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It’s a pivotal moment for China. President Xi Jinping is expected to strengthen and expand his powers at the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which opens on Wednesday. During the week-long event, which is held once every five years, Xi will eye changes to the constitution and a longer presidential term that could put him on a par with Mao Zedong for length of reign. His timing to make the case to strengthen one-party rule under one leader couldn’t be better. Since 2012, under Xi’s rule, China has felt its economic influence grow while pressure from Western countries over a lack of respect for human rights and freedom has reduced. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now Just over 20 years ago, then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly criticized China’s stance on women’s rights at an event in Beijing, saying it was no no longer acceptable to discuss these as separate from human rights. It’s hard to imagine a similar scene taking place today. “[The Chinese government] is getting more confident,” Lokman Tsui, assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication in Hong Kong, tells Newsweek. “They say: ‘We are China, we too think freedom of speech is important but we also think social stability, development and sovereignty are important values.’” Nowhere was this message spelled out more clearly than in an editorial published by the state-controlled news agency Xinhua Tuesday, titled “Enlightened Chinese democracy puts the West in the shade" that praised China’s example of stable rule in the face of the “chaos swamping” Western liberal democracies. “Under the leadership of a sober-minded, forward-looking CCP, Chinese-style democracy has never been healthier and China has absolutely no need to import the failing party political systems of other countries,” the editorial read. People walk past a large billboard featuring achievements by Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Oct. 17, 2017, a day before the opening of the 19th National Congress of China's Communist Party. Kyodo News via Getty Images Xinhua criticized Western democracies for their "political backbiting, bickering and policy reversals" and hailed instead the example of “cooperation” between the CCP and non-Communist parties. In fact, the Communist party has a monopoly on political power that it uses to keep a tight grip on civil and political rights, as recorded by the U.S.-based, government-funded, non-governmental organization Freedom House. The party's grip tightened ahead of the congress, to ensure lack of political mobilization of any kind, on the streets—where an additional number of police officers and volunteers were deployed to maintain public order, as reported in Chinese media—and online. “Mobilization and protest is what they are afraid of,” Tsui says. “But a lot of regulation and censorship is not to prevent protest but it's image management, not losing face, not looking bad. That explains the other things that they do,” he adds. In recent weeks, Whatsapp users have experience disruption or blocking of the service, Winnie the Pooh fans are no longer allowed to share images of the bear (the cartoon has been used to mock President Xi) and new regulations on VPN will make it harder for citizens to bypass the so-called great firewall of China. “Regulation, control, censorship and surveillance of the internet has increased, even by Chinese standards, considering how internet censorship was already severe and tightly regulated,” Tsui says. According to him, the crackdown on communications during Xi’s presidency was also possible thanks to scandals in the U.S., such as the unveiling of the NSA surveillance operations, that have tainted American moral arguments for human rights. “The moral leadership of the U.S. government when it comes to internet freedom has disappeared and that has only gotten worse with Trump, whose administration keeps giving Beijing talking points,” Tsui says. U.S. President Donald Trump looks on Chinese President Xi Jinping during the plenary session at the G20 Summit on July 7, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. An editorial in the state-controlled Chinese media advocated for China's government stability instead of the "chaos swamping" Western democracies. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images Due to the government control of the public sphere, it is hard to discern what Chinese people think about their leadership and whether increased limits on internet freedom could spur any significant opposition. One journalist working for a Beijing-based media group told Newsweek—asking not to be identified for fear of repercussions—that the issue of internet freedom seem to only be relevant to specific parts of the population, such as reporters and researchers, as for the main population the services offered within the government-controlled internet sphere are enough. According to the journalist, it makes little sense to discuss whether the CCP is “winning” the war on internet freedom. “There is no significant fight, at least around me,” the source said. Tsui too doubts the presence of significant rebelliousness among the population. According to him, those who have benefited economically from Xi’s leadership but cwho may suffer from the limited freedoms can always “vote with their feet,” making use of their passports and foreign assets to leave the country should the situation become harder to bear. “This is not a country dying to be liberated from the party. They feel the party is making China stronger, it's standing up to the West,” Tsui says. In one way at least, the Chinese and the American leaderships share a similar goal. Trump was elected on the promise to “make America great again” and Xi has similarly evoked nationalism to "make China great again.” This week’s cover of The Economist magazine crowning Xi “the world’s most powerful man” shows he has certainly succeeded in making China a global player. |
Breast Cancer: BRCA Study Sent to Canada Because U.S. Thinks Women Can't Handle Genetic Test Results
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Updated | Hundreds of spit samples have been traveling through the mail across the U.S.-Canadian border. Why? The samples are part of a study focused on genetic testing for breast cancer. Saliva is needed for that—and so are Canadians. Regulations in the U.S. make it more difficult to conduct a study in which participants receive genetic test results without involving their doctors. Canada is less strict about how genetic test results are released. Testing for BRCA, a gene that mutates in such a way that increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancers, has been available for many years. But the diagnostic has been limited to women with a family history of these diseases in Canada—or to those with the money and a willing doctor to help them order it in the United States. A U.S. company, Veritas Genetics, believes that expanding genetic testing for two BRCA mutations would enable women who would not otherwise be screened to catch their cancer early. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now The company is conducting this study with Dr. Steven Narod at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Ontario. Narod was one of a group of scientists to identify the BRCA genes and its links to breast and ovarian cancer risk. So far, half a dozen people out of the nearly 200 who have participated have tested positive for the BRCA gene. A few of those people may not have otherwise been considered eligible for screening, according to Veritas Genetics. (The tests are being sold for $165, or about 200 Canadian dollars.) Dr. Edward Sickles, right, and Larisa Gurilnik look at films of breast X-rays at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center on August 18, 2005, in San Francisco. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images “We’re most interested in answering this question: if we offer this test to the general population, how likely is it that people are going to take us up on it, how likely are we to find a mutation, and can we measure the health benefit to the individuals and the population based on finding those individuals,” he said. Narod’s work may also help solve a problem at the heart of BRCA testing: if detecting certain BRCA mutations can be so important to a person’s health, can the tests be implemented widely in an effective way? How could that be done? “To some degree, the devil is in the details,” said Dr. Matthew Yurgelun, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “You can say that this should be done, but the actual implementation of it is different than just saying that the benefits are there to begin with.” Measuring the rate at which people who carry the mutation go for follow-up care is one lingering question, especially in the United States where universal healthcare coverage is still an unrealized dream. Making sure that people understand the potential for false negatives would also be important. “You can say something has indisputable benefits and should be done, but you can also say we don’t know how to do it,” Yurgelun said. Narod is following-up with people who participated to see how knowing their mutation risk might impact their health and decisions. However, he doesn’t expect that it will be a representative sample of the population. A sculpture of a pink ribbon installed to promote the "Pink Ribbon" breast cancer awareness campaign at Cheonggye Stream in central Seoul on October 5, 2011. Jo Yong-Hak/REUTERS Direct-to-consumer genetic tests are in a regulatory bind in the United States. Until recently, the FDA said they would not allow companies to sell genetic tests directly to consumers if those tests provide health information, like the risk a person might have for a disease. In April, the agency authorized 23andMe to start selling tests to provide genetic risk information about 10 diseases. Breast cancer and the BRCA gene were not on the list of authorized conditions. Until the FDA authorizes companies like Veritas to sell BRCA tests directly to consumers in the United States, they must have a doctor’s note before they can run the test. Veritas also requires physician approval for all clients, including those who do not live in the United States. However, Canada has a different regulatory framework for direct-to-consumer tests—and, of course, a different insurance framework. BRCA tests are free through the universal health plans provided by provinces, but only for certain people. Factors that qualify someone for a free test can vary between provinces, but most require that a living member of a person’s immediate family be diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer and have tested positive for the gene. In some cases, members of a group known to be at elevated risk are also eligible. Unfortunately, there can be wait times for people on both sides of the border to see a genetic counselor. But since the Veritas project has stayed relatively small so far, Narod said there is no reason to believe people screened will overwhelm the hospital’s existing resources. Whether Veritas’s initiative is just the beginning of a new era in BRCA screening is still an open question, but Narod is optimistic. “I think this is the way the future is going to go.” Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said that doctors do not need to approve genetic test results in Canada. Veritas requires that for any test, including the BRCA tests sent to Canada. Tags:cellular router, 4g router , LTE router, 3g router , M2M router, wireless router |