28/04/2020
- Beijing’s Chaoyang district remains the last high-risk area in China, with virus preventive measures continuing to impact on travel and shopping plans
- China faces the dilemma of preventing a re-emerge of the pandemic, while also pushing to get its economy back to normal
China’s continued pandemic prevention measures, coupled with still hesitant consumer demand, will inevitably lead to persistent limitations on the nation’s economic recovery, analysts said. Photo: Bloomberg
After nearly three months of being quarantined by herself in Beijing, Mary Zhao was looking forward to the upcoming long weekend at the start of May to be able to finally reunite with her parents.
But Zhao was forced to abandon her plan for the Labour Day holidays as Beijing’s upmarket Chaoyang district, where she lives, remains the only high-risk zone for coronavirus in the entire country.
If she travelled the five hours by car, or two hours via bullet train, to the neighbouring Hebei province, she would first have to undergo a 14-day quarantine before seeing her parents. Her parents would also have the same two week quarantine to look forward to once they returned home if they came to visit their daughter in Beijing.
These strict controls to prevent a re-emergence of the coronavirus outbreak are making a return to normal life impossible for many, and mean the final economic and social cost
from China’s draconian preventive measures could be much larger than expected.
Wuhan declares ‘victory’ as central Chinese city’s last Covid-19 patients leave hospital
It underscores the dilemma facing China’s leaders on how to balance the need to
and to avoid a fresh outbreak. On the surface, China may be able to declare victory as even Wuhan, the city where the virus was first detected, announced that the last Covid-19 patient had left hospital on Sunday. But fears of a renewed outbreak have kept the country’s cinemas and most schools closed, with travel between provinces discouraged.
China’s national borders also remain largely closed, with flights being cut to a minimum, and a mandatory 14-day quarantine for every arrival. In the number of places where new cases have been reported, quarantine requirements have been tightened, including Harbin and a few other cities near the border with Russia.
Chaoyang, the home to one of Beijing’s main business districts and most foreign embassies, changed its risk rating to high from low in the middle of April after three new cases were reported, dealing a fresh blow to the district’s
and forcing many of the 3.5 million residents to cancel their travel plans.
On the outskirts of Beijing, near Beijing Capital International Airport, returning migrant workers to Picun village were ordered to stop at entrance and could only be escorted inside by their landlord, with many villages and residential compounds remaining closed to outsiders.
In the high-end shopping district of Guomao, some shops also remain closed as there are few potential customers, while over in the popular Sanlitun area, metal barriers restrict access and temperature checkpoints are still required.
The landmark Apple Store in the popular Taikoo shopping centre is open, but with limited customers allowed inside, there are long queues outside. Customers are required to scan a QR code to check their movements over the last few days before entering.
Coronavirus: More schools reopen in China for students preparing for university entrance exams
“Why do I have to spend 20 minutes just to get into the Apple Store? The sun has almost melted me down,” one visitor complained to the security guards at the front of the shop.
China’s continued pandemic prevention measures, coupled with still hesitant consumer demand, will inevitably lead to persistent limitations on the nation’s economic recovery, analysts said.
Ernai Cui, an economist at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, said on Monday that China’s cautious approach to lifting restrictions “points to a weak second quarter for consumer services”, adding additional pressure to the economic recovery.Mao Zhenhua, a researcher at the China Institute of Economics at Renmin University, said China’s preventive measures will inevitably be a drag on production, employment and exports.
Source: SCMP
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26/02/2020
- Around two thirds of the total number of flights scheduled every day in February were cancelled, placing huge financial pressure on airlines and airports
- China’s aviation industry has also been affected by a series of restrictions by other countries and airlines, with British Airways extending its suspension until mid-April
The cancellation of around 10,000 flights a day, or around two thirds of the total number of flights scheduled every day in February, has placed huge financial pressure on airlines and airports. Photo: Kyodo
A one-way air ticket from the coastal economic hub of Shanghai to the inland municipality of Chongqing, a journey of over 1,400km (870 miles), now costs less than a cup of coffee, with Chinese airlines slashing prices in a bid to boost weak domestic demand amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The cancellation of around 10,000 flights a day, or around two thirds of the total number of flights scheduled every day in February, has placed huge financial pressure on airlines and airports.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a notice on Tuesday that flights should resume gradually as part of the country’s efforts to return economic and social life back to normal, but passengers are still reluctant to fly with the deadly outbreak still not fully under control.
The one-way flight from Shanghai to Chongqing is being offered for just 29 yuan (US$4.10) by China’s biggest low-cost carrier, Spring Airlines, as a special offer for its frequent flyer club members, while a tall caffe latte at Starbucks in China costs 32 yuan (US$4.5).
Many Chinese carriers do receive subsidies for operating key domestic routes, so this also skews the economics as well Luya You
A one-way ticket from Shanghai to Harbin, the capital of the northern Heilongjiang province, a distance of over 1,600km (994 miles), costs just 69 yuan (US$9.80).
Shenzhen Airlines, a division of state-owned carrier Air China, is also running special offers to Chongqing, with a one-way ticket for the 1000km (621 miles) journey from Shenzhen costing just 100 yuan (US$14), around 5 per cent of the standard price of 1,940 yuan (US$276).
Chengdu Airlines, a unit of Sichuan Airlines, which counts China Southern Airlines as a shareholder, is also offering cheap one-way flights from Shenzhen to Chengdu, a distance of over 1,300km (808 miles), for just 100 yuan.
“Considering lower average costs of operating in mainland China, carriers could potentially offer deeper discounts while making slim profits or just breaking even,” said Luya You, an aviation analyst with Bank of Communication International. “As outbreak numbers stabilise or even decline, carriers will likely adjust their fares as well, so these low fares will not last if the situation quickly turns for the better.
“Many Chinese carriers do receive subsidies for operating key domestic routes, so this also skews the economics as well. If it is a key route, for example, the carrier may choose to continue operating regardless of fares or loads as the route constitutes a major link in the domestic network infrastructure.”
China’s aviation authority confirmed earlier this month that between January 25 and February 14, which included the Lunar New Year holiday, the average daily passenger traffic in China was just 470,000, representing a 75 per cent drop from the same period last year.
China’s aviation industry has also been affected by a series of restrictions by other countries and airlines, with British Airways last week extending its suspension of flights to China until after the Easter holiday in mid-April following travel advice from the British government.
The
novel coronavirus, which causes the disease officially named Covid-19, has infected more than 78,000 people and killed 2,700 in China. In recent days, South Korea, Italy and Iran have all reported a surge in new cases, raising fears over the spread of the coronavirus.
“The flight suspensions will track the outbreaks, but not likely lead them. If there are more outbreaks, expect more flight suspensions,” said Andrew Charlton, managing director of Aviation Advocacy.
Source: SCMP
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13/11/2019
- Remains of two of river’s estimated 1,012 porpoises found in less than a week
The finless porpoise found dead in the Yangtze River in Hubei on Monday was the second fatality in a week. Photo: 163.com
Two endangered finless porpoises have been found dead in the Yangtze River in the space of a week, according to mainland Chinese media reports.
One was found on Monday in Jiayu county, central Hubei province, four days after the remains of another were recovered from Dongting Lake, a tributary of the Yangtze in central Hunan province, news website Thepaper.cn reported.
The Dongting Lake carcass was tied with a rope and weighted with bricks, and authorities in Hunan said the creature became tangled in a fishing net. The Hubei death is under investigation.
The Yangtze’s finless porpoises are “extremely endangered”, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a 2016 action plan to protect the species. Last year, vice-minister Yu Kangzhen said surveys showed there were about 1,012 of the animals in the river.
The tail of a dead finless porpoise pulled from Dongting Lake in Hunan appears to have been tied to weights. Photo: Pear Video
In 2017, China raised its protection for the mammals to its highest level because of the critical dangers they faced. Experts said that as the river’s “flagship” species, the porpoise was an indicator for the Yangtze’s ecology.
The porpoise discovered in Hubei was small and it had suffered superficial wounds, investigators were quoted as saying. They estimated that it was found soon after its death.
Xiaoxiang Morning Post quoted fisheries authorities in Yueyang, near Dongting Lake, as saying the porpoise in Hunan was found with weights around its tail.
Two porpoise carcasses found on separate Hong Kong shores
Officials said the fishermen who set the net feared they would be blamed for the creature’s death and tied bricks to its tail to sink it.
Other fishermen who witnessed the incident told the authority, leading to the discovery of the body, the report said. The investigation is ongoing and the suspects are still at large.
A fishing authority spokesman told the newspaper that the porpoise’s death showed the difficulty of balancing conservation with the livelihoods of fishermen.
“It’s difficult to figure out a good model to protect the porpoises without affecting fishermen’s business,” he said.
In mainland China, finless porpoises are referred to as “giant pandas in water” because of their endangered status. Their numbers fell from 2,700 in 1991 to 1,800 in 2006, and there were 1,045 finless porpoises in 2012, according to agriculture ministry data.
Source: SCMP
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13/06/2019
- Chinese social media finds light relief in struggle over gaokao Question 12 in an American cafe
Video of a US middle school maths teacher trying to complete a mathematics question from a Chinese exam paper has been widely shared on Chinese social media. Photo: Weibo
A video of a US secondary school maths teacher comically trying – and failing – to complete a mathematics question from a Chinese gaokao exam paper has been widely shared on social media in China.
The video was shared on June 8 by an unidentified Chinese teacher working in the United States. It shows her friend, a US secondary school maths teacher, trying to solve a question from this year’s gaokao, the annual Chinese college entrance examination that has a reputation for difficulty, even by international standards.
The question was taken from section II of the natural sciences mathematics exam paper on the national level, which is generally a more challenging test given to students who select the science track.
“I heard this year’s gaokao maths questions are very difficult so I searched online and tried to solve one in a cafe. But it has been a long time, so I forgot how to solve it,” the Chinese teacher told online news platform Guancha Syndicate.
At that moment, the US maths teacher was sitting next to her and playing chess with his friends, “so I asked if he could help me solve a question, but that posed a big challenge for him”, she said.
In the video, the US teacher looks confused by question 12, a multiple choice question about functions. He reads it for three minutes, then starts to analyse and explain the steps to the Chinese teacher.
He first tries the method of substitution but fails and finally chooses D by exclusion.
The US secondary school maths teacher still doesn’t know his answer was wrong. Photo: Weibo
“I think it’s this one (option D), it’s matching, it’s D!,” the American teacher says confidently. Later in the video, the Chinese teacher explains, “He spent around seven to eight minutes on this question and finally chose D, so he should get it correct, shouldn’t he?”
However, the answer turned out to be B, much to the amusement of social media users. Posts about the video have been viewed 140 million times on microblogging site Weibo, and the video has been picked up by other Chinese news media.
Crunch time as gaokao exam season starts for China’s university hopefuls
Weibo users shared their views below the post, with comments such as, “Question 12 is usually the hardest one”; “these multiple choices should not take more than 50 seconds”; and “he would not be able to finish the whole paper at this speed”.
According to the Chinese teacher, her US friend still doesn’t know his answer was wrong.
“He just said the question is ‘worded really weird’ and he cannot clearly figure it out,” she said.
Source: SCMP
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10/06/2019
- Beijing has to reconcile the competing needs to appear tough to the Chinese public and conciliatory to an international audience
- China feels US has long had the advantage in shaping global opinion but it now needs to make itself heard
China must appear tough for an increasingly nationalistic audience at home and be conciliatory to an international audience wary of China’s assertive foreign and defence policy. Photo: Xinhua
In just the last week, a Chinese official posed a question that would resonate among his fellow cadres: as China rises, why are we not making more friends and why are our voices not heard?
The question has gained weight as the trade war with the United States has deepened, and Chinese officials have scrambled to win the battle of public opinion at home and abroad.
It also came to the fore at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore on the weekend, when Chinese officials were faced with balancing the need to appear tough for an increasingly nationalistic audience at home and being conciliatory to an international audience wary of China’s assertive foreign and defence policy.
Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhuo, a senior fellow at the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Sciences and a public diplomacy veteran for the military, said the expectations clashed in Singapore.
“Currently there are two parallel worlds in the public opinion landscape, one domestic and another international, and the two of them are basically split and in two extremes,” Zhao said.
“[The Shangri-La Dialogue] is a place where the two worlds clash. As the Chinese delegation [at the forum] we need to show our position, but it is becoming more difficult to balance [the expectations of the two sides].
“If you are tough, the domestic audience will be satisfied, but it won’t bode well with the international audience. But if we appear to be soft, we will be the target of overwhelming criticism at home.”
China asks state media to pick battles carefully with long US trade war looming, sources say
Zhao said this was an unprecedented challenge for Chinese cadres, who must also satisfy the expectations of the leadership.
“Our task was about diplomacy and making friends. But [with the tough position] you may not be able to make friends, and might even exacerbate the tension,” he said.
The pressure was immense when Chinese Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe took to the stage on Sunday in a rare appearance at the forum. Concerned about how Wei’s performance would be received at home, Beijing ordered Chinese media to minimise their coverage of acting US defence secretary Patrick Shanahan’s address in case it made China appear weak, according to a source familiar with the arrangements for Chinese media.
In his speech, Wei struck a defiant tone, vowing that the PLA would “fight at all costs” for “reunification” with Taiwan and that China was ready to fight the US to the end on the trade front.
Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe makes a rare appearance at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Photo: Reuters
Major General Jin Yinan, from the PLA’s National Defence University, a member of the Chinese delegation to the Singapore summit, said Wei’s speech defied expectations that China would show restraint with the US, and demonstrated China’s confidence on the world stage.
The public response at home was immediate and positive. Tens of thousands of Chinese internet users flooded social media platforms such as the Twitter-like Weibo service to express their approval for Wei’s hard line.
“This is the attitude that the Chinese military should show to the world,” one commenter said.
“I am proud of my country for being so strong and powerful,” another said.
Over the past year, Beijing’s propaganda apparatus has tightly controlled the domestic media narrative on the trade war, barring independent reporting on the tensions. But since the breakdown of trade talks in early May, the authorities have gone one step further by escalating nationalistic rhetoric in newspapers and on television.
How Donald Trump’s tweets outgunned China’s heavy media weapons in the trade war publicity battle
China has also tried to make its case to the world with an official statement. On the same day that Wei addressed the gathering in Singapore, the State Council, China’s cabinet, put China’s side of the dispute in a white paper, saying the US should bear responsibility for the breakdown of the trade talks.
A Chinese delegate at the forum said Beijing felt Washington had long had the advantage in shaping global opinion and there was an urgent need for China to make itself heard.
“We should get more used to voicing our position through Western platforms. The US has been criticising us on many issues. But why should the Americans dominate all the platforms and have the final say over everything?” the delegate said.
Before Wei’s appearance at the dialogue, China had not sent such a high-ranking official for eight years. It had long sought to play down the importance of the forum, seeing it as a platform wielded by the US and its Western allies to attack China.
In 2002, China set up the Beijing Xiangshan Forum to rival the Singapore gathering and amplify its voice on security issues.
But Chinese officials are well aware that Xiangshan does not have the same impact and profile as the Shangri-La Dialogue, according to Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
“[At the same time, the long absence of high-level Chinese representation to the Shangri-La Dialogue also] raises the question of whether it might be sustainable in the long run for [the dialogue] if they continue to not have such ministerial representation [from China],” Koh said.
Zhao, who is also the director of the Xiangshan forum’s secretariat office, agreed that China lagged the US in promoting the image of the military and in winning public opinion.
“China has not fought a war in 30 years. We have only built some islands in the South China Sea and yet have received so much criticism from the international media. The US has engaged in many wars but they are seldom criticised. This reflects that China is in a disadvantaged position in international discourse,” he said.
Expectations collided at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this month. Photo: AFP
In a rare conciliatory gesture – and just days before the 30th anniversary of the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square – Wei took questions from a room of international delegates on a range of sensitive issues, including the crackdown and China’s mass internment camps in Xinjiang. While he largely toed the official line in his reply, his presence at the forum and willingness to address the questions raised hopes that China would become a more responsible partner in global affairs despite its continuing disputes with the US.
Andrea Thompson, US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said Wei’s attendance at the Singapore gathering was a “positive sign” and she hoped that China would be more open and transparent in addressing issues such as arms control and cybersecurity.
“I appreciate that he is here. I think it’s important to have a dialogue … There will be areas where we will agree, and some areas where we disagree, but you still have to have dialogue,” Thompson said.
Source: SCMP
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