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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11/04/2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – China reported on Saturday a rise in new coronavirus cases, as authorities try to head off a second wave of infections, particularly from imported and asymptomatic cases, as curbs on cities and travel are lifted.
The National Health Commission said 46 new cases were reported on Friday, including 42 involving travellers from abroad, up from 42 cases a day earlier.
In its statement the commission added that 34 new asymptomatic cases were reported, down from 47 the previous day.
Mainland China’s tally of infections now stands at 81,953. The death toll rose by three to 3,339.
Tough curbs imposed since January helped rein in infections sharply from the height of the pandemic in February. But policymakers fear a second wave triggered by arrivals from overseas or asymptomatic patients.
Northeastern Heilongjiang recently reported a spike in new cases because of Chinese nationals entering the province from Russia, which has seen a surge of cases.
Provincial health officials said it had 22 new imported cases on Friday, all Chinese nationals coming from Russia, and one new local case, in its capital of Harbin.
Inner Mongolia had a daily tally of 27 new imported cases by Saturday morning, all from Russia, the region’s health authority said.
The central province of Hubei, where the virus emerged late last year, reported no new cases for a seventh successive day.
A rise in virus infections has prompted authorities in Guangzhou to step up scrutiny of foreigners, ordering bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin, the U.S. consulate in the southern city said.
Anyone with “African contacts” faces mandatory virus tests followed by quarantine, regardless of recent travel history or previous isolation, it said in a statement.
It advised African-Americans or those who feel they might be suspected of contact with nationals of African origin to avoid the city.
Since the epidemic broke out in the provincial capital of Wuhan, it has spread around the world, infecting 1.6 million people and killing more than 100,000.
Source: Reuters
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10/03/2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s central bank on Sunday pledged to further support the slowing economy by spurring loans and lowering borrowing costs, following data that showed a sharp drop in February’s bank lending due to seasonal factors.
The central bank is widely expected to ease monetary policy further this year to encourage lending especially to small and private firms vital for growth and job creation.
The central bank’s “prudent” monetary policy will emphasize on counter-cyclical adjustments, said People’s Bank of China (PBOC) Governor Yi Gang, using a phrase that implies the need to fight an economic slowdown.
“The global economy still faces some downward pressure and China faces many risks and challenges in its economy and financial sector,” Yi said at a press conference on the sidelines of the country’s annual meeting of parliament.
There is still some room for the PBOC to cut reserve requirement ratios (RRRs), although the amount of room is less compared with a few years ago, Yi said.
The PBOC has cut the amount of cash that commercial banks need to set aside as reserves five times in the past year to spur lending to small businesses in the private sector. The RRR for big banks is now at 13.5 percent and the ratio for small- to medium-size banks is at 11.5 percent.
Yi said lending rates for small firms are still relatively elevated due to higher risk premiums and the central bank will forge ahead with reforms to lower such risk premiums.
High risk premiums on loans to small firms reflect commercial banks’ traditional reluctance to extend credit to the sector because of concerns about their creditworthiness.
PBOC data on Sunday showed new bank loans in China fell sharply in February from a record the previous month, but the drop was likely due to seasonal factors, while policymakers continue to press lenders to help cash-strapped firms stay afloat.
A pull-back in February’s tally had been widely expected as Chinese banks tend to front-load loans at the beginning of the year to get higher-quality customers and win market share.
Chinese banks made 885.8 billion yuan ($131.81 billion) in net new yuan loans in February, down sharply from a record 3.23 trillion yuan in January, when several other key credit gauges also picked up modestly in response to the central bank’s policy easing.
Yi said combined January-February new loans and total social financing (TSF), a broad measure of credit and liquidity in the economy, could paint a more accurate picture as they showed a rise of 374.8 billion yuan and 1.05 trillion yuan from a year earlier, respectively.
DEBT DEFAULTS
Analysts say China needs to revive weak credit growth to help head off a sharper economic slowdown this year, but investors are worried about a further jump in corporate debt and the risk to banks as they relax their lending standards.
Corporate bond defaults hit a record last year, while banks’ non-performing loan ratio notched a 10-year high.
Pan Gongsheng, a vice governor at the PBOC, told the same briefing that China will control the amount of bond defaults in 2019, using both legal and market means.
Pan conceded that bond defaults increased last year, but the level of defaults was not high compared with China’s average bad loan ratio.
Premier Li Keqiang told parliament on Tuesday that monetary policy would be “neither too tight nor too loose”. Li also pledged to push for market-based reforms to lower real interest rates.
Chinese policymakers have repeatedly vowed not to open the credit floodgates in an economy already saddled with piles of debt – a legacy of massive stimulus during the global financial crisis in 2008-09 and subsequent downturns.
Sources have told Reuters the central bank is not ready to cut benchmark interest rates just yet, but is likely to cut market-based rates.
Yi said the downward trend in TSF has been initially curbed and broad M2 money supply growth will be more or less in line with nominal gross domestic product growth in 2019, Yi added.
Central bank data showed growth of outstanding TSF, a rough gauge of broad credit conditions, slowed to 10.1 percent in February from January’s 10.4 percent, versus a record low of 9.8 percent in December.
M2 money supply grew 8.0 percent in February from a year earlier, missing forecasts, the central bank data showed. Yi said China’s macro leverage ratio, or the amount of debt relative to GDP, was at 249.4 percent at the end of 2018, a fall of 1.5 percentage points from a year earlier, Yi said.
Analysts note there is a time lag before a jump in lending will translate into growth, suggesting business conditions may get worse before they get better.
Most economists expect a rocky first half before conditions begin to stabilize around mid-year as support measures begin to have a greater impact.
China’s economic growth is expected to cool to around 6.2 percent this year, a 29-year low, according to Reuters polls.
Growth slowed to 6.6 percent last year, with domestic demand curbed by higher borrowing rates and tighter credit conditions and exporters hit by the escalating trade war with the United States.
Source: Reuters
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 