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 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his government is trying to determine whether the coronavirus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, China, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Beijing “needs to come clean” on what they know.
The source of the virus remains a mystery. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that U.S. intelligence indicates that the coronavirus likely occurred naturally, as opposed to being created in a laboratory in China, but there is no certainty either way.
Fox News reported on Wednesday that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China’s effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States.
This report and others have suggested the Wuhan lab where virology experiments take place and lax safety standards there led to someone getting infected and appearing at a nearby “wet” market, where the virus began to spread.
At a White House news conference Trump was asked about the reports of the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab, and he said he was aware of them.
“We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened,” he said.
Asked if he had raised the subject in his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said: “I don’t want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory, I just don’t want to discuss, it’s inappropriate right now.”
Trump has sought to stress strong U.S. ties with China during the pandemic as the United States has relied on China for personal protection equipment desperately needed by American medical workers.
As far back as February, the Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology dismissed rumors that the virus may have been artificially synthesized at one of its laboratories or perhaps escaped from such a facility.
Pompeo, in a Fox News Channel interview after Trump’s news conference, said “we know this virus originated in Wuhan, China,” and that the Institute of Virology is only a handful of miles away from the wet market.
“We really need the Chinese government to open up” and help explain “exactly how this virus spread,” said Pompeo.
“The Chinese government needs to come clean,” he said.
The broad scientific consensus holds that SARS-CoV-2, the virus’ official name, originated in bats.
Trump and other officials have expressed deep skepticism of China’s officially declared death toll from the virus of around 3,000 people, when the United States has a death toll of more than 20,000 and rising.
He returned to the subject on Wednesday, saying the United States has more cases “because we do more reporting.”
“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” he said.
Malfunction happened during third stage of launch after earlier stages were completed successfully, state media says
Failed mission is second in less than a month after Long March-7A encountered problems after lift-off on March 16
A Long March-3B carrier rocket blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan province in November. A similar launch on Thursday ended in failure. Photo: Xinhua
China’s space programme suffered another setback on Thursday night with its second rocket launch failure in less than a month.
Officials are investigating what caused a malfunction during the third stage of the Long March-3B launch after lift-off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest Sichuan province at 7.46pm with an Indonesian Palapa-N1 satellite, Xinhua reported.
“The first and second stages of the rocket performed well, but the third stage malfunctioned,” the report said.
“Debris from the third stage of the rocket and the satellite fell [to the ground]. The launch mission failed.”
Debris from the failed mission rained down over Guam on Thursday night. Photo: Twitter
China’s state media did not say where the rocket landed, but the office of Guam Homeland Security and Civil Defence said “a fiery object over the Marianas sky” observed on Thursday evening was likely connected to the failed launch.
Video footage of the burning debris falling from the sky was widely circulated on social media.
The setback follows another failed launch on March 16, when China’s new Long March-7A, a three-stage, medium-lift, liquid-fuel rocket, encountered an “abnormality” minutes after lifting off from its launch site in the southern island province of Hainan.
China’s BeiDou system one satellite closer to full operation
11 Mar 2020
The satellite lost on Thursday – the Nusantara 2 – was built in China for Indonesian telecommunication companies Pasifik Satelit Nusantara and Indosat Ooredoo. It was intended to replace an older satellite to provide internet and broadcasting services in Indonesia and across the Asia-Pacific region to Australia, The Jakarta Post reported earlier this month.
It is not known if the failed launch will have an impact on other Long March-3B satellite launches planned for later in the year.
Introduced in 1996, the Long March-3B – also known as the CZ-3B or LM-3B – has been the main orbital carrier rocket of China’s space programme. It was used to carry many of the satellites that make up China’s BeiDou navigation system, with the latest addition being in March.
For that launch, engineers used parachutes to control where the rocket’s boosters would land after being discarded after lift-off so as to minimise the impact on people living below, state media reported.
The latest version of the Long March-3B entered service in 2007 and is dedicated to launching heavy communications satellites of up to 5.5 tonnes into geostationary transfer orbits.
British supermarket is investigating after newspaper report that six-year-old girl found message in card saying it was packed by Shanghai prisoners
Britain’s biggest retailer Tesco said it was “shocked by these allegations”. Photo: AFP
British supermarket giant Tesco suspended a Chinese supplier of Christmas cards on Sunday after a press report said a customer found a message written inside a card saying it had been packed by foreign prisoners who were victims of forced labour.
“We abhor the use of prison labour and would never allow it in our supply chain,” a Tesco spokesman said on Sunday.
“We were shocked by these allegations and immediately suspended the factory where these cards are produced and launched an investigation.”
donates £300,000 (US$390,000) a year from the sale of the cards to the charities British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK.
The Sunday Times said the message inside the card read: “We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu Prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organisation.
“Use the link to contact Mr Peter Humphrey.”
Peter Humphrey is a British former journalist and corporate fraud investigator.
Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng were both sentenced in China in 2014
for illegally obtaining private records of Chinese citizens and selling the information to clients including drug maker GlaxoSmithKline. The couple were deported from China in June 2015 after their jail terms were reduced.
The message inside the card was found by a six-year-old girl, Florence Widdicombe, in London, The Sunday Times said. Her father contacted Humphrey via the LinkedIn social network.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Humphrey said he did not know the identities or the nationalities of the prisoners who put the note into the card, but he “had no doubt they are Qingpu prisoners who knew me before my release in June 2015 from the suburban prison where I spent 23 months”.
Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, said it had a comprehensive auditing process in place.
“This supplier was independently audited as recently as last month and no evidence was found to suggest they had broken our rule banning the use of prison labour,” the spokesman said.
“If a supplier breaches these rules, we will immediately and permanently delist them.”
Sky News said the cards were produced at the Zheijiang Yunguang Printing factory, which is about 100km (60 miles) from Shanghai Qingpu prison.
The company, which prints cards and books for food and pharmaceutical companies, says on its website it supplies Tesco.
Two phone calls and one emailed request for comment to the company went unanswered after usual business hours on Sunday.
Humphrey and his wife said in their trial they had not thought they were doing anything illegal in their activities in China.
Authorities investigating why passenger suddenly leapt to her feet and went through open door
The woman in yellow died after alighting from the moving bus in Fenggang county, Guizhou province, on Sunday. Photo: Weibo
Police in southern China are investigating the death of a woman who suddenly leapt from her seat and through the door of a moving bus on the weekend.
The unidentified woman was confirmed dead at hospital in Fenggang county, Guizhou province, on Sunday after alighting from the bus through the rear door which should have been closed, according to county police.
An officer from the county’s traffic police bureau told the South China Morning Post that an investigation into the woman’s action and the bus driver’s responsibility was under way.
Surveillance footage posted online shows the woman in a yellow top sitting near the open back door before suddenly getting up and rushing through the door.
The door then closes and the bus stops moments later as passengers appear shocked.
Chinese police do U-turn on traffic crash after online crowd doubt official account
The footage was shared widely online on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.
Some internet users said the woman might have been dozing and awoke suddenly thinking she had missed her stop.
Others noted that the door should not have been open.
Just late last month, a woman was injured getting off a moving bus in Chongqing as the driver accidentally opened the rear door, video news app Kankanews.com reported.
The woman, in her 60s, simply stepped off as she saw the door open and thought she had arrived at her destination.
The driver said his safety belt loosened and he accidentally triggered the door button while trying to buckle up. He was held fully responsible for the passenger’s injury.
Parents in Jiangsu province were shocked by a form that said a kindergarten class had been investigated and ‘no pupils were found to be involved in organised crime’
Officials fired or disciplined for ‘causing serious negative publicity’
A kindergarten in Guiyang put up a banner on its entrance that read: “Crack down early and crack down young. Eliminate the dark and evil forces when they are still budding”. It was later removed. Photo: Weibo
Education officials in eastern China have been sacked or disciplined after targeting kindergarten pupils in a crackdown on organised crime.
Residents in Wuxi, a city in Jiangsu province, were shocked when a note saying that 35 pupils aged four and five at Xinguang Kindergarten had been investigated as part of the wider crackdown on mafia-style gangs was leaked online.
The form, signed by two teachers, concluded: “No pupils were found to be involved in organised crime”.
Copies of the document started circulating on social media, triggering a widespread backlash and ridicule.
Some social media users accused the kindergarten of box-ticking and questioned whether staff would have been capable of discovering whether any parents were involved in organised crime.
China’s war on organised crime, corrupt officials sees 79,000 people detained
One said that if officials really wanted to nip criminal tendencies in the bud, they were starting too late, adding: “Why not start when they are in the womb and crack down in the maternity hospital?”
But on Thursday the Wuxi government backed down and criticised education officials in Xishan district for misinterpreting the crackdown on organised crime and “putting on an unrealistic show”.
Three senior officials from the Xishan district authority were disciplined for their roles in “causing serious negative publicity”.
China’s fentanyl firms back crackdown on opioid
Feng Dongyan, the chief and party secretary of Xishan district education bureau, was given a party warning.
Wang Zhaoyu, director of the bureau’s general office, and Lu Zhongxian, the director in charge of education inspection of the bureau, lost their jobs and were given a serious party disciplinary warning.
Beijing started the campaign targeting grass-roots criminal organisations and their “protective umbrellas” last year.
More than 3,000 people have been punished so far, but the campaign has also been ridiculed for taking aim at the wrong targets.
Last month a kindergarten in Guiyang in Guizhou province put up a banner at its entrance reading: “Crack down early and crack down young. Eliminate the dark and evil forces when they are still budding”.
The kindergarten said the banner was “meant for the public” but took it down after an online backlash.
Tesla said it is investigating a video on Chinese social media that appears to show one of its vehicles bursting into flames in Shanghai.
In a statement, the carmaker said it had sent a team to investigate the matter, and that there were no reported casualties.
The video, which has not been verified by the BBC, showed a stationary car erupting into flames in a parking lot.
Tesla did not confirm the car model but social media identified it as Model S.
“After learning about the incident in Shanghai, we immediately sent the team to the scene last night,” according to a translation of a Tesla statement posted on Chinese social media platform Weibo.
“We are actively contacting relevant departments and supporting the verification. According to current information, there are no casualties.”
HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam is seeking clarification of how a fishing boat came to sink this week in the contested South China Sea, the Foreign Ministry said on Saturday, days after a local rescue agency said it was rammed by a Chinese vessel.
Vietnam and China have long been embroiled in maritime disputes in the potentially energy-rich stretch of water, called East Sea by Vietnam.
The boat sank on Wednesday near Da Loi island in the Paracel Archipelago, the ministry said in an emailed statement. It said all five fishermen on board were rescued by another Vietnamese fishing boat.
“Vietnamese authorities are continuing to clarify the cause of the incident,” the ministry said, without elaborating.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 