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.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Indore is a bustling commercial city
In early March, 40-year-old Ravi Dosi, a chest specialist in India, saw a baffling surge in patients with respiratory problems at outpatient clinics.
“There was almost a 50% jump in patients with upper respiratory issues and sore throat. They were not responding to antibiotics. Testing was still low and we didn’t really know what was going on,” Dr Dosi, who works at Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences, a 1,156-bed private medical college in the central city of Indore, told me.
Less than a fortnight later, Dr Dosi began seeing an uptick in admissions of Covid-19 patients. Around the end of March, the hospital was receiving 28 infected patients every day.
They had dry cough, fever, and difficulty breathing. Their blood oxygen levels were low. They were reporting loss of taste and smell.
In the first wave of patients, nearly a dozen came from far-flung districts, more than 150km (93 miles) from Indore, a bustling commercial city in Madhya Pradesh state. The state has now become a hotspot, with nearly 400 confirmed infections out of the more than 6,400 infections and nearly 200 deaths across the country so far.
By the second week of April, Dr Dosi and his team of 100 doctors and nearly an equal number of nursing staff working 24/7 in three shifts, were treating 144 Covid-19 patients. (Thirty-one had been treated and sent home already.)
A total of 38 patients were in intensive care. Twenty-one of them were critical. There had been seven deaths. “We are handling the largest number of Covid-19 patients in India,” Vinod Bhandari, a surgeon and chairman of the hospital, told me.
Doctors now believe that the infection was spreading in the community long before the government admitted to it, and testing slowly ramped up. Until two weeks ago, Indian health authorities had been denying community transmission.
Image caption The hospital in Indore has more than 140 patients
Now a new study by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) using surveillance data from 41 labs in the country has hinted at community transmission: 52 districts in 20 states and union territories reported Covid-19 patients. Some 40% of the cases did not report any history of international travel or contact with a known case. (The survey was based on swabs collected from nearly 6,000 patients who tested positive between 15 February and 19 March.)
Back in the hospital in Indore, the doctors are battling the surge in infections.
Three isolation wards spread over two floors floors are stacked with patients. (The hospital has earmarked 525 beds for Covid-19 patients.) Isolation wards have younger patients with mild infection, while elderly patients with more severe symptoms are in intensive care. The oldest patient is a 95-year-old man, and the youngest is a four-month-old boy.
The team of doctors handling patients includes chest specialists, anaesthetists, microbiologists, and dermatologists. There are patients with a lot of underlying medical conditions – diabetes, hypertension, even cancer – so all the specialists have been called in to help with the treatment.
Dr Dosi wakes up early, puts on protective gear – scrubs, face masks and shields, N95 masks, gowns, double gloves and shoe covers – before going on his rounds of the patients. Doctors say they are not facing a shortage of gear yet.
They are using 22 ventilators to help the critical patients breathe, and also providing oxygen supplies to others using nasal cannulas (nose prongs).
In the isolation wards, patients are given oral medication – antibiotics and hydroxychloroquine (commonly known as HCQ), an anti-malarial drug – and directed to maintain social distancing and wash their hands regularly.
Image caption The isolation wards are packed with patients
“I have never seen a challenge and crisis like this in my career. I have heard stories about an outbreak of plague in Surat [in 1994]. But this seems to be much bigger. The biggest challenge is to keep hopes alive and be positive,” says Dr Dosi.
Keeping hopes up for patients in isolation can be taxing. Three tests, say doctors, are being done for the infection – if the first test comes out positive, the patient remains in isolation for two weeks, and is tested twice on two days after the quarantine period. If the last two tests come back negative, the patient is discharged. If not, the patient has to stay in isolation for another two weeks. “It is a tough grind, mentally,” says one doctor.
For the last three weeks, Dr Dosi has been living in the hospital, away from his wife, two sons and parents. His father is a retired pathologist. They communicate via hurried video calls, between his frantic trips to the isolation wards and intensive care.
I ask him when does he expect this to “get over”, so that he can go home.
“In a couple of weeks,” he says. “The lockdown should have helped to slow down the infection.”
Dr Dosi is alluding to the strict 21-day lockdown India imposed on 24 March to halt the spread of the infection.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Health officials have been denying community transmission
Things are getting better, he says.
“I am getting 10 patients for admission in isolation wards, and two patients severe enough for intensive care every day now. Earlier this week, it was 50:50.”
It is possibly too early to hazard a guess about when admissions will slow down to single digits. As more people are tested, the number of patients can easily rise again.
It’s been unrelenting, Dr Dosi says.
Early, on Friday, I sent him a text to find out what was going on.
Buying and paying for meals and supplies online was already second nature for many Chinese before the Covid-19 lockdown
The supply and delivery networks that were already in place were able to work with the authorities in cities like Wuhan
China’s established home delivery system played an important role in getting food and other necessities to residents during the Wuhan lockdown. Photo: EPA-EFE
When Liu Yilin, a retired middle schoolteacher in Wuhan, first heard rumours of a
and shoppers flooded to the markets and malls to snap up supplies.
But as time went on and with residents banned from leaving their homes, he became increasingly concerned about getting hold of fresh supplies of vegetables, fruit and meat until the nation’s vast network of delivery drivers came to the rescue.
“It was such a relief that several necessity purchasing groups organised by community workers and volunteers suddenly emerged on WeChat [a leading social media app] days after the lockdown,” Liu said. “China’s powerful home delivery service makes life much easier at a time of crisis.”
Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based independent political economist said: “Home delivery played a very important role amid the coronavirus outbreak. To some extent, it prevented people from starving especially in cases when local governments took extreme measures to isolate people.”
According to Liu, people in Wuhan during the lockdown had to stay within their residential communities, with community workers guarding the exits.
Human contact was limited to the internet. Residents placed orders online with farmers, small merchants or supermarkets to buy daily necessities, and community workers helped distribute the goods from deliverymen.
Every morning, Liu passed a piece of paper with his name, phone number and order number to a community worker who would collect the items from a courier at the gate of the residential area.
Thanks to a high population density in urban areas, affluent labour force and people’s openness to digital life, China has built a well-developed home delivery network.
Extensive funding from technology companies has been invested in hardware infrastructure, software to improve logistics and big data and cloud computing to help predict consumers’ behaviour.
Mark Greeven, professor of innovation and strategy at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland, said: “Whether it is delivery of products, air parcels or fresh food or even medicine or materials for medical use, China has a very well developed system. Much better developed than I think almost any other places in the world.
“Well before the crisis, China had started to embrace digital technology in daily life whether it is in consumption, business, government and smart cities and use of third party payments. All of these things have been in place for a long time and the crisis tested its agility and capability to deal with peak demand.”
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According to e-commerce giant JD.com, demands for e-commerce and delivery services spiked during the outbreak of Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus.
It sold around 220 million items between January 20 and February 28, mainly grains and dairy products with the value of beef orders trebling and chicken deliveries quadrupling compared with a year ago.
Tang Yishen, head of JD Fresh, its fresh foods subsidiary, said: “The surge of online demand for fresh merchandise shows the pandemic helped e-commerce providers further penetrate into the life of customers. It also helped upstream farm producers to know and trust us.”
Meituan Dianping, a leading e-commerce platform, said its grocery retail service Meituan Instashopping reported a 400 per cent growth in sales from a year ago in February from local supermarkets.
The most popular items ordered between January 26 and February 8 were face masks, disinfectant, tangerines, packed fresh-cut fruits and potatoes.
The food delivery service Ele.me said that, between January 21 and February 8, deliveries of frozen food surged more than 600 per cent year on year, followed by a nearly 500 per cent growth in delivery of pet-care products. Fresh food deliveries rose by 181 per cent while drink and snack deliveries climbed by 101 per cent and 82 per cent, respectively. Ele.me is owned by Alibaba, the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
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E-commerce providers used the opportunity to show goodwill and improve their relationship with customers and partners, analysts say.
Sofya Bakhta, marketing strategy analyst at the Shanghai-based Daxue Consulting, said the food delivery sector had made significant headway in reducing physical contact during the outbreak.
Delivery staff left orders in front of buildings, in lifts or temporary shelters as instructed by the clients as most properties no longer allowed them inside.
Some companies also adopted more hi-tech strategies.
In Beijing, Meituan used self-driving vehicles to deliver meals to contactless pickup stations. It also offered cardboard boxes to be used as shields aimed at preventing the spread of droplets among its clients while they ate in their workplaces. In Shanghai, Ele.me employed delivery drones to serve people under quarantine in the most affected regions.
Some companies even “shared” employees to meet the growing labour demand in the food delivery industry that could not be satisfied with their ordinary workforce, Bakhta said.
More employees from restaurants, general retail and other service businesses were “loaned” to food delivery companies, which faced manpower shortages during the outbreak, according to Sandy Shen, senior research director at global consultancy Gartner.
“These arrangements not only ensured the continuity of the delivery service but also helped businesses to retain employees during the shutdown,” she said.
A delivery man takes a break between orders in Wuhan, central China, during the lockdown. Photo: AFP
Mo Xinsheng became one such “on-loan” worker after customers stopped coming to the Beijing restaurant where he worked as a kitchen assistant.
“I wanted to earn some money and meanwhile help people who are trapped at home,” said Mo, who was hired as a delivery man.
But before he could start work he had to go through lengthy health checks before he was allowed into residential compounds.
He also had to work long hours battling the wind and cold of a Beijing winter and carrying heavy loads.
“I work about 10 hours every day just to earn several thousand yuan [several hundred US dollars] a month,” he said.
“Sometimes I almost couldn’t breathe while my hands were fully loaded with packages of rice, oil and other things.
“But I know I’m doing an important job, especially at a time of crisis,” Mo said, “It was not until then that I realised people have become so reliant on the home delivery system.”
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The delivery system has been improved by an effective combination of private sector innovation and public sector coordination, said Li Chen, assistant professor at the Centre for China Studies at Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“[In China,] government units and the Communist Party grass roots organisations have maintained fairly strong mobilisation capabilities to cope with emergencies, which has worked well in the crisis,” he said.
However, Liu, the Wuhan resident, said prices had gone up and vegetables were three times more expensive than they had been over Lunar New Year in 2019.
“There were few varieties that we could choose from, apart from potatoes, cabbage and carrots,” he said.
“But I’m not complaining. It’s good we can still get fresh vegetables at a difficult time. Isn’t it? After all, we are just ordinary people,” he said.
Throughout the world, overworked health care professionals are being infected with Covid-19, yet the Lion City has kept numbers low
Preparation, planning, patient ratios and protective equipment have all played a part. Still, even the best gear cannot guard against discrimination
Medical staff walk to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases building at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore. Photo: AFP
Uncooperative patients, long hours and a lack of protective equipment are hampering health care workers across the world as they take the fight to the coronavirus, leading many to fall sick themselves.
In Malaysia, a pregnant woman who did not disclose that her father was infected tested positive after giving birth, leading to the shutdown of the entire hospital for cleaning. In the Philippines, nine doctors have died, two of whom had dealt with a patient who lied about her travel history.
In Spain, where more than 5,400 health care workers have been infected, accounting for about 14 per cent of the country’s patients, there are no longer enough workers to care for patients.
In Italy, which has more than 69,000 patients, the virus killed a doctor who had no choice but to work without gloves.
In the United States, which has surpassed China to become the world’s most infected nation with more than 83,000 people testing positive for Covid-19, hospitals are being overrun with patients.
Health care staff in the country say patients are packed into emergency wards and intensive care units (ICUs), further raising the risk of infections. They also report shortages of ventilators, face masks, gowns and shields.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on March 7 released interim guidelines saying health care workers exposed to the coronavirus could be asked to return to work as long as they wore face masks and were not showing symptoms, if their employers had no other manpower available.
Malaysian health workers at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Photo: AFP
A REASON FOR OPTIMISM
However, amid all the gloom, Singapore’s experienceis being held up as a reason for optimism. The city state has reported more than 630 cases of infection, all of which are being treated in hospital, yet only a handful of its health care professionals have been infected. What’s more, even these cases, according to Vernon Lee, director of communicable diseases at the Ministry of Health, are thought to have been infected outside the health care setting.
Experts suggest this has been more than just luck, pointing to a case in which 41 health workers were exposed to the coronavirus in a Singapore hospital yet evaded infection.
The workers had all come within two metres of a middle-aged man with Covid-19 who was being intubated, a procedure which involves a tube being inserted into the patient’s trachea. The procedure is seen as being particularly hazardous for health workers as it is “aerosol generating” – patients are likely to cough.
The workers had not known at the time that the man had the virus and all were quarantined after he tested positive. However, on their release two weeks later, none of them had the virus.
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The case has come to widespread attention partly because the workers were wearing a mix of standard surgical masks and the N95 mask, which doctors see as the gold standard as it filters out 95 per cent of airborne particles.
The conclusion, published in The Annals of Internal Medicine this month, was this: “That none of the health care workers in this situation acquired infection suggests that surgical masks, hand hygiene, and other standard procedures protected them from being infected.”
Surgeon and writer Atul Gawande mentioned the case in an article for The New Yorker on how health care workers could continue seeing patients without becoming patients. He said there were things to learn from Asia and that some of the lessons came out of the “standard public health playbook”. In other words, there is much to be said for social distancing, basic hand hygiene and cleaning regimens.
A health worker in protective gear walks into a quarantine room at a hospital in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Photo: AFP
COMING TOGETHER
With critical supplies running short in many countries, experts say it is increasingly vital that countries share both knowledge and resources.
To this end, China has been donating personal protective equipment to places including the Philippines, Pakistan and Europe. China’s richest man Jack Ma is donating 1.8 million masks, 210,000 Covid-19 test kits and 36,000 pieces of protective clothing to 10 countries in Asia.
At the same time, doctors are encouraging the Western world to learn from Asia.
Infectious diseases expert Leong Hoe Nam said that being “bitten by Sars” (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003 had prepared Asia for Covid-19, while Western countries were not similarly prepared and hence lacked sufficient protective equipment.
He pointed to how about 2,000 health care workers had fallen sick in China early in the outbreak because workers did not initially have protective gear. The trend reversed as equipment became available.
“Once the defences were up, there were very few health care workers who fell sick at work. Rather, they fell sick from contact with sick individuals outside the workplace,” he said.
Malaysia is a case in point. While it has reported 80 health care workers falling ill, most are thought to be community infections.
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In a webinar organised by Caixin Global on Thursday night, Peng Zhiyong, an intensive care specialist at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, shared how they managed a shortage of personal protective equipment early on in the outbreak by rationing workers to two sets of gear per shift.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, doctors from Manila’s Chinese General Hospital held a video conference call with doctors in Zhejiang to learn from China’s experience of treating Covid-19 patients.
Crowdsourcing platforms have also been created to share advice. The Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston has released guidelines for treating critically ill patients and its website includes information from Chinese doctors.
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The Jack Ma Foundation has also launched an online platform for doctors and nurses around the world to share knowledge on fighting the virus. “One world, one fight,” it said in a tweet.
Associate Professor Jeremy Lim from the global health programme at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health said it was crucial for countries to work together.
“Viruses don’t respect borders. Countries have to share information and help each other as we are only as strong as the weakest link. Any country can become a reservoir of disease and the world may then be forced to endure a ping-pong of outbreaks over and over again.”
And the advice of Lee, at Singapore’s Ministry of Health? “Practise good hygiene and wash hands regularly.”
Indonesian medical staff administer mass testing for Covid-19 in Bekasi, West Java. Photo: AFP
SINGAPORE, A CASE STUDY
Amid this sharing of advice, it is often Singapore that is held up as an example to replicate. Despite the country grappling with a rising load of Covid-19 patients, most of whom have recently returned to the city state from abroad, its health care system has continued to run smoothly. Doctors say this is because it has been preparing for a pandemic ever since Sars caught it by surprise. During the Sars outbreak, health care workers accounted for 41 per cent of Singapore’s 238 infections.
Consequently its hospitals swung into contingency planning mode early on in the coronavirus outbreak, telling staff to defer leave and travel plans after its first cases emerged.
Meanwhile, its hospitals swiftly split their workforces into teams to ensure there were enough workers if the outbreak worsened, and to ensure workers got enough rest.
Singapore has 13,766 doctors, or 2.4 doctors for every 1,000 people. That compares to 2.59 in the US, 1.78 in China and 4.2 in Germany. Places like Myanmar and Thailand have fewer than one doctor for every 1,000 people.
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“The objective is that you can run essential services with the greatest amount of security. Make sure functional units have redundancy built in, and are separate from each other. It depends on what you feel is sufficient to carry on services if one team is affected, factoring in rest periods and some system of rotation,” said Chia Shi-Lu, an orthopaedic surgeon.
The key is to ensure a good doctor-to-patient ratio and ensure there are enough specialists for the critical work, such as doctors and nurses who can provide intensive care, and know how to operate mechanical ventilators or machines to pump and oxygenate a patient’s blood outside the body.
At the emergency department where paediatrics emergency specialist Jade Kua treats Covid-19 cases in addition to regular emergencies, doctors are split into four teams of 21. Each team takes alternate 12-hour shifts and does not interact with other teams.
“We are in modular teams so the teams move together. So you and I would both do morning, off, night, off, morning off. Together. And then the other teams would do the same and we don’t intermingle,” said Kua.
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Chia, who works at the Singapore General Hospital, said doctors had been split up according to their functions.
“We try not to meet at all with the other teams as much as possible. We’ll just say hi from across the corridor. Meals are the same. All our cafeterias and everything have got social distancing spaced in already,” said Chia, who is also a member of parliament and chairs a shadow committee on health.
Chia said the health care system could also tap on doctors in the private sector.
Not every country has a plan like this. Last year’s Global Health Security Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that 70 per cent of 195 countries scored poorly when it came to having a national plan for dealing with epidemics or pandemics. Almost three in 10 had failed to identify which areas were insufficiently staffed. In India, with a population of 1.3 billion, only about 20,000 doctors are trained in key areas such as critical care, emergency medicine and pulmonology.
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In contrast, Singapore published its first Influenza Pandemic Preparedness and Response Plan in June 2005 and has since honed it to a tee. Hospitals regularly war-game scenarios such as pandemics or terrorist attacks and the simulations are sometimes observed by the Ministry of Health, which grades the performance and recommends areas for improvement.
The plan also covers the need to stockpile equipment to avoid the sort of shortages many countries are now facing, another lesson inspired by Sars when masks, gloves and gowns were in short supply.
In a pandemic preparation paper published in 2008, Singapore public health specialist Jeffery Cutter wrote that Singapore’s stockpile was sufficient to cover at least 5 to 6 months’ use by all front-line health care workers.
During the Covid-19 outbreak, it has also told citizens to not wear masks so it can conserve supply for medical staff.
Having enough protective gear has reassured Singapore’s health care workers such as Kua, a mother of six who blogged about her experience fighting Covid-19. Kua said: “I’m safe and my family is safe.”
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SOMETHING YOU CAN’T GUARD AGAINST
Despite the many positives to emerge from the Lion City, its health care workers are struggling with another problem: discrimination.
While in France, Italy and Britain, residents cheer health care workers from their windows, in Singapore health care workers are seen by some people as disease carriers.
“I try not to wear my uniform home because you never know what kind of incidents you may encounter,” said one Singapore nurse. “The public is scared and wearing our uniforms actually causes quite a bit of inconvenience. One of my staff tried to book a private-hire car to the hospital for an emergency and she was rejected by five drivers.”
There is a similar stigma in India, where the All India Institute of Medical Sciences has appealed to the government for help after health workers were forced out of their homes by panicked landlords and housing societies.
“Many doctors are stranded on the roads with all their luggage, nowhere to go, across the country,” the institute said in a letter.
Lim, from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said the worst human impulses and “every man for himself” attitudes could emerge in crises and “that is exactly why governments have to step in”.
Discrimination could affect both the performance and motivation of health care workers, Lim warned.
Meanwhile, when health care workers are infected, it creates a “triple whammy” threat.
“It means one fewer professional in an already-strained system, another patient to care for and, potentially, a team of colleagues who need to be quarantined,” said Lim.
“We must do everything possible to keep our health care workforce safe and free from Covid-19.” ■
Zhuhai police, at the end of the world’s longest sea bridge, use body armour and tear gas in preparation for Macau’s 20th anniversary celebration
Hong Kong is just an hour’s drive away from Macau using the bridge
More than 1,000 police officers took part in the anti-terror drill in Zhuhai. Photo: Toutiao
Armed police in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai held a massive anti-terror drill at its end of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge on Friday morning as part of its preparations for the 20th anniversary of the handover of Macau, when President Xi Jinping is expected to visit the city.
More than 1,000 police officers and 80 vehicles were involved in the exercise, amid
Photos circulated online showed officers in body armour, helmets and shields firing tear gas as they confronted a group of people carrying sticks and wearing black shirts and yellow helmets – attire associated with the protesters in Hong Kong, 60km (37 miles) away from Macau.
The drill was held three weeks before the 20th anniversary of Macau’s return to Chinese administration under the “one country, two systems” policy on December 20.
Police trucks and riot officers during Friday’s exercise at the Zhuhai end of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. Photo: Toutiao
Security is expected to be tightened when Xi visits the city, in response to the violent clashes in Hong Kong over the past six months, which Beijing has repeatedly blamed on radical protesters.
The former Portuguese colony is connected to Hong Kong and its neighbouring city of Zhuhai, Guangdong province, by the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. It takes about an hour to drive from Hong Kong to Macau via the bridge.
Guo Yonghang, Zhuhai party chief, urged the local police to stay loyal to the party. “[Police] should be loyal and fulfil duty and mission to create a peaceful and stable political and social environment for the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area and the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Macau’s reunification to the motherland,” he said.
Macau was returned to China two years after Hong Kong and celebrations of its success under one country, two systems could be overshadowed by its neighbour’s anti-government protests which stemmed from opposition to proposed extradition legislation and have escalated into violence on the streets and in university campuses.
In August, two months after more than 2 million people in Hong Kong took to the streets to protest the now-suspended extradition bill, police in Shenzhen held at least three drills featuring anti-riot exercises involving tear gas, armoured vehicles and water cannon.
Security forces shown tackling ‘demonstrators’ wearing black shirts
‘Anti-mob’ tactics prepare forces for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic
Shenzhen police broadcast live footage of a security exercise involving 12,000 officers rehearsing anti-riot drills. Photo: Weibo
More than 12,000 police officers assembled in Shenzhen in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong on Tuesday for a drill that included anti-riot measures similar to those seen on the streets of Hong Kong.
The drill was part of security preparations for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, Shenzhen police said on the force’s Weibo newsfeed.
“A drill will be held to increase troop morale, practise and prepare for the security of celebrations, [and] maintain national political security and social stability,” police said.
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In live videos of the police drills shown on the Yizhibo network, officers in body armour, helmets and shields confronted groups of people in black shirts and red or yellow construction safety helmets – similar to those worn by Hong Kong protesters – who were holding flags, banners, batons and wooden boards.
Global Times
✔@globaltimesnews
Shenzhen #police drill attracted unusual attention as it features scenarios that resemble the ongoing riots in #HongKong. #香港http://bit.ly/2YobnJc (Video: Shenzhen News Radio)
One of the banners read “return my hard-earned money” – a slogan often used by migrant workers in protest against unpaid salaries.
“The practice is complete with mature anti-mob tactics. The police forces can present an anti-mob formation, which is flexible, suitable for different situations, with accurate aim and effective control,” a narrator said during the live broadcast.
As the drill escalated and more “rioters” were deployed, police fired tear gas and smoke covered the training ground.
A few minutes later, the rioters fired home-made gas bombs then set bogies alight and drove them at the police lines. The officers changed formations and pressed the rioters, making arrests. Police handlers and their dogs were also on the scene.
A blazing bogie is driven towards police lines during Shenzhen police’s anti-riot exercise. Photo: Weibo
Other drills included anti-smuggling and search-and-rescue exercises involving personnel from the People’s Liberation Army.
The drill was presented as preparation for the 70th anniversary celebrations but it came amid continued violence in the streets of Hong Kong and two incidents of the Chinese national flag being thrown into Victoria Harbour.
Hong Kong has been engulfed in two months of turmoil stemming from opposition to the now-suspended extradition bill.
Police handlers and their dogs were deployed against people dressed like Hong Kong demonstrators. Photo: Weibo
“Is this hinting at Hong Kong?” a commenter on the Shenzhen police Weibo thread asked.
“We are doing drills today, and they can enter into real practice in Hong Kong in the future. We can send thousands of anti-mob squads over and strike hard at the radical traitors, those Hong Kong independence supporters,” another user said.
Since protests escalated in Hong Kong, Beijing has reiterated its “unflagging support” for embattled Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her administration to take lawful action to restore order, and warned that the city was entering “a most dangerous phase” with violence on the streets.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 