19/04/2020
- Faced with a backlash from the West over its handling of the early stages of the pandemic, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia
- Teams of experts and donations of medical supplies have been largely welcomed by China’s neighbours
Despite facing some criticism from the West, China’s Asian neighbours have welcomed its medical expertise and vital supplies. Photo: Xinhua
While China’s campaign to mend its international image in the wake of its handling of the
coronavirus health crisis has been met with scepticism and even a backlash from the US and its Western allies, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia.
Teams of experts have been sent to Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Pakistan and soon to Malaysia, to share their knowledge from the pandemic’s ground zero in central China.
Beijing has also donated or facilitated shipments of medical masks and ventilators to countries in need. And despite some of the equipment failing to meet Western quality standards, or being downright defective, the supplies have been largely welcomed in Asian countries.
China has also held a series of online “special meetings” with its Asian neighbours, most recently on Tuesday when Premier Li Keqiang discussed his country’s experiences in combating the disease and rebooting a stalled economy with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Japan and South Korea.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang speaks to Asean Plus Three leaders during a virtual summit on Tuesday. Photo: AP
Many Western politicians have publicly questioned Beijing’s role and its subsequent handling of the crisis but Asian leaders – including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – have been reluctant to blame the Chinese government, while also facing criticism at home for not closing their borders with China soon enough to prevent the spread of the virus.
An official from one Asian country said attention had shifted from the early stages of the outbreak – when disgruntled voices among the public were at their loudest – as people watched the virus continue its deadly spread through their homes and across the world.
“Now everybody just wants to get past the quarantine,” he said. “China has been very helpful to us. It’s also closer to us so it’s easier to get shipments from them. The [medical] supplies keep coming, which is what we need right now.”
The official said also that while the teams of experts sent by Beijing were mainly there to observe and offer advice, the gesture was still appreciated.
Another Asian official said the tardy response by Western governments in handling the outbreak had given China an advantage, despite its initial lack of transparency over the outbreak.
“The West is not doing a better job on this,” he said, adding that his government had taken cues from Beijing on the use of propaganda in shaping public opinion and boosting patriotic sentiment in a time of crisis.
“Because it happened in China first, it has given us time to observe what works in China and adopt [these measures] for our country,” the official said.
Experts in the region said that Beijing’s intensifying campaign of “mask diplomacy” to reverse the damage to its reputation had met with less resistance in Asia.
Why China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ is raising concern in the West
“Over the past two months or so, China, after getting the Covid-19 outbreak under control, has been using a very concerted effort to reshape the narrative, to pre-empt the narrative that China is liable for this global pandemic, that China has to compensate other countries,” said Richard Heydarian, a Manila-based academic and former policy adviser to the Philippine government.
“It doesn’t help that the US is in lockdown with its domestic crisis and that we have someone like President Trump who is more interested in playing the blame game rather than acting like a global leader,” he said.
Shahriman Lockman, a senior analyst with the foreign policy and security studies programme at Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said that as the US had withdrawn into its own affairs as it struggled to contain the pandemic, China had found Southeast Asia a fertile ground for cultivating an image of itself as a provider.
China’s first-quarter GDP shrinks for the first time since 1976 as coronavirus cripples economy
Beijing’s highly publicised delegations tasking medical equipment and supplies had burnished that reputation, he said, adding that the Chinese government had also “quite successfully shaped general Southeast Asian perceptions of its handling of the pandemic, despite growing evidence that it could have acted more swiftly at the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan”.
“Its capacity and will to build hospitals from scratch and put hundreds of millions of people on lockdown are being compared to the more indecisive and chaotic responses seen in the West, especially in Britain and the United States,” he said.
Coronavirus droplets may travel further than personal distancing guidelines
Lockman said Southeast Asian countries had also been careful to avoid getting caught in the middle of the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington as the two powers pointed fingers at each other over the origins of the new coronavirus.
“The squabble between China and the United States about the pandemic is precisely what Asean governments would go to great lengths to avoid because it is seen as an expression of Sino-US rivalry,” he said.
“Furthermore, the immense Chinese market is seen as providing an irreplaceable route towards Southeast Asia’s post-pandemic economic recovery.”
Aaron Connelly, a research fellow in Southeast Asian political change and foreign policy with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said Asian countries’ dependence on China had made them slow to blame China for the pandemic.
“Anecdotally, it seems to me that most Southeast Asian political and business elites have given Beijing a pass on the initial cover-up of Covid-19, and high marks for the domestic lockdown that followed,” he said.
“This may be motivated reasoning, because these elites are so dependent on Chinese trade and investment, and see little benefit in criticising China.”
China and Vietnam ‘likely to clash again’ as they build maritime militias
The cooperation with its neighbours as they grapple with the coronavirus had not slowed China’s military and research activities in the disputed areas of the
South China Sea – a point of contention that would continue to cloud relations in the region, experts said.
Earlier this month an encounter in the South China Sea with a Chinese coastguard vessel led to the sinking of a fishing boat from Vietnam, which this year assumed chairmanship of Asean.
And in a move that could spark fresh regional concerns, shipping data on Thursday showed a controversial Chinese government survey ship, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, had moved closer to Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone.
The survey ship was embroiled in a months-long stand-off last year with Vietnamese vessels within Hanoi’s exclusive economic zone and was spotted again on Tuesday 158km (98 miles) off the Vietnamese coast.
Source: SCMP
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20/09/2019
- Superstitious medical student, 23, said it was customary in her hometown to throw money for good luck
- Cousin’s child had fallen ill on flight from Jiangxi to Sichuan, she said
A woman was fined for tossing coins onto the apron at an airport in Sichuan province. Photo: Weibo
A woman who
threw coins onto the parking apron at an airport in southwest China in the superstitious belief it might cure her cousin’s baby’s diarrhoea was instead fined 200 yuan (US$28), local media reported.
The incident happened on September 5, as the woman, surnamed Wang, and a group of her relatives arrived in Xichang, Sichuan province, after flying from Nanchang, Jiangxi province, to attend a family wedding, the Chengdu Business News reported on Friday.
Wang, 23, dropped the coins through the gap between the aircraft and the jet bridge as she and her family were disembarking.
Police said the medical student was shocked when she realised the trouble she had caused. Photo: Weibo
Although no one spotted what she had done at the time, airport workers later found three coins on the ground while conducting a security check and reported the matter to the police.
Officers reviewed footage from the airport’s surveillance cameras and identified Wang as the guilty party and went to see her at her hotel the following morning, the report said.
Wang said that during the flight her cousin’s baby had suffered from diarrhoea and that it was customary in her hometown to toss coins in the hope it would bring the child good luck.
“She said she didn’t realise her action could have had a very serious outcome,” a police officer was quoted as saying, adding that Wang appeared shocked when she realised the trouble she had caused.
However, as her actions had not resulted in any delays to flights or created any other problems, she was charged only with a minor offence.
Many Chinese think tossing coins before a flight will bring them good luck. Photo: EPA
Wang, who recently completed a bachelor’s degree in medicine and was preparing to sit a graduate school entrance examination, was worried the incident might have an impact on her future education and job prospects, the officer said.
More than 5,000 people commented on the story on news portal 163.com, with one asking: “You are so superstitious, how can you treat patients?”
In recent years there have been numerous reports of Chinese travellers causing delays and being punished for tossing coins onto airport runways and even into aircraft engines.
In April, a woman was detained for throwing six coins as she was about to board a plane in southern China in the hope it would guarantee her a safe trip.
Source: SCMP
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