BEIJING — Cinemas, theaters and museums have closed in downtown Shanghai, and tickets have been refunded. The vast city’s school system announced late Friday that it would switch to online learning. And across China, more than 100 neighborhoods have been labeled medium-risk or high-risk Covid zones, with frequent mandatory testing and partial or complete lockdowns. After two years of posting one of the world’s most successful track records in managing the coronavirus, China suddenly faces a wave of cases. The country’s National Health Commission said Friday that 1,100 new cases…
Month: March 2022
China’s 2022 Government Work Report Looks Inward to Economic Stabilizers
Advertisement On Saturday, March 5, 2022, China’s 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) convened for their fifth annual Two Sessions. The Two Sessions – the annual meetings of the NPC as well as the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference – is arguably the most important political event of the year, in which the NPC convenes to vote on key policies pushed forward by the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in the fall prior. Moreover, the Government Work Report, delivered on the first day by Premier Li Keqiang, provides an…
‘It’s like we are being left to die’: Hong Kong tackles deadliest Covid wave
Staff meetings are often mundane affairs and rarely end in tears. But on Wednesday Ho Hiu-fai, the accident and emergency chief at Hong Kong’s Queen Elizabeth hospital, broke down in front of his team. “It has been so hard for our colleagues to hold up this past month,” he could be heard saying in a video, shortly after the hospital was converted into a Covid treatment facility and 400 non-Covid patients were transferred elsewhere. <gu-island name="EmbedBlockComponent" deferuntil="visible" props="{"html":"","isTracking":true,"isMainMedia":false,"source":"Facebook","sourceDomain":"facebook.com"}” readability=”3″> Allow Facebook content? This article includes content provided by Facebook. We…
Biden Officials Contend With Bioweapons Propaganda From Russia and China
WASHINGTON — One of Russia’s most incendiary disinformation campaigns ramped up days ago, when its defense and foreign ministries issued statements falsely claiming that the Pentagon was financing biological weapons labs in Ukraine. Then Chinese diplomats and state media organizations repeated the conspiracy theory at news conferences in Beijing, in articles and on official social media accounts. Now, the Biden White House has taken the extraordinary step of calling out both countries on their coordinated propaganda campaign and saying they might be providing cover for a potential biological or chemical…
As it happened: ‘Two sessions’ 2022: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang says Beijing is ‘deeply concerned’ about situation in Ukraine, Hong Kong to delay leadership election because of ‘serious’ Covid situation
This year’s “two sessions” were shortened to six-and-a-half days because of Covid-19, and any comments from Li about Hong Kong’s current outbreak, and the growing controversy over the “dynamic zero” strategy and the city’s mass testing plans, will be closely scrutinised. Ukraine also looms large over proceedings with the wider world wanting to know more about China’s position. While the government work report did not mention the war, the foreign minister faced repeated questions about the conflict on Monday and any remarks on the issue from Li will attract great…
‘A necessary war’: reporting on the Ukraine ‘disagreement’ outside the west
Many an insult has been hurled at Vladimir Putin since he invaded Ukraine a fortnight ago, causing chaos, heartbreak and death. A bloodstained aggressor. A 21st-century Stalin. A total fucking dickhead. Beelzebub. “Look at the face of Putin. You will see the devil,” one US commentator opined on Wednesday as a maternity hospital was bombed in the city of Mariupol. But for the Venezuelan pundit Alberto Aranguibel, Putin’s 24 February invasion was “la guerra necesaria” – the necessary war. The Chinese academic Wang Shuo saw it as “a US-created crisis”.…
War in Ukraine: How Asian economies are divided over Russia sanctions
“Without having the two Asian giants China and India on board on sanctions who account for 18% of Russia’s trade, there is unlikely to be any significant impact on Russia,” says Professor Syed Munir Khasru, chairman of the international think tank, the Institute for Policy, Advocacy, and Governance. BBC
China Maritime Report No. 19: The PLA Airborne Corps in a Joint Island Landing Campaign
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Airborne Corps would likely play an important role in a cross-strait invasion through operations behind enemy lines. During the landing campaign, the Corps would conduct paradrops or landing operations onto Taiwan, facilitated by PLA Air Force (PLAAF) aircraft. Once on island, airborne forces would seize and hold terrain and conduct a variety of operations to support the broader invasion. In recent years, the Corps has reorganized to improve its capability for mechanized maneuver and assault, leveraging the PLAAF’s larger inventories of transport aircraft, particularly the…
Penny Wong says better relationship with China possible if Coalition stops ‘playing politics’
Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, says it may be possible for Australia to achieve a diplomatic thaw with China despite the substantial differences between the two countries – if Scott Morrison abandons his “desperate” pre-election weaponisation of national security. The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, this week met China’s new ambassador to Australia who has made several overtures for dialogue since arriving in Canberra in January. Subsequently, the shadow minister told the Guardian’s Australian Politics podcast that diplomatic engagement was important. Wong said if Labor won the federal election…
China’s scientists are looking for a way out of the zero-covid policy
Mar 10th 2022 NOT SINCE the early days of the pandemic has China seen so many new, locally transmitted cases of covid-19. More than 400 were reported on March 9th (counting only those that were symptomatic). Clusters have been found in most of China’s provinces (see map). A surge of this size would not trouble most countries. Indeed, many are learning to live with the virus. But in China the new cases are testing the government’s “zero-covid” strategy, which uses mass testing and lockdowns to crush any hint of an…