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.
LONDON (Reuters) – The United Kingdom’s COVID-19 death toll surpassed 47,000 on Tuesday, a dire human cost that could define the premiership of Boris Johnson.
The Office for National Statistics said 42,173 people had died in England and Wales with suspected COVID-19 as of May 15, bringing the UK total to 47,343 – which includes earlier data from Scotland, Northern Ireland, plus recent hospital deaths in England.
A death toll of nearly 50,000 underlined Britain’s status as one of the worst-hit countries in a pandemic that has killed at least 345,400 worldwide.
Johnson, already under fire for his handling of the pandemic, has had to defend his top adviser Dominic Cummings who drove 250 miles from London to access childcare when Britons were being told to stay at home to fight COVID-19.
One Johnson’s junior ministers, Douglas Ross, resigned on Tuesday in protest. Johnson has stood by Cummings, saying the aide had followed the “instincts of every father”.
The government says that while it may have made some mistakes it is grappling with the biggest public health crisis since the 1918 influenza outbreak and that it has ensured the health service was not overwhelmed.
Unlike the daily death toll published by the government, Tuesday’s figures include suspected cases and confirmed cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
But even these figures underestimate the true number of deaths.
In March, Britain’s chief scientific adviser said keeping deaths below 20,000 would be a “good outcome”. In April, Reuters reported the government’s worst-case scenario was 50,000 deaths.
Disease experts are watching the total number of deaths that exceed the usual for amount for the time of year, an approach that is internationally comparable.
The early signs suggest Britain is faring badly here too.
Excess deaths are now approaching 60,000 across the UK, ONS statistician Nick Stripe said, citing the latest data – a toll equivalent to the populations of historic cities like Canterbury and Hereford.
The United States suffered the most from the pandemic, with 1,305,199 cases and a death toll of 78,469.
NEW YORK, May 9 (Xinhua) — Global confirmed COVID-19 cases topped 4 million on Saturday, reaching 4,004,224 as of 4:32 p.m. (2032 GMT), according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
According to the CSSE, a total of 277,860 people worldwide have died of the disease.
Police officers walk past closed retail stores along Broadway in New York, the United States, on May 8, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)
The United States suffered the most from the pandemic, with 1,305,199 cases and a death toll of 78,469. Countries with over 150,000 cases included Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Russia, France and Germany, according to the CSSE data.
In his “verbal message of thanks”, Mr Xi said he highly appreciated Mr Kim’s support during China’s outbreak and “showed his personal attention to the situation of the pandemic and people’s health” in North Korea, according to state media.
Mr Xi called for more efforts to strengthen co-operation in preventing the spread of the coronavirus, and said China was “willing to continue to provide assistance within its own capacity for [North Korea] in the fight against Covid-19”.
On Friday, North Korean state media reported that Mr Kim had sent a verbal message to the president that “congratulated him, highly appreciating that he is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic”.
Image copyright REUTERSImage caption Kim Jong-un disappeared from public view for 20 days, before visiting a factory on 2 May
Mr Kim recently went 20 days without appearing in public, and missed the celebration of his grandfather’s birthday – one of the biggest events of the year.
Some media reports claimed he was “gravely ill”, or even dead.
But he then appeared at a fertiliser factory on 2 May – apparently in good health.
On Wednesday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told a parliamentary committee that there had been no signs the health rumours were true.
“He was performing his duties normally when he was out of the public eye,” a member of the committee, Kim Byung-kee, told reporters afterwards.
The lawmaker said the North Korean leader’s absence could have been down to a Covid-19 outbreak that the authorities in Pyongyang had not reported.
Analysis
By Celia Hatton, Asia Pacific Editor, BBC World Service
For months, North Korea-watchers have questioned Pyongyang’s claims that it has managed to isolate itself from Covid-19.
Admittedly, North Korea was the first country to suspend travel in response to the virus. There are unconfirmed reports that North Korean guards have been ordered to shoot at those who try to cross the lengthy border the North shares with China. However, it will be difficult to completely seal that dividing line for long. North Korea’s underground economy relies on illicit trade with Chinese entrepreneurs.
Beijing has a few good reasons for wanting to help North Korea. On a practical level, China needs to suppress a possible Covid-19 outbreak there if it wants to keep its own population healthy. Beijing also worries about what might happen inside North Korea if the virus takes hold. The North’s decrepit health system would quickly be overwhelmed by an outbreak of Covid-19, and that could threaten the fragile Kim Jong-un regime. Beijing has been Pyongyang’s biggest aid donor for decades, and it will continue to do what it can to keep Mr Kim in power. The alternatives to Kim Jong-un are much riskier for China, which does not want change on its doorstep.
China’s global political interests are also at play. Diplomatically, Mr Xi’s public exchange with Kim Jong-un underlines the seemingly close ties between China and North Korea. Pyongyang has been slow to accept public offers of help from the United States, and peace talks with Washington have stalled. If North Korea appeared to accept Beijing’s help, China would reassert itself as North Korea’s “true” ally in a time of need.
South Korea itself reported 18 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Saturday.
Seventeen of them are linked to a 29-year-old man who tested positive after spending time at five nightclubs and bars in Seoul’s Itaewon leisure district last weekend, the Yonhap news agency said.
Mayor Park Won-soon ordered nightclubs, bars and hostess venues across the capital to suspend business in response.
“Carelessness can lead to an explosion in infections – we clearly realised this through the group infections seen in the Itaewon club case,” Mr Park said.
Health officials have urged people who have visited the five venues in Itaewon to self-isolate and get tested to prevent additional transmissions. At least 1,500 people signed their entry logs, according to Yonhap.
The new infections brought the nationwide total to 10,840, while the death toll remained unchanged at 256.
Fans greeted the team as they arrived in Wuhan via train
Chinese Super League team Wuhan Zall made an emotional homecoming after being unable to return for three months because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Players had initially stayed at their winter training camp in Spain when the virus peaked in Wuhan in January.
After a prolonged transit in Germany, they landed in Shenzhen on 16 March and underwent three weeks’ quarantine.
They were greeted by fans when they arrived in Wuhan by train on Saturday evening.
“After more than three months of wandering, the homesick Wuhan Zall team members finally set foot in their hometown,” the team said on the Twitter-like Weibo.
Fans, dressed in the team’s orange colours, sang and gave the players flowers as they arrived home for the first time in 104 days.
Players will now spend time with their families before training resumes.
The team had first left Wuhan in early January to start preparing for the Super League season.
By the time they arrived in Malaga, residents in Wuhan were living under strict lockdown measures, and there were no planes or trains in or out of the capital.
Coach Jose Gonzalez told Spanish media at the time that the players “are not walking viruses, they are athletes” and asked for them not to be demonised.
The Chinese Super League was set to begin on 22 February but it has been postponed.
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.
Why China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ is raising concern in the West
29 Mar 2020
“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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16 Apr 2020
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
12 Apr 2020
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 GETTY IMAGESImage caption The Chinese city of Wuhan recently lifted its strict quarantine measures
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated last year, has raised its official Covid-19 death toll by 50%, adding 1,290 fatalities.
Wuhan officials attributed the new figure to updated reporting and deaths outside hospitals. China has insisted there was no cover-up.
It has been accused of downplaying the severity of its virus outbreak.
Wuhan’s 11 million residents spent months in strict lockdown conditions, which have only recently been eased.
The latest official figures bring the death toll in the city in China’s central Hubei province to 3,869, increasing the national total to more than 4,600.
China has confirmed nearly 84,000 coronavirus infections, the seventh-highest globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
What’s China’s explanation for the rise in deaths?
In a statement released on Friday, officials in Wuhan said the revised figures were the result of new data received from multiple sources, including records kept by funeral homes and prisons.
Deaths linked to the virus outside hospitals, such as people who died at home, had not previously been recorded.
Media caption Learn how Wuhan dealt with the lockdown
The “statistical verification” followed efforts by authorities to “ensure that information on the city’s Covid-19 epidemic is open, transparent and the data [is] accurate”, the statement said.
It added that health systems were initially overwhelmed and cases were “mistakenly reported” – in some instances counted more than once and in others missed entirely.
A shortage of testing capacity in the early stages meant that many infected patients were not accounted for, it said.
A spokesman for China’s National Health Commission, Mi Feng, said the new death count came from a “comprehensive review” of epidemic data.
In its daily news conference, the foreign ministry said accusations of a cover-up, which have been made most stridently on the world stage by US President Donald Trump, were unsubstantiated. “We’ll never allow any concealment,” a spokesman said.
Why are there concerns over China’s figures?
Friday’s revised figures come amid growing international concern that deaths in China have been under-reported. Questions have also been raised about Beijing’s handling of the epidemic, particularly in its early stages.
In December 2019, Chinese authorities launched an investigation into a mysterious viral pneumonia after cases began circulating in Wuhan.
China reported the cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN’s global health agency, on 31 December.
But WHO experts were only allowed to visit China and investigate the outbreak on 10 February, by which time the country had more than 40,000 cases.
The mayor of Wuhan has previously admitted there was a lack of action between the start of January – when about 100 cases had been confirmed – and 23 January, when city-wide restrictions were enacted.
Around that time, a doctor who tried to warn his colleagues about an outbreak of a Sars-like virus was silenced by the authorities. Dr Li Wenliang later died from Covid-19.
Wuhan’s death toll increase of almost exactly 50% has left some analysts wondering if this is all a bit too neat.
For months questions have been asked about the veracity of China’s official coronavirus statistics.
The inference has been that some Chinese officials may have deliberately under-reported deaths and infections to give the impression that cities and towns were successfully managing the emergency.
If that was the case, Chinese officials were not to know just how bad this crisis would get in other countries, making its own figures now seem implausibly small.
The authorities in Wuhan, where the first cluster of this disease was reported, said there had been no deliberate misrepresentation of data, rather that a stabilisation in the emergency had allowed them time to revisit the reported cases and to add any previously missed.
That the new death toll was released at the same time as a press conference announcing a total collapse in China’s economic growth figures has led some to wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to bury one or other of these stories.
Then again, it could also be a complete coincidence.
China has been pushing back against US suggestions that the coronavirus came from a laboratory studying infectious diseases in Wuhan, the BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher in Washington DC reports.
US President Donald Trump and some of his officials have been flirting with the outlier theory in the midst of a propaganda war with China over the origin and handling of the pandemic, our correspondent says.
Mr Trump this week halted funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of making deadly mistakes and overly trusting China.
“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” Mr Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.
On Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how [coronavirus] came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier.”
But China has also been praised for its handling of the crisis and the unprecedented restrictions that it instituted to slow the spread of the virus.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China ordered on Saturday that anyone in Wuhan working in certain service-related jobs must take a coronavirus test if they want to leave the city.
The order comes after the central city, where the coronavirus emerged late last year, lifted a 70-day lockdown that all but ended the epidemic there.
People in Wuhan work in nursing, education, security and other sectors with high exposure to the public must take a nucleic acid test before leaving, the National Health Commission said in an order.
The government of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is capital, will pay for the tests, the commission said.
Since the city relaxed its lockdown restrictions people who arrived in there before Chinese New Year, when the virus was peaking in China, are allowed to go back to their homes.
People working in other sectors aiming to leave Wuhan are encouraged to take voluntary tests before going.
Within seven days of arrival at their destinations, people who can present test results showing they do not carry the virus, as well as a clean bill of health on a health app, can go back to work.
Everyone else will have to spend 14 days in quarantine before returning to work.
Authorities have worked with the China’s tech giants to devise a colour-based health code system, retrieved via mobile app, that uses geolocation data and self-reported information to indicate one’s health status.
Wuhan will speed up its efforts to investigate asymptomatic coronavirus cases and confirm the presence of antibodies in people, which might suggest immunity, the commission said.
Wuhan, which accounts for 60% of infections in China and 84% of the death toll as of Saturday, has been testing inhabitants aggressively throughout the virus’ breakout and many companies had already been asking workers from the city to undergo tests before resuming work.
Wuhan revised up its death toll from the coronavirus by 1,290 on Friday, taking the city’s toll to 3,869, because of incorrect reporting, delays and omissions, especially in the chaotic early stages of the outbreak, authorities said.
China national death toll is 4,632 from 82,719 cases.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The Chinese city of Wuhan recently lifted its strict quarantine measures
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated last year, has raised its official Covid-19 death toll by 50%, adding 1,290 fatalities.
Wuhan officials attributed the new figure to updated reporting and deaths outside hospitals. China has insisted there was no cover-up.
It has been accused of downplaying the severity of its virus outbreak.
Wuhan’s 11 million residents spent months in strict lockdown conditions, which have only recently been eased.
The latest official figures bring the death toll in the city in China’s central Hubei province to 3,869, increasing the national total to more than 4,600.
China has confirmed nearly 84,000 coronavirus infections, the seventh-highest globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
What’s China’s explanation for the rise in deaths?
In a statement released on Friday, officials in Wuhan said the revised figures were the result of new data received from multiple sources, including records kept by funeral homes and prisons.
Deaths linked to the virus outside hospitals, such as people who died at home, had not previously been recorded.
Media caption Learn how Wuhan dealt with the lockdown
The “statistical verification” followed efforts by authorities to “ensure that information on the city’s Covid-19 epidemic is open, transparent and the data [is] accurate”, the statement said.
It added that health systems were initially overwhelmed and cases were “mistakenly reported” – in some instances counted more than once and in others missed entirely.
A shortage of testing capacity in the early stages meant that many infected patients were not accounted for, it said.
A spokesman for China’s National Health Commission, Mi Feng, said the new death count came from a “comprehensive review” of epidemic data.
In its daily news conference, the foreign ministry said accusations of a cover-up, which have been made most stridently on the world stage by US President Donald Trump, were unsubstantiated. “We’ll never allow any concealment,” a spokesman said.
Why are there concerns over China’s figures?
Friday’s revised figures come amid growing international concern that deaths in China have been under-reported. Questions have also been raised about Beijing’s handling of the epidemic, particularly in its early stages.
In December 2019, Chinese authorities launched an investigation into a mysterious viral pneumonia after cases began circulating in Wuhan.
China reported the cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN’s global health agency, on 31 December.
But WHO experts were only allowed to visit China and investigate the outbreak on 10 February, by which time the country had more than 40,000 cases.
The mayor of Wuhan has previously admitted there was a lack of action between the start of January – when about 100 cases had been confirmed – and 23 January, when city-wide restrictions were enacted.
Around that time, a doctor who tried to warn his colleagues about an outbreak of a Sars-like virus was silenced by the authorities. Dr Li Wenliang later died from Covid-19.
Wuhan’s death toll increase of almost exactly 50% has left some analysts wondering if this is all a bit too neat.
For months questions have been asked about the veracity of China’s official coronavirus statistics.
The inference has been that some Chinese officials may have deliberately under-reported deaths and infections to give the impression that cities and towns were successfully managing the emergency.
If that was the case, Chinese officials were not to know just how bad this crisis would get in other countries, making its own figures now seem implausibly small.
The authorities in Wuhan, where the first cluster of this disease was reported, said there had been no deliberate misrepresentation of data, rather that a stabilisation in the emergency had allowed them time to revisit the reported cases and to add any previously missed.
That the new death toll was released at the same time as a press conference announcing a total collapse in China’s economic growth figures has led some to wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to bury one or other of these stories.
Then again, it could also be a complete coincidence.
But China has also been praised for its handling of the crisis and the unprecedented restrictions that it instituted to slow the spread of the virus. WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has hailed China for the “speed with which [it] detected the outbreak” and its “commitment to transparency”.
US President Donald Trump this week halted funding for the WHO, accusing it of making deadly mistakes and overly trusting China.
“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” Mr Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.
On Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how [coronavirus] came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his government is trying to determine whether the coronavirus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, China, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Beijing “needs to come clean” on what they know.
The source of the virus remains a mystery. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that U.S. intelligence indicates that the coronavirus likely occurred naturally, as opposed to being created in a laboratory in China, but there is no certainty either way.
Fox News reported on Wednesday that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China’s effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States.
This report and others have suggested the Wuhan lab where virology experiments take place and lax safety standards there led to someone getting infected and appearing at a nearby “wet” market, where the virus began to spread.
At a White House news conference Trump was asked about the reports of the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab, and he said he was aware of them.
“We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened,” he said.
Asked if he had raised the subject in his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said: “I don’t want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory, I just don’t want to discuss, it’s inappropriate right now.”
Trump has sought to stress strong U.S. ties with China during the pandemic as the United States has relied on China for personal protection equipment desperately needed by American medical workers.
As far back as February, the Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology dismissed rumors that the virus may have been artificially synthesized at one of its laboratories or perhaps escaped from such a facility.
Pompeo, in a Fox News Channel interview after Trump’s news conference, said “we know this virus originated in Wuhan, China,” and that the Institute of Virology is only a handful of miles away from the wet market.
“We really need the Chinese government to open up” and help explain “exactly how this virus spread,” said Pompeo.
“The Chinese government needs to come clean,” he said.
The broad scientific consensus holds that SARS-CoV-2, the virus’ official name, originated in bats.
Trump and other officials have expressed deep skepticism of China’s officially declared death toll from the virus of around 3,000 people, when the United States has a death toll of more than 20,000 and rising.
He returned to the subject on Wednesday, saying the United States has more cases “because we do more reporting.”
“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” he said.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China reported on Saturday a rise in new coronavirus cases, as authorities try to head off a second wave of infections, particularly from imported and asymptomatic cases, as curbs on cities and travel are lifted.
The National Health Commission said 46 new cases were reported on Friday, including 42 involving travellers from abroad, up from 42 cases a day earlier.
In its statement the commission added that 34 new asymptomatic cases were reported, down from 47 the previous day.
Mainland China’s tally of infections now stands at 81,953. The death toll rose by three to 3,339.
Tough curbs imposed since January helped rein in infections sharply from the height of the pandemic in February. But policymakers fear a second wave triggered by arrivals from overseas or asymptomatic patients.
Northeastern Heilongjiang recently reported a spike in new cases because of Chinese nationals entering the province from Russia, which has seen a surge of cases.
Provincial health officials said it had 22 new imported cases on Friday, all Chinese nationals coming from Russia, and one new local case, in its capital of Harbin.
Inner Mongolia had a daily tally of 27 new imported cases by Saturday morning, all from Russia, the region’s health authority said.
The central province of Hubei, where the virus emerged late last year, reported no new cases for a seventh successive day.
A rise in virus infections has prompted authorities in Guangzhou to step up scrutiny of foreigners, ordering bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin, the U.S. consulate in the southern city said.
Anyone with “African contacts” faces mandatory virus tests followed by quarantine, regardless of recent travel history or previous isolation, it said in a statement.
It advised African-Americans or those who feel they might be suspected of contact with nationals of African origin to avoid the city.
Since the epidemic broke out in the provincial capital of Wuhan, it has spread around the world, infecting 1.6 million people and killing more than 100,000.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 