Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
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Faced with a backlash from the West over its handling of the early stages of the pandemic, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia
Teams of experts and donations of medical supplies have been largely welcomed by China’s neighbours
Despite facing some criticism from the West, China’s Asian neighbours have welcomed its medical expertise and vital supplies. Photo: Xinhua
While China’s campaign to mend its international image in the wake of its handling of the coronavirus health crisis has been met with scepticism and even a backlash from the US and its Western allies, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia.
Teams of experts have been sent to Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Pakistan and soon to Malaysia, to share their knowledge from the pandemic’s ground zero in central China.
China has also held a series of online “special meetings” with its Asian neighbours, most recently on Tuesday when Premier Li Keqiang discussed his country’s experiences in combating the disease and rebooting a stalled economy with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Japan and South Korea.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang speaks to Asean Plus Three leaders during a virtual summit on Tuesday. Photo: AP
Many Western politicians have publicly questioned Beijing’s role and its subsequent handling of the crisis but Asian leaders – including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – have been reluctant to blame the Chinese government, while also facing criticism at home for not closing their borders with China soon enough to prevent the spread of the virus.
An official from one Asian country said attention had shifted from the early stages of the outbreak – when disgruntled voices among the public were at their loudest – as people watched the virus continue its deadly spread through their homes and across the world.
“Now everybody just wants to get past the quarantine,” he said. “China has been very helpful to us. It’s also closer to us so it’s easier to get shipments from them. The [medical] supplies keep coming, which is what we need right now.”
The official said also that while the teams of experts sent by Beijing were mainly there to observe and offer advice, the gesture was still appreciated.
Another Asian official said the tardy response by Western governments in handling the outbreak had given China an advantage, despite its initial lack of transparency over the outbreak.
“The West is not doing a better job on this,” he said, adding that his government had taken cues from Beijing on the use of propaganda in shaping public opinion and boosting patriotic sentiment in a time of crisis.
“Because it happened in China first, it has given us time to observe what works in China and adopt [these measures] for our country,” the official said.
Experts in the region said that Beijing’s intensifying campaign of “mask diplomacy” to reverse the damage to its reputation had met with less resistance in Asia.
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“Over the past two months or so, China, after getting the Covid-19 outbreak under control, has been using a very concerted effort to reshape the narrative, to pre-empt the narrative that China is liable for this global pandemic, that China has to compensate other countries,” said Richard Heydarian, a Manila-based academic and former policy adviser to the Philippine government.
“It doesn’t help that the US is in lockdown with its domestic crisis and that we have someone like President Trump who is more interested in playing the blame game rather than acting like a global leader,” he said.
Shahriman Lockman, a senior analyst with the foreign policy and security studies programme at Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said that as the US had withdrawn into its own affairs as it struggled to contain the pandemic, China had found Southeast Asia a fertile ground for cultivating an image of itself as a provider.
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Beijing’s highly publicised delegations tasking medical equipment and supplies had burnished that reputation, he said, adding that the Chinese government had also “quite successfully shaped general Southeast Asian perceptions of its handling of the pandemic, despite growing evidence that it could have acted more swiftly at the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan”.
“Its capacity and will to build hospitals from scratch and put hundreds of millions of people on lockdown are being compared to the more indecisive and chaotic responses seen in the West, especially in Britain and the United States,” he said.
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Lockman said Southeast Asian countries had also been careful to avoid getting caught in the middle of the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington as the two powers pointed fingers at each other over the origins of the new coronavirus.
“The squabble between China and the United States about the pandemic is precisely what Asean governments would go to great lengths to avoid because it is seen as an expression of Sino-US rivalry,” he said.
“Furthermore, the immense Chinese market is seen as providing an irreplaceable route towards Southeast Asia’s post-pandemic economic recovery.”
Aaron Connelly, a research fellow in Southeast Asian political change and foreign policy with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said Asian countries’ dependence on China had made them slow to blame China for the pandemic.
“Anecdotally, it seems to me that most Southeast Asian political and business elites have given Beijing a pass on the initial cover-up of Covid-19, and high marks for the domestic lockdown that followed,” he said.
“This may be motivated reasoning, because these elites are so dependent on Chinese trade and investment, and see little benefit in criticising China.”
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The cooperation with its neighbours as they grapple with the coronavirus had not slowed China’s military and research activities in the disputed areas of the South China Sea – a point of contention that would continue to cloud relations in the region, experts said.
Earlier this month an encounter in the South China Sea with a Chinese coastguard vessel led to the sinking of a fishing boat from Vietnam, which this year assumed chairmanship of Asean.
And in a move that could spark fresh regional concerns, shipping data on Thursday showed a controversial Chinese government survey ship, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, had moved closer to Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone.
The survey ship was embroiled in a months-long stand-off last year with Vietnamese vessels within Hanoi’s exclusive economic zone and was spotted again on Tuesday 158km (98 miles) off the Vietnamese coast.
Image copyright AFPImage caption A third of the current members of parliament have criminal cases pending against them
“We need to build a consensus on how to prevent individuals with a criminal record from contesting elections.”
A necessary, even obvious fundamental you would think of building the world’s largest democracy.
And when Sonia Gandhi, India’s most powerful politician, uttered those words three years ago, even her main opponent, the leader of the BJP agreed.
Yet since then, things have gone in the opposite direction – with more alleged lawbreakers among India’s lawmakers than ever, a third of the current parliament according to a watchdog called the Association for Democratic Reforms.
By some calculations, politicians with a criminal record are more likely to be elected than those with a clean slate – because, says the ADR, they have more illicit funds with which to buy votes.
And on Tuesday night, India’s cabinet sought to ensure there was even less chance of criminal politicians facing their own laws.
It issued an order overturning a Supreme Court ruling demanding the disqualification of any politician convicted for crimes punishable with more than two years in jail.
This was “to ensure that governance is not adversely impacted“, the government had argued, with no apparent irony intended.
Unusual speed
Arguably, of course, the government is right. Losing tainted local or national politicians – among them many accused murderers, rapists and fraudsters – could upset delicate political alliances and make it even harder to get laws passed.
So often derided for doing nothing, this time round the cabinet acted with unusual speed.
The urgency it appears is the impending conclusion of two cases involving key politicians, due before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gets back to India from a trip to the US.
Image copyright AFPImage caption There’s been some criticism of criminal politicians
One concerns Lalu Prasad Yadav, a former railways minister and Congress party ally, charged with pocketing millions of dollars in subsidies for non-existent livestock.
Another concerns Congress MP Rashid Masood, already convicted of corruption and due to be sentenced next week. When the BBC asked his office for a comment, his assistant told us “he is unwell”.
“Don’t know whether to laugh or cry” tweeted MP Baijayant Panda in response to the government’s protective move.
He is a rare voice though inside the chamber campaigning against criminals sitting alongside him.
There’s been some other criticism outside, but not much. Indians have become very used to these kinds of shenanigans.
Almost forgotten already are calls in the Verma commission report into the December 16 Delhi gang rape case for all politicians accused of sexual crimes to be barred from office. Instead, six politicians charged with rape remain in office.
The opposition BJP has said it will oppose the cabinet order. But its record is just as murky, with even more accused criminals among its elected members in parliament and state assemblies than the Congress.
And with elections round the corner, none of the parties want to risk real reform right now, whatever they have signed up to in the past.
BEIJING, China (Reuters) – China ramped up measures to contain a virus that has killed 26 people and infected more than 800, suspending public transport in 10 cities, shutting temples over the Lunar New Year and even closing the Forbidden City and part of the Great Wall.
The week-long holiday to welcome the Year of the Rat began on Friday, raising fears the infection rate could accelerate as hundreds of millions of people travel to their homes and abroad in what is usually a festive time of year.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the new coronavirus an emergency for China but stopped short of declaring the epidemic of international concern.
While most of the cases and all of the deaths have been in China, the virus has been detected in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. It was likely Britain also had cases, a health official said.
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Symptoms include fever, difficulty breathing and coughing.
Most of the fatalities have been elderly, many with pre-existing conditions, the WHO said.
Cases are likely to continue to rise in China but it is too soon to evaluate the severity of the virus, a WHO spokesman said on Friday.
As of Thursday, there were 830 confirmed cases and 26 people had died there, China’s National Health Commission said.
In Wuhan, where the outbreak began last month, pharmacies were running out of supplies and hospitals were flooded with nervous resident seeking medical checks.
“There’s so much news, so much data, every 10 minutes there’s an update, it’s frightening, especially for people like us in a severely hit area,” Lily Jin, 30, a resident of the city, told Reuters by phone.
While restrictions have already been put in place in cities across the country to curb the outbreak, China will take stricter and more targeted measures, state television reported citing a state council, or cabinet, meeting on Friday, but gave no further details.
“The spread of the virus has not been cut off … Local authorities should take more responsibility and have a stronger sense of urgency,” state broadcaster CCTV said.
Most cases have been in Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated in a market that traded illegally in wildlife. Preliminary research suggested it crossed to humans from snakes.
The city of 11 million people, and neighboring Huanggang, a city of about 7 million, were in virtual lockdown.
Nearly all flights at Wuhan’s airport had been canceled, and airports worldwide have stepped up the screening of passengers from China.
Checkpoints blocked the main roads leading out of town, and police checked incoming vehicles for wild animals.
Wuhan was rushing to build a 1,000-bed hospital for the infected by Monday, the official Changjiang Daily reported.
About 10 people got off a high-speed train that pulled into Wuhan on Friday afternoon but nobody got on before it resumed its journey. Although it stopped there, Wuhan had been removed from the train’s schedule.
“What choice do I have? It’s Chinese New Year. We have to see our family,” said a man getting off the train who gave his family name Hu.
CHINA EMERGENCY
The WHO said on Thursday it was a “bit too early” to designate the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, which would require countries to step up their response.
Some experts believe the virus is not as dangerous as the one that caused the 2002-03 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which also began in China and killed nearly 800 people, or the one that caused Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which has killed more than 700 people since 2012.
There is no known vaccine or particular treatment.
“There is some work being done and there are some trials now for MERS (vaccines). And we may look at some point whether those treatments and vaccines would have some effect on this novel coronavirus,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Friday.
Gilead Sciences Inc said it was assessing whether its experimental Ebola treatment could be used. Meanwhile, three research teams were starting work on vaccines, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations said.
In the meantime, Chinese authorities have imposed restrictions on movement and gatherings to try to stem the spread. It has advised people to avoid crowds and 10 cities in the central province of Hubei, where Wuhan is located, have suspended some transport, the Hubei Daily reported.
Some sections of the Great Wall near Beijing will be closed from Saturday, state media said.
Some temples have also closed, including Beijing’s Lama Temple where people make offerings for the new year, have also been closed as has the Forbidden City, the capital’s most famous tourist attraction.
Shanghai Disneyland will close from Saturday. The theme park has a 100,000 daily capacity and sold out during last year’s Lunar New Year holiday.
The virus is expected to dent China’s growth after months of economic worries over trade tensions with the United States, unnerving foreign companies doing business there.
Shares in luxury goods firms have suffered from the anticipated drop in demand from China, and on Friday French spirits group Remy Cointreau said it was “clearly concerned” about the potential impact.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 