Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan waded into the hotly contested politics of the Pacific on Wednesday, donating face masks and thermal cameras to its four diplomatic allies there to combat the coronavirus in a region where China is challenging traditional power of the United States.
The small developing nations lie in the highly strategic waters of the Pacific, dominated since World War Two by the United States and its friends, who have been concerned over China’s moves to expand its footprint there.
Democratic Taiwan has faced intense pressure from China, which claims the island as its territory with no right to state-to-state ties, and is bent on wooing away its few allies.
Taiwan has only 15 formal allies left worldwide after losing two Pacific nations, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, to China in September.
Beijing has ramped up its diplomatic push into the Pacific, pledging virus aid and medical advice.
In its own aid programme, Taiwan has donated 16 million masks to countries around the world.
“We are a very small country, so it’s easier for us to work with Taiwan than mainland China,” Neijon Edwards, the Marshall Islands ambassador to Taiwan, told Reuters at the donation ceremony in Taipei.
China has been too overbearing, she added.
“It’s pressing too much, and it’s been trying to come to the Marshall Islands, several times, but up to this time we haven’t even opened the door yet.”
While the masks presented at the ceremony are going to Taiwan’s Pacific allies, all its 15 global allies are sharing the thermal cameras.
“Today’s ceremony once again shows that Taiwan is taking concrete actions not only to safeguard the health of Taiwanese people but also to contribute to global efforts to contain COVID-19,” said Foreign Minister Joseph Wu.
Though Pacific Island states offer little economically to either China and Taiwan, their support is valued in global forums such as the United Nations and as China seeks to isolate Taiwan.
China has offered to help developing countries including those of the Pacific, and many see Chinese lending as the best bet to develop their economies.
But critics say Chinese loans can lead countries into a “debt trap”, charges China has angrily rejected.
The debt issue was a serious problem and would only lead to the spread of Chinese influence regionwide, said Jarden Kephas, the ambassador of Nauru.
“They will end up dominating or having a lot of say in those countries because of the amount of debt,” he told Reuters, wondering how the money could ever be repaid. “We are not rich countries.”
Dutch inquiry follows recall of 600,000 face masks
Ambassador rejects concerns China has a political agenda alongside medical support
In early March, China’s daily output of face masks reached 116 million units. Photo: Xinhua
China’s embassy in the Netherlands said on Monday that it was closely following a Dutch investigation into reportedly defective masks imported from China and called for the issue not to be politicised.
Xu Hong, China’s ambassador to the Netherlands, made the comment after Dutch officials recalled more than 600,000 face masks which were found to be unsuitable for intensive care medical staff.
“The embassy paid high attention to the March 28 news about the ‘defective’ masks that Dutch government purchased from China, and contacted the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Health in the first time to verify the information,” Xu said, according to a statement published on the embassy’s website.
Xu said he had spoken by telephone with the Dutch Minister for Medical Care and Sport Martin van Rijn, on Sunday about the issues and said “if necessary” China would help the Dutch investigation into the quality of the masks.
Netherlands recalls 600,000 face masks from China due to low quality
29 Mar 2020
According to the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the masks did not fit well and the filters did not function properly. It was not immediately clear whether the batch in question was given to the Netherlands as a donation or had arrived through a commercial transaction.
“The Netherlands is still looking into the situation, and if there is any further information, it will inform the Chinese side in the first time,” Xu said.
China has ramped up medical assistance abroad where the novel coronavirus pandemic has shown no signs of easing, but China’s efforts have run into rising concerns about the poor quality protective gear and test equipment it offered.
In early March, China’s daily output of face masks reached 116 million units. Picture: Xinhua
Xu also rejected concerns that China had a political agenda accompanying its medical support. He called for its assistance in not to be politicised.
“The reason why China supports the Netherlands and other countries to fight the pandemic is very simple: we are trying to save lives,” Xu said.
“There is no ‘geopolitical consideration’ as a few claimed. It is normal if some problems arise during the cooperation. These problems can be solved in an objective manner, but should not be politicised.”
It is not the first time European countries have had problems with coronavirus-related medical equipment manufactured in China.
Why China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ is raising concern in the West
The company said it would replace the test kits sent to Spain.
On Thursday, the Chinese embassy in Spain said on Twitter that the Bioeasy test kits had not been approved by China’s National Medical Products Administration and were not included in the medical supplies sent by the Chinese government to Spain.
Separately, the Philippines’ health department on Sunday apologised for comments it had made a day earlier that two batches of coronavirus test kits provided by China were substandard, and acknowledged that the quality of the test kits did meet global standards.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Mr Gui has been in and out of Chinese detention for years
A Chinese court has sentenced Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years in jail for “illegally providing intelligence overseas”.
Mr Gui, who holds Swedish citizenship, has been in and out of Chinese detention since 2015, when he went missing during a holiday in Thailand.
He is known to have previously published books on the personal lives of Chinese Communist Party members.
Rights groups condemned the “harsh sentence” and called for his release.
He was one of five owners of a small bookstore in Hong Kong who went missing in 2015. It later emerged that they had been taken to China. Four were later freed, but Mr Gui remained in Chinese detention.
In delivering its verdict, the Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court said that his Chinese citizenship had been reinstated in 2018. China does not recognise dual citizenship.
Sweden’s foreign minister on Tuesday called for Mr Gui’s release, referring to him a “citizen”.
“We have not had access to the trial,” said Ann Linde in a tweet. “[We] demand that Gui be released and that we have access to our citizens to provide consular support.”
But according to a Reuters report, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said consular arrangements had been put on hold because of the latest coronavirus outbreak, and would be restored once the health problem was “resolved”.
Zhao Lijian added that Mr Gui’s “rights and interests… [had] been fully guaranteed”.
Human rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday also called for Mr Gui to be released immediately and said the charges were “completely unsubstantiated”.
A forced confession?
Mr Gui first made headlines in 2015 when he vanished from Thailand and resurfaced in China.
After his disappearance, there were allegations that he had been abducted by Chinese agents. Chinese officials, however, say Mr Gui and the four other men all went to China voluntarily.
The bookseller ultimately confessed to being involved in a fatal traffic accident more than a decade earlier – a confession supporters say was forced.
He served two years in prison but he was arrested months after his release while he was travelling to the Chinese capital of Beijing with two Swedish diplomats.
China later released a video interview featuring Mr Gui. In it, he accused Sweden of “sensationalising” his case. It is not uncommon for Chinese criminal suspects to appear in “confessional” videos.
Earlier in 2019, Sweden recalled its ambassador to China Anna Lindstedt, who was accused of brokering an unauthorised meeting between Angela Gui – the daughter of Mr Gui – and two Chinese businessmen.
Ms Gui – who has been vocal in campaigning for her father’s release – said one of the men had pressured her to accept a deal where her father would go to trial and might be sentenced to “a few years” in prison, and in return she would stop all publicity around her father’s detention.
Luo Zhaohui, who was credited with helping to resolve 2017 Doklam stand-off peacefully, joins group set up to tackle global warming
Luo Zhaohui previously served as China’s ambassador to India. Photo: Handout
China’s former ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui has joined a national team in charge of fighting climate change, the Chinese government website has announced.
The team, led by Premier Li Keqiang, will be responsible for coming up with proposals to tackle the problem, develop proposals for energy conservation and analyse the impact of climate change on socio-economic development.
China is currently the world’s largest polluter, accounting for a quarter of the world’s total emissions, making it crucial in the effort to curb global warming.
The US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017 also makes China the largest single economy committed to the efforts to limit emissions.
In this post, Luo is in charge of Beijing’s relations with its Asian neighbours, replacing Kong Xuanyou, who was named China’s new ambassador to Japan.
Luo was credited by diplomatic observers as having helped bring relations with India back on track after the 2017 Doklam stand-off, one of the worst border disputes in decades between the two sides.
In July 2017, Luo told media in New Delhi that the Chinese people were deeply angry over the “occupation” by Indian troops of its sovereign territory but helped to resolve the situation through diplomatic means, paving the way for an informal summit between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Wuhan last year.
Luo, 57, has also served in diplomatic missions in Singapore and the US and was head of the foreign ministry’s department for Asian affairs.
He previously served as ambassador to Pakistan and Canada before being posted to the embassy in New Delhi in India in 2016.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 