doubts today. about whether they could accomplish that invasion. as china, russia, united states reached a critical point in the ukraine war. the cia says beijing s having second thoughts about potentially invading taiwan. and a significant from the head of fox move. rupert murdoch acknowledging the hosts on his network promoted election lies. what this means for the billion dollar lawsuit against fox news. we want to welcome our viewers here in the united states and around the. world i m wolf blitzer and this is a special edition of the situation room. tonight, major new questions right at the center of a deadly coronavirus pandemic. that may change so many lives. where did covid-19 come from? the white house weighing in the same thing on the u.s. energy departments assessment. that the lethal virus most likely came from a lab leak in china. emphasis on the caveat here. cnn sources tell us that the assessment comes with quote, low confidence. tonight they say withi
There are certain difficulties that the chinese economy faces this year which i think they are going to try to address. the biggest question is about the extent to which we are going to see a reversal of last year s contraction and consumption and there has been talk about helping consumers by distributing income to them, distributing income to them, distributing consumer coupons, etc. they have not been really major programmes but there will continue to be talk about that. the other worry, the biggest worry is the real estate market, as you know that has come down quite a lot and put enormous pressure, particularly on local governments who have had to wonder, salaries, etc so there will probably be an announcement about attempts to stabilise the property market. beijing doesn t want to see it revived, local governments to and i think there is a bit of a
wolf, beijing doesn t want to portray itself in all this as a global peacemaker. if you get back a year ago to when we were in the midst of the start of this invasion from russia to ukraine, and you thought about coming out of the beijing winter olympics, that was a time when xi jinping in particular wanted to portray china very different light, amidst the covid ad break. and the relationship between president xi and putin was showcased at the start of the beijing olympics. the opening ceremony even the two met, and they declare this no limits relationship, here we are a year later in what s gonna happen is there s no limits relationship is gonna be put to the test. you have beijing trying to be a peacemaker,
For many countries, because the leadership in beijing doesn t know how else to deal with this, except through censorship. joel, you know, if they tried that in the tristate area for too long, people would rebel inside and outside living their lives. yeah. but in an authoritarian state like china, of course, it s a different situation. what is the recourse of the people, average citizen, in shanghai, maybe coming to beijing soon lockdowns like this, how do you push back from a system like this? i don t think they have a recourse. you re recognizing that. they re starting to see resistance but it s small and marginal. the thing about the chinese information system is when it becomes mass action, or popular action, that s when the government really clamps down. we saw it even with the outset of the pandemic in wuhan, there were a few independent bloggers.