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.
Managers of the Leshan Giant Buddha and Jiuzhaigou National Park restrict ticket sales as millions head off for the holiday break
Park authorities in charge of the Leshan Giant Buddha in Sichuan have restricted visitor numbers in golden week. Photo: Xinhua
Several major tourist attractions in China have capped visitor numbers during this year’s National Day “golden week” holiday as millions take the chance to travel.
October 1 marked the start of a week-long break on the mainland, with an estimated 800 million people expected to go on trips in China or overseas, about 10 per cent more than last year, according to the China Tourism Academy.
The academy estimated that 726 million people would take domestic trips in this peak holiday period – a 9.4 per cent increase from last year, but that is the lowest level of growth since 2007 as pressure from China’s slowing economy and the trade war with the United States take their toll.
Managers at the scenic area surrounding the Leshan Giant Buddha – a 71-metre (233 feet) tall ancient statue carved into a cliff in southwestern Sichuan province – said last week that daily tickets would be capped at 22,400 during the holiday, which runs until Monday.
West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, drew 300,400 visitors as golden week started. Photo: Xinhua
The park said it would update visitors on daily ticket sales through social media.
“Today’s tickets for the Giant Buddha have reached the limit and sales have stopped,” the park management committee said on its Weibo account on Tuesday. “To all tourists, please rearrange your itinerary. You can visit the areas surrounding the Giant Buddha scenic spot,” it said, adding that tickets could be booked online for any day for the rest of golden week.
“I expected it to be chock-full of people, but actually today it’s still relatively calm. I had lots of fun,” a visitor to the Giant Buddha told Pear Video on Tuesday.
Hong Kong protests leave ‘golden week’ tourist boom in tatters
Jiuzhaigou National Park in Sichuan said last week that it would be limiting visitors to 5,000 per day during golden week and said on Monday that tickets had sold out.
The network of valleys known for its natural scenery was devastated by an earthquake in August 2017, and reopened with limited access in March 2018.
However, there were no restrictions at other attractions. In eastern Zhejiang province, 340,400 visitors went through the gates at Hangzhou’s West Lake on Tuesday, the Global Times’ Chinese edition reported.
“There’s too many people. I have never seen so many of them in my life,” one tourist was quoted as saying.
A guide also said that instances of “uncivilised behaviour”, such as trampling on the gardens, were down compared to last year.
“During the major holidays, many tourist attractions are so crowded that tourists can barely move an inch,” Hangzhou Daily said in an editorial on Monday.
“Not only is the tourist experience bad, but there are also safety hazards such as being trampled on, and this puts a lot of pressure on nearby public transport and food establishments.”
Travel booking platform Ctrip said that tourists heading overseas were increasingly seeking out new destinations, with bookings to places such as the Czech Republic, Austria, Croatia, Malta and Cambodia up by 45 per cent this year.
However, bookings for Hong Kong had fallen substantially after nearly four months of anti-government protests, Ctrip said.
Three films that opened on Monday morning rake in US$76.6 million by midday
Palme d’Or winner Chen Kaige heads bill with ensemble that has movie-goers in tears
My People, My Country looks at seven events in the past 70 years through the eyes of seven Chinese directors. Photo: Baidu
Three films that paid tribute to the People’s Republic of China on the eve of its 70th anniversary grossed a total of 546 million yuan (US$76.6 million) at the box offices hours after opening on Monday, Maoyan Entertainment, China’s largest movie ticketing app, said.
My People, My Country, consisting of seven short stories by seven directors led by Cannes Palme d’Or winner Chen Kaige, recounted major events since 1949. It took in 225 million yuan.
Milestones including the detonation of China’s atomic bomb in 1964; the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China in 1997, and the staging of the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008, brought back many memories and stirred feelings of national pride, film-goers said.
“I went to see the movie today and saw many primary school students with their parents. Tears welled in my eyes, and I felt touched and proud at the same time. Go China!” one Weibo user wrote.
True-life drama The Captain has proved to a big screen hit with mainland cinema-goers. Photo: Baidu
“This movie used directors of commercial movies, and most of those born in the 1960s and 1970s lived through these moments. I think young people will bring their parents to see the film,” another Weibo user wrote.
True-life drama The Captain, directed by Hong Kong director Andrew Lau Wai-Keung, ran in second with a box office take of 175 million yuan by noon on Monday. The film was based on events in May 2018, when the cockpit window of a Sichuan Airlines flight was shattered at 30,000 feet over the Tibetan Plateau in western China. The decompression pulled the co-pilot halfway out of the cabin as the pilot fought to land the flight safely.
Big-budget film The Climbers, directed by Hong Kong’s Daniel Lee Yan-Kong and featuring stars such as Wu Jing and Zhang Ziyi, retraced the steps of two generations of Chinese mountaineers who scaled Mount Everest by the perilous North Ridge in 1960 and 1975. The film posted earnings of 146 million yuan.
Tencent’s homage to modern China tops gaming charts on eve of 70th anniversary celebrations
Patriotic feelings have been running high this week as the celebration of the 70th anniversary draws near.
My People, My Country’s theme song, Me and My Mother Country, an oldie recorded by Hong Kong’s Faye Wang, has been heard in shops, restaurants and workplaces all across the mainland.
The Climbers was directed by Hong Kong’s Daniel Lee Yan-Kong. Photo: Baidu
Last week, 200 million WeChat users responded to a campaign by internet company Tencent to add a national flag or Happy National Day sticker to their social media profile picture, The Beijing News reported. Demand was so heavy Tencent’s servers were overwhelmed for a short time.
Millions of Chinese children are raised by their grandparents but some seniors are demanding compensation
For generations in China grandparents have provided childcare, but some are no longer willing to do so for free. Photo: Shutterstock
The traditional role of grandparents in caring for China’s children has been called into question with two recent lawsuits sparking debate about whether seniors should be paid for their efforts.
Two grandmothers took their demands for compensation to court in separate cases which have highlighted the reliance of Chinese workers on their parents to provide childcare while they pursue professional advancement.
A woman in Mianyang, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was awarded more than 68,000 yuan (US$9,500) by a local court after she sued her son and daughter-in-law for the costs of raising her nine-year-old grandchild, according to Red Star News.
The woman, identified only by her surname Wang, had been the child’s full-time carer for eight years after his parents left home to seek better-paid jobs elsewhere. Wang said she had taken care of most of her grandson’s living expenses and had decided to seek compensation when his parents said they were considering a divorce.
They should respect our contribution. Grandmother Wang, Sichuan province
“I only want to let them know through this lawsuit that it’s their obligation to raise their children,” she was reported as saying. “The young ones should not take it for granted that old people ought to look after their grandchildren. They should respect our contribution.”
Despite winning the case, she has not received a penny and the boy still lives with her.
In another case, three months ago, a Beijing court supported a woman’s demand for compensation for helping to raise her granddaughter since her birth in 2002.
The stories of the two women generated a public reflection on the Chinese way of childcare which, for generations, has involved leaving most – if not all – of the burden on grandparents.
One of 60 million: life as a ‘left-behind’ child in China
From a cultural perspective, it has been a matter of course in a country with a long history of several generations living under one roof, for grandparents to participate in child rearing, according to Xu Anqi, a researcher specialising in family studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
“Today, as people face fierce competition and great pressure from work, it’s still common to rely on their old parents to look after their children,” she said.
While rapid urbanisation in recent decades has broken up multi-generational households, Chinese elderly still take an active role in child rearing, with many relocating to their children’s cities to take on the job.
Millions more families do it the other way round – with parents leaving children in their hometown with the grandparents while they seek better paying jobs in the cities. In August last year, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China had nearly 7 million “left behind kids”, as they are known.
My little granddaughter is adorable, and generally I enjoy doing all this.Li Xiujuan, grandmother
“Many grandmothers like me would joke that we are ‘unpaid nannies’, but at the same time we feel it’s our responsibility to help them out – they would be in financial stress if one of them quit or they hired a nanny,” said Li Xiujuan, who relocated from her hometown in the central province of Henan to Shanghai two years ago to help look after her granddaughter.
“I’m a 24-hour nanny for my grandkid. I prepare food for her, wash her clothes, attend early childhood classes with her, take her for a walk in the park twice a day, sleep beside her at noon and night …” she said.
“I never cared for my daughter when she was little like I do her daughter now. You know, it was also her grandmother who mainly took care of her daily life when she was young,” Li said, laughing.
“My little granddaughter is adorable, and generally I enjoy doing all this. The hard part is that I miss my friends and relatives back home. We don’t have friends here. I have plenty of things to do at home, but here, nothing but babysitting. People are polite, but it’s difficult to make new friends,” she said.
‘Left behind’ sisters cry when parents leave home to go to work
In a 2017 study of about 3,600 households in six major cities including Beijing and Guangzhou, the Chinese Society of Education found almost 80 per cent of surveyed households had at least one grandparent as carer before children began primary school.
The study also showed that 60 per cent of parents still relied on help from grandparents after children were old enough for primary school at the age of six.
Whether grandparents should be compensated for their efforts split a poll of 49,000 users conducted by social media platform Weibo in late June, with half believing that the older generation should be paid for raising their grandchildren. Only 2.3 per cent said babysitting grandchildren was “an unalterable principle” for the elderly.
“This arrangement could be well managed and improve blood ties if children reward the elderly in their own ways, such as sending gifts on holidays and taking them on trips,” Shanghai researcher Xu said.
I think what they need more is words of appreciation, which many of us have neglected. David Dai, Beijing parent
Grandmother Li agreed: “I think regular payment is a little awkward, but I do expect some kind of reward, like cash gifts on festivals and daily necessities as presents.”
David Dai, a 30-year-old white collar worker in Beijing, said how to reward grandparents for their contribution depended on the financial situation of each household.
“My parents are farmers – they are in good shape and not so old – in their late 50s, and if they didn’t come all the way from my hometown in Anhui to Beijing to look after my son, they would still be taking some odd jobs,” he said.
“Therefore, besides covering their living costs at my place, I give them cash gifts on their birthdays, the Spring Festival and other important occasions, because babysitting their grandchild means they lose the opportunity to work,” he added.
“In some families, the grandparents might have retired and have a good pension. They don’t lack money and enjoy spending time with their grandkids. I don’t think they need to be paid. I think what they need more is words of appreciation, which many of us have neglected,” Dai said.
China boosts childcare and maternal health services in bid to lift birth rate
But for those who never show any gratitude, their parents have every reason not to offer child rearing help or to demand payment, Xu said.
Zhang Tao, a lawyer at the Hiways Law Firm in Shanghai, noted that as long as at least one parent of a child was living, the grandparents had no obligation to help with childcare.
“The grandparents should be compensated for the money they have paid for the child’s education, medical fees, and accommodation from the beneficiary,” he said.
But whether they should be paid has become the latest controversy as more grandparents find it a burden.
Image copyright EPAImage caption China is getting dressed up for its big birthday party
One week from now, the People’s Republic of China will mark its 70th anniversary with celebrations on a scale not seen in China in decades.
Beijing is pulling out all stops and 1 October will be flush with fireworks, fanfare and a huge military parade.
To ensure it goes smoothly, authorities have been ramping up security in the capital – and online – for weeks.
But with yet more protests expected in Hong Kong, the territory might just rain on China’s parade.
What is it all about?
The birth of modern China was declared on 1 October 1949, after the communists under Mao Zedong won the civil war that followed World War Two.
Image copyright EPAImage caption Exhibitions are highlighting the achievements of the Communist Party
The date is marked every year, but celebrations for this 70th anniversary are expected to eclipse previous events.
It’s the first big anniversary since China has emerged as a global power. While 10 years ago China was a superpower in the making, it is now the world’s second largest economy, almost eye-to-eye with the United States.
What to expect?
The main celebrations will take place in the capital, Beijing, where there will be a grand military parade with “advanced weapons” on display, followed by a “mass pageant”.
President Xi Jinping – considered the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao – will address the Chinese people. His speech is expected to celebrate China’s rapid growth and which will be closely watched for any indication of the country’s direction in the coming years.
The president will also hand out honours for contributions to the country and in the evening there will be a grand gala and fireworks show.
All official Chinese celebrations are carefully choreographed and the success of this one is particularly important to the government.
The Dos and Don’ts
The parade – open to invited guests only – will take place around Tiananmen Square in central Beijing. The surrounding area will be practically under lockdown, and in fact has been so several times already.
During rehearsals leading up to the big day, hotels near Tiananmen Square told guests that for several hours each day, no-one would be able to leave the hotel or return to it should they be out, leading to much travel chaos and rebookings.
Many shops and restaurants in the centre are also closed or have shortened hours and some subway stations are temporarily shut.
Image copyright EPAImage caption Security is tight ensure the party goes to plan
Trains to Beijing are running numerous safety checks on their passengers and vehicles going into the city are also being tightly watched.
On the big day itself, areas around Tiananmen Square will be blocked and guarded. Local residents will need to identify themselves if they want to pass.
To ensure the sun will shine brightly on the celebration in notoriously polluted Beijing, several coal plants and construction sites in and around the city have been ordered to stop work for the duration.
There’s also a ban on any low-flying aerial vehicles in place. That means anything from light aircraft to drones, balloons and even racing pigeons.
Censorship galore
Across much of the city centre, there are national flags set up at every door. Voluntary inspectors are monitoring the streets and locals have told the BBC they’re being questioned after having even brief conversations with foreigners
One person said she was asked by an inspector: “Who were those foreigners? Why were they here?”
The tight control naturally extends online as well. Popular social media platform Weibo said it was deleting content that “distorts” or “insults” the country’s history ahead of the anniversary.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Every house and every shop is sporting a national flag
Chinese journalists are always expected to toe the party line anyway, but starting in October they will have to pass an extra test to prove they are versed particularly in Xi Jinping’s teachings, officially called Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, which has been written into the constitution.
Whether or not they pass the exam will then determine whether they’ll be accredited as journalists.
“The fundamental point with this ‘training’ and indoctrination process isn’t so much about the content,” David Bandurski of China Media Watch told the BBC.
“It is about reinforcing the message and understanding among journalists that they work, first and foremost, for the Chinese Communist Party, and serve its agenda.”
So not only will the events be choreographed – the domestic coverage of them will also be tightly guarded.
What about Hong Kong?
Despite Beijing’s determination to let its achievements shine on 1 October, there’s a good chance Hong Kong will pull focus.
Anti-Beijing protests always take place in Hong Kong on China’s National Day, but this time, the activists know that the world is watching.
Anti-government protests have rocked the city for months and the situation shows no sign of dying down.
Clashes between police and activists have been becoming increasingly violent, with police using tear gas and activists storming parliament.
Image copyright AFPImage caption The protests have often escalated into violent clashes
That means two things for 1 October: official celebrations in the territory are being toned down to avoid clashes – the annual fireworks display has been cancelled – while at the same time, activists are planning to step up their protests.
On Sunday 29 September, a “Global Anti Totalitarianism March” is scheduled to take place at various locations around the world in support of Hong Kong.
On 1 October itself, a march in central Hong Kong is planned with everyone asked to wear black.
If the past weeks’ demonstrations are anything to go by, the smiles and celebrations in Beijing will be competing for media space with pictures of tear gas and angry young protesters in Hong Kong.
As well as earning three times the industry average, successful candidates are promised 165 days’ leave
Social media posts linked to story attract more than 60 million views
Authorities in Shenzhen are offering three times the national average salary to attract more teachers. Photo: Weibo
A recruitment advertisement offering schoolteachers in southern China the chance to earn up to 280,000 yuan (US$39,500) a year – more than three times the industry average – has sparked a massive response on social media.
Published by the Longhua district education bureau in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, the advert said it was looking for 400 high, middle and primary schoolteachers. As well as an annual salary of between 260,000 yuan and 280,000 yuan, depending on qualifications, the very best candidates would receive a bonus of between 30,000 and 80,000 yuan, it said.
New recruits would also be entitled to 165 days’ leave per year, though the advert – published on Tuesday on WeChat, China’s most popular messaging platform – did not make clear if that included weekends.
The Longhua district education bureau says it is looking for 400 new teachers. Photo: Weibo
The hashtag “Shenzhen middle schoolteachers are being recruited for almost 300,000 yuan a year” racked up almost 60 million views on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.
While some people praised the authority for trying to attract the best possible candidates – it said itself that hundreds of teachers currently working in the district were graduates of China’s top universities, including Peking and Beijing Normal – others said that even with a sky-high salary most young professionals would find it hard to get by in Shenzhen.
“Do you know how expensive houses are in Shenzhen?” one person wrote on Weibo. “You need to wait several years after graduation before buying a house, unless you already have money.”
“Even if your starting salary is 200,000 yuan or 300,000 yuan, you’ll still need to wait 10 years before you’ve saved up enough to buy a house,” said another.
The advert said the new teachers will be get 165 days’ leave per year. Photo: Xinhua
The education bureau has not released any additional information about the recruitment campaign and calls to its offices on Friday went unanswered.
However, it said in a recent Q&A on its website that teachers’ salaries were in line with those of civil servants in the district, and had been steadily rising under a reform of the pay system.
Longhua is not the first district in Shenzhen to offer attractive salary packages, however. In May, 21st Century Business Herald reported that authorities in Yantian district had recruited 20 teachers from Beijing with the offer of between 290,000 yuan and 330,000 yuan a year.
According to central government figures released in May, teachers in China’s public schools earned an average of 92,383 yuan last year.
While Shenzhen has grown from a once sleepy fishing village to a vast metropolis, and is now slated to become a model city for China, its education facilities have failed to keep pace with other areas of development. It also faces competition from more established centres, like Beijing and Shanghai.
Despite having a population of about 15 million, the city has just 344 primary schools. By comparison, the provincial capital Guangzhou, which has a similar population, has 961 primary schools and about 17,000 more primary schoolteachers.
According to official figures, of the nearly 80,000 students who applied for places at public secondary schools in Shenzhen last year, just 35,000 were accepted. That left the parents of the remainder having no option but to pay for places at private schools in the city or, in some cases, send their children overseas to study.
The problem is set to get worse as Shenzhen’s preschool system is already straining under the pressure of the city’s high birth rate.
Authorities investigating why passenger suddenly leapt to her feet and went through open door
The woman in yellow died after alighting from the moving bus in Fenggang county, Guizhou province, on Sunday. Photo: Weibo
Police in southern China are investigating the death of a woman who suddenly leapt from her seat and through the door of a moving bus on the weekend.
The unidentified woman was confirmed dead at hospital in Fenggang county, Guizhou province, on Sunday after alighting from the bus through the rear door which should have been closed, according to county police.
An officer from the county’s traffic police bureau told the South China Morning Post that an investigation into the woman’s action and the bus driver’s responsibility was under way.
Surveillance footage posted online shows the woman in a yellow top sitting near the open back door before suddenly getting up and rushing through the door.
The door then closes and the bus stops moments later as passengers appear shocked.
Chinese police do U-turn on traffic crash after online crowd doubt official account
The footage was shared widely online on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.
Some internet users said the woman might have been dozing and awoke suddenly thinking she had missed her stop.
Others noted that the door should not have been open.
Just late last month, a woman was injured getting off a moving bus in Chongqing as the driver accidentally opened the rear door, video news app Kankanews.com reported.
The woman, in her 60s, simply stepped off as she saw the door open and thought she had arrived at her destination.
The driver said his safety belt loosened and he accidentally triggered the door button while trying to buckle up. He was held fully responsible for the passenger’s injury.
Video of staff washing tableware with laundry detergent goes viral
A primary school principal has been sacked after it emerged laundry detergent was used in the canteen to wash tableware. Photo: Thepaper.cn
The head of a primary school in northeastern China has been sacked and a government investigation is underway into the use of laundry washing powder to clean tableware in the school canteen.
The scandal came to light when a video of canteen staff washing up at Dongfeng Primary School in Zuanghe, Liaoning province, went viral on Chinese social media.
The video shows staff, wearing white uniforms and aprons, cleaning plates and bowls in basins containing water tainted with laundry detergent. It is unclear when the incident happened.
In a statement on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, on Tuesday, the municipal government said the head of the school had been dismissed and representatives had been assigned by the authorities to take charge of the school’s daily operation. Due diligence investigations of the relevant department would begin “immediately”, the statement said.
Chinese school heads told to eat with pupils after string of scandals
The local administration for market regulation had also been ordered to speed up an examination of the food samples, tableware and washing products at the school, and the results would be made public in a timely manner, the authorities said.
Until the investigation is concluded, meals at the school, which has about 400 pupils, will be the responsibility of the municipal education department.
As an added precaution, food safety inspections would be carried out at all elementary and middle schools in the region.
The prompt action by the authorities reflects the wide public attention in China to any food safety scandal which involves children.
The principal of an international school in Shanghai was dismissed in October after parents of students found mouldy tomatoes and onions in a kitchen where food was prepared for pupils. In May, video footage showing mouldy food in the canteen of a middle school in Chengdu, Sichuan province, triggered angry parents to stage protests outside the school and the local government building.
Image copyright AFPImage caption Chinese experts will investigate Chuang Chuang’s death
A popular giant panda has died unexpectedly in a Thai zoo – prompting China to send experts to investigate.
Chuang Chuang had been at the Chiang Mai zoo on loan from China since 2003.
The 19-year old bear was widely popular across Thailand, especially due to repeated efforts by the zoo to get him to mate with his female companion.
His unexplained death on Monday caused uproar on Chinese social media, with many users accusing Thailand of not caring properly for the animal.
Giant pandas, which are native to China, usually live for 25 to 30 years in captivity. They were regarded as endangered, but were reclassified as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, following an increase in numbers.
China loans the animals to countries around the world as a way of strengthening diplomatic ties.
There’s extensive reporting in China about the animals’ lives overseas, and Chuang Chuang’s early death has received widespread coverage in state media.
Media caption Panda diplomacy: China’s cutest peacemakers
According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, an investigation will be carried out to establish the cause of death, and experts from the China Conservation and Research Centre will travel to Chiang Mai to work with their Thai counterparts.
Some social media users on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo were concerned, saying: “Thailand is not suitable for raising pandas”, and “they don’t treat animals as well as we think”.
Others asked for the remaining female panda in Chiang Mai, Lin Hui, to be returned to China.
Chuang Chuang had been at the Chiang Mai zoo since 2003, alongside his female companion.
Failing to show any sexual interest in Lin Hui, the zoo tried various methods to boost his sex drive, including putting him on a low-carb diet, and showing videos of mating pandas.
With all efforts failing, the zoo eventually resorted to artificial insemination and Lin Hui gave birth in 2009.
Hangzhou subway operator says water seeped into underground construction site
Zhejiang’s capital was scene of subway collapse that claimed 21 workers’ lives in 2008
A yellow cloud engulfs buildings after a subway tunnel in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, collapses. Photo: Pear Video
Homes in a major city in eastern China were evacuated on Wednesday after water seepage at a subway construction site caused a main road to cave in and cut a gas main.
Authorities in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, said dozens of residents feared for their homes as buildings cracked and swayed from the cave-in.
Videos posted to the Weibo microblogging network showed yellow smoke engulfing the neighbourhood as the road fell below street level. Authorities said Hangzhou’s gas supplier managed to close off the mains.
Hangzhou Metro Group, the city’s subway operator and the company overseeing the network’s expansion from four lines to nine for the 2022 Asian Games, said on Weibo that water seeped into a tunnel that connected two stations in the centre of the city, leading to the collapse.
The collapse took down a four-lane road in central Hangzhou. Photo: Pear Video
That caused a hole under the carriageway and took the pavement down with it. Hangzhou Metro said homes around the site were cleared and authorities were monitoring for further danger.
It was not known how many residents were affected, but no casualties were reported.
Most residents were put up in a nearby school until accommodation could be arranged, the City Express newspaper reported, adding that several truckloads of cement were poured into the hole.
Eight Chinese killed as road collapses near subway construction project
The road collapse in central Hangzhou was the latest in a series of subway construction accidents there – some of them deadly – in the past decade as China races to expand its urban rail networks.
In November 2008, 21 workers were killed and 24 were injured when a tunnel Hangzhou’s Line 1 collapsed beneath an eight-lane road and river water rushed in. A court sent eight people to jail for terms of between three and 5½ years for negligence at the site.
Two years later at the same place, a truck driver died and another was injured as a pit collapsed.
In 2016, four construction workers were killed when mud flooded a pit at a station on Line 4.
In 2008, an eight-lane riverside road in Hangzhou fell in on workers building a subway tunnel, killing 21. Photo: AFP
A cave-in similar to Wednesday’s collapse overturned a truck at a construction site near Hangzhou railway station this month, but no one was injured, Hangzhou Metro said.
According to the China Association of Metros, by the end of last year, more than 5,700km (3,540 miles) of urban railway had been built in 35 mainland cities, of which more than a third – 2,100km – was completed since 2015.
Powerful zoom functions can reveal fingerprint details which may be copied by criminals
A cybersecurity awareness campaign in China has prompted a warning about criminals harvesting fingerprint information from a popular pose in pictures uploaded to the internet. Photo: Shutterstock
A popular hand gesture adopted by China’s online community in uploaded pictures could be used by criminals to steal people’s fingerprints, Chinese cybersecurity experts have warned.
The “scissor hand” pose – similar to the peace sign or “V” for victory– could reveal a perfect fingerprint if held close enough to the camera, according to Zhang Wei, vice-director of the Shanghai Information Security Trade Association.
Speaking at an event promoting a national cybersecurity awareness campaign in Shanghai on Sunday, Zhang said photo magnifying and artificial intelligence-enhancing technologies meant it was possible to extract enough detail to make a perfect copy of the sensitive information.
According to a report by online news portal Thepaper.cn, Zhang’s advice was that scissor-hand pictures taken closer than three metres (10 feet) could be vulnerable and should not be published on the internet.
Chinese face-swapping app sparks privacy concerns soon after its release
“A scissor-hand picture taken within 1.5 metres (four feet 11 inches) can be used to restore 100 per cent of people’s fingerprints, while pictures taken about 1.5-3 metres away can turn out 50 per cent of the fingerprints,” he said.
Based on the information extracted from the pictures, criminals could make models of the prints which could then be used to register at fingerprint-based identity recognition checks, such as door access and payment systems, Zhang said.
Feng Jianjiang, a professor on fingerprint identification from the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, told the South China Morning Post that, theoretically, pictures could show fingerprints clearly enough to be copied, but said he was unsure of what distance would be safe.
“Some people’s fingerprints could not be captured [at any distance] because of skin problems [for example],” Feng said. “But the fingerprint images would be fairly clear if the distance, angle, focus and lighting were all ideal.”
Feng suggested people check the clarity of detail by zooming in on their fingerprints in pictures before uploading them to social media.
Zang Yali, a researcher from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, agreed that the conditions required to be able to harvest sufficiently detailed fingerprint information were “very demanding”, according to a report in China Science and Technology Daily.
The warning had been viewed on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo 390 million times within 24 hours of Zhang’s address on Sunday, with 49,000 comments left on the website by Monday afternoon.
“It’s horrifying. I always present a scissor hand in photos,” one Weibo user wrote.
“Advanced technology has brought us convenience but meanwhile has also brought us risk and danger. What can we do now?” another commenter wrote.
One social media user had the perfect solution, writing: “No worries. just show the back of your hand to the camera if you are concerned.”
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 