllable... I can't decide!)
China is played in western media because that is the perception that their audiences want to see. It isn’t universally negative either, it just is what it is. Media reports negative stories about everyone (not just China), because negative news sells more than positive news and unlike CCTV, they have to pay the bills.
In the short term, though, you're mostly right. News media firms program to increase audience engagement. Rachel Maddow didn't particularly enjoy turning her program into all-Trump-all-the-time in mid-2015, but she couldn't really help it. There was a large portion of the cable news audience that couldn't resist the frisson that came from seeing that one guy who had said mean things to people on that one TV show now saying other mean things to other people on the news. These morons would tune into to anything Trump (to some extent, they will still), and as Les Moonves observed it was "damn good" for the bottom line.
It's tempting to assume that the modern news media firm doesn't really care about which direction their product points. The particular cars that crashed don't really matter when the morons just want to see car crashes. We could hypothesize an efficient market and be smug in the sure knowledge that there are no long-term trends. Or, we could pull our heads out of our asses and actually observe the trends.
Maybe USA is so irredeemably racist that China is an easy mark for this sort of media malpractice. Somehow our racism has ignored all of sub-Saharan Africa? And somehow Israel is not only not despised, but is actually celebrated, despite the fact they are every bit as awful to Palestinians as China is to Uighurs? This is a strange reflection of common USA prejudice!
In fact, Israel purchases (often with USA tax money) large quantities of armaments from USA armaments manufacturers. The moment they stopped doing that, or alternatively the moment their rivals seemed likely to purchase even more armaments in hopes of finally destroying them, would be the moment they were seen in a very different light in USA news media. In the long run, every stupid misguided war USA or its proxies fight is preceded by a long run of news media demonization. Maybe that's just a natural thing, but I'm suspicious.
This is pointless. If the fastest shipping method available took a month, you'd be imagining crafty sick Chinese people stowed away, breathing on the masks for the entire journey. You have a sickness, but it may not be COVID-19...
Due to the fact that is a very serious, urgent, global pandemic. <-- re-read the last four words in that sentence, but slowly.
It blows my mind that during this global crisis, you think that it would take a whole month just to transport life saving medical / health equipment. We're not talking about shipping handbag accessories on Amazon's third party marketplace here, Nancy.
Is what Gates does also "always PR"?
Both of these men could afford to retire to a private island (or chain of islands) and never be heard from again. You think they do what they do primarily for PR reasons?
The problem here is it's so hard to separate private and governmental action in China. Jack Ma may not have even been able to do this without their approval or prodding, possibly. Maybe he did, but there's no good way to know. Most other large countries don't have such powerful and expansive governments.
This is about geopolitics, not philanthropy. I think most philanthropists aren't doing things for PR, and for the ones who are, it's probably a minor, extra motive. But all bets are off when the philanthropist may be an ultra-powerful nation-state.
I'm a massive conspiracy theory skeptic and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to debunk them, but this is just how geopolitics work, have always worked, and will likely still work for centuries or millennia to come. Many actions have multiple motives.
Also, I'm just saying it's a possibility. It's just hard to know since it's so hard to separate government and private activities in such a place.
That's what I'm saying. And this specific way of thinking is focusing on the worst of the motives and treating them as if they were the main motives, the most important motives, the most worthwhile motives to observe and point out, maybe the only motives worth mentioning.
It's near impossible to disentangle private and government[al] action in China. It's also not a uniquely American way to think about it. Every country uses private proxies where it makes sense in order to project power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
Use of the phrases like these, exemplifying the tu quoque logical fallacy, was an attempt to deflect criticism of the Soviet Union by referring to racial discrimination and lynching in the United States.
It is not "Classic Chinese / Soviet tactic (TM)". It is a friggin natural sense of justice that normal people possess.
But in the current one, who gets on Fox seems to be a more reliable indicator of the thinking of the ruling clique than official pronouncements. Stuff that gets repeated on Fox enough tends to end up coming out of the President's mouth eventually. Official pronouncements from Secretaries of Suchandsuch get countermanded by tweet. One of the President's closest advisors broadcasts on Fox nightly.
"Blame China" is a simple message and it would not be rational to think it is not going to be tweet-official policy soon enough.
I think you're just grasping at straws because you've already decided what narrative you want. In which case there's nothing more for me to say here.
Senators are within the top 100 most powerful people in the US.
Here is the divine revelation - it had started in China. How will it help you when it starts in China or elsewhere next time?
And again you've completely ignored the fact that the rest of the world was happily ignoring all dangers and kept borders opened for goods and people without any testing.
As for starting first: I guess we could blame first human for all our problems. Guilty party is found, the case closed shut
Perhaps the propaganda has not been as successful overseas, but here in China it is gaining legs. Having a proud party member donate gifts to foreign countries is very much a part of changing the narrative on this crisis. The government here is allowing the conspiracy theory to spread that the origins of the virus were foreign, and that it was all just a stroke of bad luck that Wuhan got hit first. But - never fear - Xi Jinping rode in to save the day! This is an extremely damaging take on what happened. Whether you support the one-party state or not, it bodes poorly for the future of China to have leaders who cannot accept responsibility for their mistakes.
The CPC had the opportunity to learn from SARS, and it appears they did not. They now have an opportunity to learn from COVID-19, but if the story is twisted in such a way that people only remember the great success of Xi and the great magnanimity of people like Jack Ma, then that will not happen.
I am way more concerned about what is happening in Western hemisphere where I live. All I know is we've allowed major f'ck up all on our own.
>I have no doubt his intention really is to save lives, but a secondary motive is surely also PR. Perhaps the Chinese state had some role in this, as well. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I could see a possible benign conspiracy like them using Jack as a proxy to distribute these.
I said it was a secondary motive, and that it was a benign conspiracy theory. I only leaned this way due to the fact the outbreak originated in China and because Jack Ma may not have been able to do this without the approval of the government. That means it's fairly likely he either had to request approval, in which case the government may have approved for PR reasons, or it's possible they reached out to him and proposed or demanded it.
Even if it were the Chinese state doing it formally, I'd still say the primary motive is to save lives, even if there were also other motives. Like how the primary motive of the Belt and Road Initiative is to increase trade and uplift poor countries, but there are many other motives, as well. Again, this is the case for all large governments, not just China - the difference here is just the lack of separation between private and governmental action in China, which makes it difficult to tell to what extent this is Jack and to what extent this is the state. If it were somehow proven the state weren't involved in any way, then I would think it was more likely than not that Jack didn't have ulterior motives.
Either way, it's not something I care much about one or way the other. I wasn't the original person to say it was a power move - I just disagreed with the parent poster who suggested it being a global initiative made it less likely to be a power move. No matter his/their motives, it's very good he and/or the Chinese government are doing this.