02/05/2020
- Inmates who have undergone compulsory re-education programme to be moved to other parts of China under job placement scheme delayed by Covid-19 outbreak
- Critics have said the camps are a move to eradicate cultural and religious identity but Beijing has defended them as way of boosting job opportunities and combating Islamic radicalisation
Illustration by Perry Tse
The Chinese government has resumed a job placement scheme for tens of thousands of Uygur Muslims who have completed compulsory programmes at the “re-education” camps in the far-western region of Xinjiang, sources said.
The plan, which includes a quota for the numbers provinces must take, was finalised last year but disrupted by the outbreak of Covid-19.
The delay threatens to undermine the Chinese government’s efforts to justify its use of internment camps in Xinjiang.
Critics have said these camps were part of the measures designed to eradicate the ethnic and cultural identity of Uygurs and other Muslim minorities and that participants had no choice but to undertake the re-education programme.
Beijing has repeatedly dismissed these criticisms and said the camps are to give Uygurs the training they need to find better jobs and stay away from the influence of radical fundamentalism.
First Xinjiang, now Tibet passes rules to promote ‘ethnic unity’
Now with the disease under control, the Chinese government has resumed the job placement deal for other provinces to absorb Xinjiang labourers, sources said.
Despite the devastating impact of the disease on its economy and job markets, the Chinese authorities are determined to go ahead with the plan, which they believe would
, a source said.
“Excellent graduates were to be taken on as labourers by various inland governments, in particular, 19 provinces and municipalities,” said the source. It is unclear what constitutes “excellent graduates”.
Some sources earlier said that the programme may be scaled back in light of the new economic reality and uncertainties.
But a Beijing-based source said the overall targets would remain unchanged.
“The unemployment problem in Xinjiang must be resolved at all costs, despite the outbreak,” the source said.
The South China Morning Post has learned that at least 19 provinces and cities have been given quotas to hire Muslim minorities, mostly Uygurs, who have “graduated” from re-education camps.
As early as February, when the daily number of infections started to come down outside Hubei province, China already begun to send Uygur workers to their new jobs.
A photo taken in February showed thousands of young Uygurs, all wearing face masks and with huge red silk flowers pinned to their chests, being dispatched to work in factories outside their hometowns.
By the end of February, Xinjiang alone has created jobs for more than 60,000 Uygur graduates from the camps. A few thousand were also sent to work in other provinces.
Many have been employed in factories making toys and clothes.
Xinjiang’s new rules against domestic violence expand China’s ‘extremism’ front to the home
Sources told the Post that the southern city of Shenzhen – China’s hi-tech manufacturing centre – was given a target last year to eventually resettle 50,000 Uygurs. The city is allowed to do this in several batches, with 15,000 to 20,000 planned for the first stage.
Shaoguan, a less developed Guangdong city
where a deadly toy factory brawl between Uygurs and Han Chinese broke out in 2009, was also asked to take on another 30,000 to 50,000 Uygur workers.
In Fujian province, a government source also said they had been told to hire “tens of thousands of Xinjiang workers”.
“I heard the first batch of several thousands would arrive soon. We have already received official directives asking us to handle their settlement with care,” said the source.
He said the preparation work includes providing halal food to the workers as well as putting in place stronger security measures to “minimise the risks of mass incidents”. It is not known whether they will be given access to prayer rooms.
There are no official statistics of how many Uygurs will be resettled to other provinces and the matter is rarely reported by the mainland media.
But in March, Anhui Daily, the province’s official newspaper, reported that it had received 1,560 “organised labourers from Xinjiang”.
The Uygur workers on average could earn between 1,200 yuan (US$170) to 4,000 yuan (US$565) a month, with accommodation and meals provided by the local authorities, according to Chinese media reports.
However, they are not allowed to leave their dormitories without permission.
The UN has estimated that up to a million Muslims were being held in the camps. Photo: AP
Xinjiang’s per capita disposable income in 2018 was 1,791 yuan a month, according to state news agency Xinhua. But the salary level outside the region’s biggest cities such as Urumqi may be much lower.
The official unemployment rate for the region is between 3 and 4 per cent, but the statistics do not include those living in remote rural areas.
Mindful of the potential risks of the resettlement, Beijing has taken painstaking efforts to carefully manage everything – from recruitment to setting contract terms to managing the workers’ day-to-day lives.
Local officials will go to each Uygur workers’ home to personally take them to prearranged flights and trains. On arrival, they will be immediately picked up and sent to their assigned factories.
US bill would bar goods from Xinjiang, classifying them the product of forced labour by Uygurs
Such arrangements are not unique to Uygurs and local governments have made similar arrangements for ethnic Han workers in other parts of China.
After screening them for Covid-19, local governments have arranged for workers to be sent to their workplaces in batches. They are checked again on arrival, before being sent to work.
China is accelerating such placement deals on a massive scale to offset the impact of the economic slowdown after the outbreak.
Sources told the South China Morning Post that the job placement deal was first finalised by governments in Xinjiang and other provinces last year.
The aim is to guarantee jobs for Uygur Muslim who have “completed vocational training” at the re-education camps and meet poverty alleviation deals in the region, one of the poorest parts of China.
The training they receive in the camps includes vocational training for various job types such as factory work, mechanical maintenance and hotel room servicing. They also have to study Mandarin, Chinese law, core party values and patriotic education.
Xinjiang’s massive internment camps have drawn widespread international condemnation.
The United Nations has estimated that up to 1 million Uygur and other Muslim minority citizens are being arbitrarily detained in the camps, which Beijing insists are necessary to combat terrorism and Islamic radicalisation.
Late last year, Xinjiang’s officials announced that all the inmates of these so-called vocational training centres had “graduated” and taken up employment.
Before this labour placement scheme was introduced, it was extremely difficult for Uygurs to find jobs or live and work in inland regions.
The 2009 brawl at the factory in Shaoguan was one of the factors that triggered a deadly riot in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, that left 192 people dead and more than 1,000 wounded.
Muslim ethnic minorities, Uygurs in particular, have been subjected to blatant discrimination in China and the situation worsened after the 2009 clashes.
Earlier this month, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a report saying more than 80,000 Uygurs had been moved from Xinjiang to work in factories in nine Chinese regions and provinces.
It identified a total of 27 factories that supplied 83 brands, including household names such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Sony, Huawei, Samsung, Nike, Abercrombie and Fitch, Uniqlo, Adidas and Lacoste.
‘Psychological torture’: Uygurs abroad face mental health crisis over plight of relatives who remain in Xinjiang
The security think tank concluded that the Chinese government had transferred Uygur workers “under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour” between 2017 and 2019, sometimes drawing labourers directly from re-education camps.
The report also said the work programme represents a “new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens”.
Workers were typically sent to live in segregated dormitories, underwent organised Mandarin lessons and ideological training outside working hours and were subject to constant surveillance, the researcher found.
They were also forbidden from taking part in religious observances, according to the report that is based on open-source documents, satellite pictures, academic research and on-the-ground reporting.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian criticised the report saying it had “no factual basis”.
Source: SCMP
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29/04/2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – China announced on Wednesday that its parliament will open a key annual session on May 22, signalling that Beijing sees the country returning to normal after being reduced to a near-standstill for months by the COVID-19 epidemic.
During the gathering of the National People’s Congress in the capital, delegates will ratify major legislation, and the government will unveil economic targets, set defence spending projections and make personnel changes. The ruling Communist Party also typically announces signature policy initiatives.
The session was initially scheduled to start on March 5 but was postponed due to COVID-19, which has infected nearly 83,000 people and killed more than 4,600 on the mainland after emerging late last year in the central city of Wuhan.
As the epidemic has subsided, economic and social life gradually returned to normal, making it possible for the congress to convene, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the standing committee of the NPC, the legislature’s top decision-making body, as saying.
The committee also appointed Huang Runqiu as the new minister for ecology and environment, a post vacated when predecessor Li Ganjie became deputy Communist Party chief for Shandong province earlier this month, Xinhua reported.
Tang Yijun was also named as the new justice minister to replace Fu Zhenghua, who has reached the retirement age of 65 for ministers.
The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body to parliament, has proposed starting its annual session a day before the parliamentary session opens.
Analysts expect China to roll out additional fiscal stimulus in order to cushion the blow from COVID-19, which has developed in to a worldwide pandemic that some fear will trigger a severe global recession.
China’s economy contracted for the first time on record during the January-March period, when the government imposed severe travel and transport restriction to curb the spread of the epidemic.
Parliament is also expected to discuss the anti-government protests in Hong Kong, amid growing speculation that Beijing take steps to strengthen its grip on the city.
It is unclear how long parliament and its advisory body will meet for this time, and people familiar with the matter have told Reuters that this year’s annual sessions could be the shortest in decades due to COVID-19 concerns. Usually more than 5,000 delegates descend on Beijing from all over China for at least 10 days.
Beijing city plans to ease quarantine rules as early as Thursday, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters, ahead of the key political meetings.
People arriving in the capital from other parts of China will no long have to be quarantined for two weeks unless they come from high-risk areas such as Heilongjiang in the north and some parts of Guangdong in the southeast, the sources said.
Source: Reuters
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07/04/2020
- Some 460,000 Chinese firms shut in the first quarter amid fallout from the coronavirus
- Registration of new firms between January and March fell 29 per cent from a year earlier
Many Chinese businesses are struggling from the economic fallout of the coronavirus. Photo: Reuters
More than 460,000 Chinese firms closed permanently in the first quarter as the coronavirus pandemic pummeled the world’s second largest economy, with more than half of them having operated for under three years, corporate registration data shows.
The closures comprised of businesses whose operating licenses had been revoked, as well as those who had terminated operations themselves, and included 26,000 in the export sector, according to Tianyancha, a commercial database that compiles public records.
At the same time, the pace of new firms being established slowed significantly. From January to March, around 3.2 million businesses were set up, a 29 per cent drop from a year earlier.
Most of these new companies were in traditional centres of economic power, such as Guangdong province in southern China, and close to half of them were in distribution or retail.
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The number of business closures underlines the challenges facing China as it tries to revive its economy, which is at risk of a contraction in the first quarter for the first time since 1976.
“China has managed to get the Covid-19 outbreak largely under control and domestic supply disruptions have now mostly dissipated,” Yao Wei and Michelle Lam, economists from French bank Societe Generale, said in a recent note.
“However, there are signs of lasting damage to domestic demand, and on top of that the external shock resulting from widespread lockdowns in other major economies is arriving fast and furious.”
In
Dongguan, a once thriving industrial hub in the Pearl River Delta, rows of empty shops and closed factories are becoming a noticeable feature of the landscape as companies grapple with slumping international demand.
Coronavirus: Chinese companies cut salaries and staff in industries hit hardest by Covid-19
In March, a local export-oriented manufacturer of tote bags and toys in the city, Dongguan Fantastic Toy Company, collapsed after overseas orders dried up, leaving some workers with unpaid salaries, the local labour authority said last month. The government has ordered the factory’s landlord to pay the outstanding wages.
Chinese business owners who can no longer afford to maintain operations face a number of hurdles before they can walk away from a company.
If an insolvent firm wants to cancel its company registration, it needs to go through bankruptcy procedures or show a liquidation report confirming it had no unpaid debt or other obligations.
Once shareholders or creditors file for bankruptcy, it can take months for courts to accept the case, followed by a long process of verification, creditors’ meetings and asset sales, said Li Haifeng, a partner at Baker McKenzie FenXun.
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“I expect a surge shortly after the situation settles down. We know many enterprises are already on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s just that they don’t have to declare or file for bankruptcy immediately,” Li said, adding he had received many queries on the matter in recent months.
Given the costly nature of bankruptcy proceedings, particularly for small businesses
struggling with cash flow or without sufficient assets, the number of bankruptcy filings this year would not be high, said Zhu Bao, a Beijing-based lawyer.
Fears over a growing number of companies going bust also appears to have played some part in Chinese courts rejecting and delaying bankruptcy filings, according to lawyers and official documents.
Creditors who filed on behalf of suppliers that helped contain the coronavirus or companies on the brink of bankruptcy as a direct result of the pandemic usually had their claims knocked back, dozens of court documents filed over the past two months showed.
We know many enterprises are already on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s just that they don’t have to declare or file for bankruptcy immediately – Li Haifeng
The courts in these cases encouraged the creditors to reconcile with the struggling firms and ride out the difficulties.
This – along with disruptions to court proceedings due to virus lockdowns – helped slow the review of bankruptcies in Chinese courts to 1,770 in February and March, from 2,160 filings in January, according to the national enterprise bankruptcy information disclosure platform.
“The delay and rejection of taking corporate bankruptcy cases is certainly intended to keep the economy going. Too many bankruptcies cases do not do much to help economic recovery,” Zhu said.
China’s central leadership has maintained it wants to hit economic targets for this year, even as the country braces for a possible second wave virus outbreak.
The delay and rejection of taking corporate bankruptcy cases is certainly intended to keep the economy going – Zhu Bao
The odds of a first quarter economic contraction for China are growing, however, and economists are debating whether it still makes sense for Beijing to set a specific gross domestic product (GDP) growth target for 2020.
Ma Jun, an academic member of the People’s Bank of China’s monetary policy committee, is one prominent voice that has suggested Beijing drop a set target amid the uncertainty caused by the virus outbreak.
However, others like Yu Yongding, an economist from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said it was necessary to anchor the country’s economic expansion, though the government should be realistic about the goal, reported the Beijing-based financial media group Caixin.
Source: SCMP
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05/04/2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – Mainland China reported 30 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, up from 19 a day earlier as the number of cases involving travellers from abroad as well as local transmissions increased, highlighting the difficulty in stamping out the outbreak.
The National Health Commission said in a statement on Sunday that 25 of the latest cases involved people who had entered from abroad, compared with 18 such cases a day earlier. Five new locally transmitted infections were also reported on Saturday, all in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, up from a day earlier.
The mainland has now reported a total of 81,669 cases, while the death toll has risen by three to 3,329.
Though daily infections have fallen dramatically from the height of the epidemic in February, when hundreds of new cases were reported daily, Beijing remains unable to completely halt new infections despite imposing some of the most drastic measures to curb the virus’ spread.
The so-called imported cases and asymptomatic patients, who have the virus and can give it to others but show no symptoms, have become among China’s chief concerns in recent weeks. The country has closed off its borders to almost all foreigners as the virus spread globally, though most of the imported cases involve Chinese nationals returning from overseas.
The central government also has pushed local authorities to identify and isolate the asymptomatic patients.
The health commission said 47 new asymptomatic cases were reported in the mainland on Saturday, compared with 64 a day earlier.
Source: Reuters
Posted in abroad, asymptomatic patients, coronavirus cases, epidemic, Guangdong, infections, Mainland China, National Health Commission, travellers, Uncategorized |
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31/03/2020
- Big shoals of acetes, which are just a few centimetres long, crippled the water pumping stations and caused a unit to go into automatic safe shutdown
- The same thing happened the next day with all units powered down, but the safety regulator says they are now in a ‘safe and controllable condition’
The Yangjiang Nuclear Power Station in Guangdong province is about 235km from Hong Kong. Photo: Handout
The power-generating units of a nuclear plant in southern China were shut down twice last week after its water filters were blocked by masses of small shrimp, the safety regulator said.
Big shoals of the tiny acetes – krill-like shrimp that are just a few centimetres long – flooded the seawater diversion channel and circulating water pumping stations of the Yangjiang Nuclear Power Station in Guangdong on March 24, the National Nuclear Safety Administration said in a statement.
They crippled the water pumping stations and caused one of the nuclear plant’s six power-generating units to go into automatic safe shutdown, while the other five units ran at 80 per cent of capacity.
The unit that shut down was powered up again the next day after station staff cleared the acetes and cleaned the filters.
But soon after on March 25, the same thing happened, with large shoals of acetes again finding their way into the pumping stations and causing four power-generating units to shut down automatically. The station shut off the other two units for safety reasons.
Big shoals of acetes found their way into the nuclear plant’s pumping stations. Photo: Handout
The incident on March 25 was rated a Level 1 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, meaning it was an “anomaly” that had no safety or health consequences. Only two nuclear events have been rated at the top of the scale as Level 7 “major accidents” – the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.
China’s nuclear safety regulator said the situation at the Yangjiang plant was under control.
“At present, all six units … are in a safe and controllable condition,” the statement said. “Staff at the scene are taking measures such as fishing out the acetes and cleaning the filters, before reactivating the units and bringing them back to normal operation in accordance with the relevant procedures.”
Nearly a decade after tsunami, clean-up continues at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant
Pan Chin, head and chair professor of nuclear engineering at City University of Hong Kong, said the two incidents were “operational events with no radiation leak”.
“The shutdown … is also an indication that the protection system of the power plant is functioning as designed,” he said.
“This incident is not unexpected,” Pan said. “The power plant uses seawater as a coolant for the condenser and occasionally aquatic animals may get close to the intake and cause such incidents.”
The Hong Kong Nuclear Society also noted that similar incidents had happened before.
“Similar events have occurred at nuclear power plants using seawater as a coolant for their power-generating units [including non-nuclear ones] throughout the world, including China,” said Luk Bing-lam, chairman of the society.
New Wufengshan power line across China’s Yangtze River completed
In 2016, a generating unit at the Lingao Nuclear Power Plant in Shenzhen was guided to a safe shutdown by an automatic reactor protection signal after its seawater intake was inundated with tiny marine crustaceans, according to Hong Kong’s Security Bureau. They blocked the filtering screen drum at the intake and tripped two seawater intake pumps.
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17 Feb 2020
China’s nuclear safety regulator said it had asked all nuclear power station operators to use marine life detection systems in light of incidents such as those at Yangjiang last week.
But Pan from CityU said the acetes could be too small to be detected by a marine life warning system.
“If a system can detect the approach of marine life, large or small, early enough, leaving enough time to take some action to prevent them from approaching further … there will be no such incident,” he said, adding that the systems needed to be improved.
The Yangjiang nuclear plant in Guangdong is about 235km from Hong Kong. It is owned by the China General Nuclear Power Corporation, which operates over 20 nuclear power stations in China. CLP, one of Hong Kong’s two power companies, acquired a 17 per cent stake in the plant in 2017.
Source: SCMP
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30/03/2020
WUHAN, China (Reuters) – China reported a drop in new coronavirus infections for a fourth day as drastic curbs on international travellers reined in the number of imported cases, while policymakers turned their efforts to healing the world’s second-largest economy.
The city of Wuhan, at the centre of the outbreak, reported no new cases for a sixth day, as businesses reopened and residents set about reclaiming a more normal life after a lockdown for almost two months.
Smartly turned out staff waited in masks and gloves to greet customers at entrances to the newly-reopened Wuhan International Plaza, home to boutiques of luxury brands such as Cartier and Louis Vuitton.
“The Wuhan International Plaza is very representative (of the city),” said Zhang Yu, 29. “So its reopening really makes me feel this city is coming back to life.”
Sunday’s figure of 31 new cases, including one locally transmitted infection, was down from 45 the previous day, the National Health Commission said.
As infections fall, policymakers are scrambling to revitalise an economy nearly paralysed by months-long curbs to control the spread of the flu-like disease.
On Monday, the central bank unexpectedly cut the interest rate on reverse repurchase agreements by 20 basis points, the largest in nearly five years.
The government is pushing businesses and factories to reopen, as it rolls out fiscal and monetary stimulus to spur recovery from what is feared to be an outright economic contraction in the quarter to March.
China’s exports and imports could worsen as the pandemic spreads, depressing demand both at home and abroad, Xin Guobin, the vice minister of industry and information technology, said on Monday.
The country has extended loans of 200 billion yuan (22.75 billion pounds) to 5,000 businesses, from 300 billion allocated to help companies as they resume work, Xin said.
Authorities in Ningbo said they would encourage national banks to offer preferential credit of up to 100 billion yuan to the eastern port city’s larger export firms. The city government will subsidize such loans, it said in a notice.
VIRUS CONCERNS
While new infections have fallen sharply from February’s peak, authorities worry about a second wave triggered by returning Chinese, many of them students.
China cut international flights massively from Sunday for an indefinite period, after it began denying entry to almost all foreigners a day earlier.
Average daily arrivals at airports this week are expected to be about 4,000, down from 25,000 last week, an official of the Civil Aviation Administration of China told a news conference in Beijing on Monday.
The return to work has also prompted concern about potential domestic infections, especially over carriers who exhibit no, or very mild, symptoms of the highly contagious virus.
Northwestern Gansu province reported a new case of a traveller from the central province of Hubei, who drove back with a virus-free health code, national health authorities said.
Hubei authorities say 4.6 million people in the province returned to work by Saturday, with 2.8 million of them heading for other parts of China.
Most of the departing migrant workers went to the southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, the eastern provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, and northeast China.
In Hubei’s capital of Wuhan, more retail complexes and shopping streets reopened.
Electric carmaker Tesla Inc has also reopened a showroom in Wuhan, a company executive said on Weibo.
Shoppers queued 1-1/2 metres (5 ft) apart for temperature checks at Wuhan International Plaza, while flashing “green” mobile telephone codes attesting to a clean bill of health.
To be cleared to resume work, Wuhan residents have been asked to take nucleic acid tests twice.
“Being able to be healthy and leave the house, and meet other colleagues who are also healthy is a very happy thing,” said Wang Xueman, a cosmetics sales representative.
Source: Reuters
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28/03/2020
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s authorities plan stronger steps to revive an economy hit by the spread of coronavirus, as the nation on Saturday reported no new locally transmitted infections for the previous day.
The ruling Communist Party’s Politburo said on Friday it would step up macroeconomic policy adjustments and pursue more proactive fiscal policy, state media reported. With the world’s second-biggest economy expected to shrink for the first time in four decades this quarter, China is set to unleash hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus.
The Politburo called for expanding the budget deficit, issuing more local and national bonds, guiding interest rates lower, delaying loan repayments, reducing supply-chain bottlenecks and boosting consumption.
“We expect government ministries to roll out more tangible measures in the coming weeks as this Politburo meeting gave them no choice but to do more,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note.
The Politburo did not elaborate on plans for the central government to issue special treasury bonds, which would be the first such issuance since 2007.
Restrictions on foreigners entering the country went into effect on Saturday, as China reported no new locally transmitted infections and a small drop in so-called imported cases.
Airlines have been ordered to sharply cut international flights from Sunday.
Beijing has in recent days emphasised the risk posed by imported virus cases after widespread lockdowns within China helped to sharply reduce domestic transmissions. The Politburo said it would shift its focus to prevent more imported cases and a rebound in locally transmitted infections.
“We must be extremely vigilant and cautious, and we must prevent the post-epidemic relaxation from coming too soon, leading to the loss of all our achievements,” the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper said in a front-page editorial.
The authorities also reversed planned reopenings of movie theatres, the state-owned China Securities Journal reported, citing sources.
DEATH TOLL AT 3,295
China’s National Health Commission said on Saturday that 54 new coronavirus cases were reported on the mainland on Friday, all imported cases. There were 55 new cases a day earlier, one of which was transmitted locally.
The number of infections for mainland China stands at 81,394, with the death toll rising by three to 3,295, the commission said.
Hubei province reported no new cases, and three new deaths. The province of 60 million, where the virus was first detected, has recorded 67,801 coronavirus cases and 3,177 deaths.
Shanghai reported the highest number of new cases, with 17. An additional 11 cases were reported in Guangdong, six in Fujian, five in Tianjin, four in Zhejiang, three each in Beijing and Liaoning, two each in Inner Mongolia and Jilin, and one in Shandong.
Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday that China would support U.S. efforts to fight the coronavirus.
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States rose by at least 16,000 on Friday to nearly 102,000, the most of any country.
George Gao, the director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, urged people to wear masks to control the virus’s spread overseas.
Gao told the journal Science in an interview published late on Friday that the “big mistake in the United States and Europe has been the failure to wear masks, which “can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others.”
Source: Reuters
Posted in Beijing, China, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese President Xi Jinping, coronavirus, dwindle, Europe, Fujian, Guangdong, hubei province, Jilin, Liaoning, local, National Health Commission, Politburo, readies, shandong province, Shanghai, stimulus measures, Tianjin, U.S. President Donald Trump, Uncategorized, United States, virus cases, zhejiang province |
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27/03/2020
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President Donald Trump during a phone call on Friday that he would have China’s support in fighting the coronavirus, as the United States faces the prospect of becoming the next global epicentre of the pandemic.
The United States now has the most coronavirus cases of any country, with 84,946 infections and 1,259 deaths. Hospitals in cities like New York and New Orleans struggle to cope with the wave of patients.
Xi’s offer of assistance came amid a long-running war of words between Beijing and Washington over various issues including the coronavirus epidemic.
Trump and some U.S. officials have accused China of a lack of transparency on the virus, and Trump has at times called the coronavirus a “China virus” as it originated there, angering Beijing.
In the call, Xi reiterated to Trump that China had been open and transparent about the epidemic, according to an account of the conversation published by the Chinese foreign ministry.
Trump said on Twitter that he discussed the coronavirus outbreak “in great detail” with Xi.
“China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the virus,” Trump said. “We are working closely together. Much respect!”.
The World Health Organization has said the United States, which saw 17,099 new coronavirus cases and 281 deaths in the past 24 hours, is expected to become the epicentre of the pandemic.
CHINA CUTS FLIGHTS
Like U.S. hospitals now, China’s medical system struggled to contain the coronavirus just two months ago, but draconian city lockdowns and severe travel restrictions has seen China dramatically ease the epidemic.
Mainland China on Friday reported its first local coronavirus case in three days and 54 new imported cases, as Beijing ordered airlines to sharply cut international flights, for fear travellers could reignite the coronavirus outbreak.
The 55 new cases detected on Thursday were down from 67 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said on Friday, taking the tally of infections to 81,340. China’s death toll stood at 3,292 as of Thursday, up by five from a day earlier.
The central province of Hubei, with a population of about 60 million, reported no new cases on Thursday, a day after lifting a lockdown and reopening its borders as the epidemic eased there.
The commercial capital of Shanghai reported the most new imported cases with 17, followed by 12 in the southern province of Guangdong and four each in the capital Beijing and the nearby city of Tianjin.
Shanghai now has 125 patients who arrived from overseas, including 46 from Britain and 27 from the United States.
In effect from Sunday, China has ordered its airlines to fly only one route to any country, on just one flight each week. Foreign airlines must comply with similar curbs on flights to China, although many had already halted services.
About 90% of current international flights into China will be suspended, cutting arrivals to 5,000 passengers a day, from 25,000, the civil aviation regulator said late on Thursday.
From Saturday, China will temporarily suspend entry for foreigners with valid visas and residence permits, in an interim measure, the foreign ministry added.
Before the new curbs, foreign nationals made up about a tenth of the roughly 20,000 travellers arriving on international flights every day, an official of China’s National Immigration Administration said last week.
As commercial flights dwindle, Chinese students from wealthy families are paying tens of thousands of dollars to fly home on private jets.
International demand for chartered and private flights into China increased 227% in March from a year earlier, said Shanghai-based private jet service provider iFlyPlus.
Notably, requests for flights from the United States to China rose 10-fold in late March, iFlyPlus told Reuters.
Source: Reuters
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24/03/2020
- ‘Aggressive and targeted’ tactics needed to curb spread of Covid-19 as more than 100,000 new infections recorded in just four days
- Global political commitment and coordination needed to halt trajectory, agency chief says
A customs officer speaks to passengers on board an inbound flight at Beijing Capital International Airport. Photo: Xinhua
The
World Health Organisation has warned that the
Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating, calling for “aggressive and targeted tactics” to curb its spread after more than 100,000 new infections were recorded in just four days.
The warning, by the UN agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, came as the number of deaths from the disease, caused by the new coronavirus, continued to rise, and as mainland China reported a doubling in new cases.
The outbreak, which was first reported in December in China, is rapidly spreading across the globe. Tedros said it had taken 67 days from the first reported case to the first 100,000 infections, and just 11 days for the number to soar to the second 100,000.
“[It was] just four days for the third 100,000 cases. You can see how the virus is accelerating,” he said on Tuesday.
“But we’re not prisoners to statistics. We’re not helpless bystanders. We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
China’s National Health Commission reported 74 imported coronavirus infections on Monday – the highest since March 4, when it began including data on such cases and noted two infections that had originated abroad.
They bring the total number of imported cases on the mainland to 427, as of Monday. The total number of infections there now stands at 81,171, and the death toll has risen to 3,277, with seven new fatalities.
Tedros said political commitment and coordination at the global level were needed to stop the spread, but warned against using untested medicines, saying they could raise false hope.
“To win, we need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics – testing every suspected case, isolating and caring for every confirmed case, and tracing and quarantining every close contact,” he said.
Italy’s number of new Covid-19 cases dropped to a five-day low on Monday, easing the strain on overstretched hospitals, but the situation in Spain continued to worsen.
Italian health authorities announced 4,789 new cases on Monday, a drop from 5,560 on Sunday and 6,557 on Saturday. Spanish authorities announced 462 deaths on Monday, the country’s worst day since the start of the epidemic.
Italy has a glimpse of hope as new coronavirus cases drop to a 5-day low
The British government said on Monday that another 54 people had died in the previous 24 hours after testing positive for the coronavirus, raising the country’s deaths from the pandemic to 335. The number of confirmed cases in Britain rose to 6,650 on Monday, from 5,683 on Sunday.
Mainland China officials have said the risk facing the nation was to contain imported infections. Among the new imported infections, 31 were recorded in Beijing, 14 in Guangdong and nine in Shanghai.
Beijing has stepped up measures to contain imported infections, diverting all arriving international flights from Monday to other cities, including Shanghai and as far west as Xian, where passengers will undergo virus screening.
Guangzhou also requires all travellers to the city, except for those from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, to undergo the coronavirus test. Beijing has required the test for incoming travellers with symptoms and epidemic history.
The coastal province of Zhejiang, near Shanghai, will also put all arrivals from overseas in centralised quarantine facilities for 14 days, according to media reports.
Source: SCMP
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24/03/2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Hubei province where the coronavirus pandemic originated will lift travel restrictions on people leaving the region as the epidemic there eases, but other regions will tighten controls as new cases double due to imported infections.
The Hubei Health Commission announced it would lift curbs on outgoing travellers starting March 25, provided they had a health clearance code.
The provincial capital Wuhan, where the virus first appeared and which has been in total lockdown since since Jan. 23, will see its travel restrictions lifted on April 8.
However, the risk from overseas infections appears to be on the rise, prompting tougher screening and quarantine measures in major cities such as the capital Beijing.
China had 78 new cases on Monday, the National Health Commission said, a two-fold increase from Sunday. Of the new cases, 74 were imported infections, up from 39 imported cases a day earlier.
The Chinese capital Beijing was the hardest-hit, with a record 31 new imported cases, followed by southern Guangdong province with 14 and the financial hub of Shanghai with nine. The total number of imported cases stood at 427 as of Monday.
Only four new cases were local transmissions. One was in Wuhan which had not reported a new infection in five days.
Wuhan residents will soon be allowed to leave with a health tracking code, a QR code, which will have an individual’s health status linked to it.
In other parts of the country, authorities have continued to impose tougher screening and quarantine and have diverted international flights from Beijing to other Chinese cities, but that has not stemmed the influx of Chinese nationals, many of whom are students returning home from virus-hit countries.
Beijing’s city government tightened quarantine rules for individuals arriving from overseas, saying on Tuesday that everyone entering the city will be subject to centralised quarantine and health checks.
The southern city of Shenzhen said on Tuesday it will test all arrivals and the Chinese territory of Macau will ban visitors from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The number of local infections from overseas arrivals – the first of which was reported in the southern travel hub of Guangzhou on Saturday – remains very small.
On Monday, Beijing saw its first case of a local person being infected by an international traveller arriving in China. Shanghai reported a similar case, bringing the total number of such infections to three so far.
CONCERNS ABOUT NEW WAVE OF INFECTIONS
The rise in imported cases and the lifting of restrictions in some cities to allow people to return to work and kickstart the battered Chinese economy has raised concerns of a second wave of infections.
A private survey on Tuesday suggested that a 10-11% contraction in first-quarter gross domestic product in the world’s second largest economy “is not unreasonable”.
The epidemic has hammered all sectors of the economy – from manufacturing to tourism. To persuade businesses to reopen, policymakers have promised loans, aids and subsidies.
In the impoverished province of Gansu, government officials are each required to spend at least 200 yuan (24.31 pounds) a week to spur the recovery of the local catering industry.
The official China Daily warned in an editorial on Tuesday that maintaining stringent restrictions on people’s movements would “now do more harm than good”.
Source: Reuters
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 