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.
US President Donald Trump has described the coronavirus pandemic as the “worst attack” ever on the United States, pointing the finger at China.
Mr Trump said the outbreak had hit the US harder than the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War Two, or the 9/11 attacks two decades ago.
His administration is weighing punitive actions against China over its early handling of the global emergency.
Beijing says the US wants to distract from its own response to the pandemic.
Since emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December, the coronavirus is confirmed to have infected 1.2 million Americans, killing more than 73,000.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday, Mr Trump said: “We went through the worst attack we’ve ever had on our country, this is worst attack we’ve ever had.
“This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There’s never been an attack like this.
“And it should have never happened. Could’ve been stopped at the source. Could’ve been stopped in China. It should’ve been stopped right at the source. And it wasn’t.”
Media caption Life for asylum seekers in lockdown on the US-Mexico border
Asked later by a reporter if he saw the pandemic as an actual act of war, Mr Trump indicated the outbreak was America’s foe, rather than China.
“I view the invisible enemy [coronavirus] as a war,” he said. “I don’t like how it got here, because it could have been stopped, but no, I view the invisible enemy like a war.”
Media caption US shopping centres re-open: ‘This is the best day ever’
Who else in Trump’s team is criticising China?
The deepening rift between Washington and Beijing was further underscored on Wednesday as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed his rhetoric against China, accusing it of covering up the outbreak.
He stuck by his so far unsubstantiated charge that there is “enormous evidence” the coronavirus hatched in a Chinese laboratory, even while acknowledging there is still uncertainty about its origins.
“Those statements are both true,” America’s top diplomat told the BBC. “We don’t have certainty and there is significant evidence that it came from a lab.”
One of the most trusted US public health experts has said the best evidence indicates the virus was not made in a lab.
Dr Anthony Fauci, a member of Mr Trump’s coronavirus task force, said on Monday the illness appeared to have “evolved in nature and then jumped species”.
Why is the US blaming China?
President Trump faces a tough re-election campaign in November, but the once humming US economy – which had been his main selling point – is currently in a coronavirus-induced coma.
As Mr Trump found his management of the crisis under scrutiny, he began labelling the outbreak “the China virus”, but dropped that term last month days before speaking by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Both Mr Trump and his likely Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, appear to be fastening on to China’s unpopularity as an election issue, with each accusing the other of being a patsy for America’s primary economic competitor.
As the coronavirus began spreading in the US back in January, Mr Trump signed phase one of a trade deal with China that called a truce in their tariff war. The US president’s hopes of sealing a more comprehensive phase two deal are now in limbo because of the pandemic.
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Only Taiwan’s democratically-elected government can represent its people on the world stage, not China, its foreign ministry said on Tuesday, calling on the World Health Organization (WHO) to “cast off” China’s control during the coronavirus pandemic.
Taiwan’s exclusion from WHO, due to China’s objections which considers the island one of its provinces, has infuriated Taipei, which says this has created a dangerous gap in the global fight against the coronavirus.
Taiwan has been lobbying to attend, as an observer, this month’s meeting of the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), although government and diplomatic sources say China will block the move.
Steven Solomon, the WHO’s principal legal officer, said on Monday that the WHO recognised the People’s Republic of China as the “one legitimate representative of China”, in keeping with U.N. policy since 1971, and that the question of Taiwan’s attendance was one for the WHO’s 194 member states.
Speaking in Taipei, Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said the 1971 decision, under which Beijing assumed the U.N. China seat from Taipei, only resolved the issue of who represented China, not the issue of Taiwan, and did not grant China the power to represent Taiwan internationally.
“Only the democratically-elected Taiwanese government can represent Taiwan’s 23 million people in the international community,” she told reporters.
The WHO should “cast off the Chinese government’s control”, and let Taiwan fully participate in fighting the virus, Ou said.
“Do not let China’s improper political interference become an obstacle to impeding the world’s united fight against the virus.”
Taiwan attended the World Health Assembly as an observer from 2009-2016 when Taipei-Beijing relations warmed.
But China blocked further participation after the election of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who China views as a separatist, charges she rejects.
The United States has strongly supported Taiwan’s participation at the WHA as an observer, another fault line in Washington-Beijing ties that have been already overshadowed by the Trump administration’s criticism of how China and the WHO have handled the outbreak.
China says Taiwan is adequately represented by Beijing and that Taiwan can only take part in the WHO under Beijing’s “one China” policy, in which Taiwan would have to accept that it is part of China, something Tsai’s government will not do.
Taiwan has reported far fewer cases of the new coronavirus than many of its neighbours, due to early and effective detection and prevention work.
Buffett’s Berkshire posted a record quarterly net loss of nearly US$50 billion
Company sells entire stakes in US airlines, Buffett says ‘world has changed’
Warren Buffett speaks during the virtual Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting. Photo: Bloomberg
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Saturday he’s confident the US economy will bounce back from its pummelling by the coronavirus pandemic because “American magic has always prevailed”.
The 89-year-old made the sanguine prediction about the world’s largest economy as his holding company Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter net losses of nearly US$50 billion.
Buffett also announced Saturday that his company had sold all its stakes in four major US airlines last month, as the pandemic clobbered the travel industry.
“It turns out I was wrong,” he said of his acquisitions of 10 per cent stakes in American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.
Berkshire Hathaway had paid US$7 billion to US$8 billion, and “we did not take out anything like that,” he said.
Between the purchases that took place over months, and the sale, “the airlines business I think changed in a very major way” and could no longer meet Berkshire criteria for profitability, he said.
Buffett’s announcement may further hurt airlines already pushed to the brink by coronavirus lockdown measures, now looking to the US government for US$25 billion in relief funds.
Berkshire Hathaway, based in Omaha, Nebraska, called its first-quarter setback “temporary” but said it could not reliably predict when its many businesses would return to normal or when consumers would resume their former buying habits.
Warren Buffett (left) and vice-chairman Charlie Munger at the annual Berkshire shareholder shopping day in Omaha, Nebraska in 2019. Photo: Reuters
“We’ve faced great problems in the past, haven’t faced this exact problem – in fact we haven’t really faced anything that quite resembles this problem,” Buffett said in a lengthy speech on the country’s economic history.
“But we faced tougher problems, and the American miracles, American magic has always prevailed and it will do so again.”
“We are now a better country, as well as an incredibly more wealthy country, than we were in 1789 … We got a long ways to go but we moved in the right direction,” he said, referencing the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage.
Warren Buffett has traded his old flip phone for Apple’s iPhone
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“Never bet against America.”
Buffett is considered one of the savviest investors anywhere. His fortune of US$72 billion is the fourth-largest in the world, according to Forbes, and in normal years, the company’s annual gathering in Omaha is a high-point of the calendar for investors, a “Woodstock for capitalists”.
But the devastating economic impact of the pandemic has hit hard at Berkshire Hathaway’s wide range of investments, and the need for social distancing forced it to hold the annual meeting online.
Buffett addressed his shareholders in a live-stream flanked only by Gregory Abel, who is in charge of Berkshire’s non-insurance operations.
His business partner for six decades, 96-year-old Charlie Munger, did not appear.
China’s first-quarter GDP shrinks for the first time since 1976 as coronavirus cripples economy
Buffett, in a statement, played down his company’s bleak-looking net figure. He said a better measure of the company’s performance was its operating earnings, which exclude investments and are less subject to sharp fluctuations.
By that measure, Berkshire Hathaway saw growth to US$5.9 billion from US$5.55 billion a year earlier.
The brutal drop in the net – to a loss of US$49.75 billion from a profit last year of US$21.7 billion – resulted primarily from the virus-related decline in value of its broad investment portfolio, which ranges from energy to transport to insurance and technology.
Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire finally sits down to eat with Warren Buffett
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The annual meeting often has an almost carnival atmosphere, as thousands of fans and investors flock to Nebraska to hear from the celebrated “Oracle of Omaha”. Buffett, famous for his relatively modest lifestyle, turns 90 on August 30.
In documents filed Saturday, Berkshire noted that until mid-March many of its companies were posting “comparative revenue and earnings increases” over the same 2019 period.
Many of its companies – including in rail transport, energy production and some manufacturing and service businesses – are deemed essential and are able to continue working amid the far-reaching confinement orders.
But their turnover slowed considerably in April, the company statement said.
Moves taken by those companies such as employee furloughs, salary cuts and reductions, and capital spending reductions are “necessary actions” and “temporary,” it said.
Beijing ‘carefully considering’ unveiling the plane at the Zhuhai Airshow in November at a time of heightened regional tension
H-20 will give China the nuclear triad of submarines, ballistic missiles and bombers
An artist’s impression of what the H-20 may look like. Photo: Weibo
China’s new generation strategic bomber is likely to be ready for delivery this year, but Beijing is said to be weighing the impact of its unveiling at a complex time in regional relations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Military sources said the Xian H-20 supersonic stealth bomber – expected to double the country’s strike range – could make its first public appearance at this year’s Zhuhai Airshow in November, if the pandemic was sufficiently under control.
“The Zhuhai Airshow is expected to become a platform to promote China’s image and its success in pandemic control – telling the outside world that the contagion did not have any big impacts on Chinese defence industry enterprises,” a source said.
But the appearance of the bomber at this year’s air show could heighten tensions by directly threatening countries within its strike range, especially Australia, Japan and the Korean peninsula.
Thrilling aerobatics fill the skies to open air show in central China
“The Beijing leadership is still carefully considering whether its commission will affect regional balance, especially as regional tensions have been escalating over the Covid-19 pandemic,” another source said.
“Like intercontinental ballistic missiles, all strategic bombers can be used for delivering nuclear weapons … if China claimed it had pursued a national defence policy which is purely defensive in nature, why would it need such an offensive weapon?”
Tensions in the region have worsened in the past month with a war of words between Beijing and Washington over the pandemic, and both sides increasing naval patrols.
The US defence department has estimated a cruising distance of more than 8,500km (5,300 miles) for the H-20, the last in China’s 20 series of new generation warplanes, which includes the J-20 stealth fighter jet, the Y-20 giant transporter and the Z-20 medium-lift utility helicopter.
The arrival of the H-20 would mark the completion of China’s “nuclear triad” of ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and air-launched weapons.
An H-6K bomber, or China’s B-52, flies over the South China Sea. Photo: AP
Chinese state television has said the H-20 could alter the strategic calculus between the US and China by doubling the strike range of its current H-6K, dubbed the country’s B-52.
The H-20 has reportedly been designed to strike targets beyond the second island ring – which includes US bases in Japan, Guam, the Philippines and other countries – from bases in mainland China. The third island chain extends to Hawaii and coastal Australia.
It will be equipped with nuclear and conventional missiles with a maximum take-off weight of at least 200 tonnes and a payload of up to 45 tonnes. The bomber is expected to fly at subsonic speeds and could potentially unleash four powerful hypersonic stealth cruise missiles.
However, like China’s first active stealth fighter jet, the J-20, engine development of the H-20 bomber has fallen behind schedule, according to sources.
For the J-20, engineers were developing high-thrust turbofan WS-15 engines, but the jet is understood to be using either Chinese WS-10B or Russian-built AL-31FM2/3 engines, which compromise its manoeuvrability and stealth capabilities at subsonic speeds.
Military enthusiasts have speculated the H-20 might use the NK-321 Russian engine but two independent military sources said it would be equipped with an upgraded WS-10 engine.
“The WS-10 is still a transitional engine for the H-20 because it is not powerful enough. The eligible replacement may take two to three years for development,” one of the sources said.
China must meet air force demand for J-20 stealth jets, say analysts
17 Feb 2020
The second said the speed of the H-20 would be slower than its original design, with some of its original combat capability being reduced.
“That’s why the American air force doesn’t care about the H-20, because it is not strong and powerful enough to cause any challenge to their B-2 and B-21 bombers.”
If the US decided to deploy more F-35 supersonic fighter jets – it has already sold about 200 to Japan and South Korea – it could push China to bring forward the unveiling of the new bomber, the second source said.
“For example, if some US decision makers decided to deploy up to 500 F-35s to Japan, South Korea, and even Singapore, India and Taiwan – making almost all of China’s neighbours in the Indo-Pacific region use F-35s to contain China – that would pushBeijing to launch the H-20 as soon as possible.”
The H-20 is believed to have been in development since the early 2000s. The project to develop a strategic bomber was first announced by the People’s Liberation Army in 2016.
Warship joined by at least five escort vessels and analysts say the drills were ‘very significant’ to show the strike group wasn’t hit by coronavirus
Latest exercises also seen as putting pressure on Taiwan’s pro-independence forces, with strike group sailing through the strait
The Liaoning is seen as having a big role in the Chinese military’s plan to unify Taiwan by force. Photo: AFP
China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, returned to its home port of Qingdao on Thursday after nearly a month of training on the high seas, the People’s Liberation Army said.
According to military analysts, the warship was joined by at least five escort vessels, and the drills showed its crew had not been affected by the coronavirus pandemic and that it remained combat-ready.
The annual cross-region drills included intensive and complicated air and sea operations, the official PLA Daily said in a post on social media on Friday.
“The drills have further improved the real combat training level of the Liaoning carrier strike group, putting its systematic combat capability to the test,” the statement on WeChat said, without giving other details.
It was the longest training session by China’s navy since the PLA resumed all large-scale drills in March, after they were suspended because of disruptions to transport and military resources across the country as the deadly new virus rapidly spread.
Beijing-based naval expert Li Jie said it was important for the carrier to get back to training activities.
“The recent training by the Liaoning carrier strike group is very significant because it’s evidence that none of the 2,000 sailors and commanders on the ship have been hit by Covid-19, and neither have any of the other soldiers and personnel on the other warships and support units,” Li said.
The coronavirus situation has eased in China, where the first cases were reported late last year, but it continues to spread across the globe and has infected more than 3.2 million people worldwide and killed over 233,000.
Sailors on warships like USS Theodore Roosevelt vulnerable as coronavirus spreads
29 Mar 2020
The virus has also hit crew members on at least 40 US Navy warships, and Li said that left China with the only operational aircraft carrier in the region.
“Since the four American aircraft carriers in the Indo-Pacific region have all been struck by the pandemic, China is the only country that can operate an aircraft carrier in the area,” he said.
US warship captain seeks to isolate crew members as coronavirus spreads
Taiwan’s defence ministry reported earlier that the Liaoning flotilla had sailed through the Taiwan Strait twice last month as it headed towards the western Pacific, prompting the self-ruled island to scramble aircraft and send warships to monitor its movements.
Japan’s Ministry of Defence said the Liaoning was escorted by two destroyers, two frigates and a supply ship, and they had passed through the Bashi Channel, a waterway to the south of Taiwan, and headed towards waters east of Taiwan.
As tensions continue to simmer between Taipei and Beijing, the PLA has stepped up activities around the island, which the mainland sees as part of its territory awaiting reunification.
Hong Kong-based military commentator Song Zhongping said the latest naval drills were also aimed at heaping more pressure on Taiwan’s pro-independence forces as well as foreign countries seeking to intervene in cross-strait issues.
Coronavirus: US ‘supports Taiwan joining WHO events’ in ministerial phone call
28 Apr 2020
“Taiwan’s pro-independence forces have become more active and are attempting to take advantage amid the pandemic,” said Song, a military commentator with Phoenix Television.
“The Liaoning would play a major role in the PLA’s plan to unify Taiwan by force, so it’s necessary for the aircraft carrier strike group to get back to operations, step up training and send a warning to Taipei,” he added.
Lu Li-Shih, a former instructor at the naval academy in Taiwan, noted that the PLA Navy had regularly held drills in the waters east of Taiwan in recent years to avoid surveillance by US satellites.
Carrier targets return of daily services to major Asian cities and more frequent long-haul services
Airline to monitor global situation and adjustments may be made ‘as necessary’
A Cathay Pacific employee stands near the check-in desks at a virtually deserted Hong Kong International Airport. Photo: Sam Tsang
Cathay Pacific Airways has signalled its intent to start reversing its near-total grounding of aircraft because of the coronavirus pandemic, and plans to start increasing its number of passenger flights in the last week of June.
The airline said it hoped to add more long-haul destinations, make flights more frequent, and reinstate some major Asian cities to its daily schedule for the first time in several months, “subject to government travel restrictions”.
Cathay scaled its operations back to a skeleton schedule of 3 per cent of services in early April, and that was extended until June 20. The newly announced increases would take that up to 5 per cent.
Tracking the massive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the world’s airline industry in early 2020 Singapore Airlines, another of Asia’s major carriers, said last week it would maintain a 96 per cent reduction in flights until the end of June.
Cathay, which has 236 aircraft, currently operates long-haul flights to London Heathrow, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Sydney twice a week, but will increase that to five times a week.
On top of that, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, San Francisco and Melbourne are among the long-haul destinations set to return three times a week.
With regional routes currently operating three times a week, including Tokyo Narita, Taipei, Beijing and Singapore, Asian routes will increase to a daily service. Osaka and Seoul would also return to the network, too.
“We will continue to monitor the developing situation and further adjustments may be made as necessary,” the airline said.
Coronavirus: ban on non-residents leaves Hong Kong airport virtually deserted
Earlier this month, Cathay’s budget unit HK Express extended its total grounding until June 18, having been on hiatus since March 23.
Meanwhile, Boeing has added to warnings of a very slow recovery in air travel, with Dave Calhoun, its CEO, saying demand may not return to 2019 levels for two to three years.
Cathay Pacific’s daily passenger volume has collapsed from regular previous peaks of 100,000 to less than 1,000 in April. Over the past two months, the company has been running more than 250 extra pairs of cargo-only passenger flights to maintain air freight capacity, much of which is accounted for by passenger services.
In a bid to cut costs, most of the Cathay Pacific Group’s 34,200 staff have taken three weeks of unpaid leave. Also, 433 cabin crew in the US and Canada were told they would be laid off, while about 200 pilots in the UK, Australia have been furloughed.
The International Air Transport Association, which revised down pandemic-related revenue losses for the global sector to US$314 billion (HK$2.4 trillion) two weeks ago, said last week the Hong Kong aviation market would take a US$7.5 billion hit this year, a 27 per cent increase on the previous estimate. That equates to a 59 per cent decline in air travel demand, or a loss of almost 31 million passengers, in 2020.
BOCOM International, a financial services company, forecast in a report on Monday that the city’s aviation sector would lose HK$65.2 billion in revenue in 2020, yet Cathay Pacific could emerge as a winner if it survived largely unscathed, given the weakness of rivals at home and in the region plus its dominant position in Hong Kong.
“Hong Kong aviation is at the most critical juncture in its history. Though calamitous, Covid-19 is set to reshape Hong Kong’s aviation industry for the years, possibly decades, to come,” said transportation analyst Luya You.
“Covid-19’s sweeping blows now offer a blank slate for remaining players to regain lost leadership or gain new markets. If [Cathay Pacific] can survive intact from Covid, the carrier could enjoy winner-takes-all growth trajectory in the years following [2020].”
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s biggest listed banks posted higher profits in the first quarter despite the wider impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy, though margins shrank.
The world’s largest commercial lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) (601398.SS)(1398.HK) on Tuesday reported a 3.04% rise in first quarter net profit compared to a year earlier, while Bank of Communications Co Ltd (BoCom) (601328.SS)(3328.HK) reported a 1.8% rise.
Meanwhile at Agricultural Bank of China Ltd (AgBank) (1288.HK)(601288.SS) and China Construction Bank Ltd (CCB) (601939.SS)(0939.HK), first quarter net profit rose 4.79% and 5% respectively from the same period last year.
Following suit, Bank of China Ltd (BOC) (601988.SS) (3988.HK) posted on Wednesday a 3.17% rise in first-quarter net profit.
The growth came despite China’s economy posting the first quarterly contraction since at least 1992 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The government restricted people from travelling and going back to work to contain the spread of the virus, reducing revenue for companies and income for residents.
China’s largest banks are historically more resilient than their smaller kin, as they lend more to state-backed enterprises and have larger capital reserves.
However, despite this firmer base, net interest margins shrank at four of the five lenders, as loan prime rate reform and looser monetary policy weighed, said analysts.
AgBank did not report its net interest margin, the difference between what banks pay on deposits and earn on loans.
SOURED DEBT
ICBC, AgBank and CCB bucked the trend of the wider banking sector by posting steady non-performing loan (NPL) ratios.
The banking sector’s NPL ratio climbed in the first quarter to 2.04%, the banking and insurance regulator said, the highest level since the global financial crisis.
The rise came despite Chinese regulators moving to give banks leeway, allowing them to postpone some loan repayments until the end of June, as credit card and mortgage defaults surged.
About one-third of Chinese bank loans are to sectors including transport and retail that are significantly stressed by the pandemic, according to S&P Global.
“You can see generally from banks’ results that some lenders have reported falling asset quality, the NPL ratios have risen quite a lot,” said Richard Cao, an analyst at Guotai Junan International on Monday.
The largest banks are best placed to absorb such losses with a better ability to get financing and withstand a substantial volume of bad loans, S&P said in a research note in April.
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) has bought cameras to take temperatures of workers during the coronavirus pandemic from a firm the United States blacklisted over allegations it helped China detain and monitor the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
China’s Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co Ltd (002236.SZ) shipped 1,500 cameras to Amazon this month in a deal valued close to $10 million, one of the people said. At least 500 systems from Dahua – the blacklisted firm – are for Amazon’s use in the United States, another person said.
The Amazon procurement, which has not been previously reported, is legal because the rules control U.S. government contract awards and exports to blacklisted firms, but they do not stop sales to the private sector.
However, the United States “considers that transactions of any nature with listed entities carry a ‘red flag’ and recommends that U.S. companies proceed with caution,” according to the Bureau of Industry and Security’s website. Dahua has disputed the designation.
The deal comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned of a shortage of temperature-reading devices and said it wouldn’t halt certain pandemic uses of thermal cameras that lack the agency’s regulatory approval. Top U.S.-based maker FLIR Systems Inc (FLIR.O) has faced an up to weeks-long order backlog, forcing it to prioritize products for hospitals and other critical facilities.
Amazon declined to confirm its purchase from Dahua, but said its hardware complied with national, state and local law, and its temperature checks were to “support the health and safety of our employees, who continue to provide a critical service in our communities.”
The company added it was implementing thermal imagers from “multiple” manufacturers, which it declined to name. These vendors include Infrared Cameras Inc, which Reuters previously reported, and FLIR, according to employees at Amazon-owned Whole Foods who saw the deployment. FLIR declined to comment on its customers.
Dahua, one of the biggest surveillance camera manufacturers globally, said it does not discuss customer engagements and it adheres to applicable laws. Dahua is committed “to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19” through technology that detects “abnormal elevated skin temperature — with high accuracy,” it said in a statement.
The U.S. Department of Commerce, which maintains the blacklist, declined comment. The FDA said it would use discretion when enforcing regulations during the public health crisis as long as thermal systems lacking compliance posed no “undue risk” and secondary evaluations confirmed fevers.
Dahua’s thermal cameras have been used in hospitals, airports, train stations, government offices and factories during the pandemic. International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) placed an order for 100 units, and the automaker Chrysler placed an order for 10, one of the sources said. In addition to selling thermal technology, Dahua makes white-label security cameras resold under dozens of other brands such as Honeywell, according to research and reporting firm IPVM.
Honeywell said some but not all its cameras are manufactured by Dahua, and it holds products to its cybersecurity and compliance standards. IBM and Chrysler’s parent Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCHA.MI) did not comment.
The Trump Administration added Dahua and seven other tech firms last year to the blacklist for acting against U.S. foreign policy interests, saying they were “implicated” in “China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups.”
More than one million people have been sent to camps in the Xinjiang region as part of China’s campaign to root out terrorism, the United Nations has estimated.
Dahua has said the U.S. decision lacked “any factual basis.” Beijing has denied mistreatment of minorities in Xinjiang and urged the United States to remove the companies from the list.
A provision of U.S. law, which is scheduled to take effect in August, will also bar the federal government from starting or renewing contracts with a company using “any equipment, system, or service” from firms including Dahua “as a substantial or essential component of any system.”
Amazon’s cloud unit is a major contractor with the U.S. intelligence community, and it has been battling Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) for an up to $10 billion deal with the Pentagon.
Top industry associations have asked Congress for a year-long delay because they say the law would reduce supplies to the government dramatically, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that policies clarifying the implementation of the law were forthcoming.
FACE DETECTION & PRIVACY
The coronavirus has infected staff from dozens of Amazon warehouses, ignited small protests over allegedly unsafe conditions and prompted unions to demand site closures. Temperature checks help Amazon stay operational, and the cameras – a faster, socially distant alternative to forehead thermometers – can speed up lines to enter its buildings. Amazon said the type of temperature reader it uses varies by building.
To see if someone has a fever, Dahua’s camera compares a person’s radiation to a separate infrared calibration device. It uses face detection technology to track subjects walking by and make sure it is looking for heat in the right place.
An additional recording device keeps snapshots of faces the camera has spotted and their temperatures, according to a demonstration of the technology in San Francisco. Optional facial recognition software can fetch images of the same subject across time to determine, for instance, who a virus patient may have been near in a line for temperature checks.
Amazon said it is not using facial recognition on any of its thermal cameras. Civil liberties groups have warned the software could strip people of privacy and lead to arbitrary apprehensions if relied on by police. U.S. authorities have also worried that equipment makers like Dahua could hide a technical “back door” to Chinese government agents seeking intelligence.
In response to questions about the thermal systems, Amazon said in a statement, “None of this equipment has network connectivity, and no personal identifiable information will be visible, collected, or stored.”
Dahua made the decision to market its technology in the United States before the FDA issued the guidance on thermal cameras in the pandemic. Its supply is attracting many U.S. customers not deterred by the blacklist, according to Evan Steiner, who sells surveillance equipment from a range of manufacturers in California through his firm EnterActive Networks LLC.
“You’re seeing a lot of companies doing everything that they possibly can preemptively to prepare for their workforce coming back,” he said.
City at centre of outbreak finally able to declare itself clear of disease after months in lockdown and thousands of deaths
Risk of infection remains, however, with some patients testing positive for coronavirus that causes disease without showing symptoms
Ferries and other public transport services resumed in Wuhan last week. Photo: Xinhua
The city of Wuhan, the initial epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, no longer has any Covid-19 patients in hospital after the last 12 were discharged on Sunday.
Their release ended a four-month nightmare for the city, where the disease was first detected in December. The number of patients being treated for Covid-19, the disease caused by a new coronavirus, peaked on February 18 at 38,020 – nearly 10,000 of whom were in severe or critical condition.
“With the joint efforts of Wuhan and the national medical aid given to Hubei province, all cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan were cleared as of April 26,” Mi Feng, a spokesman for the National Health Commission said on Sunday afternoon.
The announcement came only one day after the city discharged the last patient who had been in a severe condition. That patient also was the last severe case in Hubei province.
The last patient discharged from Wuhan Chest Hospital, a 77-year-old man surnamed Ding, twice tested negative for Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and was released at noon on Sunday.
“I missed my family so much!” Ding told Changjing Daily.
Another unidentified patient exclaimed as he left the hospital: “The air outside is so fresh! The weather is so good today!”
Wuhan faced a long journey to bring its patient count down to zero.
The city of 11 million, the capital of Hubei province and a transport hub for central China, was put under a strict lockdown on January 23 that barred anyone from entering or exiting the city without official approval for 76 days until it was officially lifted on April 8.
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Residents were ordered to stay in their apartments as the city stopped public transport and banned private cars from city streets. As the epidemic worsened, more than 42,000 medical staff from across the country were sent to the city and to Hubei province to help ease the burden on the local health care system.
Wuhan was the hardest hit city in China, accounting for 50,333 of the 82,827 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases recorded in China. More than 4,600 died in the country from the disease.
On March 13, the city reported for the first time that there were no new suspected cases of the infection, and five days later there were no confirmed cases.
The number of discharged patients bottomed out at 39.1 per cent at the end of February, gradually climbing to 92.2 per cent by last Thursday.
“Having the patients in the hospital cleared on April 26 marks a major achievement for the city’s Covid-19 treatment,” the Wuhan Health Commission said in a statement.
However, having no severe cases in hospital does not mean all the discharged patients will require no further treatment as they may still need further care.
“Clearing all the severe cases marks a decisive victory for the battle to safeguard Wuhan,” health minister Ma Xiaowei told state broadcaster China Central Television on Saturday.
“Some patients who have other conditions are being treated in specialised hospitals. It has been properly arranged.”
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Ten patients aged between 42 and 85 who have been declared coronavirus-free are still in intensive care at the city’s Tongji Hospital where they are being treated for kidney problems and other complications arising from Covid-19. Some still need ventilators to help them breathe.
These 10 patients are under 24-hour care, with 190 nurses on four-hour rotations. There are other patients in a similar condition in two other hospitals in Wuhan, according to the Hubei Broadcasting and Television Network.
However, the discharge of the last batch of Covid-19 patients does not mean that the risk of infection is gone.
The city reported 20 new cases of people testing positive for Sars-CoV-2, the official name for the coronavirus that causes the disease, but who do not yet show symptoms.
There are 535 such carriers under medical observation. Past data shows some of these asymptomatic carriers will develop symptoms, and so will be counted as Covid-19 patients under China’s diagnosis and treatment plan.
China’s coronavirus infection curve has flattened out with about 694 imported cases of Covid-19 on top of about 800 locally transmitted ones now under treatment.
The national health commission spokesman warned that people still need to be on high alert as the virus is continuing to spread around the globe, with no sign yet of a slowdown.
“[We] must not drop our guard and loosen up. [We] must discover cases in time and deal with them quickly,” Mi said, citing the continued pressure from cases imported by people returning from overseas.
“The next step will be to implement the requirements of the central government and continue to guard against imported cases and a rebound of domestic transmitted cases.”
But trade with partner countries might not be as badly affected as with countries elsewhere in the world, observers say
China’s trade with belt and road countries rose by 3.2 per cent in the January-March period, but second-quarter results will depend on how well they manage to contain the pathogen, academic says
China’s investment in foreign infrastructure as part of its Belt and Road Initiative has been curtailed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Xinhua
The coronavirus pandemic is set to cause a slump in Chinese investment in its signature
and a dip in trade with partner countries that could take a year to overcome, analysts say.
But the impact of the health crisis on China’s economic relations with nations involved in the ambitious infrastructure development programme might not be as great as on those that are not.
China’s total foreign trade in the first quarter of 2020 fell by 6.4 per cent year on year, according to official figures from Beijing.
Trade with the United States, Europe and Japan all dropped in the period, by 18.3, 10.4 and 8.1 per cent, respectively, the commerce ministry said.
By comparison, China’s trade with belt and road countries increased by 3.2 per cent in the first quarter, although the growth figure was lower than the 10.8 per cent reported for the whole of 2019.
China’s trade with 56 belt and road countries – located across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America – accounts for about 30 per cent of its total annual volume, according to the commerce ministry.
Despite the first-quarter growth, Tong Jiadong, a professor of international trade at Nankai University in Tianjin, said he expected China’s trade with belt and road countries to fall by between 2 and 5 per cent this year.
His predictions are less gloomy than the 13 to 32 per cent contraction in global trade forecast for this year by the World Trade Organisation.
“A drop in [China’s total] first-quarter trade was inevitable but it slowly started to recover as it resumed production, especially with Southeast Asian, Eastern European and Arab countries,” Tong said.
“The second quarter will really depend on how the epidemic is contained in belt and road countries.”
Nick Marro, Hong Kong-based head of global trade at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said he expected China’s total overseas direct investment to fall by about 30 per cent this year, which would be bad news for the belt and road plan.
“This will derive from a combination of growing domestic stress in China, enhanced regulatory scrutiny over Chinese investment in major international markets, and weakened global economic prospects that will naturally depress investment demand,” he said.
The development of the Chinese built and operated special economic zone in the Cambodian town of Sihanoukville is reported to have slowed, while infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, including the Payra coal-fired power plant, have been put on hold.
The development of the Chinese built and operated special economic zone in the Cambodian town of Sihanoukville is reported to have slowed. Photo: AFP
Marro said the reduction of capital and labour from China might complicate other projects for key belt and road partner, like Pakistan, which is home to infrastructure projects worth tens of billions of US dollars, and funded and built in large part by China.
“Pakistan looks concerning, particularly in terms of how we’ve assessed its sovereign and currency risk,” Marro said.
“Public debt is high compared to other emerging markets, while the coronavirus will push the budget deficit to expand to 10 per cent of GDP [gross domestic product] this year.”
Last week, Pakistan asked China for a 10-year extension to the repayment period on US$30 billion worth of loans used to fund the development of infrastructure projects, according to a report by local newspaper Dawn.
China’s overseas investment has been falling steadily from its peak in 2016, mostly as a result of Beijing’s curbs on capital outflows.
Last year, the direct investment by Chinese companies and organisations other than banks in belt and road countries fell 3.8 per cent from 2018 to US$15 billion, with most of the money going to South and Southeast Asian countries, including Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Tong said the pandemic had made Chinese investors nervous about putting their money in countries where disease control measures were becoming increasingly stringent, but added that the pause in activity would give all parties time to regroup.
“Investment in the second quarter will decline and allow time for the questions to be answered,” he said.
“Past experience along the belt and road has taught many lessons to both China and its partners, and forced them to think calmly about their own interests. The epidemic provides both parties with a good time for this.”
Dr Frans-Paul van der Putten, a senior research fellow at Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands, said China’s post-pandemic strategy for the belt and road in Europe
might include a shift away from investing in high-profile infrastructure projects like ports and airports.
Investors might instead cooperate with transport and logistics providers rather than invest directly, he said.
“Even though in the coming years the amount of money China loans and invests abroad may be lower than in the peak years around 2015-16, I expect it to maintain the belt and road plan as its overall strategic framework for its foreign economic relations,” he said.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier returns home from a month of training
China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, returned to its home port of Qingdao on Thursday after nearly a month of training on the high seas, the People’s Liberation Army said.
According to military analysts, the warship was joined by at least five escort vessels, and the drills showed its crew had not been affected by the coronavirus pandemic and that it remained combat-ready.
The annual cross-region drills included intensive and complicated air and sea operations, the official PLA Daily said in a post on social media on Friday.
“The drills have further improved the real combat training level of the Liaoning carrier strike group, putting its systematic combat capability to the test,” the statement on WeChat said, without giving other details.
Beijing-based naval expert Li Jie said it was important for the carrier to get back to training activities.
“The recent training by the Liaoning carrier strike group is very significant because it’s evidence that none of the 2,000 sailors and commanders on the ship have been hit by Covid-19, and neither have any of the other soldiers and personnel on the other warships and support units,” Li said.
The coronavirus situation has eased in China, where the first cases were reported late last year, but it continues to spread across the globe and has infected more than 3.2 million people worldwide and killed over 233,000.
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The virus has also hit crew members on at least 40 US Navy warships, and Li said that left China with the only operational aircraft carrier in the region.
“Since the four American aircraft carriers in the Indo-Pacific region have all been struck by the pandemic, China is the only country that can operate an aircraft carrier in the area,” he said.
Japan’s Ministry of Defence said the Liaoning was escorted by two destroyers, two frigates and a supply ship, and they had passed through the Bashi Channel, a waterway to the south of Taiwan, and headed towards waters east of Taiwan.
As tensions continue to simmer between Taipei and Beijing, the PLA has stepped up activities around the island, which the mainland sees as part of its territory awaiting reunification.
Hong Kong-based military commentator Song Zhongping said the latest naval drills were also aimed at heaping more pressure on Taiwan’s pro-independence forces as well as foreign countries seeking to intervene in cross-strait issues.
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“Taiwan’s pro-independence forces have become more active and are attempting to take advantage amid the pandemic,” said Song, a military commentator with Phoenix Television.
“The Liaoning would play a major role in the PLA’s plan to unify Taiwan by force, so it’s necessary for the aircraft carrier strike group to get back to operations, step up training and send a warning to Taipei,” he added.
Lu Li-Shih, a former instructor at the naval academy in Taiwan, noted that the PLA Navy had regularly held drills in the waters east of Taiwan in recent years to avoid surveillance by US satellites.
Source: SCMP
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