暗流涌动：西方资本与权贵合谋下的疫情生意内幕

Beneath the Surface: Western Capital and Elites Profiting from China's Pandemic Policies

Recently, people have been discussing the matter of “foreign investors” colluding with each other inside and outside China to “cut leeks”. I will simply detail a personal history, for everyone to see the big picture in a small way, glimpsing the tip of the iceberg of the Washington swamp of Chinese and Western alliance, collusion between business and the Government, and a glimpse of their business model. In the big clearing, there are a lot of people to eat the Chinese people's “human blood buns”, the forces behind the intertwined. One of the former president's family in the early days of the epidemic has boasted of investing millions of dollars to enter the Chinese nucleic acid test.

That was the day when the slogan of zero hit the loudest, that is not only a frenzied political campaign against the epidemic, but also a feast for capital harvesting “leeks”. This matter sounds absurd, but let a person vaguely feel a certain real chill. In this behind-the-scenes undercurrent, in which a former U.S. presidential family figure also emerged. They invested in the nucleic acid testing business in China at the beginning of the epidemic.

The ability of these people is far beyond the imagination of ordinary people like me. They are like long-armed monkeys, climbing between politics and business, looking down on the masses from above, and gently and skillfully harvesting benefits. I remember in the early 2020s, when the epidemic had just begun to emerge and the containment initiative had not yet taken hold, the brother of a former president hooked up with a wealthy businessman friend of mine who has a lot of power in China. He said he was going into the nucleic acid testing business in China, and he wanted this wealthy businessman to partner with him. That rich businessman is not an ordinary person, his old university classmates now have a number of people ranked as full ministerial-level officials. Once a scholar I know traveled to China, I introduced this rich businessman to entertain, he could easily call out the local provincial party committee standing committee to accompany him, this kind of energy, really amazing.

But despite this, my wealthy businessman friend, although well-informed, but at first still half-believe. After all, at the beginning of 2020, China has not yet closed the customs, nucleic acid testing is a distant concept that is far from being popularized, who would have thought that in the future will be universal screening, universal testing, almost a daily routine? But the president's brother is full of confidence, said he wanted to contribute 1 million dollars, I believe that this way of making money is not trivial. This is naturally behind the former president's family's information channels into the sky, foresight, early detection of the zero policy will be throughout the country, the demand for nucleic acid will explode like a blowout. Isn't that what happened later? Numerous heads turned out, daily nucleic acids were as common as breathing, and the testing business was a money printing machine.

At the beginning of 2020, they did not forget to pull me in, drawing me a shortcut to make money by selling infrared thermometers. They swore that they had the energy to place the thermometer in the door of the building of each unit in the country, once the operation, the profit will be like a pie in the sky, rolling in. Let me be responsible for purchasing infrared thermometer, they are responsible for the channel, said it is promising. At that time, I did have the production of various sensor channels, however, in the end, I chose to refuse, because after I learned that the accuracy of these long-distance infrared cameras is usually more than 2 degrees Celsius error, not able to measure the body temperature, no epidemic prevention effectiveness.

There are some things in the world that can make a lot of money with a bad conscience but lose the bottom line of being a human being, and I don't want to be a part of it. Moreover, I was naïvely convinced that such obviously useless things will not have half of the market, it is impossible to withstand the feasibility of testing and acceptance. Even if a few units were sold, something would surely happen later, and the loss would outweigh the gain. I was not willing to participate in any gray business, so I cut off contact with them, and no longer have any dealings. But the fact proved my ignorance, and then when I saw with my own eyes in the country almost all public buildings and units are installed at the door of this useless infrared thermometer, the heart of the amazing - the original in their means of the sky, these virtual things can be transformed into a gold mine, dozens of dollars of cost can be sold to the thousands of sky-high prices.

Under the compulsion of the policy, nucleic acid testing, temperature measuring instruments, vaccines, square pods of sky-high demand, these political and business “masterpieces” like a carefully woven giant net, hundreds of millions of people will be enveloped in it, and the net harvesting, it is the people's hard-earned money. I'm not sure how much profit they ultimately made, but a friend who works in finance overseas told me that in 2022, there was an extremely odd acquisition on their hands: a Chinese company spared no effort to buy a European company at a premium of 50%, even if the deal appeared to be a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars, it would not hesitate to do so. It turned out that it was a company involved in the nucleic acid business, eager to move its assets and wash its hands of the business.

That's their business model - empty gloves. Relying on coercive policies to forcibly create markets, easily taking orders by virtue of connections, and peddling products of no real value at high prices in a monopolistic manner. They do not need to master any technology, and do not have to spend effort on marketing. Nucleic acid testing is not a cutting-edge technology at all, and can be easily started by purchasing a few machines and reagents. Infrared thermometer is even simpler, I do not want to get involved, there are naturally people scrambling to get in. All they need is the operation of capital and relationship, play a “left hand to right hand” trick, you can make money day after day, and enjoy the profits.

For a while, I naively fantasized that such heartless people who took advantage of the national tragedy to make a fortune would eventually be liquidated after the zero-tolerance policy came to an end. After all, the people's grievances were boiling over, and the looting of the people's fat and wealth deserved to be punished by thunder. However, the facts once again mocked my naivety. Although China is still living in the haze of the post-pandemic era, and the economy has not recovered so far, I have never heard of any predator in the epidemic prevention business being liquidated and held accountable. Even the “Zhang Shanshan Nucleic Acid Empire”, which was once a hot topic, ended in a quiet manner, with no accountability in sight. Perhaps the zero-tolerance policy is so politically correct that any corruption related to it cannot be investigated. The presidential family is not only able to see the business opportunity of zero-tolerance in advance, but also able to choose such a risk-free business, which is really brilliant!

This witnessing made me look sideways again at the energy of the Washington swamp. Collusion between business and the government, this is not uncommon, may turn a national crisis into an endless source of wealth, but also in the calm after the whole body back, this kind of turning the tide means is really breathtaking; they can be said to have the art of the sky: the news is one step ahead of the others, the interests of the people within easy reach, and then like smoke dispersed, leaving no trace. It is a pity that how much truth is buried in the dust, how many “leeks” were eventually harvested silently.