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.
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BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s factory activity likely rose for a second straight month in April as more businesses re-opened from strict lockdowns implemented to contain the coronavirus outbreak, which has now paralysed the global economy.
The official manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI), due for release on Thursday, is forecast to fall to 51 in April, from 52 in March, according to the median forecast of 32 economists polled by Reuters. A reading above the 50-point mark indicates an expansion in activity.
While the forecast PMI would show a slight moderation in China’s factory activity growth, it would be a stark contrast to recent PMIs in other economies, which plummeted to previously unimaginable lows.
That global slump, caused by heavy government-ordered lockdowns, as well as the cautious resumption of business in China, suggests any recovery in the world’s second-largest economy is likely to be some way off.
“The recovery so far has been led by a bounce-back in production, however, the growth bottleneck has decisively shifted to the demand side, as global growth has weakened and consumption recovery has lagged amid continued social distancing,” Morgan Stanley said in a note.
“The expected slump in external demand has likely capped further recovery in industrial production.”
The latest official data showed 84% of mid-sized and small business had reopened as of April 15, compared with 71.7% on March 24.
Hobbled by the coronavirus, China’s economy shrank 6.8% in the first quarter from a year earlier, the first contraction since current quarterly records began.
That has left Chinese manufacturers with reduced export orders and a logistics logjam, as many exporters grapple with rising inventory, high costs and falling profits. Some have let workers go as part of the cost-cutting efforts.
A China-based brokerage Zhongtai Securities estimated that the country’s real unemployment rate, measured using international standards, could exceed 20%, equal to more than 70 million job losses and much higher than March’s official reading of 5.9%.
Sheng Laiyun, deputy head at the statistics bureau, said on Sunday migrant workers and college graduates are facing increasing pressures to secure jobs, while official jobless surveys show nearly 20% of employed workers not working in March.
Chinese authorities have rolled out more support to revive the economy. The People’s Bank of China earlier in April cut the amount of cash banks must hold as reserves and reduced the interest rate on lenders’ excess reserves.
City at centre of outbreak finally able to declare itself clear of disease after months in lockdown and thousands of deaths
Risk of infection remains, however, with some patients testing positive for coronavirus that causes disease without showing symptoms
Ferries and other public transport services resumed in Wuhan last week. Photo: Xinhua
The city of Wuhan, the initial epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, no longer has any Covid-19 patients in hospital after the last 12 were discharged on Sunday.
Their release ended a four-month nightmare for the city, where the disease was first detected in December. The number of patients being treated for Covid-19, the disease caused by a new coronavirus, peaked on February 18 at 38,020 – nearly 10,000 of whom were in severe or critical condition.
“With the joint efforts of Wuhan and the national medical aid given to Hubei province, all cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan were cleared as of April 26,” Mi Feng, a spokesman for the National Health Commission said on Sunday afternoon.
The announcement came only one day after the city discharged the last patient who had been in a severe condition. That patient also was the last severe case in Hubei province.
The last patient discharged from Wuhan Chest Hospital, a 77-year-old man surnamed Ding, twice tested negative for Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and was released at noon on Sunday.
“I missed my family so much!” Ding told Changjing Daily.
Another unidentified patient exclaimed as he left the hospital: “The air outside is so fresh! The weather is so good today!”
Wuhan faced a long journey to bring its patient count down to zero.
The city of 11 million, the capital of Hubei province and a transport hub for central China, was put under a strict lockdown on January 23 that barred anyone from entering or exiting the city without official approval for 76 days until it was officially lifted on April 8.
Coronavirus: Wuhan, Los Angeles officials discuss getting back to work after lockdown
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Residents were ordered to stay in their apartments as the city stopped public transport and banned private cars from city streets. As the epidemic worsened, more than 42,000 medical staff from across the country were sent to the city and to Hubei province to help ease the burden on the local health care system.
Wuhan was the hardest hit city in China, accounting for 50,333 of the 82,827 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases recorded in China. More than 4,600 died in the country from the disease.
On March 13, the city reported for the first time that there were no new suspected cases of the infection, and five days later there were no confirmed cases.
The number of discharged patients bottomed out at 39.1 per cent at the end of February, gradually climbing to 92.2 per cent by last Thursday.
“Having the patients in the hospital cleared on April 26 marks a major achievement for the city’s Covid-19 treatment,” the Wuhan Health Commission said in a statement.
However, having no severe cases in hospital does not mean all the discharged patients will require no further treatment as they may still need further care.
“Clearing all the severe cases marks a decisive victory for the battle to safeguard Wuhan,” health minister Ma Xiaowei told state broadcaster China Central Television on Saturday.
“Some patients who have other conditions are being treated in specialised hospitals. It has been properly arranged.”
Coronavirus: Chinese writer hit by nationalist backlash over diary about Wuhan lockdown
18 Apr 2020
Ten patients aged between 42 and 85 who have been declared coronavirus-free are still in intensive care at the city’s Tongji Hospital where they are being treated for kidney problems and other complications arising from Covid-19. Some still need ventilators to help them breathe.
These 10 patients are under 24-hour care, with 190 nurses on four-hour rotations. There are other patients in a similar condition in two other hospitals in Wuhan, according to the Hubei Broadcasting and Television Network.
However, the discharge of the last batch of Covid-19 patients does not mean that the risk of infection is gone.
The city reported 20 new cases of people testing positive for Sars-CoV-2, the official name for the coronavirus that causes the disease, but who do not yet show symptoms.
There are 535 such carriers under medical observation. Past data shows some of these asymptomatic carriers will develop symptoms, and so will be counted as Covid-19 patients under China’s diagnosis and treatment plan.
China’s coronavirus infection curve has flattened out with about 694 imported cases of Covid-19 on top of about 800 locally transmitted ones now under treatment.
The national health commission spokesman warned that people still need to be on high alert as the virus is continuing to spread around the globe, with no sign yet of a slowdown.
“[We] must not drop our guard and loosen up. [We] must discover cases in time and deal with them quickly,” Mi said, citing the continued pressure from cases imported by people returning from overseas.
“The next step will be to implement the requirements of the central government and continue to guard against imported cases and a rebound of domestic transmitted cases.”
BEIJING, April 23 (Xinhua) — China decided to donate another 30 million U.S. dollars to the World Health Organization (WHO) in support of global efforts to fight COVID-19 and the construction of public health systems in developing countries, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said here Thursday.
Spokesperson Geng Shuang told a news briefing that the WHO, led by Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had actively fulfilled its duties with objective, science-based and fair position and played an important role in assisting countries in responding to the outbreak and boosting international cooperation on COVID-19.
Geng said to support the WHO is to defend the principles of multilateralism and safeguard the status and authority of the United Nations at a crucial time of the battle against the pandemic, adding that the virus is the common enemy of humankind, and the international community can only defeat it through unity and cooperation.
In March, China donated 20 million dollars to the WHO to support the global fight against COVID-19.
The spokesperson said China’s donations to the WHO reflected the support and trust of the Chinese government and people in the organization, and China also made its own contributions to global public health and the fight against the pandemic.
“China will continue to stand in solidarity and render mutual assistance with other countries to jointly overcome the pandemic, safeguard regional and global public health and build a community with a shared future for mankind,” he said.
(Reuters) – Consumer goods giant Unilever Plc (ULVR.L) (UNA.AS) withdrew its full-year forecast on Thursday, saying the hit from lockdowns in China and India, as well as lower ice cream sales, offset strong U.S. and European sales of cleaning items, sending its shares down 5%.
Underlying sales across Asia, the Middle East and Russia, fell 3.7%, as lockdowns in the quarter restricted restaurant visits and shopping in China and led to factory shutdowns that halted production in India.
In Europe, Turkey and Latin America, Unilever’s 3 billion euro ice cream business was hit by national efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, deterring distributors in holiday destinations from buying stock.
“Many of our classic out-of-home retailers like leisure sites, travel hubs, beaches and tourist destinations were closed,” Chief Financial Officer Graeme Pitkethly said on a call.
These factors countered increased sales in the United States and Europe, where consumers stocked up on laundry detergents, Domestos bleach, Cif cleaning products and personal hygiene items, as the virus spread to those regions.
Overall, first-quarter turnover rose 0.2% to 12.40 billion euros ($13.42 billion), slightly missing the estimate of 12.77 billion euros based on analysts polled by Factset.
The company withdrew its sales performance targets for the year, which forecast growth at the lower end of a 3%-5% range, saying it could not “reliably assess the impact” of the virus, , although it said it would still pay its interim dividend.
Jefferies analysts said investors would be asking why Unilever “has apparently been hit so badly, and early, by the negative impacts of COVID-19 without seeing much of the positives. We expect a difficult day for the shares.”
Shares in Unilever, which joins spirits maker Diageo (DGE.L) and other consumer goods companies in withdrawing guidance, was down 5.5% at 4,008 pence in early trading.
The Anglo-Dutch company’s report follows results from larger U.S. rival Procter & Gamble (PG.N), which last week said its U.S. sales had seen their biggest rise in decades.
Unilever also said underlying sales grew strongly in North America, rising 4.8% as shoppers stocked up on personal hygiene products, Knorr soups and Hellmann’s dressings.
In Europe, sales growth was led by Germany and Britain, although prices across the region fell.
“We are adapting to new demand patterns and are preparing for lasting changes in consumer behaviour, in each country, as we move out of the crisis and into recovery,” Unilever Chief Executive Alan Jope said in a statement.
The company said it was directing a chunk of its 500 million euro package to support suppliers towards its ice cream distribution partners, which Pitkethly called the “jewel” in its supplier relationships.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will cut its subsidies on new energy vehicles (NEV) by 10% this year, and will expand government purchases of NEVs, the finance ministry said on Thursday.
China will in principle cut such subsidies by 20% in 2021 and 30% in 2022, the finance ministry said in a statement. However, it will not cut subsidies on qualified new energy commercial vehicles earmarked for public purposes this year.
Under the plan, China would extend subsidies for NEV purchases to 2022, rather than ending them this year, and extend their purchase tax exemption for two years.
China will slightly lift the requirements for the driving range and power efficiency of cars qualified for the subsidies, the statement said, adding authorities will support the sales of cars with swappable batteries, a technology that has been pursued by Chinese electric vehicle makers Nio Inc (NIO.N) and BAIC BluePark (600733.SS).
Only passenger cars cheaper than 300,000 yuan (34,330.23 pounds) will be offered subsidies, it said. The price is higher than starting price of Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) China-made Model 3 sedans.
China also said authorities will give priority to purchase new energy vehicles for government use but did not give further details.
The new policy is effective from April 23. NEVs include battery-powered electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.
China has set an aggressive goal for NEVs to account for a fifth of auto sales by 2025 compared with the current 5%, as it seeks to reduce pollution and cultivate homegrown champions.
Sales of NEVs, however, contracted for a ninth month in a row in March and were down over 50% from a year earlier, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).
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.
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
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“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.
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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
12 Apr 2020
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.
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.
BEIJING, April 17 (Xinhua) — The lander and rover of the Chang’e-4 probe have resumed work for the 17th lunar day on the far side of the moon after “sleeping” during the extremely cold night.
The lander woke up at 1:24 p.m. Friday (Beijing time), and the rover awoke at 8:57 p.m. Thursday. Both are in normal working order, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.
The Chang’e-4 probe, launched on Dec. 8, 2018, made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3, 2019.
A lunar day equals 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is the same length. The Chang’e-4 probe, switching to dormant mode during the lunar night due to the lack of solar power, has survived about 470 Earth days on the moon.
The rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2, has worked much longer than its three-month design life, becoming the longest-working lunar rover on the moon.
Carrying scientific instruments such as panoramic camera, lunar penetrating radar, infrared imaging spectrometer and neutral atom detector, the rover will continue to move northwest to conduct scientific detection.
The scientific tasks of the Chang’e-4 mission include conducting low-frequency radio astronomical observation, surveying the terrain and landforms, detecting the mineral composition and shallow lunar surface structure and measuring neutron radiation and neutral atoms.
The Chang’e-4 mission embodies China’s hope to combine wisdom in space exploration with four payloads developed by the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.
Image copyright ANIImage caption People participating in the chariot-pulling festival
Indian officials have suspended a local magistrate and a police official for allowing large crowds to attend a chariot-pulling festival at a Hindu temple on Thursday morning.
A case has also been filed against the trustees of the temple and another 20 people, police told the BBC.
Pictures of the crowds caused outrage after they surfaced on social media.
It comes weeks after Covid-19 clusters were linked to a Muslim religious gathering in the capital, Delhi.
Revoor village, which is in the state’s Kalburagi district, has been sealed off and officials are rushing teams of medical personnel to set up fever clinics there, the deputy commissioner of the district, told the BBC.
Kalburagi recorded India’s first coronavirus-related death – it is also the first district to implement “containment areas”, which involves sealing off villages where infections are reported.
Revoor is also close to another village that has been sealed off after a two-year-old tested positive for coronavirus.
The festival was held despite temple trustees giving officials an undertaking that it would not go ahead, a state lawmaker, Priyank Kharge, told the BBC.
Officials say that the daily rituals were performed at the temple on Wednesday evening in the presence of a few priests and temple trustees.
But early the next morning, the chariot was brought out of the temple premises and was pulled by “hundreds of people,” according to one official. They estimate that under 1,000 devotees attended the event.
BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua held a phone conversation on Thursday with British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak on advancing bilateral cooperation on epidemic prevention and economic development.
Hu, who leads the Chinese delegation to the China-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD), noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently held two phone conversations and reached important consensus on jointly dealing with the pandemic and developing China-UK relations.
The Chinese side stands ready to work with the British side to implement the consensus reached by the two leaders, deepen practical cooperation in such fields as epidemic prevention and finance, and provide Britain with support and assistance within its capabilities in medical supplies and other fields, Hu said.
The vice premier expressed hope that the two sides will further strengthen cooperation under the framework of the United Nations and the Group of 20, promote macroeconomic policy coordination, cut tariff, remove barriers, and facilitate the flow of trade, so as to maintain the stability of the global industrial supply chain and promote sustainable growth of the world economy.
For his part, Sunak thanked China for its support and assistance, adding that Britain stands ready to strengthen bilateral cooperation in epidemic prevention, economy and finance through channels like the China-UK EFD, so as to continuously advance bilateral relations.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 