Three Covid-19 fatalities have been reported in Shanghai, the first to be officially counted since the beginning of the city’s lockdown. The three people reported on Monday included two women aged 89 and 91, and a 91-year-old man, who also had underlying health conditions, and were reportedly unvaccinated. Shanghai municipal authorities said the three were admitted to hospital and became critically ill. They died on Sunday “after all efforts were made to rescue them”. As of 5 April, more than 92 million Chinese people over 65, including 20.2 million over…
Month: April 2022
China’s GDP Data Hint at Heavy Cost of its Zero Covid Strategy
BEIJING — Faced with its worst Covid-19 outbreak yet, China has been enforcing an expanding number of mass quarantines, strict lockdowns and border controls. The measures may yet work, but official data released on Monday show they are exacting a grim toll on the world’s second-largest economy. China’s economy expanded 4.8 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same period last year. That pace was barely faster than the final three months of last year, and it also obscured a looming problem. Much of that…
Canberra’s tired old script has led to a less democratic Solomon Islands and a less secure Australia
China must be hoping that Australia persists in its “business as usual” approach to Solomon Islands. An appeasement policy by Australia towards the Solomons prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, has been outstandingly successful for Beijing over the past few years, and the CCP’s muscular actions in the South Pacific in the last six months seem to anticipate that it will continue. Since the news of Sogavare’s alleged secret military deal with China was leaked in March, the cycle of response and counter-response between Honiara and Canberra has been entirely predictable. It…
Shanghai’s lockdown: desperation rises as food runs low
At about noon last Tuesday, Yu Wenming, an 82-year-old man in Shanghai, called his local residential committee for help. “I’ve used up my medicines. Nor do I have anything to eat. I’m feeling awful,” Yu, who had tested positive for Covid, told the party secretary, Zhang Zhen. Zhang listened patiently, saying he had already referred the case to his superiors and there was nothing he could do. “Do you mean I should just wait here until I die, then?” Yu asked. Zhang responded with an angry rant, complaining that he…
Covid: inside Shanghai’s largest makeshift hospital – video
Yu Beibei, a resident of Shanghai, was transferred to the city’s largest makeshift hospital after testing positive for Covid-19. Yu lives with her husband, their two-year-old daughter and a nanny. They were ordered to join a mass test on 2 April and all but her daughter were found to have the virus. After being kept under home lockdown for 10 days, Yu, her husband and their nanny were transferred to the hospital. Their daughter was handed over to her husband’s father before they were hospitalised The Guardian
Peng Ming-min, Fighter for Democracy in Taiwan, Dies at 98
By that time Mr. Peng had been blacklisted from returning to Taiwan, after a military court in 1964 convicted him of sedition over his involvement with two of his students in the printing of a manifesto calling for the overthrow of the Republic of China government and the establishment of a Taiwanese democracy. American pressure on Chiang Kai-shek to release Mr. Peng had led to his transfer from an eight-year prison sentence to house arrest in 1965. With help from Amnesty International, he escaped in 1970, fleeing to Sweden. The…
China tightens controls as Shanghai reports record Covid cases
Shanghai reported a record number of symptomatic Covid-19 cases on Saturday and other areas across China tightened controls as the country kept up its “dynamic clearance” approach that aims to stamp out the highly transmissible Omicron variant. The Zhengzhou airport economic zone, a central Chinese manufacturing area that includes Apple supplier Foxconn, announced a 14-day lockdown on Friday “to be adjusted according to the epidemic situation”. In north-western China, the city of Xi’an urged residents to avoid unnecessary trips outside their residential compounds and encouraged companies to have employees work…
The way Chinese think about covid-19 is changing
Apr 16th 2022 BEIJING READING THE news backwards has long been a useful skill in China, where officials often obfuscate. Recently it has seemed like a matter of survival for some. Take the residents of Beijing, the capital, who are girding themselves for a covid-19 lockdown and all the hardship that might entail. When the city’s officials announced on April 11th that there was more than enough food for everyone, people assumed the opposite. “Understood, hurry and go shopping now,” a cynic wrote online. Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio…
Shanghai’s Isolation Facilities Have Prompted a Backlash
When Ms. Cheng first arrived at the exhibition center, it felt vast, cold and empty, she said in a phone interview. Ms. Cheng, who is a student in her early 20s, also wrote about her experience on Chinese social media. The fluorescent lights were glaring but she tried to get some rest. She woke up the next morning to find her hall suddenly crammed with people. There was no tap for running water and no showers, Ms. Cheng said, so each day she and others would crowd around several fresh…
Taiwanese Lee Ming-che Freed From Detention in China
Advertisement Taiwanese human rights advocate and NGO worker Lee Ming-che was freed earlier this week, returning to Taiwan by plane on April 15. This ended five years of detention in China for Lee, who crossed to the mainland from Macau in March 2017 and was subsequently detained by authorities. Lee was detained on charges of “subverting state power” and is thought to be the first Taiwanese detained on such charges. At the time, his detention was thought of in the context of laws passed by the Chinese government regulating foreign…