The fact that people outside of China don't know what WeChat is make sense. It isn't an "online forum". It is more like a private Whatsapp group. He also told them the wrong information. He shouldn't have been charged but while he used the "internet" it wasn't public. It was passed around and others did post it publically online.
I don't know why Wikipedia is missing a lot of the public information that happened before the 31st. The local government was notified on the 28th. The National government was notified on the 30th. Other hospitals in the region were notified around this time as well.
His "leak" came while a lot of people were being notified about this problem. It "looks" like they would have notified the public and WHO a few days later once they had more information.
We still don't know if the original source is the seafood market. The fact that not all the cases came from there doesn't mean much. The SARS expert (Guan Yi) from Hong Kong said that there was no proof of human to human transmission on the 3rd.
You've counted time before anyone knew it existed in your 2-month delay. The first death was on the 10th. Less than 50 people have the virus. The probably should have done something then or on the 15th (second death).
There was a delay but more like 2 weeks compared to 2 months. If you are saying that they should have done something before they knew it existed then ... what should they have done?
As it is people are constantly bashing them for doing something.
The earliest case was found at the start of December but it wasn't correctly identified till the end (they went back and tested existing patients).
It wasn't confirmed as being able to spread person to person until the 17th although there was some evidence that it should have been identified on the 11th. (So a delay of either 5 or 10 days rather than 2 months)
The doctor didn't raise public concern. He told a few friends and told them not to tell people. The official announcement was made the following day.
If you look at the timetable it is significantly better than the SARs response or the N1H1 response so we seem to be learning and making progress which is good.
So, you do a lab test and it comes back Coronavirus which is expected. They do nothing (its the "cold").
Someone else wants to check it (basically luck or maybe policy since SARs) and when they do they notice it is different - 7th of January
then by the 14th, they have it sampled and they have detection kits.
Because of SARs Wuhan takes a few days to figure out what to do and then decide to quarantine the entire city. It is a rush job but they don't exactly have a lot of time.
From the real discovery (7th) to massive response time is 2 weeks. In the past it has often been over a month before anything effective is done. What would you do differently?
There are currently 61 high-speed trains from Wuhan to Guangzhou on most days (although to different stations in Guangzhou). The fastest one is now just under 4 hours.
If you go from Shanghai to Suzhou via HSR a train goes roughly every 15 minutes. Most trains going east go through Suzhou (since it is a major hub) and it is roughly 30 minutes away which is a decent distance so worth stopping for. The train only gets to maximum speed for about 15 minutes in the middle.
The problem with planes is that they have to carry all their fuel/energy and to carry it costs more fuel/energy.
Most high-speed trains don't carry all their fuel with them. They get it from the network.
This will all change as battery technology improves but at the moment I cannot see it getting better trains.
That being said I expect that the 1000km/h speed will be like the Shanghai to Beijing track that got up to maximum speed a few times for the record and has since been reduced to make it more economical.
Even if this does happen and the train reaches 1,000 for a single trip and then drops back to a safer and more profitable speed of 600km/h or 800km/h it is still faster than what we have now and is a massive improvement.
That isn't true. You have multiple tracks for a reason. Generally, you have three separate trains on the same tracks and a sidetrack that goes into the cities or two tracks that split before the city and merge after the city.
1. Direct - They have the least stops and are the fastest. They don't go into towns. They go around them.
2. Express - They only stop at the largest towns.
3. Regular - They are the slowest and stop at every town.
You then use timing to make sure that they don't crash. The slow train will generally stop on the track and wait while the direct overtakes it (you don't want them both moving at the same time).
Taobao shouldn't have many warehouses because of the business model.
I'm not sure about TMall but I know that in Beijing they used to have a distribution point roughly every 10km through the whole city.
When you used to setup your address you selected the closet distribution center to you (I assume because the maps were not setup then. You don't select it any more.)
When I buy packages in Shanghai about half of them are delivered through a 3rd party and the rest are direct. It may just be my area though. I assume it depends where the product is come from...
When did Amazon start logistics? I know for a fact that Taobao/TMall was doing it in 2012. There was a distribution hub at the end of my street. I assume they had been doing it a few years before then but not 100% sure when they started.
You are correct JD didn't exist back then since it used to be called 360buy and they used 3rd party shipping companies.
After becoming JD they started shipping themselves. Not sure about the year.
Probably right about JD but as far as I know Amazon didn't start doing logistics till after 2013.
What is interesting is that an American company is copying Chinese companies after pulling out of China because they could not compete with the local companies.
Both JD & Taobao/Tmall have their own large shipping empires in China. I suspect that was part of the reason they pulled out. They could not compete using 3rd part shipping companies.
Now they are doing the same thing in their home market.
The general attitude of Chinese people that I speak to is that they are good but lots of other Chinese people are bad/don't follow rules. I constantly have Chinese people trying to protect me from other Chinese people that they are worried will try to take advantage of me.
It seems to be like breaking road rules. Everyone justifies themselves when they do it but other people are bad drivers when they break rules.
The general idea is that surveillance isn't for them but for other Chinese people which they are fine with.
The BBC is blocked all (it is blocked right now because of the Hong Kong protest/riot happening at the moment) the time and its live news feed is also cut off regularly in the middle of stories.
That being said it is trusted a lot more than CCN & Foxnews which are the other two news sources that are on cable TV (neither are blocked at the moment).
I wouldn't really say that the BBC has a China-friendly stance. I would say that it tries to be more objective most of the time (which I agree with when compared to CCN & Fox News).
They eat lots of animals but bats are not one of them. (I'm sure there is a village in China where they do eat bats. It is a big country.)
The photos you see online of Chinese people eating bats are Tourist in the Pacific.