Earth Citizen Jin Jianguo | Researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and His Extraordinary Article

I read an article called “Anti-Biological Warfare: The Spread of the New Coronavirus and Variant AIDS” the other day, and its low quality and absurd content were eye-opening. What’s even more outrageous is that the author’s signature is actually Yang Bin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Seriously, if it weren’t for the backing of the official magazine “Motherland”, I would have thought that this kind of thing, which is full of the taste of street stall literature, was written by some folk scientist who was taking advantage of the name of the Academy of Social Sciences and Researcher Yang.

Following the principle of not eating alone, I will take you to experience this epic article.

The article begins with a bang, throwing out a conspiracy theory, claiming that foreign financial capital firmly controls the health and pharmaceutical fields and is good at large-scale corruption. He calls this corruption “strategic corruption” and suggests that China should engage in a “mixed anti-corruption war”.

It’s “strategic” and “mixed war” again. Those who know think you’re majoring in economics, and those who don’t know think you’re possessed by some military blogger. Is it that there are no words in the fields of economics and political science, or is it that your own head is empty?

Then he began to recall the glorious years of the past, saying that during the Anti-Japanese War, Zhou Enlai personally led the financial war against the Kong-Song oligarchy, and his father (Yang Peixin) was personally directed by him.

As we all know, Zhou was in charge of the Southern Bureau at that time, responsible for overall planning and management. The specific work was carried out by several subordinate groups. Although the Economic Group wrote articles (Business Daily) exposing the corruption of the Kuomintang, such as the Kong Xiangxi US dollar bond case, this was a political exposure and public opinion war, not financial confrontation, and the Economic Group was not directly under Zhou’s jurisdiction, but under Xu Dexin.

You must know that the financial system during the Anti-Japanese War was highly decentralized and regionalized, and there was no so-called financial war. As for Yang Peixin, he mentioned in his memoirs that he was connected by Lu Ming, who was under Xu Dexin, and was a subordinate of Zhou’s subordinate. It is absurd to say that he was personally directed.

The above is just an appetizer, and what is even more shocking is yet to come. At this time, Researcher Yang’s pen turned, and he began to focus on discussing the threat of biological warfare in the field of health.

He said, “According to the information, there are AIDS gene fragments in the new coronavirus. The AIDS gene fragments may be the insertion of the AIDS virus from African monkeys into the virus carried by Southeast Asian bats, which is very much like a man-made biological warfare practice and hides a huge conspiracy.”

“According to the information” and “According to the data” are the starting formulas favored by many rumor-mongers, giving people a professional and credible illusion, but they don’t say what information or data.

Of course, as a researcher at the Academy of Social Sciences, the information Yang Bin mentioned does exist. It is a preprint of a paper uploaded to bioRxiv in January 2020 by a group of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology. It can be understood as a trial version that has not been peer-reviewed and has not been accepted for publication in academic journals. It mentions that there are HIV-like insertion fragments in the spike protein of the new coronavirus, implying the possibility of artificial synthesis.

Although the paper was strongly criticized and questioned by virologists around the world due to serious loopholes in the research methods, it was withdrawn two days later, but the rumors spread from then on.

I don’t know whether Researcher Yang’s inspiration came from that preprint or from online self-media articles, but what is certain is that when discussing fields he is not familiar with, he doesn’t even bother to use the most basic search tools. After all, a quick search can tell that the new coronavirus belongs to the genus Coronavirus, and HIV belongs to the genus Lentivirus. The two have neither evolutionary relationship nor gene homology.

Then, he talked about AIDS, saying, “It is reported that hundreds of thousands of people in the UK have tested positive for AIDS after the epidemic. This may indicate a huge danger.” The meaning is obvious – these AIDS cases are caused by the new coronavirus infection.

Here, Researcher Yang made the mistake of being unlearned again. First of all, HIV ≠ AIDS (AIDS). HIV is a virus called Human Immunodeficiency Virus, while AIDS is a condition called Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. A person will develop AIDS if they are infected with the HIV virus and are not treated. Therefore, there is no such thing as an AIDS test being positive, only an HIV test being positive.

Secondly, “hundreds of thousands of people” is also hearsay data. According to the UK Health Security Agency’s 2022 annual report, the number of HIV-positive people is about 107,000, which is an order of magnitude different.

At the end of the article, Researcher Yang also did not forget to give suggestions for the treatment of AIDS. He said, “In the past, China’s experience was to use traditional Chinese medicine to intervene in the treatment of AIDS, which had a very good effect… There is a very famous master of traditional Chinese medicine in the United States who has treated many AIDS cases in the United States. He said that AIDS initially has positive symptoms, and the pulse is not fatal, but it is precisely because of eating some expensive anti-AIDS Western medicine, the toxicity of chemical synthesis has instead become the yin-jue syndrome that kills people. That is, capital may make a lot of money to create panic about the epidemic and make profits.”

When I first read this, I thought that Researcher Yang’s purpose in writing this article was to promote his products, but I didn’t see the name of the medicine, nor did I know the name of this master of traditional Chinese medicine. It seems that he really believes it.

In fact, whether it is the World Health Organization, the US CDC, the United Nations AIDS Program, or the Chinese Health Commission, they all recommend that people infected with HIV should use antiretroviral therapy, which is currently the only effective treatment.

In summary, my feeling about this article is that Researcher Yang is not only very poor in writing and expression, but also has a rotten logic and attitude towards scholarship: a researcher at the Academy of Social Sciences who has a master’s degree in international relations from International University of Japan and a master’s degree in economics from Boston University, actually believes in conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, and it is also something that is so superficial that it cannot be put on the table. It is really incredible.

Although I have not read this researcher’s masterpiece, but from this, I doubt his academic level in his own field. No wonder Mao Zengyu regarded him as a “non-mainstream economist” when he edited “Dialogue with Famous Chinese Economists”, probably because he is too “unconventional” and even likes to fabricate things.

Of course, his academic level is not really important. There are countless water-filled scholars in China, and there are also some well-known big shots. What really matters is that such an unreliable economist has repeatedly participated in major national research projects with the name of the Academy of Social Sciences, and can influence economic decisions to a certain extent.

Tsk, it makes me feel chills just thinking about it.