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.
WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he had offered to mediate a standoff between India and China at the Himalayan border, where soldiers camped out in a high-altitude region have accused each other of trespassing over the disputed border.
“We have informed both India and China that the United States is ready, willing and able to mediate or arbitrate their now raging border dispute,” Trump said in a Twitter post.
The standoff was triggered by India’s construction of roads and air strips in the region as it competes with China’s spreading Belt and Road initiative, involving infrastructure development and investment in dozens of countries, Indian observers said on Tuesday.
Both were digging defences and Chinese trucks have been moving equipment into the area, the officials said, raising concerns about an extended standoff.
There was no immediate response from either India or China to Trump’s offer. Both countries have traditionally opposed any outside involvement in their matters and are unlikely to accept any U.S. mediation, experts said.
China’s ambassador to India, Sun Weidong, struck a conciliatory note, saying the two Asian countries should not let their differences overshadow the broader bilateral relationship.
“We should adhere to the basic judgment that China and India are each other’s opportunities and pose no threat to each other. We need to see each other’s development in a correct way and enhance strategic mutual trust,” he said, speaking in a webinar on China’s experience of fighting COVID-19.
“We should correctly view our differences and never let the differences shadow the overall situation of bilateral cooperation.”
The two countries are engaged in talks to defuse the border crisis, an Indian government source said. “These things take time, but efforts are on at various levels, military commanders as well as diplomats,” the source said.
The Chinese side has been insisting that India stop construction near the Line of Actual Control or the de facto border. India says all the work is being done on its side of the border and that China must pull back its troops.
Trump in January offered to “help” in another Himalayan trouble spot, the disputed region of Kashmir that is at the center of a decades-long quarrel between India and Pakistan.
But the U.S. offer triggered a political storm in India, which has long bristled at any suggestion of third-party involvement in tackling Kashmir which it considers an integral part of the country.
MADRID, May 3 (Xinhua) — A Boeing 777 plane carrying 56 tons of sanitary material from China for Community of Madrid, one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain, landed at Madrid-Barajas Airport late on Saturday night, the regional government has informed.
Among the equipment on the aircraft, which came from Shanghai, were 315 multi-parameter monitors, which are used in intensive care units.
The material was shipped to Pavilion 10 at the IFEMA exhibition center in Madrid, which is being used as a warehouse for sanitary equipment during the ongoing coronavirus crisis, and will subsequently be distributed among the region’s hospitals.
Saturday’s arrival was the sixth shipment of sanitary material which has arrived in Madrid from China since April 2, bringing a total of 18 million items, such as facemasks, protective gowns and shoe coverings.
Apart from the monitors, Saturday’s arrival contained 1.5 million face masks (including 560,000 FFP2 masks), 560,000 gloves and 158,000 protective gowns.
Madrid is the worst-hit region of Spain by the pandemic with over 62,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 8,332 deaths.
The richest man in China opened his own Twitter account last month, in the middle of the Covid-19 outbreak. So far, every one of his posts has been devoted to his unrivalled campaign to deliver medical supplies to almost every country around the world.
“One world, one fight!” Jack Ma enthused in one of his first messages. “Together, we can do this!” he cheered in another.
The billionaire entrepreneur is the driving force behind a widespread operation to ship medical supplies to more than 150 countries so far, sending face masks and ventilators to many places that have been elbowed out of the global brawl over life-saving equipment.
But Ma’s critics and even some of his supporters aren’t sure what he’s getting himself into. Has this bold venture into global philanthropy unveiled him as the friendly face of China’s Communist Party? Or is he an independent player who is being used by the Party for propaganda purposes? He appears to be following China’s diplomatic rules, particularly when choosing which countries should benefit from his donations, but his growing clout might put him in the crosshairs of the jealous leaders at the top of China’s political pyramid.
Other tech billionaires have pledged more money to fight the effects of the virus – Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is giving $1bn (£0.8bn) to the cause. Candid, a US-based philanthropy watchdog that tracks private charitable donations, puts Alibaba 12th on a list of private Covid-19 donors. But that list doesn’t include shipments of vital supplies, which some countries might consider to be more important than money at this stage in the global outbreak.
The world’s top coronavirus financial donors
How Alibaba compares to the top five. No one else other than the effervescent Ma is capable of dispatching supplies directly to those who need them. Starting in March, the Jack Ma foundation and the related Alibaba foundation began airlifting supplies to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and even to politically sensitive areas including Iran, Israel, Russia and the US.
Ma has also donated millions to coronavirus vaccine research and a handbook of medical expertise from doctors in his native Zhejiang province has been translated from Chinese into 16 languages. But it’s the medical shipments that have been making headlines, setting Ma apart.
“He has the ability and the money and the lifting power to get a Chinese supply plane out of Hangzhou to land in Addis Ababa, or wherever it needs to go,” explains Ma’s biographer, Duncan Clark. “This is logistics; this is what his company, his people and his province are all about.”
A friendly face
Jack Ma is famous for being the charismatic English teacher who went on to create China’s biggest technology company. Alibaba is now known as the “Amazon of the East”. Ma started the company inside his tiny apartment in the Chinese coastal city of Hangzhou, in the centre of China’s factory belt, back in 1999. Alibaba has since grown to become one of the dominant players in the world’s second largest economy, with key stakes in China’s online, banking and entertainment worlds. Ma himself is worth more than $40bn.
Officially, he stepped down as Alibaba’s chairman in 2018. He said he was going to focus on philanthropy. But Ma retained a permanent seat on Alibaba’s board. Coupled with his wealth and fame, he remains one of the most powerful men in China.
Media caption The BBC’s Secunder Kermani and Anne Soy compare how prepared Asian and African countries are
It appears that Ma’s donations are following Party guidelines: there is no evidence that any of the Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation donations have gone to countries that have formal ties with Taiwan, China’s neighbour and diplomatic rival. Ma announced on Twitter that he was donating to 22 countries in Latin America. States that side with Taiwan but who have also called for medical supplies – from Honduras to Haiti – are among the few dozen countries that do not appear to be on the list of 150 countries. The foundations repeatedly refused to provide a detailed list of countries that have received donations, explaining that “at this moment in time, we are not sharing this level of detail”.
However, the donations that have been delivered have certainly generated a lot of goodwill. With the exception of problematic deliveries to Cuba and Eritrea, all of the foundations’ shipments dispatched from China appear to have been gratefully received. That success is giving Ma even more positive attention than usual. China’s state media has been mentioning Ma almost as often as the country’s autocratic leader, Xi Jinping.
AFP
So far…
Over 150 countries have received donations from Jack Ma, including about:
120.4mface masks
4,105,000testing kits
3,704ventilators
Source: Alizila
It’s an uncomfortable comparison. As Ma soaks up praise, Xi faces persistent questions about how he handled the early stages of the virus and where, exactly, the outbreak began.
The Chinese government has dispatched medical teams and donations of supplies to a large number of hard-hit countries, particularly in Europe and South-East Asia.
However, those efforts have sometimes fallen flat. China’s been accused of sending faulty supplies to several countries. In some cases, the tests it sent were being misused but in others, low-quality supplies went unused and the donations backfired.
In contrast, Jack Ma’s shipments have only boosted his reputation.
“It’s fair to say that Ma’s donation was universally celebrated across Africa,” says Eric Olander, managing editor of the China Africa Project website and podcast. Ma pledged to visit all countries in Africa and has been a frequent visitor since his retirement.
“What happens to the materials once they land in a country is up to the host government, so any complaints about how Nigeria’s materials were distributed are indeed a domestic Nigerian issue,” Olander adds. “But with respect to the donation itself, the Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, called it a “shot in the arm” and pretty much everyone saw it for what it was which was: delivering badly-needed materials to a region of the world that nobody else is either willing or capable of helping at that scale.”
Walking the tightrope
But is Ma risking a backlash from Beijing? Xi Jinping isn’t known as someone who likes to share the spotlight and his government has certainly targeted famous faces before. In recent years, the country’s top actress, a celebrated news anchor and several other billionaire entrepreneurs have all “disappeared” for long periods. Some, including the news anchor, end up serving prison sentences. Others re-emerge from detention, chastened and pledging their allegiance to the Party.
“There’s a rumour that [Jack Ma] stepped down in 2018 from being the chairman of the Alibaba Group because he was seen as a homegrown entrepreneur whose popularity would eclipse that of the Communist Party,” explains Ashley Feng, research associate at the Centre for New American Security in Washington DC. Indeed, Ma surprised many when he suddenly announced his retirement in 2018. He has denied persistent rumours that Beijing forced him out of his position.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Ma discussed trade with then-President-elect Donald Trump in January 2017
Duncan Clark, Ma’s biographer, is also aware of reports that Ma was nudged away from Alibaba following a key incident in January 2017. The Chinese billionaire met with then-President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower, ostensibly to discuss Sino-US trade. The Chinese president didn’t meet with Trump until months later.
“There was a lot of speculation of time that Jack Ma had moved too fast,” Clark says. “So, I think there’s lessons learned from both sides on the need to try to coordinate.”
“Jack Ma represents a sort of entrepreneurial soft power,” Clark adds. “That also creates challenges though, because the government is quite jealous or nervous of non-Party actors taking that kind of role.”
Technically, Ma isn’t a Communist outsider: China’s wealthiest capitalist has actually been a member of the Communist Party since the 1980s, when he was a university student.
But Ma’s always had a tricky relationship with the Party, famously saying that Alibaba’s attitude towards the Party was to “be in love with it but not to marry it”.
Even if Ma and the foundations connected to him are making decisions without Beijing’s advance blessing, the Chinese government has certainly done what it can to capitalise on Ma’s generosity. Chinese ambassadors are frequently on hand at airport ceremonies to receive the medical supplies shipped over by Ma, from Sierra Leone to Cambodia.
China has also used Ma’s largesse in its critiques of the United States. “The State Department said Taiwan is a true friend as it donated 2 million masks,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry tweeted in early April. “Wonder if @StateDept has any comment on Jack Ma’s donation of 1 million masks and 500k testing kits as well as Chinese companies’ and provinces’ assistance?”
Perhaps Ma can rise above what’s happened to so many others who ran afoul of the Party. China might just need a popular global Chinese figure so much that Ma has done what no one else can: make himself indispensable.
“Here’s the one key takeaway from all that happened with Jack Ma and Africa: he said he would do something and it got done,” explains Eric Olander. “That is an incredibly powerful optic in a place where foreigners often come, make big promises and often fail to deliver. So, the huge Covid-19 donation that he did fit within that pattern. He said he would do it and mere weeks later, those masks were in the hands of healthcare workers.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Ma at an Electronic World Trade Platform event with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last year
Duncan Clark argues that Ma already had a seat at China’s high table because of Alibaba’s economic heft. However, his first-name familiarity with world leaders makes him even more valuable to Beijing as China tries to repair its battered image.
“He has demonstrated the ability, with multiple IPOs under his belt, and multiple friendships overseas, to win friends and influence people. He’s the Dale Carnegie of China and that certainly, we’ve seen that that’s irritated some in the Chinese government but now it’s almost an all hands on deck situation,” Clark says.
There’s no doubt that China’s wider reputation is benefiting from the charitable work of Ma and other wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs. Andrew Grabois from Candid, the philanthropic watchdog that’s been measuring global donations in relation to Covid-19, says that the private donations coming from China are impossible to ignore.
“They’re taking a leadership role, the kind of thing that used to be done by the United States,” he says. “The most obvious past example is the response to Ebola, the Ebola outbreak in 2014. The US sent in doctors and everything to West Africa to help contain that virus before it left West Africa.”
Chinese donors are taking on that role with this virus.
“They are projecting soft power beyond their borders, going into areas, providing aid, monetary aid and expertise,” Grabois adds.
So, it’s not the right time for Beijing to stand in Jack Ma’s way.
“You know, this is a major crisis for the world right now,” Duncan Clark concludes. “But obviously, it’s also a crisis for China’s relationship with the rest of the world. So they need anybody who can help dampen down some of these those pressures.”
SHENYANG, April 23 (Xinhua) — With trucks standing bumper to bumper and large cranes loading containers on the train, work returned to normal at a logistics base in northeast China’s Liaoning Province.
The base, where the China-Europe freight trains are set to depart in Shenyang, the provincial capital, has seen stable departures since early April as the novel coronavirus epidemic ebbs away.
With the global supply chain being affected by restrictions in air, land, and port travel due to the global pandemic, China-Europe railway has been playing a more important role, experts say.
“The train was operated by staff in different sections, which means it does not require cross-border personnel health inspections, giving it advantages during the pandemic,” said Shan Jing, an industry insider who wrote a book on China-Europe freight trains.
In March, a total of 809 China-Europe freight trains carrying 73,000 containers were sent across China. Both numbers hit a monthly record.
At the Shenyang logistics base, trains depart to travel through Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally reach Germany in around 18 days. As of April 13, a total of 130 trains carrying 11,200 standard containers had departed from the base.
“The province sends a stable number of five trains each week,” said He Ruofan, a business manager with the Shenyang branch of China Railway Container Transport Corp., Ltd, operator of the trains.
The stable operation has made the route a top choice for many Chinese enterprises, said Yao Xiang, a manager with logistics group Sinotrans’s northeast company.
“Many shipping routes have been canceled, and the rest are more and more expensive amid the epidemic,” said Yao, noting the price for air cargo surged 5 to 10 times the normal price as flights decreased from China to Europe.
With increasing departing trains, returning trains on the route have also been increasing, Yao said.
Among the 130 trains that have been sent from the Shenyang base so far this year, 33 returned, carrying construction materials, car parts, mechanical equipment, and daily products.
“These goods provide supplies to large companies like BMW and Michelin’s Shenyang factories,” Yao said.
Medical supplies have also been sent to hard-hit Europe to fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
As of April 18, a total of 448,000 pieces of medical supplies weighing 1,440 tonnes had been sent to European countries via the route, according to China State Railway Group Company, Ltd.
“China-Europe freight trains have shown great service capabilities during the epidemic,” said Shan, the industry insider. “It serves as a new choice for European enterprises, and I believe more people will come to realize the importance of the route.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Delhi’sair quality has improved remarkably during the shutdown
When India shut down last month and suspended all transport to contain the spread of coronavirus, the skies over its polluted cities quickly turned an azure blue, and the air, unusually fresh.
As air pollution plummeted to levels unseen in living memory, people shared pictures of spotless skies and even Himalayan peaks from cities where the view had been obscured by fog for decades.
On one social messaging group, a resident of the capital, Delhi, which regularly records some of the foulest air in the world, celebrated the city’s “alpine weather“. Politician and author Shashi Tharoor wrote that the “blissful sight of blue skies and the joy of breathing clean air provides just the contrast to illustrate what we are doing to ourselves the rest of the time”.
Media caption India coronavirus lockdown cleans up Ganges river
Less than six months ago, Delhi was gasping for breath. Authorities said air quality had reached “unbearable levels”. Schools were shut, flights were diverted, and people were asked to wear masks, avoid polluted areas and keep doors and windows closed.
Delhi and 13 other Indian cities feature on a list of the world’s 20 most polluted. It is estimated that more than a million Indians die every year because of air pollution-related diseases. Industrial smoke, vehicular emissions, burning of trash and crop residue, and construction and road dust are the major contributors.
As urban Indians gazed at the skies and breathed clean air inside their homes, researchers hunkered down to track data on how the grinding lockdown – now extended to 3 May – was impacting air pollution across the country.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Lucknow is another city on the top 20 world’s most polluted list
“This was an unprecedented opportunity for us to take a close look at how air pollution levels have responded to an extraordinary development,” Sarath Guttikunda, who heads Urban Emissions, an independent research group that provides air quality forecasts, told me.
Dr Guttikunda and his team of researchers looked at the data spewed out by the 100-odd air quality monitoring stations all over India. They decided to concentrate on the capital Delhi and its suburbs – a massive sprawl called the National Capital region, where more than 20 million people live. Last winter, air pollution here had reached more than 20 times the World Health Organization’s safe limit.
Image copyright HINDUSTAN TIMESImage caption The financial capital Mumbai also seems very different
The deadliest particle in Delhi’s foul air is the tiny but deadly PM 2.5, which increases the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. They primarily come from combustion – fires, automobiles and power plants.
Urban Emissions found the levels of PM 2.5 in Delhi during the lockdown plummeted to 20 micrograms per cubic metre with a 20-day average of 35.
To put this into context, between 2017 and 2019, the monthly average of PM 2.5 in the capital was up to four times higher. (The national standard is set at 40, and the WHO has an annual average guideline of just 10 micrograms per cubic metre.)
“If 35 is the average lowest available PM2.5 with limited local emissions, it means that at least 70% of the pollution is locally generated,” Mr Guttikunda told me.
Media caption India coronavirus lockdown cleans up Ganges river
His study also found a marked dip in PM 10, caused mainly by road and construction dust, and nitrogen dioxide, which comes mainly from vehicular emissions, and nearly 90% of vehicles are off the road.
“The current crisis has shown us that clear skies and breathable air can be achieved very fast if concrete action is taken to reduce burning of fossil fuels,” says Sunil Dahiya, of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which has also been tracking air pollution levels during the lockdown.
But will this prompt change? After all, urban Indians’ and the media’s panic and outrage during the deadly winter pollution every year soon gets lost in the fog of summer heat and concerns over monsoon rains and droughts.
“We don’t yet have a democratic demand for clean air,” Arunabha Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a leading climate think tank, told me. Orders to clean up the air have almost always come from the courts, responding to pleas by NGOs.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Pollution in Delhi peaks during winter
However, Dr Ghosh still hopes that “the experience of blue skies and fresh air could be a trigger to create a democratic demand for clean air in India”.
Crises often trigger life changing reforms. A fatal four-day “pea-souper” that engulfed London in 1952 and killed thousands provoked the passing of the Clean Air Act to reduce the use of smoky fuels.
China tried to clean up its air several times before hosting marquee international events – like the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the World Expo in Shanghai and the Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 – before sliding back to grey, smoky skies.
But many believe the 2014 Apec meeting in Beijing, when China hosted 21 heads of Asia-Pacific economies, was a turning point. The rare blue skies over Beijing spawned the phrase ‘Apec blue‘. In a rush to clean its air, China introduced a set of far-reaching measures. Over the next four years, this resulted in a 32% drop in average pollution across major Chinese cities.
So could a lockdown to prevent the spread of a pandemic, which has imperilled the health and livelihoods of millions, trigger similar policy changes to clean up India’s air?
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The movement for clean air has been sporadic and mainly pushed by NGOs
Could it move to a shift in reducing traffic on the road by asking people to work from home in shifts now that millions have experienced clean air for the first time in years? (Facing energy shortages after the loss of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan unleashed a Cool Biz campaign to cut down air conditioning in workplaces and reduce carbon emissions by asking office workers to shed their suits.)
Or can India use some of the money from an inevitable stimulus to help kick-start the economy go towards helping green industries? Renewables, experts say, creates more jobs than coal: India has already created nearly 100,000 jobs in solar and wind energy firms.
Can the country use the windfall revenues accruing from the steep decline in oil prices – most of India’s oil is imported – to provide rebates to polluting factories to set up much-needed emission control equipment?
“We have to learn lessons to deploy the economic recovery from the pandemic. We need growth, jobs and sustainable development,” says Dr Ghosh. Cleaning up the air could be the key. For too long, India – and Indians – have ignored their right to breathe easy.
What’s more, if China can reduce air pollution by 32% in four-and-a-half years, why can’t India pledge to reduce pollution by 80% in 80 cities by 2027, which is our 80th anniversary of Independence? asks Dr Ghosh.
More than 15,000 workers infected as hospitals struggle with a lack of test kits and protective gear
Chronic shortages are forcing emergency teams to ration equipment and come up with their own makeshift solutions
Health workers in protective gear outside an emergency entrance to a hospital in northern Spain. Photo: AFP
Overburdened hospitals and a shortage of protective measures and tests are taking a toll on Spanish medical professionals who are contracting Covid-19 – the illness caused by the new coronavirus – at an alarming rate.
To date, more than 15,000 health professionals in Spain – about 14 per cent of the national total – have been infected. In contrast, Italy reported that health workers accounted for about 10 per cent of its infections.
“I have tried to be careful, but when you work in a hospital, no one can guarantee that one of your colleagues doesn’t have the virus in the asymptomatic phase,” said ambulance crew member Xevi Mateu, who tested positive for the virus a week ago.
Mateu, who lives and works in Catalonia, said he thought he might have got infected during a meal break at the hospital or while on duty in the cramped space of an emergency vehicle.
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Information on how to protect himself from the rampaging pandemic was conflicting, he said, and with no guarantee on future supplies he was forced to ration his use of protective equipment as soon as the demand for ambulance services began to exceed capacity.
Albert Gual, another emergency worker in Catalonia, said protocols had changed since he first started transferring Covid-19 patients to hospital, and he believes the shortage of protective equipment is to blame.
“At the beginning of the crisis, we threw away the glasses, the medical suit and the mask after one use. Now we are using one mask per day, until the stock runs out,” Gual said.
“Yesterday I talked to a colleague from the emergency service who told me they are overwhelmed – without material, without resources, without people. The medical suits are reused and sterilised until they have holes,” he said.
There have also been reports of doctors and nurses in Spain making their own protective clothing out of bin liners.
To ease the burden on Spain’s medical workforce, retirees have been asked to return to practice and newly licensed personnel have been recruited to make up the shortfall. One of the new recruits is Candela Lebrero, who completed her medical degree last year and is now a nurse at a hospital in Madrid.
The Spanish capital has seen the country’s largest number of infections – with more than 36,000 – and staff at the Madrid Principe de Asturias Hospital, where Lebrero works have been among those falling ill from the disease.
Reports of an overload of patients were very real, she said, with emergency rooms forced to send less serious cases to “medicalised hotels” and additional hospital wards switched to caring for Covid-19 patients.
As for rapid testing, it “hadn’t arrived yet” at Lebrero’s hospital, which was relying on PCR tests – the swab technique which identifies the presence of any genetic material belonging to the virus – as a diagnostic for both patients and health personnel who presented with symptoms, she said.
Similar problems have been reported across Spain and last week the health ministry’s coordinator for the emergency response, Fernando Simon, acknowledged the difficulties for health care workers to access protective equipment.
On March 25, Simon admitted the jump in infections among medical staff was due to “a market access problem” as supplies “are scarce and there is non availability” – a problem not limited to Spain.
“We are on the way to a solution,” he said. On Monday, Simon also tested positive for the disease.
While equipment shortages are a global problem, Spain was hit particularly hard after its two largest distributors of medical supplies – located in France and Germany – were ordered to stop selling by their governments in early March, fearful of depleted stocks in their own countries as the pandemic spread.
The decision, which was criticised for being contrary to the spirit of the European Union, forced the Spanish government to turn to other measures, including the purchase of €432 million (US$467 million) worth of supplies from China.
A freight corridor was also opened to speed deliveries, and Spanish manufacturers were put on a “war footing” to urgently switch to making medical supplies. The car industry is now turning out respirators and gels, while textile manufacturers have turned their hand to producing gowns and face masks.
Sports equipment chain Decathlon has even adapted its snorkel goggles for medical use and donated its entire stock to Spanish hospitals.
A Covid-19 patient wears a full-face snorkelling mask which has been converted into a ventilator. Photo: Reuters
The scramble to address shortages in Spain’s overstretched health system has not been without problems. Last week, the government withdrew 58,000 Covid-19 rapid test kits
it bought from a Chinese company, after their accuracy rate was reported to be just 30 per cent.
China said the kits were not approved for sale and not included in supplies sent by Beijing to Spain.
It is not clear if the supplies from China have arrived, but on the ground medical personnel said they had not yet seen the equipment.
“It is assumed that the new ones have already arrived, but they have to pass the approval of the Carlos III Public Health Institute [a Spanish public health research institute], and their use is not yet widespread,” Laura Díez, press officer for the State Confederation of Medical Unions said.
“Their arrival will improve the situation since at least it would be known if someone in contact with the infected could transmit the disease, especially health personnel,” she said.
Medical staff in Spain acknowledge the daily applause from the public which has become a feature of the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: DPA
Several health organisations have appealed to the courts in their desperate bid to get hold of protective equipment. A Madrid court did accept the argument by an association of doctors that the authorities should be forced to provide adequate supplies to all health personnel.
But the Supreme Court refused to support the claim, saying it recognised the government was doing everything it could.
“We presented precautionary measures and they were dismissed, we have filed an appeal,” Díez said.
“At the moment we have no answer. Authorities said that planes with the material are arriving, but at the hospitals, they are not seen.”
Spain says Covid-19 can lead to closer ties with Chinese medical suppliers
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Meanwhile, the General Councils of Dentists, Nurses, Pharmacists, Doctors, and Veterinarians, which represent more than 700,000 health professionals in Spain, expressed its “absolute rejection” of new guidelines for medical workers set by the health ministry.
In a notice issued on Friday, the ministry said that health professionals that had not been tested for Covid-19 but who took time off should return to work seven days after the onset of symptoms as long as they did not have a fever or respiratory problems.
Once back at work, they should wear a surgical mask for 14 days from the onset of symptoms and avoid contact with other people.
The general councils said some of the guidelines represented “a serious risk” to the health of professionals and their patients.
Ambulance worker Mateu is currently in isolation at home as he recovers from the disease, but his thoughts are with his colleagues and their daily struggle. He said he thanked his supervisors and coordinators for working hard every day.
With so many of the staff themselves sick, there was a lot of stress on those who were still at work, he said.
“I have the feeling that the effort and management is not being done from the top down, but from the bottom up: from us who work directly with the patients, our supervisors and they are continuing the chain of gestures and efforts,” he said.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The Netherlands has been among the countries reporting faulty Chinese-made equipment
A number of European governments have rejected Chinese-made equipment designed to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
Thousands of testing kits and medical masks are below standard or defective, according to authorities in Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands.
Europe has reported hundreds of thousands of cases of coronavirus.
More than 10,000 people have died in Italy since the outbreak began.
The virus was first detected in China at the end of 2019. The government implemented strict lockdown measures to bring it under control.
What’s wrong with the equipment?
On Saturday, the Dutch health ministry announced it had recalled 600,000 face masks. The equipment had arrived from a Chinese manufacturer on 21 March, and had already been distributed to front-line medical teams.
Dutch officials said that the masks did not fit and that their filters did not work as intended, even though they had a quality certificate,
“The rest of the shipment was immediately put on hold and has not been distributed,” a statement read. “Now it has been decided not to use any of this shipment.”
Spain’s government encountered similar problems with testing kits ordered from a Chinese company.
It announced it had bought hundreds of thousands of tests to combat the virus, but revealed in the following days that nearly 60,000 could not accurately determine if a patient had the virus.
The Chinese embassy in Spain tweeted that the company behind the kits, Shenzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology, did not have an official license from Chinese medical authorities to sell its products.
It clarified that separate material donated by the Chinese government and technology and retail group Alibaba did not include products from Shenzhen Bioeasy.
Turkey also announced that it had found some testing kits ordered from Chinese companies were not sufficiently accurate, although it said that some 350,000 of the tests worked well.
Allegations of defective equipment come after critics warned China could be using the coronavirus outbreak to further its influence.
“China is aggressively pushing the message that, unlike the US, it is a responsible and reliable partner,” he wrote. “Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors.”
What’s the situation in Europe?
On Monday, Spain reported 812 new deaths in the space of 24 hours – bringing its total death toll to 7,340. It now has more than 85,000 infections – surpassing the number of cases reported in China.
Media caption Spanish doctor “scared and exhausted” by pandemic
New measures have also come into force in Spain banning all non-essential workers from going to their jobs. The restrictions will be in place for at least two weeks.
Italy remains the worst affected country worldwide. More than 10,000 people have died from the virus there, and it has recorded nearly 100,000 infections. Only the US has more confirmed cases, although the death toll there is far lower.
The deaths of three airmen in a helicopter crash and a second accident days later point to problems with training and equipment
The crashes happened within a span of 10 days, amid an increased number of intensive drills
Chinese military helicopters form the number 70 as part of the National Day parade in Beijing. Photo: AP
Engine flaws and a lack of training have been identified as the likely causes of two accidents that hit the Chinese air force in the space of little over a week – one of which claimed the lives of three airmen.
Deaths from the crashes, which happened within a span of 10 days, included a helicopter pilot who took part in the National Day grand parade at the start of the month.
A number of military sources said that as the air force stepped up its exercises – part of President Xi Jinping’s call to strengthen the “combat readiness” of the military – more accidents would happen as increased drills exposed technical problems and inadequate training.
“[If these problems are not resolved], it is foreseeable that more accidents will happen because the top brass is pushing for more drills and exercises across the military,” said one source close to the air force.
The fatal accident happened about three weeks ago in central Henan province, when a transport helicopter crashed, killing all three people on board.
Gong Dachuan, 33, was one of the airmen killed in the crash. Photo: Handout
Local television reports named pilot Gong Dachuan, 33, and 37-year-old engineer Wen Weibin, as two of this killed in the crash. The third victim was later named as Luo Wei, from Luzhou in Sichuan, by an online mourning website.
A memorial for Gong was held by the local government in Xinye County last Tuesday.
“The three people were conducting some tests on the helicopter,” said a local source who declined to disclose where the crash happened and the nature of the test.
Xinye county government in Henan province held a memorial to honour the dead pilot. Photo: Handout
Media reports said that Gong had flown in this year’s National Day parade in Beijing, while Wen had been decorated for his participation in the 2015 parade in Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of victory over Japan in World War II.
The three dead airmen have been designated as martyrs, the reports added.
The second accident happened eight days later on the Tibetan Plateau where a J-10 fighter jet on a low-altitude flying drill crashed into the mountain.
“Fortunately, the pilot ejected safely in time, but the J-10 crashed into the mountain,” said an informed source, who requested anonymity since no official announcement about the accident has been made.
“Preliminary investigations indicated that the accident had something to with the Russian-made AL-31 engine on board the J-10,” the source said.
Military analysts said the air force needs to improve the durability of its aircraft and training for pilots.
Hong Kong-based military expert Song Zhongping suggested that problems with engines and flight control systems were also key reasons behind some of the fatal crashes.
Wen Weibin, 37, also died in the crash. Photo: Handout
Two J-15 fighter jets crashed in April 2016, resulting in one death and one serious injury. Investigations into the two crashes pointed to problems with the flight control system.
A source from the Chinese air force said that, unlike their American counterparts, PLA pilots generally lack training in avionics engineering and had little flying experience before enlistment.
“PLA pilots may be strong and courageous, and they are motivated to make sacrifices,” the air force source said. “But they don’t have as much experience as American pilots – many of [whom] have a lot of experience in flying civilian aircraft before they join the air force.”
WUHAN, March 9 (Xinhua) — The city of Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, will invest 40 billion yuan (about 6 billion U.S. dollars) to provide key support to the development of high-tech infrastructure by 2022, local authorities said.
The province and its capital will forge ahead with high-tech industries by raising a 10-billion-yuan fund per year for major projects, platforms, industrial parks, equipment and talent teams, from 2019 to 2022.
So far, a research facility of precise gravity measurement, a national major science and technology infrastructure, is under construction in the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan.
In the past few years, the city has completed a pulsed high magnetic field facility and opened China’s first national bio-safety level four lab, which requires the highest level of biological safety.
Wuhan will work with universities, institutes and enterprises to achieve great breakthroughs in various fields including integrated electromagnetic energy, optoelectronics, microelectronics, geomatics, and new materials, as well as build national laboratories.
Data released at the city’s science and technology conference for 2019 on Friday showed that the value added of the hi-tech industries in Wuhan exceeded 300 billion yuan last year, accounting for 20.56 percent of the city’s gross domestic product.
With 3,536 high-tech enterprises in total, the city is making efforts to build itself into a tech hub of the country.
BEIJING, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) — Emergency air rescue has played a key role in relieving southern China from frequent forest fires during the Spring Festival, according to the emergency management authorities Monday.
During the week-long Spring Festival holidays from Feb. 4 to 10, helicopters were dispatched 91 times to fight forest fires in southern China, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.
In a total of 170 flight hours, they carried a 735 tonnes of water with hanging buckets to fight eight forest fires with a total range of 25,000 kilometers.
The Spring Festival has been a key time for forest fire control in southern China due to the warmer weather and more frequent outdoor fire use during the holiday, especially during tomb sweeping and when setting off fireworks.
Emergency air rescue is playing a more important role in fighting forest fires in China, especially in southern regions with high-altitude mountains or rough terrain.
Aerial extinguishing teams take firefighters, equipment and water closer to the sites with fire fighting helicopters, allowing them to control the fire more quickly.
China is making efforts to strengthen emergency air emergency rescue capabilities by introducing new equipment, cultivating professionals and improving infrastructure, according to Ministry of Emergency Management.
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