A big success?

"The Beijing Winter Olympics drew to a close Sunday, rounding off the Games that will go down in history as much for their coronavirus restrictions and geopolitical tensions, as their nail-biting competitions and emotional moments," CNBC. "They have come to an end, the strangest, most controversial, most unwelcoming Olympic Games of our lifetime," USA Today. "We have never seen anything quite like these Olympics. They will be deemed a success only because they were not deemed an abject failure." The Winter Olympics was "a political statement by China to showcase its soft power" like "the 1936 Olympics organised by Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in Munich," News18. However, China may not have achieved what it wanted. In order to increase its medal tally China allowed foreign citizens to compete under its flag. "The Chinese law does not allow dual citizenship but the foreign-born Chinese players admitted that they were not even asked to renounce their citizenship." The Olympics also drew attention to Covid-19. Athletes who tested positive were isolated and "Team officials from Germany, Belgium and Russia said their athletes were facing nightmarish situations, like poor to no internet connections, bad food and no training equipment, in the so-called quarantine hotels set up by Chinese officials," npr. Russian athlete Valeria Vasnetsova posted a photo of the food she was served showing "plain pasta, a red sauce, charred meat on a bone, a few potatoes and no green vegetables. She also said that she is being served the same meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner," si.com. Many scientists are coming round to the opinion that the pandemic originated in Wuhan lab. "Under the natural origin theory, the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, would have originated in an animal and traveled to humans either directly or through an intermediate host animal," as happened in the first Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 in which "the intermediary host animals were masked palm civets that tested positive for the virus", yahoo. However, this time, "They tested an unprecedented 80,000 animals covering 209 species, including wild, domestic and market animals...and they found no infections in animals," said Prof Richard Miller. The good news for China is that its producer price index (PPI) increased by 9.1% in January compared to 10.3% in December but the consumer price index (CPI) increased by only 0.9% last month compared to 1.5% in December, Reuters. "The PBOC (People's Bank of China) has cut interest rates and pumped cash into the financial system to lower borrowing cost, with more easing steps expected." This, when the US Federal Reserve is deciding on the size of rate rises, ET. Why is the CPI so low when input costs are increasing? Does it show a collapse in consumer demand? So, is it good news? Or bad.