Its where the coronavirus started but is so where things are now returning to normal so what is chinas post coronavirus strategy the National Peoples congress is dealing with 1st criticism over its handling of the pandemic and concerns over its economy how will china move forward this is inside still. Hello im come all santa maria it is normally a time to outline the strength of china and the communist party but then whats normal about these times already the annual session of the National Peoples congress had to be postponed from its usual salt and march but its happening now amid a pandemic thats all to chinas agendas and shuffled its priorities the country is facing the challenge of restoring an economy that strong almost 7 percent in just the 1st quarter of this year in fact beijings been forced to abandon setting an Economic Growth target for the 1st time in decades now it has other priorities stabilizing employment Living Standards as well it was made by premier the chuang at the start of the parliamentary meeting and while chinas face widespread criticism for its handling of the crisis lee was praising its response. So. Under the strong leadership of the Central Committee of the communist party of china with comrade xi jinping at its core and through the hard work and sacrifice of our entire nation we have made many just chief mints in our response to covert 19 at present the epidemic has not yet come to an end while the tasks we face in promoting development are immense we must strive to minimize the losses resulting from the virus and work hard to fulfill the targets and tasks for economic and social development this year so as premier league said corona virus is not over there also company ignore that the outbreak did start in china in late last year many countries chief among them the United States accused china of covering up the crisis during its early days whistle blowers were religiously silenced and many doubted the official numbers of infections and deaths coming out of china the u. S. Went as far as to suggest the virus came from a lab in will han and along with other countries its called for an investigation into the origins in response the World Health Organization has agreed to set up an inquiry after coming under pressure from the u. S. For praising chinas response through it all the china says it has been transparent it has sent medical aid to many countries and is working towards a vaccine. So where to from here well our panel is going to help us answer that in beijing weve got done one and economist nationalists the Economist Intelligence units access China Service in new jersey gordon chang author of the coming collapse of china quite a book title and the great u. S. China tech way and back in beijing rounding out a panel as im a time going to china Political Affairs analyst and former provincial government advisor to welcome to all 3 of you i think the 1st point just to make from the start about the congress is that it is regardless of when it happens it is largely ceremonial it is in some ways predictable and done if i can come to you 1st we come on the play the fact that the the people will listen what they will they will trust what their leaders are saying and that it is the right plan for them Going Forward well in china there is no doubt that this state has a very strong capacity and also authority and its not just in china in most of Asian Countries people look up to authorities naturally and that have lead to a relatively easy implementing containing mattias for the crown of virus and china is relatively successful in containing this route of the coronavirus it has a lot to do with a strong state capacity and also with a very strong public trust we have heard a lot of complaints about how china has handled its majesty in fighting in fine mrs lyras but if you go down to streets talking to individuals talking to private businesses you actually find out there is still very strong public trust that the Chinese Government can have this epidemic under control. Do you agree with that that there is that sort of trust or is this maybe given what has happened with coronavirus maybe just a slight opportunity for people to question it and say well what did happen here. Well im sure that in various cities there are various responses so for instance and on there probably is less trust and we have seen examples of that so for instance when a minister toured the city after the outbreak she was met with hows of derision from people and of course after dr lee when long died on february 7th there was white hot anger on social media across china and china went to extraordinary efforts to censor social media posts you know if there is a real question clearly the government and the communist party have the ability to influence narratives and that has really been the primary effort of the party specially we saw with the composition of the january 26 leading small group of the communist party on the crown of virus they only had one Public Health official on a 9 person roster the rest of it was security types political hacks and of course propaganda officials so yeah theyre doing a good job but thats because thats our highest priority on a tank and you already thoughts on this was a different sort of congress thats going on the sea i mean even just by some of the measurements that the speech which premier league gave was with her it was it was focused in a different direction. Well i think the major takeaways here are that lee was laying out what the groundwork was for Going Forward i mean obviously this is. For china now about the economic battle although the International Battle of course goes on but this isnt Something Big control if donald trump or europe or whoever brazil wants to open up early and doesnt want to take the necessary precautions and thats going to delay the you know the resolution of this until there is actually some sort of antiviral that can be administered and remembers not just developing its getting 8000000 of these things out to people and making sure that they can get otherwise you dont conquer it its just kind of stays with us at ins an item so at this point lead was making his case that china has done actually a pretty good job and it wasnt about old sorts of selfcongratulatory stuff unlike donald trump he said you know both he and she said that there are big issues that need to be addressed he talked about things that need to be improved and i think thats a very sober and very refreshing response given the kind of hyper bowl and nonsense that were hearing from other parties around the world ok were going to come back to that later on but important the honor is brought up the the economic issue and i think daniel your best place to stop us off on this the fact that china in this congress did not set an economic target. I think thats quite significant and when you think about the fact that the economy has contract to 7 percent in one quarter and the i. M. F. Is predicting any 1. 2 percent growth a 2020 these are on the hood of numbers for china. Right we are of are surprised to that there was no g. D. P. Target during the meeting because everybody was expecting it and you can see the disappointment in the market or right after this meeting we saw stock market stock market tumbled immediately. But i do think this is still right thing to do for the Chinese Government operating now its focus is not so much growth but rather on containing risks so there has been a lot of risks accumulating in the past decade its about that the Financial Market the Banking System accumulating debt on the local government level and also in the corporate sector so in this year and also in 2021 i dont think the fiscal stimulus the money for easing would be nearly as significant as times western countries so for compared now to fiscal stimulus away the what america is doing china is only have about a 5 percent of the g. D. P. Equivalent of fiscal stimulus package in contrast to about 14 to 20 percent of this fiscal stimulus package in the us and this is quite unusual for the Chinese Government theyre being very cautious like i said down is because pointed out they have some of the different priorities now away from the economy and i do just want to go through that very quickly the strategy went under the banner of 6 protections and i just want to go through them really quickly here youve got job security youve got peoples livelihoods youve got businesses so those ones are basically older you know the things related to how well people are looked after and indeed how well they can look after themselves and then there are 3 others and these are sort of more deeper issues i would say youve got food and Energy Security stable industrial and supply chains and even how the lower levels of the Chinese Government functions remember youve got to actually a 5 level hierarchy in the chinese leadership so 6 layers there and down again ill just get a quick word for you before we move on to the other as. Well whats the biggest thing out of those 6 is that about job security for people about their livelihoods about quality of life what whats the one of those which you take out. I think its about job security because this will be the difficult year for chinas government to generate generating enough jobs for University Graduates from migrants and especially for those urban workers that actually have a mortgage and it will be the 1st year that many Chinese People will see for the 1st time assuring in their household allowed an individual income and this is a very serious issue for the Chinese Government i havent gotten let me bring you back in then so well continue talking about job security and employment a thing believe 6 percent is the is the unemployment right but i also understand that there are 300000000 Migrant Workers in china who included necessarily in those numbers so again can you trust the numbers out of china and how big of an issue do you think employment is right now in china well i agree that when you look at the work report premier li ka chong instead of targeting g. D. P. Growth what he was doing was he was shifting the targets to employment so he had the 6 percent Unemployment Rate he had the target of 9000000. 00 new jobs but to put the mill 9000000 new urban jobs in the context weve got to remember that last year officially they created 13520000 new urban jobs so this is really quite stunning you know right now we cant trust the numbers especially employment numbers have historically been under reported because they used to report 4 percent each year for decades so the employment numbers dont really make any sense we can maybe discern trends but thats about it when it comes to employment but clearly this is the most important thing for the communist party right now because thats an issue of stability and stability is an issue of continued communist party rule just remind me sir what was that number you said about numbers that had been created. Jobs that had been told last year officially urban employment new jobs was 13520000 new jobs thats in contrast to the 9000000 target for the current year ok so let me throw that ive and then can you extrapolate those numbers for us a bit more and as i go and says well you know the issues which. Which people outside of china might have with interpret in those numbers. Well thats part of the problem with this argument everyone keeps talking about chinas untrustworthy i mean most governments put out numbers there are always questions the question is you know can you get at more basic data i dont think anybody has any doubt that there was a lot of jobs for this last year theres an antipoverty drive things spent there lets go back to his g. D. P. I think were missing something here and the fact is g. D. P. Has been going up for years all right but for the average person theyre basically their salaries theyre in real incomes have been sliding sideways so what is real g. D. P. Mean to the average person apart from the fact is as a metric its flawed because it double counts some make things especially with the schools like change so in china has done is theyve switched to metrics that can be much more easily measured if you say 9000000 jobs thats 9000000 jobs you say youre going to increase disposable income that means something youre going to provide aid to you know Small Businesses and youre trying to create more businesses you may hit those marks then youve done something and people can see it and they can feel it i think thats its its a disservice worldwide to continue using g. D. P. Ive said this is nothing to do with china report not choosing to report this year just simply it doesnt make any sense and i think then that would agree with me its a nice Overall Mission but it doesnt really tell you how the average versus joe its a fair point actually and its much in the way in the United States that donald trump will talk about the strength of the stock market where that really doesnt affect you know the general population down said he thinks hell agree with him. I was going to add that actually in terms of the quality of chinas job market number i dont think the official number is not that far off of course we have our own estimates of this years Unemployment Rate we think its going to hit 10 percent for the year and you know 2nd quarter economy hits at least 18 percent if you account all the Migrant Workers not might who stare jobs but there are 2 different kinds of official figures for Unemployment Rate what is the urban surveyed Unemployment Rate and that is the target for 6 percent this year as important as pointed out and historically the 4 percent of that was the registered Unemployment Rate and that was absolutely not accurate at all and nobody look at that but in the past a few years what we have been hearing is actually is actually more of a story of a labor shortage rather than unemployment because with 6 to 10 percent or even faster Economic Growth it was a bigger problem to find enough workers to work for the factory rather than a surplus of workers there or unemployment but a lot of those unemployment or seasonal and they were not permanent right youve all mentioned the issues of manufacturing and factories and supply chain so i want to go into that and stop with you there is and its anecdotal but there is talk out there from other countries who are now realizing just how tied into china they are as far as Global Supply chains and theyre thinking well if this sort of things going to happen we need to think about making our own goods we need to think about bringing things home how much of a problem is that potentially for china. Well i mean theres the idea in this reality in fact is once you start trying to pull things home if you cannot produce them efficiently in essence what youve done is pass on higher costs to your citizens your consumers so that thats not always very popular people get very tired of paying more for what they used to get and just simply because quote gets made in this country also it kills your exports obviously if your costs were to produce something you not be able to sell it abroad less the government subsidizes it so its a its a no lose no win proposition. Countries think about it emotionally but the one thing that weve seen over the last 30 years is that globalization has cut the price of goods you can simply buying more and this is one of the ways in which the middle class has been kind of duped because they have been able to buy a lot where they can you know buy an expensive what would been an untouchable phone for you know its still a high price but something they can afford. Whereas in the past it would cost much more short so you seen a lot of things go down in price you know food etc even oil right now is your old experience but you know the truth is it doesnt work economically and if you go back to the small youre in essence saying that the free market doesnt work and i dont know that there are a lot of people us who want to join that bandwagon also when you pull out ok where is your overseas market youre basically giving up everything because lets say the u. S. Companies pull out of china that would be 35400000000000. 00 worth of goods not sold that would have an impact in the u. S. That would really decrease or not hers and i just talking about Companies American companies who are here who are selling here gordon why the shaking ahead there. Well because some factories are moving from china and theyre moving for a number of reasons but you know theres a number of issues here and one of them is a supply chain robustness you know chinas declared a peoples war on the United States they did that last may they took steps to deliberately spread the coronavirus beyond their borders in all probability from what we can tell and so were americans are starting to understand theres something more important than just low cost its also reliability of supply because china has threatened to cut off supplies to the United States of Critical Materials and in fact its done that with regard to other countries as well so from the United States point of view you know we can have goods made in india which would be just as cheap and i think were probably going to move in that direction largely because theres a cost to buying goods in china and enriching a hostile regime so there are going to be political barriers to trade goods will be more expensive at least in the interim but eventually i think were going to find that the markets will adjust and americans will have access to low cost goods plus theyll have a more reliable supply plus we will not be enriching the hostile state the thing is youre saying eventually there and and i think thats actually quite important because i mean so much product is made in china and exported from china not just to the United States but to all over the world unraveling that its would take give decades possibly. Well i think would take less than than decades when i was practicing law in hong kong in 1909 i represented an American Consumer Products Company and they manufactured in guangdong they were concerned about political disruption so they moved the factory to thailand and it took them a couple months and then when they saw that the political problems in china were not affecting the supply chain they moved their tires factory back in the going down province so this can be done quickly and met a fact weve seen that as factories have left china for various reasons including cost going to places like vietnam going to places like india and the rest of it and if you look at the trend of chinese propaganda its very very corrosive against india and thats a real indication that beijing is worried about factories leaving china this is a trend its occurring and i think it will pick up speed especially as countries understand how bill line china has been because you got to remember that china has now at this very moment is involved in threats against india it wants to take over kazakhstan you know weve seen the incursions into indian controlled territory theres of all sorts of things that are ok right now that countries are going to understand i cant go one point for a 2nd i enter a quick reply from you then and then i want to go back to down to some of the questions approach a broken rap record of half truths i mean it is situation is not that simple and i understand he has a lot of experience from 1009 but that is not the case if you actually go to the and chairman here and you talk to them and theyve done surveys both in the shanghai chapter and also in beijing and the Good Companies are moving. Production out of china but theyre not moving out of china where theyre doing is theyre putting future production in other places why because donald trump is declare that china is off limits erected a cold war is kind of chinas started a routine is nonsense and only a body in the right mind and i understand that. My worthy opponent here has read the big book. Virus put out by donald associates and says that you should attack china at every moment to reelect aung trunks but i dont think its really very rational and i dont think anyone really believes that ok im going to leave but what what this discussion particular thing gordon and i know has raised its potentially and image problem and done a lot to ask you about that after coronavirus after the mudslinging from from the lights of donald trump and others does china have an image problem that it needs that it will that be important to fix for it to move forward. It is extremely important for china to fix this image because to me im living in china so i dont fear that as strongly as my foreign colleagues on that now in the u. S. Actually you dont have to be chinese you just look have to look like asia for people to sort of have the bias against you and i think for china to correct that impression its going to be a very tough battle on now do you the ology competition and how china u. S. Relation is evolving is quite warring and we have seen that there are a lot of conflicts steering the 2 countries competition in technology and geopolitics and now china has to come forward to give more transparency about the origin of this krone virus and right now its more of a mystery rather than a secret for Chinese Government in my opinion because the internal investigation is going on but absolutely china has to step up and do more International Collaboration with the un with the you with other countries and try to come up with a report and a clear clear saying what they did on january 3rd when they made the decision of locking down exactly what measures were made and how they reached that decision and after that what happened exactly in a city and a what and when do they decide to ask people to go back to war and those are the questions that china needs to become more transparent just otherwise i think is really hard for me to make friends in International Just really quickly down 30 seconds and this is a slight tangent to end on but hong kong i mean we see already the protests starting up there again and the issues of the National Security told thats another thing which would need to on an International Stage really think about. Where the home home issue was is going to be very tricky because now we have seen that china has tightened a grip control over hong kong and we know that as a Financial Center is very important but im personally a bit more pessimistic overhung constitute sure because the fundamental problems of its having its protests in the past was not solved and we have seen the capital outflow away from hong kong so its going to be a tough battle for home cause it isnt as well folks this is been a great discussion lots of different perspectives which is what we like on inside story done one gordon chang on a tank and thank you so much for your time. And thank you for watching wherever you are around the world remember we are online as well in the show section and aljazeera dot com also on facebook at facebook dot com forward slash inside story just a. J. Inside story on twitter or at if you want to get in touch with me directly im kemal santamaria from the whole inside story team thanks for joining us and well see you again soon. The tsunami of mud there the 16 indonesians will need to. Submerging the homes and livelihoods of 60000 people. Years later local inhabitants still fighting for justice from the Fracking Company they blame. And the whole sludge continues to flow. Great a witness documentary. On aljazeera. The latest news as it breaks the mine sits within a valley surrounded by bush land and most of its operations have been about 500 made his name the surface with detailed coverage the Malaysian Navy recently prevented a boat carrying around 200. 00 range of refugees from landing from around the world summit leaders are accusing the opponents of trying to topple the fights with financial stability. Teach it strongman is ruling within a fire and faced on the sidelines from. His allies is deafening the us was perfectly happy to trade off from our forsee for security why our western leader is turning a blind eye when even the own citizens have forgotten victim to his repression executions torture or censorship is not acceptable and you wont hear such strong words from lets say berlin or paris or london a man in cairo on aljazeera Save Humanity i really really am not getting anywhere near it. Hello again peace it will be here in doha the top stories on aljazeera have been more evacuations on monday morning of russian most nerys from the frontlines of the battlefield in the libyan capital tripoli thats according to the un backed government the russians have been fighting on behalf of the warlord after against forces who backed the government with support from turkey have to has been trying to capture the capital for 13 months the mayor of bani walid confirm the russians flew the 1st group out from an air base in the town on sunday 7 military planes were sent to retrieve them not what up till what had