South Korea has just released its daily Covid report. The Asian nation recorded another 3,024 confirmed coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, a figure much lower than recent weeks. A further 51 deaths were also recorded with 973 people in critical condition, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A total of 86.2 % of the eligible population have received at least one Covid vaccine dose and 83.1 % have received at least two. 대한민국 질병관리청 (@KoreaDCA) 🔊코로나19 국내 현황(1.4.) 일 1차접종 39,839명(누적 1차접종 44,239,358명/86.2%)일 2차접종…
Day: January 3, 2022
Indonesia coal ban ‘manageable’ for China, but temporary energy headache looms amid Australia dispute
In the first 11 months last year, China imported 177 million tonnes of thermal coal from Indonesia, an increase of 54 per cent compared with the same period in 2020, and which accounted for 74 per cent of its total imports, customs data showed. Photo: Reuters South China Morning Post
China-US Subnational Exchanges Under the Biden Administration
Advertisement Despite efforts from the Trump administration to respond to Beijing’s subnational influence operations, and despite tensions that remain at the federal level, China-U.S. subnational exchanges have largely continued under Biden, with some American subnational officials calling on the then-new administration to advance such relationships. For example, on December 1, 2020, Jerry Brown, former governor of California and currently chair of the California-China Climate Institute at UC Berkeley, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times titled “Jerry Brown: Biden’s first task should be working with China on climate change.”…
China Evergrande Suspends Trading Shares in Hong Kong
Trading in the shares of the indebted property developer China Evergrande Group were suspended on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Monday morning as the company raced to deliver apartments to millions of home buyers and raise cash to manage its $300 billion in debt. Evergrande said in a filing that its shares were halted pending an announcement “containing inside information,” without giving more details. The company had halted its shares once before, in October, as it tried to finalize the sale of a $2.6 billion stake in its property management…
Abducted son finds family by drawing map of village he last saw aged four
Thirty years ago, when Li Jingwei was four years old, a neighbour abducted him from his home village in China’s Yunnan province and sold him to a child trafficking ring. Now he has been reunited with his mother after drawing a map of his home village from his memories of three decades ago and sharing it on a popular video-sharing app in the hope that someone might be able to identify it. “I’m a child who’s looking for his home,” Li said in the video. Unable to recall the name…
How Beijing Has Muted Hong Kong’s Independent Media
HONG KONG — Citizen News, a small online news site in Hong Kong known for its in-depth coverage of courts and local politics, said it would stop publishing on Monday night, deepening concerns about the collapse of the city’s once-robust media. Just days earlier, another independent online media outlet, Stand News, closed after hundreds of police raided its offices and arrested seven people. Two former senior editors at Stand News and the publication itself were charged with conspiracy to publish seditious materials. The latest closures are the final chapters in…
Another News Site Shuts in Hong Kong
Advertisement A group of lawmakers loyal to China’s Communist Party were sworn in to Hong Kong’s Legislature on Monday following an election without opposition candidates, as yet another pro-democracy news outlet announced it could no longer operate amid a growing crackdown on freedoms in the territory. The former British colony that was returned to China in 1997 was once known as a haven for dissent and freedoms of the press and expression not seen on the mainland. But the central government in Beijing has clamped down in the last year,…
China: Concern over Xi’an residents’ midnight quarantine
“There is nothing here, just basic necessities… Nobody has come to check up on us, what kind of quarantine is this? They did a big transfer of us, more than a thousand people, in the night and many of us are elderly people and children. They didn’t make any proper arrangements and so they just carelessly placed us [here],” read one comment posted by an affected resident. BBC
China steps up crackdown on financial products promoted on social media, requires industry licence
Live-streamers promote products online at the 2nd China-Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) Expo in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, on June 9, 2021. Live-streaming e-commerce has become an increasingly popular way to shop during the pandemic, but the sale of financial services has caught the attention of regulators. Photo: Xinhua South China Morning Post
Evergrande suspends shares in Hong Kong as firm tries to raise cash
Authorities have also signalled that they have no intention of bailing out Evergrande, and its billionaire founder, because it would go against President Xi Jinping’s “Common Prosperity” policies, which aim to distribute wealth more fairly throughout society. BBC