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.
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Inceptio Technology, a startup developing self-driving trucks, has raised $100 million in its latest funding round from logistics firm GLP, its key strategic investor G7 and other investors, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The proceeds from its series A funding round will be used to further develop its technologies and to start commercial trials, said the sources, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to media.
The company, which aims to operate a freight network with autonomous driving trucks in China from 2022, has partnerships with Dongfeng Automobile Co Ltd (600006.SS), Sinotruk Hong Kong Ltd (3808.HK) and Foton (600166.SS).
The two-year-old firm is developing autonomous driving software and an in-car computing system while the truckmakers are responsible for the vehicles’ platforms.
Inceptio declined to comment. G7 and Singapore-based GLP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Inceptio focuses on level 3 and 4 technologies. A level 3 vehicle will enable drivers to turn their attention away from driving but they still need to take over if the car encounters a problem, while with level 4 technologies, there is no human intervention in most circumstances.
The trucking industry is expected to an earlier adopter of autonomous driving technology compared to passenger vehicle makers as driving on highways is more predictable than on busy city streets.
German automaker Daimler (DAIGn.DE) and U.S. postal giant United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) have invested in self-driving trucks.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The Chinese city of Wuhan recently lifted its strict quarantine measures
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated last year, has raised its official Covid-19 death toll by 50%, adding 1,290 fatalities.
Wuhan officials attributed the new figure to updated reporting and deaths outside hospitals. China has insisted there was no cover-up.
It has been accused of downplaying the severity of its virus outbreak.
Wuhan’s 11 million residents spent months in strict lockdown conditions, which have only recently been eased.
The latest official figures bring the death toll in the city in China’s central Hubei province to 3,869, increasing the national total to more than 4,600.
China has confirmed nearly 84,000 coronavirus infections, the seventh-highest globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
What’s China’s explanation for the rise in deaths?
In a statement released on Friday, officials in Wuhan said the revised figures were the result of new data received from multiple sources, including records kept by funeral homes and prisons.
Deaths linked to the virus outside hospitals, such as people who died at home, had not previously been recorded.
Media caption Learn how Wuhan dealt with the lockdown
The “statistical verification” followed efforts by authorities to “ensure that information on the city’s Covid-19 epidemic is open, transparent and the data [is] accurate”, the statement said.
It added that health systems were initially overwhelmed and cases were “mistakenly reported” – in some instances counted more than once and in others missed entirely.
A shortage of testing capacity in the early stages meant that many infected patients were not accounted for, it said.
A spokesman for China’s National Health Commission, Mi Feng, said the new death count came from a “comprehensive review” of epidemic data.
In its daily news conference, the foreign ministry said accusations of a cover-up, which have been made most stridently on the world stage by US President Donald Trump, were unsubstantiated. “We’ll never allow any concealment,” a spokesman said.
Why are there concerns over China’s figures?
Friday’s revised figures come amid growing international concern that deaths in China have been under-reported. Questions have also been raised about Beijing’s handling of the epidemic, particularly in its early stages.
In December 2019, Chinese authorities launched an investigation into a mysterious viral pneumonia after cases began circulating in Wuhan.
China reported the cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN’s global health agency, on 31 December.
But WHO experts were only allowed to visit China and investigate the outbreak on 10 February, by which time the country had more than 40,000 cases.
The mayor of Wuhan has previously admitted there was a lack of action between the start of January – when about 100 cases had been confirmed – and 23 January, when city-wide restrictions were enacted.
Around that time, a doctor who tried to warn his colleagues about an outbreak of a Sars-like virus was silenced by the authorities. Dr Li Wenliang later died from Covid-19.
Wuhan’s death toll increase of almost exactly 50% has left some analysts wondering if this is all a bit too neat.
For months questions have been asked about the veracity of China’s official coronavirus statistics.
The inference has been that some Chinese officials may have deliberately under-reported deaths and infections to give the impression that cities and towns were successfully managing the emergency.
If that was the case, Chinese officials were not to know just how bad this crisis would get in other countries, making its own figures now seem implausibly small.
The authorities in Wuhan, where the first cluster of this disease was reported, said there had been no deliberate misrepresentation of data, rather that a stabilisation in the emergency had allowed them time to revisit the reported cases and to add any previously missed.
That the new death toll was released at the same time as a press conference announcing a total collapse in China’s economic growth figures has led some to wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to bury one or other of these stories.
Then again, it could also be a complete coincidence.
China has been pushing back against US suggestions that the coronavirus came from a laboratory studying infectious diseases in Wuhan, the BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher in Washington DC reports.
US President Donald Trump and some of his officials have been flirting with the outlier theory in the midst of a propaganda war with China over the origin and handling of the pandemic, our correspondent says.
Mr Trump this week halted funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of making deadly mistakes and overly trusting China.
“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?” Mr Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.
On Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how [coronavirus] came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier.”
But China has also been praised for its handling of the crisis and the unprecedented restrictions that it instituted to slow the spread of the virus.
Millions of Chinese children are raised by their grandparents but some seniors are demanding compensation
For generations in China grandparents have provided childcare, but some are no longer willing to do so for free. Photo: Shutterstock
The traditional role of grandparents in caring for China’s children has been called into question with two recent lawsuits sparking debate about whether seniors should be paid for their efforts.
Two grandmothers took their demands for compensation to court in separate cases which have highlighted the reliance of Chinese workers on their parents to provide childcare while they pursue professional advancement.
A woman in Mianyang, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was awarded more than 68,000 yuan (US$9,500) by a local court after she sued her son and daughter-in-law for the costs of raising her nine-year-old grandchild, according to Red Star News.
The woman, identified only by her surname Wang, had been the child’s full-time carer for eight years after his parents left home to seek better-paid jobs elsewhere. Wang said she had taken care of most of her grandson’s living expenses and had decided to seek compensation when his parents said they were considering a divorce.
They should respect our contribution. Grandmother Wang, Sichuan province
“I only want to let them know through this lawsuit that it’s their obligation to raise their children,” she was reported as saying. “The young ones should not take it for granted that old people ought to look after their grandchildren. They should respect our contribution.”
Despite winning the case, she has not received a penny and the boy still lives with her.
In another case, three months ago, a Beijing court supported a woman’s demand for compensation for helping to raise her granddaughter since her birth in 2002.
The stories of the two women generated a public reflection on the Chinese way of childcare which, for generations, has involved leaving most – if not all – of the burden on grandparents.
One of 60 million: life as a ‘left-behind’ child in China
From a cultural perspective, it has been a matter of course in a country with a long history of several generations living under one roof, for grandparents to participate in child rearing, according to Xu Anqi, a researcher specialising in family studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
“Today, as people face fierce competition and great pressure from work, it’s still common to rely on their old parents to look after their children,” she said.
While rapid urbanisation in recent decades has broken up multi-generational households, Chinese elderly still take an active role in child rearing, with many relocating to their children’s cities to take on the job.
Millions more families do it the other way round – with parents leaving children in their hometown with the grandparents while they seek better paying jobs in the cities. In August last year, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China had nearly 7 million “left behind kids”, as they are known.
My little granddaughter is adorable, and generally I enjoy doing all this.Li Xiujuan, grandmother
“Many grandmothers like me would joke that we are ‘unpaid nannies’, but at the same time we feel it’s our responsibility to help them out – they would be in financial stress if one of them quit or they hired a nanny,” said Li Xiujuan, who relocated from her hometown in the central province of Henan to Shanghai two years ago to help look after her granddaughter.
“I’m a 24-hour nanny for my grandkid. I prepare food for her, wash her clothes, attend early childhood classes with her, take her for a walk in the park twice a day, sleep beside her at noon and night …” she said.
“I never cared for my daughter when she was little like I do her daughter now. You know, it was also her grandmother who mainly took care of her daily life when she was young,” Li said, laughing.
“My little granddaughter is adorable, and generally I enjoy doing all this. The hard part is that I miss my friends and relatives back home. We don’t have friends here. I have plenty of things to do at home, but here, nothing but babysitting. People are polite, but it’s difficult to make new friends,” she said.
‘Left behind’ sisters cry when parents leave home to go to work
In a 2017 study of about 3,600 households in six major cities including Beijing and Guangzhou, the Chinese Society of Education found almost 80 per cent of surveyed households had at least one grandparent as carer before children began primary school.
The study also showed that 60 per cent of parents still relied on help from grandparents after children were old enough for primary school at the age of six.
Whether grandparents should be compensated for their efforts split a poll of 49,000 users conducted by social media platform Weibo in late June, with half believing that the older generation should be paid for raising their grandchildren. Only 2.3 per cent said babysitting grandchildren was “an unalterable principle” for the elderly.
“This arrangement could be well managed and improve blood ties if children reward the elderly in their own ways, such as sending gifts on holidays and taking them on trips,” Shanghai researcher Xu said.
I think what they need more is words of appreciation, which many of us have neglected. David Dai, Beijing parent
Grandmother Li agreed: “I think regular payment is a little awkward, but I do expect some kind of reward, like cash gifts on festivals and daily necessities as presents.”
David Dai, a 30-year-old white collar worker in Beijing, said how to reward grandparents for their contribution depended on the financial situation of each household.
“My parents are farmers – they are in good shape and not so old – in their late 50s, and if they didn’t come all the way from my hometown in Anhui to Beijing to look after my son, they would still be taking some odd jobs,” he said.
“Therefore, besides covering their living costs at my place, I give them cash gifts on their birthdays, the Spring Festival and other important occasions, because babysitting their grandchild means they lose the opportunity to work,” he added.
“In some families, the grandparents might have retired and have a good pension. They don’t lack money and enjoy spending time with their grandkids. I don’t think they need to be paid. I think what they need more is words of appreciation, which many of us have neglected,” Dai said.
China boosts childcare and maternal health services in bid to lift birth rate
But for those who never show any gratitude, their parents have every reason not to offer child rearing help or to demand payment, Xu said.
Zhang Tao, a lawyer at the Hiways Law Firm in Shanghai, noted that as long as at least one parent of a child was living, the grandparents had no obligation to help with childcare.
“The grandparents should be compensated for the money they have paid for the child’s education, medical fees, and accommodation from the beneficiary,” he said.
But whether they should be paid has become the latest controversy as more grandparents find it a burden.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
Chinese self-driving truck startup Inceptio raises $100 million – sources
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Inceptio Technology, a startup developing self-driving trucks, has raised $100 million in its latest funding round from logistics firm GLP, its key strategic investor G7 and other investors, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The proceeds from its series A funding round will be used to further develop its technologies and to start commercial trials, said the sources, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to media.
The company, which aims to operate a freight network with autonomous driving trucks in China from 2022, has partnerships with Dongfeng Automobile Co Ltd (600006.SS), Sinotruk Hong Kong Ltd (3808.HK) and Foton (600166.SS).
The two-year-old firm is developing autonomous driving software and an in-car computing system while the truckmakers are responsible for the vehicles’ platforms.
Inceptio declined to comment. G7 and Singapore-based GLP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Inceptio focuses on level 3 and 4 technologies. A level 3 vehicle will enable drivers to turn their attention away from driving but they still need to take over if the car encounters a problem, while with level 4 technologies, there is no human intervention in most circumstances.
The trucking industry is expected to an earlier adopter of autonomous driving technology compared to passenger vehicle makers as driving on highways is more predictable than on busy city streets.
German automaker Daimler (DAIGn.DE) and U.S. postal giant United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) have invested in self-driving trucks.
Source: Reuters
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