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.
Image copyright AFPImage caption Embankments have been washed away in Bangladesh
Millions of people across Bangladesh and eastern India are taking stock of the devastation left by Cyclone Amphan.
A massive clean-up operation has begun after the storm left 84 dead and flattened homes, uprooted trees and left cities without power.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has arrived in West Bengal state to conduct an aerial survey.
Authorities in both countries had evacuated millions of people before the storm struck.
Covid-19 and social-distancing measures made mass evacuations more difficult, with shelters unable to be used to full capacity.
Officials also said people were afraid and reluctant to move to shelters for fear of contracting the virus.
The cyclone arrived with winds gusting up to 185km/h (115mph) and waves as high as 15ft.
Image copyright REUTERSImage caption Roads have been blocked by falling trees in BangladeshImage copyright AFPImage caption Many people have been injured in wall collapses in Bengal
It is the first super cyclone to form in the Bay of Bengal since 1999. Though its winds had weakened by the time it struck, it was still classified as a very severe cyclone.
Three districts in India’s West Bengal – South and North 24 Parganas and East Midnapore – were very badly hit.
In Bangladesh, there are reports of tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed and many villages submerged by storm surges in low-lying coastal areas like Khulna and Satkhira.
The affected areas include the Sunderbans, mangroves spread over an area of more than 10,000 square kilometres that spans both India and Bangladesh – the swampy islands are home to more than four million of the world’s poorest people.
Image copyright MUKTIImage caption Many homes, built of brick and mud, have been washed away
Those in the Sunderbans say it is too early to estimate casualties in the area, which is now cut-off from the mainland by the storm.
“There are houses which have collapsed and people could be trapped in them but we don’t know yet,” Debabrat Halder, who runs an NGO in one of the villages, told the BBC.
He recalls cyclone Bulbul in November 2019, which was followed by a huge incidence of fever, diarrhoea and flu, and is afraid that that the same may happen again.
And worse, he adds, is that the flooding from contaminated sea water, has likely destroyed the soil.
“Nothing will grow in this soil,” he says, adding that it will likely take years to convert it into fertile land again.
Image copyright MUKTIImage caption The Sunderbans delta is frequently hit by severe stormsImage copyright MUKTIImage caption Crops have all been destroyed by the flooding
Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, and one of India’s biggest cities has been devastated. Its roads are flooded and the city was without power for more than 14 hours.
The state’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, said the devastation in Kolkata was “a bigger disaster than Covid-19”.
But assessment of the damage is being hampered by blocked roads and flooding in all these areas.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China ordered on Saturday that anyone in Wuhan working in certain service-related jobs must take a coronavirus test if they want to leave the city.
The order comes after the central city, where the coronavirus emerged late last year, lifted a 70-day lockdown that all but ended the epidemic there.
People in Wuhan work in nursing, education, security and other sectors with high exposure to the public must take a nucleic acid test before leaving, the National Health Commission said in an order.
The government of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is capital, will pay for the tests, the commission said.
Since the city relaxed its lockdown restrictions people who arrived in there before Chinese New Year, when the virus was peaking in China, are allowed to go back to their homes.
People working in other sectors aiming to leave Wuhan are encouraged to take voluntary tests before going.
Within seven days of arrival at their destinations, people who can present test results showing they do not carry the virus, as well as a clean bill of health on a health app, can go back to work.
Everyone else will have to spend 14 days in quarantine before returning to work.
Authorities have worked with the China’s tech giants to devise a colour-based health code system, retrieved via mobile app, that uses geolocation data and self-reported information to indicate one’s health status.
Wuhan will speed up its efforts to investigate asymptomatic coronavirus cases and confirm the presence of antibodies in people, which might suggest immunity, the commission said.
Wuhan, which accounts for 60% of infections in China and 84% of the death toll as of Saturday, has been testing inhabitants aggressively throughout the virus’ breakout and many companies had already been asking workers from the city to undergo tests before resuming work.
Wuhan revised up its death toll from the coronavirus by 1,290 on Friday, taking the city’s toll to 3,869, because of incorrect reporting, delays and omissions, especially in the chaotic early stages of the outbreak, authorities said.
China national death toll is 4,632 from 82,719 cases.
Unit 121 on Lanman Hutong, about 10 minutes’ drive from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, changed hands last month for 1.28 million yuan
The new owner bought a 5.6-square metre (72 square feet) cubicle covered in bathroom tiles large enough to fit a bunk bed, with standing room only
A view of the 5.6 square metre cubicle-size home in Beijing on 15 November 2019. The home sold for 1.28 million yuan at auction. Photo: Louise Moon
A subdivided home in a run-down alley in Beijing recently sold for a record price at auction, as eager buyers piled in to get hold of its much sought-after address to gain access to some of the Chinese capital’s best schools.
A subdivided unit at No. 121 Lanman Hutong, about 10 minutes’ drive from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, changed hands on November 11 for 1.28 million yuan (US$182,400) after 136 rounds of furious bidding during an auction in Beijing.
For 230,000 yuan per square metre (HK$23,850 per square foot), the new owner bought a 5.6-square metre (72 square feet) cubicle covered in bathroom tiles large enough to fit a bunk bed, with standing room only. That’s smaller than even Hong Kong’s notorious micro-apartments – also known derisively as shoebox flats or nano flats – which average about 200 square feet. A standard car parking space measures 126 square feet.
What the dilapidated space does have is an address that entitles its owner to a hukou, the household registration that is the prerequisite for access to schools, homes, civil service jobs, public health care and almost every aspect of daily life in the Chinese capital.
The alley on which No. 121 Lanman Hutong sits in Beijing on 15 November 2019. Photo: Louise Moon
Lanman Hutong, or the Alley of the Brilliant Drapes, sits in Xicheng district, a chequerboard neighbourhood criss-crossed with hundreds of alleyways that boasts three of the five highest-ranked schools in the city.
According to Beijing’s real estate regulations, one square metre entitles the owner a hukou. That fuelled the rush by parents to buy property in the area to qualify for sending their children to such eminent schools as the Beijing No. 4 High School, whose alumni include former Chongqing Commissar Bo Xilai, former China Development Bank president Chen Yuan and Citic’s chairman Kong Dan. Most of these bolt holes are now unoccupied after they have served their purposes, local residents said.
Lanman Hutong, or the Alley of the Brilliant Drapes, in the Xicheng district of Beijing, about 10 minutes drive from the Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, on 15 November 2019. Photo: Louise Moon
The auction result offers a peek into the growing speculative bubble in Beijing’s property market, a development that has defied more than two years of policymakers’ attempts to control. The average price of newly built homes rose 4.3 per cent in October to 60,894 yuan per square metre in Beijing, according to China’s statistics bureau data and Lianjia, a major real estate broker.
“Beijing’s homes have always been expensive, [particularly so] in Xicheng, where only the ultra-wealthy can afford to stay,” said Midland Beijing’s analyst Zhao Jia. “A million yuan is not expensive at all, to find space that close to the Forbidden City.”
Beijing’s average home price is equivalent to 24.9 years of the city’s median net income, excluding expenditures, according to data by E-House China Research and Development Institution. Hong Kong, the world’s most expensive urban centre to live and work in, requires 21 years of average income to affordable the average abode, according to the Demographia International Housing Affordability Study, as the city also boasts of a higher income and lower tax rate.
A tiny alleyway leading to No. 121 Lanman Hutong, which sold earlier this week for 1.28 million yuan in Beijing. Photo: Louise Moon
“It is not that easy for the average person to own property in Beijing,” said Midland’s Zhao. “For most homes in the city, 1 million yuan is only enough for a down payment.”
Unit 121 on Lanman Hutong is located among a cluster of siheyuan, as Beijing’s traditional courtyard homes are called. Bicycles, old washing machines and other household junk are piled along the maze of alleyways leading to the ground-floor unit.
Its auction drew 29 bidders starting from 470,000 yuan. The final winning bid prices the Lanman cubicle 35 per cent higher than a 100-million yuan villa with view of the Summer Palace in Beijing’s outskirts, on a per square foot basis.
To be sure, the unidentified buyer of the unit may be speculating for a quick flip, when the property is torn down, said Zhang Dawei, an analyst at Centaline Property Agency.
“This is more like a gamble, betting on the unit being demolished,” Zhang said. “If the odds are good, the buyer can pocket the [compensation], which could be several times what he bought it for. Even if it is not demolished in the short term, it is not bad to have some asset in the heart of Beijing.”
Hangzhou subway operator says water seeped into underground construction site
Zhejiang’s capital was scene of subway collapse that claimed 21 workers’ lives in 2008
A yellow cloud engulfs buildings after a subway tunnel in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, collapses. Photo: Pear Video
Homes in a major city in eastern China were evacuated on Wednesday after water seepage at a subway construction site caused a main road to cave in and cut a gas main.
Authorities in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, said dozens of residents feared for their homes as buildings cracked and swayed from the cave-in.
Videos posted to the Weibo microblogging network showed yellow smoke engulfing the neighbourhood as the road fell below street level. Authorities said Hangzhou’s gas supplier managed to close off the mains.
Hangzhou Metro Group, the city’s subway operator and the company overseeing the network’s expansion from four lines to nine for the 2022 Asian Games, said on Weibo that water seeped into a tunnel that connected two stations in the centre of the city, leading to the collapse.
The collapse took down a four-lane road in central Hangzhou. Photo: Pear Video
That caused a hole under the carriageway and took the pavement down with it. Hangzhou Metro said homes around the site were cleared and authorities were monitoring for further danger.
It was not known how many residents were affected, but no casualties were reported.
Most residents were put up in a nearby school until accommodation could be arranged, the City Express newspaper reported, adding that several truckloads of cement were poured into the hole.
Eight Chinese killed as road collapses near subway construction project
The road collapse in central Hangzhou was the latest in a series of subway construction accidents there – some of them deadly – in the past decade as China races to expand its urban rail networks.
In November 2008, 21 workers were killed and 24 were injured when a tunnel Hangzhou’s Line 1 collapsed beneath an eight-lane road and river water rushed in. A court sent eight people to jail for terms of between three and 5½ years for negligence at the site.
Two years later at the same place, a truck driver died and another was injured as a pit collapsed.
In 2016, four construction workers were killed when mud flooded a pit at a station on Line 4.
In 2008, an eight-lane riverside road in Hangzhou fell in on workers building a subway tunnel, killing 21. Photo: AFP
A cave-in similar to Wednesday’s collapse overturned a truck at a construction site near Hangzhou railway station this month, but no one was injured, Hangzhou Metro said.
According to the China Association of Metros, by the end of last year, more than 5,700km (3,540 miles) of urban railway had been built in 35 mainland cities, of which more than a third – 2,100km – was completed since 2015.
Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is in the news in India after a judge asked an activist to explain why he had a book “about war in another country”.
Vernon Gonsalves had appeared in the high court in Mumbai city on Wednesday for a hearing on his bail plea.
The judge’s question sparked a flurry of tweets, with users both outraged and bemused by it.
Five activists, including Mr Gonsalves, were arrested in August 2018 in connection with caste-based violence.
Police raided and searched their homes at the time and submitted a list of books, documents and other belongings to the court. The public prosecutor told the court that police had found “incriminating evidence” in Mr Gonsalves’ home, including “books and CDs with objectionable titles”.
“Why were you having these books and CDs at your home? You will have to explain this to the court,” the judge told Mr Gonsalves.
Police said that all five activists incited Dalits (formerly untouchables) at a large public rally on 31 December 2017, leading to violent clashes that left one person dead. They accused them of “radicalising youth” and taking part in “unlawful activities” which led to violence and showed “intolerance to the present political system”.
The arrests had been criticised by many at the time who saw them as an attack on free speech, and even a “witch hunt” against those who challenged the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
So the judge’s question quickly made news and War and Peace was soon trending on Twitter.
The tweets ranged from jokes to shock over the state of India’s judiciary.
Others wondered how they would fare in a courtroom given what’s on their bookshelf, and some have issued a call out asking people to share books from their own “subversive” collection.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The death toll from a major typhoon in eastern China rose to 30 on Sunday, with 18 people missing, state broadcaster CCTV reported, as the country braced for more travel disruptions as the storm moved further north up the coast.
Typhoon Lekima made landfall early on Saturday in the eastern province of Zhejiang with winds gusting to 187 km (116 miles) per hour, causing travel chaos with thousands of flights canceled and rail operations suspended.
The typhoon damaged more than 173,000 hectares of crops and 34,000 homes in Zhejiang, provincial authorities said in estimating the economic losses at 14.57 billion yuan ($2 billion), the state news agency Xinhua said.
Lekima, China’s ninth typhoon of this year, is expected to make a second landing along the coastline in Shandong province, prompting more flight cancellations and the closure of some expressways, Xinhua and state broadcaster CCTV said.
In Zhejiang, many of the deaths occurred about 130 km north of the coastal city of Wenzhou, where a natural dam collapsed in an area deluged with 160 mm (6.3 inches) of rain within three hours, causing a landslide, Xinhua reported.
State media reports showed rescuers wading in waist-high waters to evacuate people from their homes, while the Ministry of Emergency Management said that more than one million people in the financial hub of Shanghai, as well as Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, have been evacuated due to the typhoon.
An estimated 3,200 flights were canceled, state broadcaster CCTV reported, although some suspensions on high-speed railway lines were lifted on Sunday.
Homes destroyed and trees uprooted as destructive forces rips area apart in 15 minutes
Residents try to pick up the pieces after a deadly tornado destroyed homes and factories in Kaiyuan, Liaoning province, on Wednesday afternoon. Photo: Weibo
At least six people died and 190 were injured when a tornado struck a city in northeastern China on Wednesday, according to police.
The freak tornado formed in Jingouzi township in Kaiyuan, Liaoning province, at about 5pm, reaching speeds of about 23 metres per second before weakening after roughly 15 minutes, state news agency Xinhua reported.
A tornado carves a path of destruction through Kaiyuan in Liaoning province on Wednesday. Photo: Xinhua
It tore through the township, demolishing homes, uprooting trees, and stripping factories of cladding in the city’s economic development zone, according to a Beijing News video posted online.
The Beijing Times website quoted a resident as saying that she saw at least one car tossed into the air and buildings smashed by the tornado.
Kaiyuan in Liaoning province is counting the toll of destruction from a deadly tornado on Wednesday. Photo: Weibo
“Power went off in surrounding areas as the tornado went by. About two or three minutes later there was thunder and then it hailed,” Red Star News quoted a high school student as saying.
Kaiyuan issued an emergency alert and sent about 800 police officers, firefighters and medical personnel to the area.
Two children killed as bouncy castle destroyed by tornado in China
By Thursday, about 210 people had been rescued and some 1,600 evacuated, The Beijing News said. About 10,000 people were also “displaced”.
“There are 63 people in hospital now with 15 in critical condition,” Beijing Times quoted Yu Shuxin, director of Kaiyuan’s emergency management bureau, as saying.
“Communication systems have recovered in most areas. Electricity infrastructure was severely damaged but we’ll try our best to get the power supply back up.”
The wild weather brought down power lines and cut communications in some areas. Photo: Weibo
Tornadoes are so rare in China, particularly the country’s north, that it does not have a specific alarm for it, according to a website backed by the China Meteorological Administration.
In 2016, 99 people died and more than 800 others were injured in a tornado in Funing county, Jiangsu province.
Image copyright AFP
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 