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.
There has been strong demand for air freight services since April, when Chinese factories got back to work
Cargo flights have become critical in moving protective health equipment across the globe
Planes of German air carrier Lufthansa at the country’s largest airport in Frankfurt. Photo: Reuters
German freight carrier Lufthansa Cargo is expanding in China, surpassing 100 weekly flights for the first time, and adding new flights to Shenzhen.
Peter Gerber, CEO of Europe’s largest cargo airline, said there had been heavy demand for its services, though this might cool by the peak of summer.
“At the moment, cargo demand is very, very strong,” he told the Post. “It started to get strong in April, when Chinese industries got back to work, and after that we have seen a constant, heavy demand, a real peak.”
Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon report combined HK$4.5 billion loss for start of 2020
15 May 2020
Global air freight capacity has been squeezed as two-thirds of the world’s aircraft have been grounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The collapse of air travel has practically put a stop to passenger flights, which typically carry half of all air cargo.
Since the pandemic, cargo flights have been critical in moving protective health equipment across the globe. From sending masks and other supplies to China in February, the German carrier is now taking urgent supplies from the mainland back to Europe.
Peter Gerber says Lufthansa Cargo has a high responsibility in maintaining supply chains, for both global health and world trade. Photo: Handout
“We have a high responsibility in maintaining supply chains in these unprecedented times for both global health and world trade,” Gerber said.
With the addition of Shenzhen, Lufthansa Cargo will fly to five destinations in China. It serves more than 300 destinations in 100 countries.
The cargo carrier is part of the Lufthansa Group and coordinates all the freight that goes into the passenger planes of its sibling brands, including Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian.
Coronavirus: South Africa asks Hong Kong to remove its citizens from government quarantine list
16 May 2020
By next week, Lufthansa Cargo will be running more freight flights to China than the 72 passenger flights the group flew weekly before the pandemic to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Nanjing and Qingdao.
Lufthansa Cargo has a fleet of seven Boeing 777 Freighters (777Fs), with two new 777Fs arriving this year as part of its strategy to operate a fleet with a single aircraft type.
It also has six McDonnell Douglas-11Fs that Gerber said would still be retired as planned at the end of 2020, despite the extra demand for cargo capacity.
Its additional flights to China will make use of “preighters” – passenger aircraft flying cargo only. Gerber felt the trend of using empty passenger planes as “preighters” had peaked, pointing out that they cost the same to operate as freighters but carry only a fraction of the cargo.
Although he did not rule out future expansion, he said: “Demand will gradually come down in the next two or three months because a lot of equipment would have been shipped by then and some shipments will go on rail or ocean shipping.”
Coronavirus: Cathay Pacific could get cash injection from shareholder Qatar Airways
13 May 2020
He said some uncertainty remained over continued demand for airfreighted cargo, given the battered state of the world economy. Airlines would have to consider longer-term demand before deciding to invest more in cargo aircraft. “It depends how it looks beyond the next year,” he said.
Gerber said no decision had been taken yet on whether to convert some of the group’s orders for Boeing’s newest widebody 777X passenger aircraft into cargo planes.
He added that future plane orders would be balanced against the wider needs and spending decisions at Lufthansa Group, which is currently negotiating a government pandemic bailout package in the region of €9 billion (US$9.7 billion).
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Many passengers have been wearing masks while travelling on the network
One of the world’s busiest urban rail systems will be shut down for ordinary commuters from Monday morning to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection in Mumbai, one of India’s most populous cities. Only government workers in “essential services” will be allowed to travel on a truncated service.
This was waiting to happen.
Consider this. Eight million people take Mumbai’s crowded suburban train network every day. Packed to nearly three times its capacity, this is one of the busiest railway systems in the world.
The 459km (285-mile) network is the lifeline of India’s financial and entertainment capital, accounting for nearly 80% of all commuting trips in the populous western city. The suburban trains “cover almost the distance up to [the] moon in one week,” the network’s website says.
The 66-year-old network carries 60,000 passengers per km per day, the highest among all the leading commuter rail systems in the world, say officials. The coaches are sturdy enough to carry a “super dense crush load”, a phrase coined by the railways to describe the intense crowding on Mumbai’s trains. This means that a nine-car train designed for 1,800 standing passengers will often carry up to 7,000 passengers, according to Monisha Rajesh, author of Around India in 80 Trains. “Mumbai’s local trains were certainly not for the fainthearted,” she wrote.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Mumbai’s suburban train network carries eight million passengers every day
Now consider this. The western state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, has confirmed more than 60 coronavirus infections, the highest in India so far. Scores of long distance trains out of the city have been cancelled, but the suburban network has continued to rumble on, raising fears of the mass spread of the virus on these packed trains. The crowded service was an easy target of a terror attack in 2006 when serial blasts ripped though a number of trains. At least 180 people were killed and more than 800 injured – the high casualty figure was attributed to overcrowding.
“From ports and landing places the local transport networks, particularly the railways, carried the virus from large cities to the smallest, remotest settlements,” said a report on the spread of the flu in Britain in 1918-1919.
So should one of the world’s busiest rail networks be shut down to stop a possible spread of the virus in a city that many fear could turn into a coronavirus hotspot?
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Officials say ridership on the trains has dropped by 17% after the coronavirus scare
Economists like Shruti Rajagopalan believe so.
“India is conducting the fewest tests per million at the moment. If the virus is truly within the community, then given these two issues, the Mumbai outbreak cannot be contained and people will die without healthcare.
“Mumbai trains are the fastest and surest way to spread the virus (if it is within the community) to the densest parts of the city,” she told me.
There is enough precedent: China stopped trains, ferries, planes and buses from leaving the city of Wuhan; and on Thursday, London officials announced that up to 40 stations on the London Underground network are to be shut as the city attempts to contain the outbreak.
Others are not so sure about linking the spread of a pandemic to public transport systems. One study does not support the effectiveness of suspending mass urban transport systems to reduce or slow down a pandemic because, “whatever the relevance of public transport is to individual-level risk, household exposure most likely poses a greater threat”.
“I have not seen any data on the relative risk of public transportation compared with [dense places like] workplaces or schools,” Timothy Brewer, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California Los Angeles told Vox.com.
He said data from China suggested that “household contact was an important means of transmission outside of Wuhan, suggesting that prolonged contact [with a sick person] increases the risk of transmission”.
“If correct, then the time spent commuting and the density of people commuting could be important factors in assessing if public transportation is a risk factor for the disease’s transmission.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Trains on the network are being scrubbed clean to avoid the spread of infection
Shivaji Sutar, a senior communications officer of the railways, told me that the network was running an aggressive campaign to ease the rush: awareness announcements, posters and videos containing virus information.
They were also monitoring crowds, scrubbing the trains, taking the temperature of willing passengers and embarking on a drive against public spitting, he said.
A combination of awareness and panic has already led to a 27% drop in traffic on the network. But millions of people continue to take the train to work and home every day.
“This is more because of fear than anything else. Most of us have to take the network because we have to come to work. There is still no government directive to all companies to work from home. And apart from passengers wearing masks, I haven’t seen any other precautions being taken,” Rekha Hodge, who has been using the network for three decades, told me. That is bad news.
Cathay Pacific has said it expects a “substantial” loss in the first half of this year as the impact of the coronavirus outbreak takes it toll.
The Hong Kong carrier also saw a 28% drop in 2019 profits as it struggled during the city’s political protests.
The airline is now battling with the fallout of the virus as passenger numbers plummet.
Chairman Patrick Healy said the first half of 2020 was expected to be “extremely challenging financially”.
The development comes with thousands of flights already cancelled worldwide, as airlines struggle to cope with a slump in demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
British Airways, Ryanair and EasyJet have all cancelled flights to and from Italy until April, while Norwegian Air and American Airlines have also announced significant cuts to services.
Calling 2019 a “turbulent year”, Mr Healy said he expected “our passenger business to be under severe pressure this year and that our cargo business will continue to face headwinds”.
While Cathay Pacific has reduced flights to help save costs, “we expect to incur a substantial loss for the first half of 2020,” he added.
The airline reported a net profit of HK$1.69bn (£170m) for last year, down from a HK$2.35bn profit in 2018.
In other developments:
Dutch airline KLM is cancelling all its flights to and from Milan, Venice and Naples until 3 April
Austrian rail operator OBB has announced it is suspending all trains in and out of Italy – which has more than 10,000 confirmed cases of the virus – until further notice
Seat, the Spanish unit of car-maker Volkswagen, is considering temporary lay-offs at its Barcelona plant
Ride-hailing app Uber says it plans to offer an as-yet unspecified amount of financial assistance to its drivers who have to self-isolate for up to 14 days
Embattled sector
The airline industry faces a loss of revenue of up to $113bn this year, according to aviation trade body IATA, as thousands of planes are grounded amid travel restrictions across the globe.
After UK-based airline Flybe went into administration last week, analysts are warning of more failures to come for the embattled airline industry.
Earlier this week, Korean Air warned the coronavirus outbreak could threaten its survival, in a memo sent to employees.
The global spread of the coronavirus has hit both holidaymakers and business travellers. The Global Business Travel Association said on Wednesday that 43% of its member companies have cancelled business trips booked for this month.
Matriarchal and matrilineal communities centred around women have existed for centuries in China, India and Indonesia
But a recent influx of tourism, technology and mainstream patriarchal ideas is rapidly changing their way of life
Khasi women leave their village of Nongtraw in India’s northeastern Meghalaya state to collect herbs from the fields. Photo: AFP
While women’s rights may have become a major topic of discussion around the world in recent years, there are female-centric communities that for centuries have distinguished themselves by carving out their own feminist traditions in places such as China, India
and Indonesia.
But many of these matriarchal and matrilineal societies are now struggling to survive, amid threats posed by the modern world such as mass tourism, technology and the infiltration of ideas from mainstream patriarchal society.
In China, for instance, there is a small Mosuo tribe known as the “kingdom of women”.
“Key to the Mosuo culture is their matrilineal family structure, with a basic building block of only members sharing the same female bloodline making up the family … Any male bloodline is not taken into account,” says Choo Waihong, a former Singaporean corporate lawyer who has researched the community for the past decade.
Lugu Lake in China’s Yunnan province is home to the Mosuo tribe. Photo: hemis.fr
At the top of the hierarchy is the grandmother, who is the head of the household. “Her daughters run the home and look after all the children of the female siblings … The sons and grandsons are expected in their supporting role to shoulder the manual tasks required to maintain the farmstead,” Choo says.
Researchers say that there are about 30,000 to 40,000 Mosuo people – most of whom live in the far eastern foothills of the Himalayas in Yunnan, southwest China. This unique community has come together in a series of villages dotted around a mountain and Lugu Lake, while growing numbers have moved out to work in larger towns and cities elsewhere in the country.
According to Choo, author of the book The Kingdom of Women: Life, Love and Death in China’s Hidden Mountains, the most distinctive facet of this community that sets it apart from mainstream society is the absence of formal marriage arrangements between men and women. Instead, they have “walking marriages”, where the man goes to the woman’s home, spends the night with her and then leaves the following morning.
The Kingdom of Women: China’s ‘lost tribe’ of matriarchs, the Mosuo
15 Mar 2017
The couple can choose to have a temporary or even a permanent arrangement as partners, but they are not bound by marriage ties. If they have children, the baby belongs to the woman’s household. “In fact, the man is not considered part of the matrilineal family and his ties to the baby do not determine the social place of the baby,” the researcher says.
Such a society, where women are not subjected to men and sexual freedom is an intrinsic part of their culture, is so radically different from mainstream patriarchal family structures that the Mosuo tribe has been examined and studied over time. More recently, its unique features have also become an eye-catching selling point for the local tourism industry.
TOURISM INDUSTRY
The Mosuo tribe used to live off the land by farming, herding and hunting. But many families now rely on tourism after the tribe’s culture and Lugu Lake became more popular and widely known.
“Tour buses on fancy freeways and planes arriving at a new airport bring more and more tourists daily to turn the whole area into a busy travel playground,” Choo says. “Every household around the lake is involved one way or another with the hotel, restaurant and tour guide industries.”
While the tourism industry has brought money and better food for most families as well more access to educational opportunities for their children, it is also posing a serious threat to their culture and traditional ways of life.
“The greatest challenge for the tribe is their rapid transition from living a rudimentary subsistence farming way of life right into a burgeoning modern middle-class existence within a short span of 20 or so years,” Choo says.
Mosuo people pictured at a wedding ceremony with an all-meat feast in 2013. Photo: Shutterstock
The Mosuo are now being bombarded not only by mainstream traditional Chinese values, but also by new economic values connected to money and the digital economy. “That is a lot to take in for people who had no writing to support their oral language … and only had primary schools for their children not so long ago,” she says.
Older Mosuo are now being pushed to learn Mandarin in order to keep up with the younger generations.
At the same time, the researcher says, “their long-held cultural beliefs and principles are evolving as the young generation gets exposed to the outside world and start to question the old ways of doing things.”
How life is changing for Thailand’s Karen tribe
17 Mar 2017
Walking marriages are not as common, with more youngsters getting married and forming nuclear families. “Large matrilineal families which were the norm are now breaking up into smaller nuclear families. All this dilutes the traditional matrilineal Mosuo family structure,” Choo says.
“The central place of the female in old Mosuo society is slowly being affected, as the male Mosuo are beginning to entertain some patriarchal outlook in the face of outside cultural influences.”
China may have radically reinvented itself in recent decades, but the changes to the Mosuo tribe have been nearly as dramatic. “The world of the Mosuo when I first ventured into their midst 12 years ago is a distant past as I look [today in 2020] at how they have changed,” Choo says.
PATRIARCHY IN DISGUISE
There are dozens of female-centric communities scattered around the world. The Garo and Khasi tribes, which are also traditionally matrilineal societies, can be found mostly in India.
In a Khasi family, the youngest daughter inherits the ancestral property, while in the Garo community, women also inherit property, but don’t necessarily have to be the youngest daughter of the family.
Caroline Marak, former head of the Garo Department at the North Eastern Hill University in India, says that the Garo are female-oriented, but not female-dominated. Women “have no part in the field of administration decision-making”, she wrote in an academic paper.
In recent years, the husbands of Garo women who are property owners have had a greater say over land deals, such as with government. “We are now trying to reclaim our rights from the males,” says Sume Sangma, secretary of the Garo Mothers Union NGO. “Women in the community are self-reliant and we are fighting for their real power.”
Khasi women wash leaves for cooking in the village of Nongtraw in India’s north-eastern Meghalaya state. Photo: AFP
Tiplut Nongbri, from the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research at the Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, also says women don’t have much authority in Garo and Khasi societies. “Patriarchy is in disguise in both the communities. The societies are matrilineal only as far as descent, residence and inheritance of property are concerned,” she says. “Women are not allowed to take part in politics.”
RG Lyngdoh, former home minister of Meghalaya – the hilly state in north-eastern India where both communities are based – says inward migration and the presence of Christian missionaries in the state have affected traditional lifestyles. “The old practices of equity between males and females have eroded,” Lyngdoh says.
“This has led to a perception of inadequacy among the males, [creating] discord within the family, which found expression in many negative ways, such as domestic violence and abandonment of wives, which never existed within the Khasi community.”
Gertrude Lamare, a member of the Khasi-Jaintia community now pursuing her PhD in anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, argues that “with families becoming more nuclear, women do have a huge role in the decision-making process”.
A Khasi woman walks in the rain with children past a paddy field along the Assam-Meghalaya state border in India. Photo: AP
Researchers have estimated that there are 1 million Garo in India and
, and 1.7 million Khasi in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills.
Some of them have become increasingly wary of outsiders preying on their natural resources, which are dwindling, thanks to deforestation and climate change.
Another challenge these communities are facing has to do with the growing trend of mixed marriages. “In recent years, children of a Khasi or Garo mother and non-tribal father [have] not [been] welcomed. The males in the family want their women to marry within the tribal community,” researcher Nongbri says, noting that younger generations are going through an identity crisis.
STILL PROUD
The world’s largest known matrilineal society today is believed to be in Indonesia: the Minangkabau, also known as Minang. Their community of about 8 million is scattered around the world, but most are in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province. While traditionally animist, they were later influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism, and most have since embraced Islam.
But much like the others, their community is also changing.
Nursyirwan Effendi, dean of the Faculty of Social and Political Science at Andalas University, says that many of those who remain in villages and rural areas still hold tight to the tribe’s values.
“Women are central in the distribution of assets, such as rice fields, gardens and [houses], from their ancestors,” he says.
Dancers pose during the 2018 Minangkabau art and culture festival in Batusangkar, West Sumatra. Photo: AFP
Traditionally, Minangkabau women play an essential role in their children’s education and hold inheritance rights, while men are expected to take jobs elsewhere and occupy political and religious positions. When they do get married, the man moves to the woman’s house.
But Nursyirwan, who is of Minangkabau descent, notes that many have left for bigger cities, where they do not closely follow the community’s traditions.
An example of this is Afrianto Sikumbang, a 53-year-old businessman who was born to Minangkabau parents in West Sumatra province but now lives in the capital, Jakarta. Although he married a Minangkabau woman, he says they “don’t really apply” the tribe’s values in their daily life.
Sonya Anggraini, 35, who also works in the capital, has got used to city life, but remains proud of her ancestral roots and hopes that Minangkabau culture will persist for years to come.
“I am a member of my mother’s family, not of my father’s,” she says. ■
The measures China has taken to stop the spread of the coronavirus are starting to have an impact, Mi Feng, a spokesman at the National Health Commission, said on Sunday.
In other developments:
The number of people who have tested positive on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which is being held in quarantine in Japan, has risen to 355. The US and Canada are sending planes to evacuate their citizens
A Chinese tourist has died in France – the first fatality outside Asia
An 83-year-old American woman has tested positive after disembarking another cruise ship that was turned away by a number of countries before being allowed to dock in Cambodia
In the UK, all but one of nine people being treated have been discharged from hospital
On Saturday, World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Beijing’s response to the outbreak.
“China has bought the world time. We don’t know how much time,” he said. “We’re encouraged that outside China, we have not yet seen widespread community transmission.”
How is China coping?
Tens of millions of Chinese still face heavy restrictions on their day-to-day life as part of the government’s efforts to halt the spread of the disease, which causes a disease named Covid-19.
Much of the response has focused on the hard-hit province of Hubei and its capital Wuhan, where the outbreak began. The city is all but sealed off from the rest of the country.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that along with a drop in infections within Hubei there had also been a rapid increase in the number of people who had recovered.
China’s central bank will also disinfect and store used banknotes before recirculating them in a bid to stop the virus spreading.
Media caption Medics in Wuhan resort to shaving their heads in a bid to prevent cross-infection of the coronavirus
In another development Chinese state media published a speech from earlier this month in which Chinese President Xi Jinping said he said he had given instructions on 7 January on containing the outbreak.
At the time, local officials in the city of Wuhan were downplaying the severity of the epidemic.
This would suggest senior leaders were aware of the potential dangers of the virus before the information was made public.
With the government facing criticism for its handling of the outbreak, analysts suggest the disclosure is an attempt to show the party leadership acted decisively from the start.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 