South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Xi’s gambit: China plans for a world without tech from US
Firefighters, faith leaders get shots for the vulnerable
China is freeing up tens of billions of dollars for its tech industry to borrow. It is cataloging the sectors where the United States or others could cut off access to crucial technologies. And when its leaders released their most important economic plans last week, they laid out their ambitions to become an innovation superpower beholden to none.
Anticipating efforts by the Biden administration to continue to challenge China’s technological rise, the country’s leaders are accelerating plans to go it alone, seeking to address vulnerabilities in the country’s economy that could thwart its ambitions in a wide range of industries, from smartphones to jet engines.
China has made audacious and ambitious plans before — in 2015 — but is falling short of its goals. With more countries becoming wary of China’s behavior and its growing economic might, Beijing’s drive for technological independence has taken on a new urgency. The country’s new five-year plan, made public March 5, called tech development a matter of national security, not just economic development, a break from the previous plan.
The plan pledged to increase spending on research and development by 7% annually, including the public and private sectors. That figure was higher than budget increases for China’s military, which is slated to grow 6.8% next year, raising the prospect of an era of looming Cold War-like competition with the United States.
The spending pledges follow four tumultuous years during which former President Donald Trump rattled — and angered — the Communist Party leadership
under Xi Jinping by restricting access to U.S. technology for some of its corporate giants, including Huawei.
The experience has hardened a view that the United States, even under a new administration, is determined to undercut the country’s advancement and that China can no longer rely on the West for a stable supply of the technologies that help drive its economic growth.
“The United States, which has already climbed to the summit, wants to kick away the ladder,” Zhang Xiaojing, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote recently.
One sector that China has struggled with is microchips, which much of its electronics production relies on. Bewilderingly complex production has stymied Chinese businesses, which instead import the majority of the semiconductors they require.
Despite tens of billions of dollars invested, China’s domestic chip production met only 15.9% of its chip demand in 2020, barely higher than the 15.1% share it accounted for in 2014,
according to IC Insights, a U.S. semiconductor research firm.
China’s premier, Li Keqiang, last week detailed proposals to accelerate the development of high-end semiconductors, operating systems, computer processors, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
“I think they’re really worried,” said Rebecca Arcesati, a tech analyst with the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. “They know that without access to those technologies, they won’t be able to reach their targets.”
The new strategy, to a degree, rebrands the country’s previous Made in China 2025 campaign, which sought to propel it to the lead in a range of cutting-edge technologies.
“China wants to reduce its dependency on the world — not to reduce its trade and interaction but to ensure that it is not vulnerable to the kind of strategic blackmail against China that it has historically used against others,” said Daniel Russel, a former U.S. diplomat who is now a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
MIAMI BEACH — At the end of a recent Sunday evening Spanish-language Mass, the Rev. Roberto Cid made an announcement that perked up many gray-haired heads.
“If you are over 65 and a Florida resident and want a COVID vaccine, call the parish office and we can help you,” the Roman Catholic priest said, as happy nodding spread through the pews of historic St. Patrick church.
In much of the country, getting the coveted vaccine has been tremendously difficult for many older adults due to complicated and overtaxed websites and bureaucracies — and even more so for those who have disabilities, are homebound or have no family to help.
But in Miami Beach, faith leaders and the fire department have joined resources to expedite getting shots in the arms of older adults starting with the homebound and those in low-income housing.
Through late February the initiative was responsible for delivering 5,466 shots in the city, where a relatively high 17% of its 92,000 residents are 65 and over, including hundreds of Holocaust survivors. That’s on top of other vaccinations being arranged by hospitals and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the area.
“We’re not responding with lights and sirens, but we are responding to a need in the community,” Fire Chief Virgil Fernandez said. “For many of the vulnerable, we’re the first line of defense.”
The initiative began to take shape well before vaccines were available. Early last fall, Division Chief Digna Abello started pushing for the fire department to rent a freezer that could store the Pfizer
vaccine at the required ultracold temperatures, on the assumption that it would be approved and the department’s 200 firefighters, all trained paramedics, could help distribute it.
The program now up and running since January, each day, amid a mountain of neatly organized paperwork in her office at the fire station, she manually keys into the state database each vaccine delivered by the firefighters and the nurses that now accompany them, using a data entry system she created.
“It’s easier to look the other way. But if we have the capabilities ...” Abello said, her voice trailing off. The 38-yearold mother self-assigns tasks that often keep her at the station until 2 a.m., such as procuring the most efficient syringes that waste as little
of the precious vaccines as possible.
“Every drop has to be accounted for,” said fire Capt. Mark Schwartz, who loads the vials in bags of ice for daily deliveries and has configured his phone to alert him to any temperature changes in the department’s vaccine freezers.
“The first time we had 1,000 thousand doses,” Schwartz said, “I couldn’t sleep — ‘I’ve got 1,000 of what everybody wants!’ ”
The biggest challenge was to get the shots to the people who needed them most and had the greatest difficulty navigating online registrations or mass vaccination sites — like a 96-year-old man who’s unable to leave his bed in a cramped apartment and got his second dose from Schwartz in mid-February.
Firefighters already have
an “evacuation list” of people they need to get to safety during hurricanes. To go beyond that, they turned to temples and churches that minister to and are familiar with many of the neediest in the community. Rabbis and pastors draw up lists of those who need or have asked for help with a vaccine, for as soon as the doses become available.
One of them is Rabbi Mendy Levy of the Chabad Hasidic movement, who qualified to receive the vaccine due to his front-line work as a hospital chaplain and posted about it online immediately to encourage others.
“We have to be examples to the rest of the community,” he said.
Levy helps train health care providers who treat Holocaust survivors, some of
whom can be retraumatized by triggers such as injections and white coats after being subjected to experiments carried out by doctors in concentration camps. It’s crucial that firefighters and nurses take the vaccines to a welcoming setting, such as a synagogue or a patient’s home, and visit with them and their families.
“Though it’s a trigger, so in general they are afraid, they recognize this is a God-given gift,” Levy said.
Firefighter Eric Cento, who has worked two extra volunteer shifts weekly, administered a shot to a homebound Holocaust survivor in her late 90s earlier this year. During his visit the woman showed off family photos and offered him food, he recalled.
“To be able to help someone like that ... they’ve been
waiting a long time,” he said. “It’s like going to a grandparent’s house.”
While faith leaders assist with the outreach, their help transcends congregations and belief systems. A married couple whom Cento helped get their first doses at a senior community center were put on a list by a synagogue, but they’re not Jewish.
Their daughter, Karin Matos, said the family was “desperate” after four nurses administering home care to her 93-year-old father tested positive. She tried all the vaccine lists she could find but struck out with each. Then she heard about the one being maintained by Temple Beth Sholom and signed them up.
“The city literally called the same day,” Matos said.
Ten days later Matos’ parents got their first shots.
KYIV, Ukraine — After receiving its first shipment of coronavirus vaccine, Ukraine found itself in a new struggle against the pandemic — persuading its widely reluctant people to get the shot.
Although infections are rising sharply, Ukrainians are becoming increasingly opposed to vaccination: an opinion poll released this month by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 60% of the country’s people don’t want to get vaccinated, up from
40% a month earlier. The nationwide poll of 1,207 had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
The resistance appears to be rooted in longstanding suspicion of vaccines dating back to the Soviet era, amplified by politicians’ allegations about low-quality vaccines, corruption scandals and misinformation spread through social media. Even more surprisingly, the reluctance still appears even among those highest at risk who administer lifesaving drugs to others every day: medical workers.
In the mining town of Selydove, 420 miles east of Kyiv, only 5% of the medical staff agreed to be vaccinated. Those declining included Olena Obyedko, a 26-yearold nurse who works in the hospital’s intensive care ward for COVID-19 patients, where people die every week.
“I decided not to get vaccinated. I doubt the quality of the vaccine. I’m afraid there will be side effects,” she said.
So few people chose to get the shots that the mobile brigade who came to Selydove to administer them ended up giving vaccinations to themselves in order not to let the vaccine go to waste.
“Such a low number of vaccinated people is associated with low confidence in the vaccine that has entered Ukraine,” brigade head
Olena Marchenko said of the AstraZeneca vaccine that was manufactured in India. “This is due to prejudice and information that is spread on social networks. People read a lot, they have a negative attitude towards the Indian vaccine.”
Prominent politicians have fed that suspicion.
Former President Petro Poroshenko said in parliament this month that he asked doctors in one region about why there was resistance to vaccination and was told: “Because they brought s---. And they brought it because of corruption and incompetence.”
Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko added to the discontent by demanding that parliament pass a law to give government compensation to those who face vaccine side effects.
Vaccine corruption scandals had started even before the first doses arrived in the country. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine reported that it began an investigation into a September deal to purchase
1.9 million doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine at 504 hryvna, or about
$18, per dose. Its Chinese makers have not released full reports on its efficacy and one study in Brazil said it only has a 50% efficiency.
“What these attacks lead to are consequences that will affect every Ukrainian,” said Health Minister Maxim Stepanov. “We are talking about an attempt to disrupt the vaccination campaign in
Ukraine.”
Ukraine received its first shipment of vaccine — 500,000 AstraZeneca doses — in late February. Yet, only about 23,500 people have been vaccinated since then.
In that same period, as many as 10,000 new infections a day have been recorded. Overall, the country of 41 million has recorded more than 1.4 million infections and almost 29,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The health minister says only about 40% of medical workers treating coronavirus patients have agreed to receive the vaccine.
Speaking in parliament, Oleksandr Kornienko, a leading member of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People faction, said medical facilities were forced to destroy many doses of the vaccine — which can only be stored for a few hours after a vial is opened — because the medical professionals who had been prescribed vaccinations did not show up.
“Now they are forced to destroy the coveted vaccine, because they fail to give it to people in time,” said Kornienko.
Zelenskiy, who contracted the virus in November, tried to encourage vaccinations by publicly getting a shot himself.
“The vaccine will allow us to live again without restrictions,” Zelensky said. “I believe that this vaccine is of high quality.”
Yet his action seems to have had little effect.
The country designated 14,000 doses of its first vaccine shipment for the military, especially those fighting Russia-backed separatists in the east. But only 1,030 troops have been vaccinated thus far.
In the front-line town of Krasnohorivka, soldiers widely refused to vaccinate.
“I have little faith in a pandemic, I don’t think it’s some kind of serious disease,” said Serhiy Kochuk, a 25-year-old soldier. “I am healthy, but the vaccine can provoke illness. Because of this vaccine you can get sick.”
The head of the Kyiv sociology institute, Volodymyr Paniotto, told Associated Press that a recent decline in the popularity of Zelenskiy’s government has contributed to the vaccine resistance.
“The super-critical attitude of Ukrainians to the authorities was superimposed on the struggle of politicians and the information war, which led to massive distrust in society,” he said.
Ukrainians have been skeptical about vaccinations since Soviet times. In 2019, the country had Europe’s largest measles outbreak due to widespread refusals to get a measles vaccine shot.
“Over the past 20 years, Ukraine has been among the European countries most opposed to vaccination as such,” said Vadym Denysenko, an analyst at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future.
The United Nations Development Program says the country is suffering an “info-demic” of misinformation about the vaccine and has called on the government to step up its fight.
“Conspiracy theories, rumors and malicious disinformation can quickly go viral on social media, especially when there is a low level of public trust in state institutions,” it said.
“Such a low number of vaccinated people is associated with low confidence in the vaccine that has entered Ukraine.”
Olena Marchenko, mobile vaccination brigade head