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.
URUMQI, April 18 (Xinhua) — A medical team of eight experts who aided Pakistan’s fight against COVID-19 returned Friday night to Urumqi, capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The team, consisting of experts in various fields including respiratory, critical care and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), arrived in Pakistan on March 28 and visited cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.
The Chinese experts communicated with the Pakistani federal government, national and local health authorities, hospitals and medical schools, as well as the Red Crescent.
The team members shared their experience through several video conferences and offered practical, specific suggestions to their Pakistani peers concerning the diagnosis, clinical treatment and epidemiologic study of COVID-19, and the application of TCM, hospital infection control and the construction of temporary hospitals.
The team also assisted with improving Pakistan’s guidelines on diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 to help build an efficient epidemic prevention and control system in Pakistan and enhance its screening and testing capabilities.
Meanwhile, the experts carried out epidemic prevention guidance and popular science education for the Chinese embassy in Pakistan, Chinese enterprises, overseas Chinese and Chinese students in the country.
Fu Chengyu, the former chairman of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), says hostility towards Beijing will increase after the coronavirus
US will try to ‘thwart China’s rise’ and economic fallout from Covid-19 will be worse than the global financial crisis, says Fu
Former Sinopec chairman Fu Chengyu says China will face a more hostile world post coronavirus. Photo: EPA
The world is set to become more hostile for China after the coronavirus as the risk of “black swan” events gathers for Beijing, a heavyweight in China’s state oil industry has warned, reflecting growing wariness about the geopolitical environment among political and business elites.
Fu Chengyu, the former chairman of both China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Sinopec Group, painted an ominous picture of increasing antagonism from the United States and damaging unforeseen events, known as black swans, like Covid-19
at an online symposium organised by business magazine Caijing.
The US would “mercilessly” suppress China in the fields of economics, trade, finance and technology, and Washington was set on taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to “forge a less favourable international environment for” the nation, Fu said this week.
“We’ve smelled the odours and new plots against China are in formation,” he said.
After the epidemic, the external environment for our survival will be more severe – Fu Chengyu
“After the epidemic, the external environment for our survival will be more severe … we must prepare for the worst and do our best to achieve the best possible results.”
While Fu has retired from his posts at state companies, he is an influential voice in
with decades of experience and contacts in the US petroleum sector.
Fu was a counterpart of Rex Tillerson, who was chairman of ExxonMobil from 2006 to 2017, and served as US State Secretary under President Donald Trump until March 2018.
While at the helm of CNOOC in the early 2000s, he felt political heat from Washington over a US$18.5 billion takeover bid for the American oil company Unocal in 2005, which the company was subsequently forced to withdraw.
China says no evidence to suggest coronavirus virus came from Wuhan’s lab
Speaking at the event in Beijing, Fu said that the coronavirus, which has heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, will have impacts on global value chains and the world trade landscape for years to come.
“The crisis stemming from the coronavirus pandemic won’t be over in just one or two years … the impact will last longer than the 2008 global financial crisis,” he said.
He added that China would face numerous “black swan” risks in the future.
President Xi Jinping warned in 2019 that China must be on guard for black swan risks as well as “grey rhino” events, referring to an obvious threat that is often neglected.
Geopolitics is getting worse and worse, and we need to be very careful. The US will try various ways to thwart China’s rise, and energy is an important area
To respond to the economic fallout from the coronavirus, China must do more to create a self-sustaining domestic economy, Fu said, and in particular reduce input prices for gas and electricity and boost public services such as health care and education.
“Geopolitics is getting worse and worse, and we need to be very careful,” Fu said. “The US will try various ways to thwart China’s rise, and energy is an important area.”
The US could potentially form a new oil export alliance with Saudi Arabia and Russia to make it possible to cut oil supplies to China, he said.
“China must be prepared for such a scenario, and even when supplies are cut off, we can have some basic self-protection.”
LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) – India, the world’s second-biggest gold consumer, has discovered gold fields with reserves of over 3,000 tonnes in its most populous northern state, a government official said on Saturday.
India mines between 2 to 3 tonnes of gold annually, relying on expensive imports to fulfil nearly all of its demand, which averaged 843 tonnes per year over the past 10 years.
Its hunger for gold – used extensively in jewellery, as offerings to Gods and in lavish weddings – cost India more than $31 billion on imports last year, making the metal its second-biggest import item after crude oil.
Federal and state departments have discovered traces of gold in northern Uttar Pradesh’s Sonbhadra district after surveying the area for more than 10 years, said Roshan Jacob, the head of the mining department in Uttar Pradesh state.
“In Son Pahadi we have found 2,940 tonne… in the Hardi Pahadi area 646 kilogram of ore has been traced,” Jacob told Reuters, referring to the two areas where gold ore had been discovered.
The state is now seeking forest and environment clearances after which it will open up the reserves for bidding, Jacob said.
The concentration level of gold in the area is about 3 grams per tonne of ore and the state is working with the Geological Survey of India to determine how much gold can be extracted from the fields, she added.
India has time and again considered a plan to revive a cluster of colonial-era gold mines in southern Karnataka state but the project has failed to take off due to predictions of low output and high costs involved.
Image copyright TWITTER/@ARVINDKEJRIWALImage caption Delhi Chief MinisterArvind Kejriwal has been handing out masks to school students
Five million masks are being distributed at schools in India’s capital, Delhi, after pollution made the air so toxic officials were forced to declare a public health emergency.
A Supreme Court mandated panel imposed several restrictions in the city and two neighbouring states, as air quality deteriorated to “severe” levels.
All construction has been halted for a week and fireworks have been banned.
The city’s schools have also been closed until at least next Tuesday.
Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said Delhi had been turned into a “gas chamber”.
The masks are being handed out to students and their parents, and Mr Kejriwal has asked people to use them as much as possible.
The levels of tiny particulate matter (known as PM2.5) that enter deep into the lungs are 533 micrograms per cubic metre in the city. The WHO recommends that the PM2.5 levels should not be more than 25 micrograms per cubic metre on average in 24 hours.
As thick white smog blanketed the city, residents started tweeting pictures of their surroundings. Many are furious that the situation remains the same year after year.
The hashtags #DelhiAirQuality and #FightAgainstDelhiPollition are trending on Twitter.
One of the main reasons for air quality in the city worsening every year in November and December is that farmers in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana burn crop stubble to clear their fields. It’s made worse by the fireworks during the Hindu festival of Diwali.
There are other reasons too, including construction dust, factory and vehicular emissions, but farm fires remain the biggest culprit.
Media caption A hair-raising drive through the Delhi smog
More than two million farmers burn 23 million tonnes of crop residue on some 80,000 sq km of farmland in northern India every winter.
The stubble smoke is a lethal cocktail of particulate matter, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.
Using satellite data, Harvard University researchers estimated that nearly half of Delhi’s air pollution between 2012 and 2016 was due to stubble burning.
The burning is so widespread that it even shows up in satellite photos from Nasa.
What are PM 2.5 particles?
Particulate matter, or PM, 2.5 is a type of pollution involving fine particles less than 2.5 microns (0.0025mm) in diameter
A second type, PM 10, is of coarser particles with a diameter of up to 10 microns
Some occur naturally – e.g. from dust storms and forest fires, others from human industrial processes
They often consist of fragments that are small enough to reach the lungs or, in the smallest cases, to cross into the bloodstream as well
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 