19/04/2020
- 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.
Beijing has also donated or facilitated shipments of medical masks and ventilators to countries in need. And despite some of the equipment failing to meet Western quality standards, or being downright defective, the supplies have been largely welcomed in Asian countries.
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.
Why China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ is raising concern in the West
“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.
China’s first-quarter GDP shrinks for the first time since 1976 as coronavirus cripples economy
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.
Coronavirus droplets may travel further than personal distancing guidelines
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.”
China and Vietnam ‘likely to clash again’ as they build maritime militias
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.
Source: SCMP
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13/04/2019
Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, presides over a biweekly session on stepping up the cultivation of preschool teachers, in Beijing, capital of China, April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Tao)
BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) — Chinese political advisors during a consultation session Friday offered proposals on stepping up the cultivation of preschool teachers.
The biweekly session held by the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China’s top political advisory body, was presided over by Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the CPPCC National Committee.
Wang stressed the importance of stepping up the cultivation of preschool teachers, who assume the dual functions of child care and education and play an important role in promoting the healthy growth of children and sound development of preschool education.
While hailing achievements China has made in preschool education since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, political advisors at Friday’s event said preschool education is still a weak point in China’s education system. Its development remains unbalanced and inadequate and still lacks of quality preschool teachers as well as easily accessible, affordable kindergartens.
Some political advisors proposed that the government should fulfill its responsibility in promoting preschool education development, and meanwhile, give full play to the role of the market.
They called for a substantial increase of funds to be allocated by the government for preschool education as well as innovating the mechanism of funding for preschool education, and encouraging running of kindergartens with social resources.
China should increase the number of university students who are enrolled to free preschool education programs and foster more quality professional kindergarten teachers, according to the political advisors.
They said a system for preschool teachers to receive regular training should be established, and the systems governing their qualification, promotion and pay should be reformed, among the country’s efforts to create an atmosphere where preschool teachers are well respected.
They also called for stepping up legislation regarding preschool education, to provide legal guarantee for preschool teachers.
Source: Xinhua
Posted in chairmanship, China alert, CPPCC National Committee, National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Political advisors, preschool teachers, Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Uncategorized, wang yang |
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25/02/2019
(This Feb. 24 story corrects paragraph 12 to show Huawei was world’s third-largest smartphone vendor last year, not second largest)
BARCELONA (Reuters) – China’s Huawei welcomed comments from President Donald Trump about the future of U.S. mobile communications on Sunday and asserted its position as a world-leading smartphone producer as Washington and Beijing seek a trade war ceasefire.
U.S. and Chinese negotiators are set to meet for a sixth straight day of negotiations on Sunday as they work to strike a deal ahead of a March 1 deadline on a trade dispute which has disrupted global commerce and slowed the world economy.
At the center of the imbroglio is Huawei Technologies, accused by Washington of sanctions busting, intellectual property theft and facilitating Chinese state espionage operations.
Speaking ahead of the mobile industry’s biggest global event which begins in Barcelona on Monday, Huawei Chairman Guo Ping reiterated his company’s position that it has never and would never allow any country to spy through its equipment.
Guo, who holds Huawei’s rotating chairmanship, said Trump’s recent assertion that the United States needed to get ahead in mobile communications through competition rather than seeking to block technology was “clear and correct”.
Trump’s tweets on Thursday did not specifically mention Huawei, the world’s largest producer of mobile network equipment, but appeared to soften earlier U.S. statements that it should be barred from Western networks on security grounds.
“I have noticed the president’s Twitter, he said that the U.S. needs faster and smarter 5G, or even 6G in the future, and he has realized that the U.S. is lagging behind in this respect, and I think his message is clear and correct,” Guo said, speaking through an interpreter.
He said the United States did not represent the whole world and called for equipment makers, network operators and governments to work together to devise trustworthy standards to manage cyber security risks.
The Huawei logo is displayed ahead of the Mobile World Congress (MWC 19) in Barcelona, Spain, February 24, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez
“We need to have unified standard that should be verifiable. It should not be based on politics,” Guo said.
FOLDING PHONE, RIGID PRICE TAG
Huawei also sought to reaffirm its position as one of the world’s leading technology companies, unveiling a folding 5G smartphone to an audience of media and analysts in Barcelona.
Huawei, the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor after Samsung and Apple, said it had taken the lead in developing phones for 5G – which promises super-fast internet speeds – because it was also involved in developing the networks.
Folding phones?
Makers pray you’ll want one
The new Huawei Mate X will have two back-to-back screens which unfold to become an eight-inch tablet display, and goes on sale later this year priced at 2,299 euros ($2,607), setting a new upper limit for consumer smartphones.
Samsung had unveiled its own folding smartphone last week, priced at nearly $2,000, as part of a bid to top the technology of Chinese rivals and Apple Inc.
Thomas Husson, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said the Mate X showed Huawei was an innovative technology company and no longer trailing American and Korean competitors.
“The fact that Huawei is not just a network equipment provider but also a smartphone manufacturer … gives them a competitive advantage for 5G. It is also a double-edge sword as some argue the security risks are higher,” Husson said.
China’s Xiaomi, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone maker, also unveiled a 5G handset on Sunday, but without the folding screen or high price tags touted by the Huawei and Samsung devices. Xiaomi’s offering will start at 599 euros ($679) when it hits the market in May.
Source: Reuters
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 