Thank you for being with us on cspan. Guest happy to be here. Host it is friday afternoon your time. Some of the looming questions involve chinas responsibility for this pandemic. What are your looming questions five months after the first outbreak . Guest the thing im focusing on now is how china tries to come out of this and manage this. I think they can see that when the dust settles, there is going to be a lot of fingerpointing. More fingerpointing now. A lot of blame shifting both from the United States, from europe. Tona has been trying rewrite the narrative and pretrade themselves not as the source of the virus but as the savior from it. Not so much on the United States but in europe in particular and africa and other parts of asia. We have seen them donating a lot of masks. Selling a lot of ventilators and other equipment to try to portray themselves as a helpful, responsible, global superpower. In a lot of cases, that has backfired because those masks have turned out to be substandard. China is trying to manage this and come out of this as best as it possibly can. December,g back to january, early february, what were the biggest missteps by the Chinese Government . Guest the biggest missteps was both was the attempt to cover up this virus. We know the first case was discovered in the middle of november. It was covered up throughout december and into january. It was not until january the first that they closed the market that was the source of the virus. It was not until the 20th of january that Chinese People were told the virus could be transmitted between people. By that stage, many millions of Chinese People, hundreds of millions of Chinese People were already on the road moving around china in preparation for the Lunar New Year holiday. Chinas attempt to cover up at the beginning and the first few beginning in the first few weeks, allow this virus to spread rapidly should spread rapidly. Host based on your expertise as the beijing bureau chief, what were they thinking . Guest they put politics first as they often do. The local officials in wuhan were very conscious of the political calendar. There are these political meetings that have been around china leading up to the big political meeting held in march in beijing every year. The meeting were held in the middle of january in wuhan. The local officials appeared not to want to allow the virus to overshadow those meetings or interfere with it. By putting politics first, they put Public Health second and someed the virus to gain traction. There has been a lot of anger in china about the fact that the people were not warned. That doctors and was a blowers andd to warn about the whistleblowers who tried to one about the buyers were silence. There was the case of the doctor who was censured when he tried to sound the alarm and ended up dying from the coronavirus. There has been a lot of anger in china. Thanks to the censorship and the political control within china, a lot of it has been repressed and put down. If you read a chinese newspaper today, it will be celebrating the strength of the chinese response. This is propaganda. This is the Chinese Communist partys narrative. They are always going to try to portray chinese leadership in the best a possible. Right now, they are seizing on the missteps in the United States and the u. K. And portraying Boris Johnson and donald trump as bumbling and indecisive in their leadership of the respective american and british responses to this. They are taking advantage of the comparison. Portraying china as being decisive and bringing this crisis under control with the leaders and these other western liberal democracies have not been able to do so. Host as a western reporter in beijing, what kind of pressure did you face as a reporter for the Washington Post in china . Guest being a reporter for an american outlet in china has become exceptionally difficult over the past year in particular. This year, it is very standard to have government officials block our request for information. Very standard. When you are reporting anywhere in china even in beijing on the coronavirus, i had people in plainclothes coming up and obstructing us on the street. Detaining us from being able to do our job. China does not want any independent journalism about anything let alone about the coronavirus. We face a lot of obstruction. More severely is the chinese reporters. Anyone trying to do independent journalism in china until i different story from what the official propaganda narrative is. They have been disappeared, detained, locked up to silence them. The obstruction we face is significant, nothing compared to what brave chinese reporters try to do. Is also theifield hor of the book we will talk about the north Korean Leader in just a moment. Katie is joining us from new york. Evening. Caller hi. Is this mean . Host yes, you are on the air. Caller thank you. , i do not know if it started in china. Does anybody know it started in china . It was on the news and what was going on. The president had to know what was going on. Illfirst person that became and tested and diagnosed with the coronavirus, he is like one person. One person. Why should i shutdown the whole country for one person . Guess what . It went from one person to over a million. Now, it is the innocence of the world, the children. Things are happening to things are happening to our children. He wants to reopen up the schools. Well, that one person went to over one million. What is going to happen to our children . Our children are our future. What is going to happen . Host katie, thank you for the question. Lets begin with her first point. Did it originate in wuhan, china, anna fife . Guest yes. All of the evidence points to hunt, china. And i know that secretary pompeo has been pushing this idea that it came from a lab. There is no evidence to support that claim. The scientists have told us this is clearly derived from nature. It started in a bat, it seems. The question mark is still about what the intermediate host of that was. Aybe a pangolin, a sort of scaly animal. We know it jumped from bats and mutated and going to humans. There is no doubt that it began that way. There is no reason to believe any of these conspiracy theories that it was leaked from the lab in wuhan intentionally or otherwise. Host to this headline from the Washington Post, that the Chinese Government, with some additional cases, is now preparing to test all 11 million residents in wuhan. How is that going to work . Guest that is a great question. It is a big feat to do that. If they wanted to test, they said it would be a 10day battle. It is difficult to see even that the lab capacity would be able to process that many tests in that time. China has set out a goal of trying to, you know, look at how this has spread in wuhan. They are extremely sensitive to the political implications of this, because there is this very important political meeting that will take place at the end of next week in beijing, and china does not want any kind of whatsoever, to rain on that parade. They will do a lot of testing in wuhan and other places where there are outbreaks. Whether it is 11 million are not or not is inconsequential, i think. They will do blanket testing to make sure there is no second or third wave of cases stemming from wuhan. Host bottom line, do the Chinese People know that this originated from their country, from wuhan . Guest yes, they know that it began in wuhan. People, at the people in wuhan were also calling it the wuhan virus. There was not much dispute about that. Having said that, the Chinese Government has been propagating its own Conspiracy Theory , including this idea that american soldiers may have released the virus in october, during the International Military games that were held in wuhan. There is no support whatsoever for that. By releasing this Conspiracy Theory, chinese officials have been able to muddy the waters, in a way that american officials have also attempted to in the United States. Bottom line, it is accepted this began in the city of wuhan at the end of last year. Host anna fifield is the beijing bureau chief of the for the Washington Post. It is early friday afternoon. She is joining us from new zealand. Peter is on the phone from rhode island. Go ahead. Caller good evening. I had a quick question. There was a doctor on cspan a few weeks ago. I did not take his name down. He is a worldwide expert on viruses. He said one of his best friends was a leading scientist from china, who had known him for 30 years. He talked to him back in november. He said he warned the Chinese People not the people, but the leaders, that this could be real bad. He went to get in contact with the leading scientist again, and he disappeared. Do you know anything about that at all, for does that make sense to you . Guest i do not know anything about that particular case, but it does ring true to me. It does not necessarily mean he has been locked up or anything like that. But there is such a climate of fear in china that people who may have a dissenting view from the official government line are told to be quiet. If you were to raise questions about this publicly in china, probably the police would be knocking on your door within an hour, telling you to shut up. Because, yes, the government exercises a lot of political control. There is no freedom of speech in china. So it stands to reason than anybody, a scientist, a doctor, a journalist who is telling truths that the government does not like, does not find helpful would be silenced by the authorities. I do not know anything about that case, but it rings true with other cases i do know about. Host our next caller is from delta, colorado. John, good evening. You are on the air. Caller hi. In 1987, i was aware of doctors being able to correspond with each other around the world. Here we are 33 years later, and we have a major virus in december of 2019. And for me to understand as well, it is hard for me to understand why, with all this technology and information and access to information, that doctors from around the world and all kinds of medical professions around the world were not aware of this virus other than proclaiming that china covered it up, covered it up, when it was announced in december and january this virus was apparent. Why is this host thank you, john. We will get a response. Guest yes, china was pretty quick after it acknowledged this that this virus had been breaking out in wuhan to share the sequencing of it and enable to enable scientists around the world to look at it and to try to figure out what to do about it. But, yes, they could have certainly done that a lot earlier. I think, right now, the slow communication, the lack of communication is not because they do not have the technology or ability to share information and work together. It is more about political considerations. From chinas perspective, they do not want to be blamed for this. They are trained to cover their behinds, in a way, to make sure they are not blamed as much as possible. But there has been quite a lot of cooperation between countries like italy and china and iran and china and these laces that had the initial outbreaks overseas, south korea in particular. So i think the thing that is constraining cooperation between the United States and china is entirely political. It is the fact that the two leaderships are locked in a much bigger, more existential kind of battle there, which incorporates the trade war, which incorporates technology and 5g and huawei. It is really this kind of butting heads of two global powers that is constraining cooperation on so many things. So, yeah, we have not seen the United States and china cooperate on a Global Pandemic in a way that we would expect. But also, looking at, kim jongun, there was a lot of questioning about where he had gone a few weeks ago. That is the kind of area you know, north korea is the kind of area where china and the United States has been able to cooperate on an area of mutual interest in the past. 2008 or so, they were able to cooperate, when there were similar rumors. Now, because of the hostility between the two countries, they are not working together on areas where it is in both countries interest to do so. Host so what was up with the north Korean Leader . Speculation that he was near death, he was dying, and then he shows up, seemingly fine. Guest there are so many things with north korea we just do not know. There is no evidence to suggest anything was up with him whatsoever. It is not unusual for him to disappear for weeks at a time. The only thing that was different was the fact that there were unclear reports coming from south korea, which were picked up in the United States, suggesting he had heart surgery. I think the reason why these rumors took more traction, kind of gained more traction than other rumors was because they seemed credible. He is clearly in very bad physical shape for a 36yearold guy. But there is no evidence to support the rumors he had a stent put into his arteries, that he had any kind of health problems. Probably, he was social distancing. Probably, he was hunkered down at his beachfront compound and just keeping his distance from people, because, you know, he did not want to catch the coronavirus, like anybody else. All of north koreas relationship with the outside world are pretty much through china. He would have reason to be concerned about that. With so many things with north korea, we do not know, and we probably never will. Host as our viewers might discern, the accent, you are from new zealand. Your Prime Minister said your country has won the battle over coronavirus. What is the situation in new zealand . And in our final minutes or so, what are the lessons for the rest of the world . Guest after almost 50 days and pretty drastic lockdowns, yesterday, we were allowed to go out again. Life is pretty much back to normal in new zealand right now. I just took my son down to get a haircut this morning. There are lines of people in restaurants. , getting a haircut, and out and about. If you look at it, the only thing you would notice that is different was the fact that everybody is asked to sign in everywhere. Leave your Contact Details so that they can do contact tracing, if they need to. But we have had three days in a row with zero new cases. The virus is very much under control. The lesson, i mean, from new zealand is that we have had a very datadriven response, a scientificdriven response, where the Prime Minister has been crunching the numbers and looking at how this has spread. The modeling showed that we were going to look like italy, if we did nothing. So everybody was ordered to stay at home, to work from home. Schools were closed. It was very drastic, and it hurt our economy a lot, but it was short, and it was sharp. After 50 days, we are back to normal. The borders are closed, but the domestic economy is back to normal. The new zealand lesson is that a short, sharp, painful period is much better for the economy and for Peoples Mental Health than during very long, protracted , sort of half measures. People here are very relieved. We are allowed to hug our loved ones again and go visit people, just be careful, but go back to normal life. It is great. Host anna fifield as the beijing bureau chief from the post, joining us on what is a friday afternoon in new zealand come on this thursday evening, we thank you for being with us. Guest sure. Thank you for having me on. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspans washington journal , live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up today, dr. David kimberlin, a pediatric Infectious Disease chair at the university of alabama at birmingham, discusses how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting children. Join us live at 7 00 a. M. Join the discussion. Today ats. House joins nine 00 a. M. Eastern to vote on a Coronavirus Relief package. The bill provides over 3 trillion for state and local governments, funding for local governments, and moneys for individuals and families. The house is also expected to debate and vote on house rules changes to allow for proxy voting on the house floor during the public emergency period. Todays how session is expected to last late in the evening due to social distancing guidelines. Watch live coverage on cspan, online at cspan. Org, or listen with the free cspan radio app. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, with white house briefings, updates from governors and congress, and our daily callin program, washington journal, hearing your thoughts about the coronavirus coverage command if you miss any of our live coverage, watch anytime on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discussed a 3 trillioon