“Summer Davos”: despite the end of zero-covid, Klaus Schwab flatters the Chinese government, “impatient to learn” from its “vision”… to impose social credit?

2023-07-05 18:00:00

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM – As part of the “Summer Davos” held from June 27 to 29 in Tianjin, China, Klaus Schwab gave the opening speech at the 14th annual meeting of the “New Champions”. The founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), praised Premier Li Qiang for his handling of Covid and his economic development plan for the country. In the spring of 2022, then secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai, he ordered a very strict confinement of the city for two months. Upon entering his new position in March 2023, Li Qiang enforced “new measures” control of the pandemic according to Schwab, which nevertheless represent the total abandonment of the so-called “zero-covid” policy. Indeed, after public riots at the end of last year against this type of measure, China has chosen to largely reopen and revive its economy. Without acknowledging the failure of a management he encouraged on behalf of the WEF, Klaus Schwab welcomed his collaboration “40 years with the CCP” and pandered to the Chinese executive, growing impatient for other partnerships, including some related to building social credit.

Created in 2017, the meeting of “New WEF Champions“, held within the “Summer Davos” forum, is held every summer in China and brings together participants from emerging countries, business leaders, “leaders” from “next generation” or tech personalities.

This year, the new version took place in Tianjin from June 27 to 29, 2023. On the program of discussions: themes traditionally prized by the WEF and already addressed during previous editions of the Davos Forum, such as food security and biotechnologies, the climate and global warming, the future of money or artificial intelligence.

Fighting global warming “with China”

This new edition is especially talked about because speech opening by Klaus Schwab. In his speech, he openly expressed the appreciation of the WEF for its “partnership of more than 40 years with the Chinese Communist Party” (CPC), saying he is ready to “deepen it”. The founder of the Forum undertakes, for example, to “fight against global warming” alongside China, hailed “for its anti-Covid control measures”.

“Premier Li Qiang took office in March [2023] (…), at a critical time when China adopted new control measures against the Covid pandemic and began to stimulate economic development, social dynamism and international cooperation”did he declare.

“Premier Li took his office this March at China’s National People’s Congress at a critical moment when China adopted new COVID control measures and started to boost economic development, social dynamism, and international cooperation”: Klaus Schwab #AMNC23 #WEF pic.twitter.com/cWHGl5QNJs

— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) June 27, 2023

In fact, these “new measures” are more a disavowal of the so-called “zero-covid” policy encouraged by Schwab and the WEF during the health crisis. Measures which have rightly been decried in China because their exorbitant, even ruinous, cost to the economy and their stressful nature for the population, without however showing any scientific effectiveness.

In December 2022, the largest Chinese cities were the scene of major demonstrations against all the anti-Covid measures: confinements, daily tests, control system by pass…, deemed too harsh and coercive by the population.

Both national and local authorities have relied on apps to fight the spread of the coronavirus. Citizens were forced to install programs on their smartphones to be able to move freely in the country after obtaining authorization certificates. These programs gathered a lot of health data such as the results of PCR tests, mandatory to take a plane, a train or even to access a commercial establishment such as a hotel, a supermarket or a restaurant.

In a survey unveiled at the end of 2022, Associated Press demonstrated how these apps have been used to stifle protests against China’s “zero-covid” policy.

This Chinese example, with its “modernization over the past 40 years” and its anti-Covid measures, is thus, what many fear, the model that the WEF and its founder Klaus Schwab would like to establish in several other nations, particularly in Europe and North America. A “modernisation” accompanied by mass surveillance technologies, which in fact rhymes with the establishment of a social credit system.

But the processes that cause concern in the West are different. Despite the rejection of anti-Covid measures by part of the population, such as wearing a mask, vaccination or confinement, G20 states or global organizations such as the WHO openly plan to renew the implementation of health passes , “to prevent future pandemics”.

WEF ‘eager’ to learn from Chinese ‘vision’

Many other initiatives, aimed at “fighting” epidemics, global warming or protecting minors pose the risk of a social credit system similar to that established in China and are, each time, decried by citizens. , in France as elsewhere in Europe or in the United States.

Let us quote the European and American projects to create a digital version of their respective currencies, the euro and the dollar, or the French project of a digital certificate to prevent the access of minors to pornographic sites. Let’s not forget the European project for a digital identity, which could integrate “social, financial, medical, professional data and much more”and of “store personal information in a single digital identifier”.

The fight against global warming also arouses apprehension, since, among the measures proposed (and sometimes adopted), is the compulsory monitoring of the carbon footprint of individuals, through a “pass” that some see as a violation of life privacy and individual freedoms.

Ideas that can also be found among the personalities invited each year to the Davos Forum. During the last edition in January 2023 in Switzerland, many personalities for example proposed initiatives favorable to the climate or to the prevention of the next pandemics. Take the case of Tony Blair, who openly called for the establishment of a “digital infrastructure” centralized for “know who has been vaccinated and who has not” and as a result, to fight against the next pandemics.

“Premier Li, we look forward to learning from your vision of China and the world”concluded Klaus Schwab in his speech. The founder of the WEF and his speech are highly criticized, particularly on Twitternot only for its praise of China’s anti-pandemic measures but also for this barely concealed project, “to learn from vision” China with, implicitly, the adoption of its famous social credit system.