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.
Indian security forces have killed a prominent militant leader in disputed Kashmir, officials say.
Riyaz Naikoo had taken over command of the banned Hizbul Mujahideen group, succeeding Burhan Wani who was killed by security forces in 2016.
Wani’s death triggered massive protests in the region, which is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan.
The region has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, which has flared following Wani’s killing.
Naikoo was shot dead in his home village of Beigh Pora in Pulwama district after militants killed eight security personnel in two separate attacks, part of a recent surge of violence in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Locals said the militant leader had been trapped in a joint siege laid by army, paramilitary and police forces. He had been on the run for eight years.
“At least 76 militants including Naikoo have been killed since January this year. But we also lost 20 soldiers including senior army and police officers,” a security official told BBC Urdu on condition of anonymity.
Under a new policy, militants who are killed are not identified and their bodies are not handed over to their families.
Officials had accused Riyaz Naikoo of plotting attacks against the security establishment in the valley.
Disputed Kashmir has been a flashpoint for more than 60 years, sparking two wars between India and Pakistan.
In August 2019, the Indian government stripped the region of its semi-autonomous status and split it into two federally-run territories.
Thousands of people were detained and the region remains under severe security restrictions.
Image caption A message written in the snow alongside the Tonghui river reads “Goodbye Li Wenliang!”
On a cold Beijing morning, on an uninspiring, urban stretch of the Tonghui river, a lone figure could be seen writing giant Chinese characters in the snow.
The message taking shape on the sloping concrete embankment was to a dead doctor.
“Goodbye Li Wenliang!” it read, with the author using their own body to make the imprint of that final exclamation mark.
Five weeks earlier, Dr Li had been punished by the police for trying to warn colleagues about the dangers of a strange new virus infecting patients in his hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Now he’d succumbed to the illness himself and pictures of that frozen tribute spread fast on the Chinese internet, capturing in physical form a deep moment of national shock and anger.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption A worker in a Chinese factory wears a protective mask
There’s still a great deal we don’t know about Covid-19, to give the disease caused by the virus its official name. Before it took its final fatal leap across the species barrier to infect its first human, it is likely to have been lurking inside the biochemistry of an – as yet unidentified – animal. That animal, probably infected after the virus made an earlier zoological jump from a bat, is thought to have been kept in a Wuhan market, where wildlife was traded illegally.
Beyond that, the scientists trying to map its deadly trajectory from origin to epidemic can say little more with any certainty.
But while they continue their urgent, vital work to determine the speed at which it spreads and the risks it poses, one thing is beyond doubt. A month or so on from its discovery, Covid-19 has shaken Chinese society and politics to the core.
That tiny piece of genetic material, measured in ten-thousandths of a millimetre, has set in train a humanitarian and economic catastrophe counted in more than 1,000 Chinese lives and tens of billions of Chinese yuan. It has closed off whole cities, placing an estimated 70 million residents in effective quarantine, shutting down transport links and restricting their ability to leave their homes. And it has exposed the limits of a political system for which social control is the highest value, breaching the rigid layers of censorship with a tsunami of grief and rage.
The risk for the ruling elite is obvious.
It can be seen in their response, ordering into action the military, the media and every level of government from the very top to the lowliest village committee.
The consequences are now entirely dependent on questions no one knows the answers to; can they pull off the complex task of bringing a runaway epidemic under control, and if so, how long might it take?
Across the world, people seem unsure how to respond to the small number of cases being detected in their own countries. The public mood can swing between panic – driven by the pictures of medical workers in hazmat suits – to complacency, brought on by headlines that suggest the risk is no worse than flu. The evidence from China suggests that both responses are misguided. Seasonal flu may well have a low fatality rate, measured in fractions of 1%, but it’s a problem because it affects so many people around the world.
The tiny proportion killed out of the many, many millions who catch it each year still numbers in the hundreds of thousands – individually tragic, collectively a major healthcare burden.
Very early estimates suggested the new virus may be at least as deadly as flu – precisely why so much effort is now going into stopping it becoming another global pandemic. But one new estimate suggests it could prove even deadlier yet, killing as many as 1% of those who contract it. For any individual, that risk is still relatively small, although it’s worth noting such estimates are averages – just like flu, the risks fall more heavily on the elderly and already infirm.
Image copyright REUTERSImage caption Despite the death toll, an increasing number of patients are recovering
But China’s experience of this epidemic demonstrates two things. Firstly, it offers a terrifying glimpse of the potential effect on a healthcare system when you scale up infections of this kind of virus across massive populations. Two new hospitals have had to be built in Wuhan in a matter of days, with beds for 2,600 patients, and giant stadiums and hotels are being used as quarantine centres, for almost 10,000 more.
Despite these efforts, many have still struggled to find treatment, with reports of people dying at home, unregistered in the official figures. Secondly, it highlights the importance of taking the task of containing outbreaks of new viruses extremely seriously. The best approach, most experts agree, is one based on transparency and trust, with good public information and proportionate, timely government action.
But in an authoritarian system, with strict censorship and an emphasis on political stability above all else, transparency and trust are in short supply.
Media caption Aerial time-lapse shows Wuhan hospital construction
But those measures have become necessary only because its initial response looked like the very definition of complacency.
There’s ample evidence that the warning signs were missed by the authorities, and worse, ignored. By late December, medical staff in Wuhan were beginning to notice unusual symptoms of viral pneumonia, with a cluster linked to the market trading in illegal wildlife. On 30 December, Dr Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist working in Wuhan’s Central Hospital, posted his concerns in a private medical chat group, advising colleagues to take measures to protect themselves. He’d seen seven patients who appeared to be suffering with an illness similar to Sars – another coronavirus that began in an illegal Chinese wildlife market in 2002 and went on to kill 774 people worldwide.
The case received national media attention, with a high-profile state-run TV report announcing that in total, eight people in Wuhan were being investigated for “spreading rumours”. The authorities, though, were well aware of the outbreak of illness. The day after Dr Li posted his message, China notified the World Health Organization, and the day after that, the suspected source – the market – was closed down.
But despite the multiplying cases and the concerns among medics that human-to-human transmission was taking place, the authorities did little to protect the public. Doctors were already setting up quarantine rooms and anticipating extra admissions when Wuhan held its important annual political gathering, the city’s People’s Congress.
Image caption Images from Chinese state TV show the large banquet in Wuhan
Most remarkable of all perhaps, the following day, Wuhan held a Lunar New Year dance performance, attended by senior officials from across the surrounding province of Hubei. A state media report of the event, since hurriedly deleted but captured here, says the performers, some with runny noses and feeling unwell, “overcame the fear of pneumonia… winning praise from the leaders”.
By the time the national authorities had woken up to the impending disaster, and closed the city down on 23 January, it was too late – the epidemic was out of control. Before Wuhan’s transport links were cut, an estimated five million people had left the city for the Lunar New Year break, travelling across China and the world.
The parallels in failures to pass bad news up the chain of command and the incentives to put the short-term interests of political stability ahead of public safety, seem all too apparent. Li Wenliang, who’d gone back to work after being warned to keep quiet, soon discovered he’d also been infected.
He died earlier this month, leaving a five-year-old son and a pregnant wife.
Anger was already simmering over the authorities’ failure to issue timely warnings, with the crisis now being aired in full view. Wuhan’s politicians were blaming senior officials for failing to authorise the release of the information; senior officials appeared to be preparing to hang Wuhan’s politicians out to dry.
But the death of a man, silenced for simply trying to protect his colleagues, burst open the dam with a wave of online fury directed not just at individuals, but at the system itself. So great was the public outrage, China’s censors appeared unsure what to censor and what to let through. The hashtag #Iwantfreedomofspeech was viewed almost two million times before it was blocked. Aware of the tide of emotion, the Party began paying its own tributes to Dr Li.
Image copyright COURTESY BADIUCAOImage caption Doctor Li Wenliang tried to warn authorities about the new virus and died after contracting it
China’s rulers, untroubled by the inconveniences of the ballot box, have far deeper and older fears of what might sweep them from office. The wars, famines and diseases that shook the dynasties of old have given them their inheritance; an acute historical sense of the danger of the unforeseen crisis. They will also know well what Chernobyl did for the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party in the former USSR.
“It’s impossible to know if Li Wenliang’s death will serve as the catalyst for something bigger,” Jude Blanchette, an expert on Chinese politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, tells me. “But the raw emotion that surged when news of his condition broke indicates deep levels of frustration and anger exist within the country.”
Precisely because it feels the weight of history, however, the Communist Party has made holding onto power a living obsession, and it has an ever more formidable domestic security apparatus to help it to do so. Over the past few decades it has proven nothing if not resilient, enduring through political chaos, devastating earthquakes and man-made disasters.
But one sign that might hint at an awareness of just how great the current risks are comes in the role being played by China’s President Xi Jinping. This week – for the first time since the crisis began – he ventured out to meet health workers involved in the fight, visiting a hospital and a virus control centre in Beijing.
In contrast, his premier, Li Keqiang, has been sent to the front lines in Wuhan and appointed head of a special working group to tackle the epidemic.
While it is common for the premier to be the face of reassurance during national disasters, some observers see another reason why Mr Xi might be wise to be seen to delegate.
Image copyright EPAImage caption China’s president has kept a low profile since the outbreak began
“Xi’s absence from this crisis is yet another demonstration that he doesn’t so much lead as he does command,” Mr Blanchette says. “He’s clearly worried that this crisis will blow up in his face, and so he’s pushed out underlings to be the public face of the CCP’s response.”
Already there are signs that the censorship is being ratcheted up once again, with Mr Xi ordering senior officials to “strengthen the control over online media”.
A few days ago, I spoke by phone to the lawyer and blogger, Chen Qiushi, who’d travelled to Wuhan in an attempt to provide independent reporting about the situation. Videos from Mr Chen, and a fellow activist, Fang Bin, have been widely watched, showing not the ranks of patriotic soldier-medics and the building of hospitals that fill state media coverage, but overcrowded waiting rooms and body bags.
He told me he was unsure how long he’d be able to carry on. “The censorship is very strict and people’s accounts are being closed down if they share my content,” he said.
Mr Chen has since gone missing.
Friends and family believe he’s been forced into Wuhan’s quarantine system, in an attempt to silence him.
China’s leaders now find their fate linked to the daily charts of infection rates, published city by city, province by province. There are some signs that the extraordinary quarantine measures may be having an effect – outside of Hubei Province, the worst affected area, the number of new daily infections is falling.
But with the need to try to restart the economy – all but frozen now for over a week – the country has begun a slow return to work.
Media caption “Wuhan, add oil!”: Watch residents shouting to boost morale in quarantined city
Strict quarantine measures will remain in force in the worst affected areas, but workers from other parts of the country are trickling back to the cities, with the task of monitoring and managing their movements being handed to local neighbourhood committees.
It will be a difficult balancing act.
Too tough an approach risks further choking off business activity, commerce and travel in a consumer environment already suffocating under the deep psychological fear of contagion. Too lax, and any one of the many potential reservoirs of infection, now scattered across the country, could explode into another, separate epidemic.
That would require further harsh action, knocking domestic confidence and prolonging the international border closures and flight restrictions put in place at such enormous economic cost.
Questions about the systemic failings behind the disaster are dismissed as foreign “prejudice”, as the propaganda machine cranks into overdrive, channelling the narrative and muting the criticisms.
But the devastating scale and scope of China’s world-threatening catastrophe have already revealed something important. The thousands who have lost family members, the millions living under the quarantine measures and the workers and businesses bearing the financial costs have been asking those difficult questions too.
Image caption A tribute in snow to doctor Li Wenliang
On the snowy banks of the Tonghui river, the giant tribute to Li Wenliang remains intact. When we visited, a few locals were taking photos and talking quietly to each other.
A police car crawled slowly by.
Soon, with the warming weather, the characters will be gone.
Research sheds light on 500-year Chinese weather cycle and suggests a cool change could be on the way
Findings leave no room for complacency or inaction
A team of Chinese researchers says a period of global cooling could be on the way, but the consequences will be serious. Photo: Xinhua
A new study has found winters in northern China have been warming since 4,000BC – regardless of human activity – but the mainland scientists behind the research warn there is no room for complacency or inaction on climate change, with the prospect of a sudden global cooling also posing a danger.
The study found that winds from Arctic Siberia have been growing weaker, the conifer tree line has been retreating north, and there has been a steady rise in biodiversity in a general warming trend that continues today. It appears to have little to do with the increase in greenhouse gases which began with the industrial revolution, according to the researchers.
Lead scientist Dr Wu Jing, from the Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the study had found no evidence of human influence on northern China’s warming winters.
“Driving forces include the sun, the atmosphere, and its interaction with the ocean,” Wu said. “We have detected no evidence of human influence. But that doesn’t mean we can just relax and do nothing.”
Moon Lake, a small volcanic lake hidden in the deep forest of China’s Greater Khingan Mountain Range, where a team of scientists spent more than a decade studying the secrets hidden in its sediments. Photo: Baidu
Wu and her colleagues are concerned that, as societies grow more used to the concept of global warming, people will develop a misplaced confidence in our ability to control climate change. Nature, they warned, may trick us and might catch us totally unprepared – causing chaos, panic, famine and even wars as the global climate system is disrupted.
There are already alarming signs, according to their paper, which has been accepted for publication by the online Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
Wu and her colleagues spent more than a dozen years studying sediments under Moon Lake, a small volcanic lake hidden in the deep forests of the Greater Khingan Mountain Range in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region. They found that winter warming over the past 6,000 years had not been a smooth ride, with ups and downs occurring about every 500 years.
Their findings confirmed an earlier study by a separate team of Chinese scientists, published by online journal Scientific Reports in 2014, which first detected the 500-year cyclical pattern of China’s summer monsoons and linked it to solar activity.
The 2014 research, which drew on 5,000 years’ worth of data, suggested the current warm phase of the cycle could terminate over the next several decades, ushering in a 250-year cool phase, potentially leading to a partial slowdown in man-made global warming.
Wu said the latest study, with 10,000 years’ worth of new data, not only helped to draw a more complete picture of the 500-year cycle, but also revealed a previously unknown mechanism behind the phenomenon, which suggested the impact of the sun on the Earth’s climate may be greater than previously thought.
According to Wu, the variation in solar activity alone was usually not strong enough to induce the rapid changes in vegetation the research team recorded in the sediment cores of Moon Lake. Instead, the scientists found the warming impact was amplified by a massive, random interaction between surface seawater and the atmosphere in the Pacific Ocean known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
As a result of the research findings, Wu said she was now more worried about cooling than warming.
“A sharp drop of temperature will benefit nobody. The biggest problem is, we know it will come, but we don’t know exactly when.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 