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.
LONDON (Reuters) – The United Kingdom’s COVID-19 death toll surpassed 47,000 on Tuesday, a dire human cost that could define the premiership of Boris Johnson.
The Office for National Statistics said 42,173 people had died in England and Wales with suspected COVID-19 as of May 15, bringing the UK total to 47,343 – which includes earlier data from Scotland, Northern Ireland, plus recent hospital deaths in England.
A death toll of nearly 50,000 underlined Britain’s status as one of the worst-hit countries in a pandemic that has killed at least 345,400 worldwide.
Johnson, already under fire for his handling of the pandemic, has had to defend his top adviser Dominic Cummings who drove 250 miles from London to access childcare when Britons were being told to stay at home to fight COVID-19.
One Johnson’s junior ministers, Douglas Ross, resigned on Tuesday in protest. Johnson has stood by Cummings, saying the aide had followed the “instincts of every father”.
The government says that while it may have made some mistakes it is grappling with the biggest public health crisis since the 1918 influenza outbreak and that it has ensured the health service was not overwhelmed.
Unlike the daily death toll published by the government, Tuesday’s figures include suspected cases and confirmed cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
But even these figures underestimate the true number of deaths.
In March, Britain’s chief scientific adviser said keeping deaths below 20,000 would be a “good outcome”. In April, Reuters reported the government’s worst-case scenario was 50,000 deaths.
Disease experts are watching the total number of deaths that exceed the usual for amount for the time of year, an approach that is internationally comparable.
The early signs suggest Britain is faring badly here too.
Excess deaths are now approaching 60,000 across the UK, ONS statistician Nick Stripe said, citing the latest data – a toll equivalent to the populations of historic cities like Canterbury and Hereford.
Indian security forces have killed a prominent militant leader in disputed Kashmir, officials say.
Riyaz Naikoo had taken over command of the banned Hizbul Mujahideen group, succeeding Burhan Wani who was killed by security forces in 2016.
Wani’s death triggered massive protests in the region, which is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan.
The region has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, which has flared following Wani’s killing.
Naikoo was shot dead in his home village of Beigh Pora in Pulwama district after militants killed eight security personnel in two separate attacks, part of a recent surge of violence in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Locals said the militant leader had been trapped in a joint siege laid by army, paramilitary and police forces. He had been on the run for eight years.
“At least 76 militants including Naikoo have been killed since January this year. But we also lost 20 soldiers including senior army and police officers,” a security official told BBC Urdu on condition of anonymity.
Under a new policy, militants who are killed are not identified and their bodies are not handed over to their families.
Officials had accused Riyaz Naikoo of plotting attacks against the security establishment in the valley.
Disputed Kashmir has been a flashpoint for more than 60 years, sparking two wars between India and Pakistan.
In August 2019, the Indian government stripped the region of its semi-autonomous status and split it into two federally-run territories.
Thousands of people were detained and the region remains under severe security restrictions.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he believes China’s handling of the coronavirus is proof that Beijing “will do anything they can” to make him lose his re-election bid in November.
In an interview with Reuters in the Oval Office, Trump talked tough on China and said he was looking at different options in terms of consequences for Beijing over the virus. “I can do a lot,” he said.
Trump has been heaping blame on China for a global pandemic that has killed at least 60,000 people in the United States according to a Reuters tally, and thrown the U.S. economy into a deep recession, putting in jeopardy his hopes for another four-year term.
The Republican president, often accused of not acting early enough to prepare the United States for the spread of the virus, said he believed China should have been more active in letting the world know about the coronavirus much sooner.
Asked whether he was considering the use of tariffs or even debt write-offs for China, Trump would not offer specifics. “There are many things I can do,” he said. “We’re looking for what happened.”
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“China will do anything they can to have me lose this race,” said Trump. He said he believes Beijing wants his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, to win the race to ease the pressure Trump has placed on China over trade and other issues.
“They’re constantly using public relations to try to make it like they’re innocent parties,” he said of Chinese officials.
He said the trade deal that he concluded with Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at reducing chronic U.S. trade deficits with China had been “upset very badly” by the economic fallout from the virus.
A senior Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that an informal “truce” in the war of words that Trump and Xi essentially agreed to in a phone call in late March now appeared to be over.
The two leaders had promised that their governments would do everything possible to cooperate to contain the coronavirus. In recent days, Washington and Beijing have traded increasingly bitter recriminations over the origin of the virus and the response to it.
However, Trump and his top aides, while stepping up their anti-China rhetoric, have stopped short of directly criticizing Xi, who the U.S. president has repeatedly called his “friend.”
Trump also said South Korea has agreed to pay the United States more money for a defense cooperation agreement but would not be drawn out on how much.
“We can make a deal. They want to make a deal,” Trump said. “They’ve agreed to pay a lot of money. They’re paying a lot more money than they did when I got here” in January 2017.
The United States stations roughly 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, rather than a peace treaty.
Trump is leading a triage effort to try to keep the U.S. economy afloat through stimulus payments to individuals and companies while nudging state governors to carefully reopen their states as new infections decline.
Trump sounded wistful about the strong economy that he had enjoyed compared with now, when millions of people have lost their jobs and GDP is faltering.
“We were rocking before this happened. We had the greatest economy in history,” he said.
He said he is happy with the way many governors are operating under the strain of the virus but said some need to improve. He would not name names.
Trump’s handling of the virus has come under scrutiny. Forty-three percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll from April 27-28.
But there was some good coronavirus news, as Gilead Sciences Inc said its experimental antiviral drug remdesivir was showing progress in treating virus victims.
Trump has also seeking an accelerated timetable on development of a vaccine.
“I think things are moving along very nicely,” he said.
At the end of the half-hour interview, Trump offered lighthearted remarks about a newly released Navy video purportedly showing an unidentified flying object.
“I just wonder if it’s real,” he said. “That’s a hell of a video.”
Researchers conclude that the virus was circulating undetected in France in February
Findings highlight the difficulties governments face in tracing the source of coronavirus outbreaks
Researchers in France have carried out genetic analysis and found that the dominant types of the viral strains in the country did not come from China or Italy. Photo: AP
The coronavirus outbreak in France was not caused by cases imported from China, but from a locally circulating strain of unknown origin, according to a new study by French scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
Genetic analysis showed that the dominant types of the viral strains in France belonged to a clade – or group with a common ancestor – that did not come from China or Italy, the earliest hotspot in Europe.
“The French outbreak has been mainly seeded by one or several variants of this clade … we can infer that the virus was silently circulating in France in February,” said researchers led by Dr Sylvie van der Werf and Etienne Simon-Loriere in a non-peer reviewed paper released on bioRxiv.org last week.
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths.
France detected the virus in late January, before any other country in Europe. A few patients with a travel history that included China’s Hubei province were sampled on January 24 and tested positive.
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths. Photo: AFP
The French government took quick and decisive measures to trace contacts of the infected people and shut down the chance of further infection.
However, these strains were not found in patients tested after the initial imported cases, suggesting “the quarantine imposed on the initial Covid-19 cases in France appears to have prevented local transmission”, the researchers said.
The Pasteur institute collected samples from more than 90 other patients across France and found the strains all came from one genetic line. Strains following this unique path of evolution had so far only been detected in Europe and the Americas.
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The earliest sample in the French clade was collected on February 19 from a patient who had no history of travel and no known contact with returned travellers.
Several patients had recently travelled to other European countries, the United Arab Emirates, Madagascar and Egypt but there was no direct evidence that they contracted the disease in these destinations.
To the researchers’ surprise, some of the later strains collected were genetically older – or closer to the ancestral root – than the first sample in this clade.
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A possible explanation, according to the authors, was that local transmission had been occurring in France for some time without being detected by health authorities.
The French government may have missed detecting the transmission. According to the researchers, a large proportion of those patients might have had mild symptoms or none at all.
The researchers also found that three sequences later sampled in Algeria were closely related to those in France, suggesting that travellers from France might have introduced the virus to the African country and caused an outbreak.
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Benjamin Neuman, professor and chair of biological sciences with the Texas A&M University-Texarkana, said the French strains might have come from Belgium, where some sequences most closely related to the original strain from China were clustered.
“Since the earliest European strains of [the coronavirus] Sars-CoV-2 seem to be associated with Belgium, the idea that the virus spread from Belgium to both Italy and France at around the same time seems plausible, as this paper contends,” he said.
France is the latest in a growing number of countries and areas where no direct link between China and local outbreaks could be established.
The dominant strains in Russia and Australia, for instance, came from Europe and the United States, respectively, according to some studies.
These findings have drawn fire from some politicians who have tried to deflect domestic anger over their handling of the crisis by blaming China.
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“So now the Fake News @nytimes is tracing the CoronaVirus origins back to Europe, NOT China. This is a first!” he tweeted on April 11, referring to a story about the studies in the The New York Times’ science section.
The findings also highlight the difficulties governments face in tracing the source of coronavirus outbreaks.
Less-developed countries may never know where their strains came from due to inadequate testing and sequencing capability.
India, for example, has released the genetic sequence of fewer than 40 samples to the public so far, a small number considering its huge population.
Most of the strains sampled in 35 early cases came from clades that could be traced to Italy and Iran, with only a few from China, according to a recent study. But researchers were not able to track further because of the lack of data.
A scientist on the study, Dr Mukesh Thakur, of the Zoological Survey of India, said it was too early to rule out China as the source of outbreaks in India because the number of samples at hand was limited.
A 20-year-old student studying medicine in Wuhan, for instance, might have come in contact with many people on the way home before she was tested positive on January 30.
Thakur said local media reported that the Indian government quarantined 3,500 people possibly linked to three positive cases imported from Wuhan.
“God knows how many of them tested positive in the subsequent stages,” Thakur said in an email response to the Post’s queries on Tuesday.
Some prominent scientists, including Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said the virus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak.
The virus had thus adapted well to the human body. Some genes regulating its binding to host cells were similar, or even identical, to those found in some other highly infectious human viruses, such as HIV and Ebola.
According to some estimates, the ancestor of Sars-CoV-2, the virus causing Covid-19, might have left bats between 50 and 70 years ago. A recent study by a team of geneticists in Oxford University estimated the first outbreak of the current pandemic could have occurred as early as September last year.
They found that the dominant strains circulating in China and Asia were genetically younger than some popular strains in the United States.
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.
Blaze that also left 50 people needing hospital treatment broke out in bar that covered nine floors on Sunday morning
Trapped customers seen climbing onto window sills and calling for help
Firecrews at the scene of the blaze in Taipei. Photo: EPA-EFE
At least three people were killed in a fire in Taipei karaoke bar on Sunday morning, which left 50 others in hospital.
Apart from those declared dead, four other people were in a critical condition and were being treated in a local hospital, the official CNA news agency said.
The fire broke out between 10 and 11am on the fifth floor of a 14-storey building on Linsen North Road in the Taiwanese capital. The bar occupied the first nine floors.
Pictures from the scene showed thick smoke emerging from the building.
Customers trapped on the upper floors were seen calling for help with some even standing on window sills in panic.
Customers were rescued from the upper floors. Photo: AFP
Firefighters used aerial ladders to rescue the trapped people from the upper storey windows. The Taipei city fire department said it dispatched 43 fire engines and 17 ambulances to the scene.
The fire was extinguished at about 11.30am and the search for more survivors was continuing, the department said.
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Shelling across the border between India and Pakistan killed three Indian civilians and wounded two Pakistani civilians, military officials from the two sides said on Sunday.
Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged mortar and artillery shelling along the de facto border known as the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the disputed Kashmir region. The sporadic exchanges began on Saturday and continued into Sunday.
Both countries claim the region in full, but rule only parts, and often accuse each other of breaching a 2003 ceasefire pact by shelling and firing across the LoC.
Pakistani troops targeted civilians living near the LoC, killing three people, including a child and a woman, and wounding five, Vijay Kumar, police chief of Kashmir, told Reuters.
Pakistan blames Indian troops for ceasefire violations and targeting civilians in Kashmir.
Two Pakistani civilians were injured due to shelling from India, Major-General Babar Iftikhar of the public relations wing of the Pakistan Army, said in a Tweet.
Tension between the two countries was renewed when New Delhi withdrew the autonomy of the Kashmir region in 2019 and split it into territories federally administered by India. Until then, it had had autonomy over all matters except defence, communications and foreign affairs.
India accuses its neighbour of training and then sending militants across the border to launch attacks and support a separatist movement against Indian rule.
Pakistan denies giving material support to militants in Kashmir but says it provides moral and diplomatic backing for the self-determination of Kashmiri people.
Official news agency Xinhua says the three died in Saturday’s attack in the province of Ituri
Central African country is major source of cobalt and copper but armed rebels pose a persistent risk
Mines have been targeted by armed rebels in the past. Photo: Reuters
A gun attack in a mining area in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed three Chinese nationals, the official news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.
The attack took place on Saturday in the northeastern province of Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan, Xinhua said, citing the Chinese embassy.
It did not name the mine in question or the company operating it.
The DRC is the world’s biggest producer of mined cobalt – a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles – and one of Africa’s biggest copper producers, although its key copper-cobalt producing region is in the southwest, far from the site of the attack.
The country has attracted billions of dollars in investment from Chinese miners in recent years despite security risks.
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Canadian gold miner Banro, which owns mines in Maniema, a DRC province south of Ituri, suspended operations last year after several of its mines were overrun by armed rebels.
The Chinese embassy has asked the Congolese government to “take effective measures to protect the lives and property of Chinese citizens” in the DRC, as well as to expedite an investigation into the killings, Xinhua said, noting that the embassy had repeatedly advised Chinese citizens against travel to Ituri due to the presence of armed groups.
The embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, a public holiday in China.
Seven people have been killed in Delhi in protests against India’s controversial new citizenship law, as US President Donald Trump made his first official visit to the country.
Violence has erupted again in parts of north-east Delhi, which saw deadly clashes between supporters and opponents of the law on Monday night.
Two journalists have been attacked and BBC reporters in the area say mobs are throwing stones and shouting slogans.
There are fears of further clashes.
Mobs in parts of north-east Delhi are throwing stones at each other, and the situation remains tense, according to BBC correspondents.
Gokulpuri, in #Delhi today. The BBC saw mobs of people with sticks and stones chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Parts of Delhi are witnessing the worst violence and rioting India’s capital has seen in decades. Seven confirmed dead. #DelhiViolence
A policeman and six civilians have died in Delhi’s deadliest violence since the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) – which critics say is anti-Muslim – was passed last year.
Around 150 people, including 48 policemen, are reportedly injured.
Image copyright AFP
“There are around 200 people, some are holding the Indian flag in their hands, others are holding saffron flags, generally associated with right-wing Hindu groups. They are chanting Jai Shri Ram [hail Lord Ram],” BBC Hindi reporter Faisal Mohammed said.
The crowd was also shouting “shoot the traitors”, our reporter added.
Correspondents say the timing of the unrest is an embarrassment to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he hosts the US president and the violence has taken the spotlight away from Mr Trump’s visit.
Where is the violence?
It broke out in three Muslim-majority areas in north-east Delhi on Sunday and has continued since.
The violence in the area has seen protesters firmly split along religious lines, BBC reporters at the scene say.
Both sides have blamed each other for starting the clashes.
Image copyright REUTERSImage caption The violence in the Muslim-majority areas in north-east Delhi began on Sunday
The violence has been linked to a BJP leader, Kapil Mishra, who had threatened a group of protesters staging a sit-in against the CAA over the weekend, telling them that they would be forcibly evicted once Donald Trump had left India.
The clashes spilled into Monday and police fired tear gas shells and led baton charges to disperse the stone-throwing crowds. TV footage showed flames and smoke billowing from buildings.
Eyewitnesses said they saw charred vehicles and streets full of stones in areas like Jaffrabad and Chand Bagh on Tuesday morning. Police were allowing people to enter only after checking their identity cards. Some Metro stations have also been shut.
Who are the dead and injured?
Six civilians and one policeman have been killed in the violence so far.
“One of the seriously injured is a senior police officer. He has now been moved to another hospital for specialised treatment,” an official said.
Two journalists belonging to the NDTV news channel were badly beaten while they were out reporting on Tuesday morning.
Shahid Alvi, an auto rickshaw driver, died because of a bullet injury he suffered during the protest. His brother Rashid told BBC Hindi that Shahid was married just a month ago.
“He was shot in the stomach and died while we were taking him to the hospital,” he said.
Another victim has been identified as Rahul Solanki.
His brother, Rohit Solanki, told BBC Hindi that he died after being shot as he tried to escape from a mob.
“He had gone out to buy groceries when he was suddenly surrounded. He was shot at point blank range. We tried taking him to four hospitals but we were turned away,” he said.
What are officials doing?
Delhi’s freshly re-elected Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, called on the federal government to restore law and order.
“There are not enough police on the streets [in the affected areas]. Local police are saying they are not getting orders from above to control the situation, and they are not able to take action,” he told reporters.
The capital’s police force reports directly to Mr Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government.
Home Minister Amit Shah, who is in-charge of Delhi’s police forces, is holding a meeting with Mr Kejriwal to discuss the situation.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The police and protesters fought pitched battles on the streets of Delhi
What is the citizenship act about?
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants amnesty to non-Muslim immigrants from three nearby Muslim-majority countries.
The new law has raised fears that India’s secular status is at risk.
Critics say it discriminates against Muslims. But the government says the protests are unnecessary as it only seeks to give amnesty to persecuted minorities.
Protests so far have been largely led by Muslim women and men, but a lot of Hindus have also joined them.
MANILA, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) — Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has offered condolences for the people killed in the series of strong earthquakes that devastated central and eastern Mindanao in the southern Philippines last month, saying China is ready to help the Philippine government in its efforts to rehabilitate the region.
In a message of sympathy sent to Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin on Saturday, Wang said he was shocked to learn that strong earthquakes had hit Mindanao, resulting in casualties and property damage.
“He (Wang) would like to extend sincere sympathy to the victims and the bereaved families,” the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines said in a statement.
“China is willing to offer assistance to the Philippines within our capacity, and believes that under the strong leadership of the Philippine government, the Philippine people will overcome the disaster and return to normal life at an early date,” it quoted Wang as saying.
On Friday, China announced a donation of 3 million yuan (about 434,896 U.S. dollars) to help the quake victims, mostly poor farmers.
The Philippine National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said in an updated report on Sunday that the Oct. 29 6.6-magnitude and the Oct. 31 6.5-magnitude earthquakes that hit several central and eastern Mindanao provinces had killed 21 people and injured more than 400 others.
Rescuers were still looking for two missing villagers, the country’s disaster agency said.
The agency said the two tremors also affected more than 178,000 people in 200 villages in the region. Nearly 22,000 displaced people were staying in makeshift tents, it added.
The agency said the quakes also damaged nearly 29,000 infrastructures in the region, mostly houses, school buildings, hospitals, roads and bridges.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 