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.
Fu Chengyu, the former chairman of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), says hostility towards Beijing will increase after the coronavirus
US will try to ‘thwart China’s rise’ and economic fallout from Covid-19 will be worse than the global financial crisis, says Fu
Former Sinopec chairman Fu Chengyu says China will face a more hostile world post coronavirus. Photo: EPA
The world is set to become more hostile for China after the coronavirus as the risk of “black swan” events gathers for Beijing, a heavyweight in China’s state oil industry has warned, reflecting growing wariness about the geopolitical environment among political and business elites.
Fu Chengyu, the former chairman of both China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Sinopec Group, painted an ominous picture of increasing antagonism from the United States and damaging unforeseen events, known as black swans, like Covid-19
at an online symposium organised by business magazine Caijing.
The US would “mercilessly” suppress China in the fields of economics, trade, finance and technology, and Washington was set on taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to “forge a less favourable international environment for” the nation, Fu said this week.
“We’ve smelled the odours and new plots against China are in formation,” he said.
After the epidemic, the external environment for our survival will be more severe – Fu Chengyu
“After the epidemic, the external environment for our survival will be more severe … we must prepare for the worst and do our best to achieve the best possible results.”
While Fu has retired from his posts at state companies, he is an influential voice in
with decades of experience and contacts in the US petroleum sector.
Fu was a counterpart of Rex Tillerson, who was chairman of ExxonMobil from 2006 to 2017, and served as US State Secretary under President Donald Trump until March 2018.
While at the helm of CNOOC in the early 2000s, he felt political heat from Washington over a US$18.5 billion takeover bid for the American oil company Unocal in 2005, which the company was subsequently forced to withdraw.
China says no evidence to suggest coronavirus virus came from Wuhan’s lab
Speaking at the event in Beijing, Fu said that the coronavirus, which has heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, will have impacts on global value chains and the world trade landscape for years to come.
“The crisis stemming from the coronavirus pandemic won’t be over in just one or two years … the impact will last longer than the 2008 global financial crisis,” he said.
He added that China would face numerous “black swan” risks in the future.
President Xi Jinping warned in 2019 that China must be on guard for black swan risks as well as “grey rhino” events, referring to an obvious threat that is often neglected.
Geopolitics is getting worse and worse, and we need to be very careful. The US will try various ways to thwart China’s rise, and energy is an important area
To respond to the economic fallout from the coronavirus, China must do more to create a self-sustaining domestic economy, Fu said, and in particular reduce input prices for gas and electricity and boost public services such as health care and education.
“Geopolitics is getting worse and worse, and we need to be very careful,” Fu said. “The US will try various ways to thwart China’s rise, and energy is an important area.”
The US could potentially form a new oil export alliance with Saudi Arabia and Russia to make it possible to cut oil supplies to China, he said.
“China must be prepared for such a scenario, and even when supplies are cut off, we can have some basic self-protection.”
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.
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.
Image copyright AFPImage caption Meet Hong and Kong?
Two newborn panda cubs at Berlin Zoo have been unexpectedly caught up in Hong Kong’s political unrest, after German newspapers started a campaign to name them “Hong” and “Kong”.
One of Berlin’s leading papers, Der Tagesspiegel, asked its readers to come up with name suggestions.
Top of the poll: “Hong” and “Kong”.
One reader wrote in to say they should be named “in solidarity with a city fighting for survival”.
Other suggested names included “Joshua Wong Chi-fung” and “Agnes Chow Ting” – after two prominent Hong Kong democracy activists.
Loaning pandas to zoos around the world is part of China’s soft diplomacy, aimed at winning hearts and minds abroad.
As the cubs will have to be returned to China in two to four years, the paper suggested that naming them after the activists might even be a sneaky way of keeping them in Germany.
The poll is in no way binding or even related to the zoo – but it was soon picked up by Germany’s leading tabloid, Bild, which issued a passionate call “to politicise” the naming of the little pandas.
“Bild is choosing to call the panda cubs Hong and Kong because it’s China’s brutal politics that lies behind these panda babies,” the paper wrote on Thursday.
“Bild is demanding of the German government that it reacts in a political way to the birth of these small bears.”
As German Chancellor Angela Merkel is currently on a visit to China, Bild said she could even relay the news to President Xi Jinping in person.
Image copyright EPAImage caption Mother panda Meng Meng has been on loan to Germany since 2017
Hong Kong activists had already called on Ms Merkel to raise their cause during her talks in Beijing.
In an earlier interview with Bild, activist Joshua Wong had suggested the zoo should name the animals “Freedom” and “Democracy”.
The German media’s foray into panda PR came as Hong Kong’s government launched a series of full-page adverts in international newspapers, designed to reassure investors that the city is still open for business.
The ads, which will run in leading papers around the world, say the government is determined to achieve a “peaceful, rational and reasonable resolution” to present political tensions.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 