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.
In his “verbal message of thanks”, Mr Xi said he highly appreciated Mr Kim’s support during China’s outbreak and “showed his personal attention to the situation of the pandemic and people’s health” in North Korea, according to state media.
Mr Xi called for more efforts to strengthen co-operation in preventing the spread of the coronavirus, and said China was “willing to continue to provide assistance within its own capacity for [North Korea] in the fight against Covid-19”.
On Friday, North Korean state media reported that Mr Kim had sent a verbal message to the president that “congratulated him, highly appreciating that he is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic”.
Image copyright REUTERSImage caption Kim Jong-un disappeared from public view for 20 days, before visiting a factory on 2 May
Mr Kim recently went 20 days without appearing in public, and missed the celebration of his grandfather’s birthday – one of the biggest events of the year.
Some media reports claimed he was “gravely ill”, or even dead.
But he then appeared at a fertiliser factory on 2 May – apparently in good health.
On Wednesday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told a parliamentary committee that there had been no signs the health rumours were true.
“He was performing his duties normally when he was out of the public eye,” a member of the committee, Kim Byung-kee, told reporters afterwards.
The lawmaker said the North Korean leader’s absence could have been down to a Covid-19 outbreak that the authorities in Pyongyang had not reported.
Analysis
By Celia Hatton, Asia Pacific Editor, BBC World Service
For months, North Korea-watchers have questioned Pyongyang’s claims that it has managed to isolate itself from Covid-19.
Admittedly, North Korea was the first country to suspend travel in response to the virus. There are unconfirmed reports that North Korean guards have been ordered to shoot at those who try to cross the lengthy border the North shares with China. However, it will be difficult to completely seal that dividing line for long. North Korea’s underground economy relies on illicit trade with Chinese entrepreneurs.
Beijing has a few good reasons for wanting to help North Korea. On a practical level, China needs to suppress a possible Covid-19 outbreak there if it wants to keep its own population healthy. Beijing also worries about what might happen inside North Korea if the virus takes hold. The North’s decrepit health system would quickly be overwhelmed by an outbreak of Covid-19, and that could threaten the fragile Kim Jong-un regime. Beijing has been Pyongyang’s biggest aid donor for decades, and it will continue to do what it can to keep Mr Kim in power. The alternatives to Kim Jong-un are much riskier for China, which does not want change on its doorstep.
China’s global political interests are also at play. Diplomatically, Mr Xi’s public exchange with Kim Jong-un underlines the seemingly close ties between China and North Korea. Pyongyang has been slow to accept public offers of help from the United States, and peace talks with Washington have stalled. If North Korea appeared to accept Beijing’s help, China would reassert itself as North Korea’s “true” ally in a time of need.
South Korea itself reported 18 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Saturday.
Seventeen of them are linked to a 29-year-old man who tested positive after spending time at five nightclubs and bars in Seoul’s Itaewon leisure district last weekend, the Yonhap news agency said.
Mayor Park Won-soon ordered nightclubs, bars and hostess venues across the capital to suspend business in response.
“Carelessness can lead to an explosion in infections – we clearly realised this through the group infections seen in the Itaewon club case,” Mr Park said.
Health officials have urged people who have visited the five venues in Itaewon to self-isolate and get tested to prevent additional transmissions. At least 1,500 people signed their entry logs, according to Yonhap.
The new infections brought the nationwide total to 10,840, while the death toll remained unchanged at 256.
BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhua) — China has achieved much progress in environmental protection and taken the lead in green development in recent years.
The efforts have exemplified Chinese President Xi Jinping’s proposal of “working together for a green and better future for all” made a year ago in his speech at the opening ceremony of the International Horticultural Exhibition 2019 Beijing.
In the keynote speech, Xi proposed a five-point initiative on promoting green development, namely pursuing harmony between man and nature, pursuing the prosperity based on green development, fostering a passion for nature-caring lifestyle, pursuing a scientific spirit in ecological governance, and joining hands to tackle environmental challenges.
China’s hard work on environment protection has paid off.
The ecological environment has improved significantly. People are enjoying more days of blue sky, cleaner water, and fertile land.
China has achieved the goal of zero growth of desertified land by 2030 set by the United Nations ahead of time. Besides, forest stock volume increased by 4.56 billion cubic meters compared with that of 2005.
Carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP in 2018 fell by 45.8 percent compared with that of 2005, exceeding the target set for the year.
After more than 30 years of hard work, the seventh largest desert in China, the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, once known as the “sea of death” difficult for birds to fly across, has turned into a green valley.
In January 2020, in a letter in reply to the student representatives of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate, the Chinese president mentioned his thoughts about ecological civilization in his youth.
“Over four decades ago, I lived and worked for many years in a small village on the Loess Plateau in western China. Back then, the ecology and environment there was seriously damaged due to over-development and the local people were trapped in poverty as a result,” Xi wrote.
“This experience taught me that man and nature are a community of life and that the damage done to nature will ultimately hurt mankind,” said Xi.
China’s progress and achievements are recognized worldwide.
The ecological civilization and green development advocated by China are actually an endeavor to find a way to balance economic development and environmental protection, said John Cobb, Jr., the founding president of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Noting that the endeavor is a remarkable exploration, he expressed his hope that it will succeed.
China is on the right path in dealing with global climate change and achieving sustainable development, said Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum.
In addition to making efforts at home, China has also rolled out a series of measures to support the global combat against climate change.
In September 2015, ahead of the Paris climate change conference, Xi pledged a 20-billion-yuan (3-billion-U.S. dollars) China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund, which was dedicated to help other developing countries combat climate change.
China has also been fulfilling the obligations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, and achieved the goal of its intended nationally determined contributions submitted to the secretariat of the Climate Change Convention as scheduled.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his appreciation for China’s important contributions to addressing the climate change and building a green “Belt and Road,” and said he expects China to continue to play a leading role in addressing the climate change and other issues.
“Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets,” a concept put forward by Xi in 2005 when he visited Yucun Village in southeast China’s Zhejiang Province as the party chief of the province, has become the motto of the Lao Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
In March 2020, when Xi returned to Yucun, he said that economic development should not be achieved at the expense of the ecological environment. To protect the ecological environment is to develop the productive forces, he said.
The history of civilizations shows that the rise or fall of a civilization is closely tied to its relationship with nature, Xi said at the International Horticultural Exhibition last year.
Only by joining hands can the humankind advance a global ecological civilization and march towards the bright future of building a community with a shared future for mankind.
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
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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 17 (Xinhua) — China supports the action plan issued by the Group of 20 (G20) to deal with the impact of COVID-19 and will contribute to the G20 efforts to fight the pandemic through its own policy actions, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said Friday.
G20 finance ministers and central bank governors agreed Wednesday to suspend debt service payments for the world’s poorest countries from May 1 until the end of the year.
China will implement more proactive fiscal policies with higher quality and efficiency, appropriately increase the fiscal deficit ratio, issue special government bonds, increase the scale of special bonds for local governments, and further cut taxes and fees, the MOF said.
In the process, China will strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination with G20 members and jointly support the implementation of the G20 action plan, the MOF said.
China will carry out specific work through bilateral consultations at the request of relevant poor borrowers in accordance with the G20 consensus, the MOF said.
To achieve better results of the action plan, China calls on multilateral creditors and commercial creditors to take appropriate actions as soon as possible to jointly help the poorest countries tide over their difficulties, the MOF said.
China has been providing support to the international community through other bilateral and multilateral channels, including donating 20 million U.S. dollars to the World Health Organization and earmarking 10 million U.S. dollars in its Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation Fund under the Asian Development Bank to support outbreak control programs in the region.
Image copyright REUTERS
Image copyright REUTERS
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 