Number of infections rises by 19 as Games organisers warn of more cases in coming days
China has reported a jump in Covid cases among athletes and team officials at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The number of daily Covid infections rose to 19 on Friday from two a day earlier, and Games organisers said more cases could be expected in the coming days.
Continue reading...Unusually explicit reference to prospect of war comes as tensions over island’s future continue to rise
China’s ambassador to the US has said the two countries could face a “military conflict” over the future of Taiwan, in an unusually explicit reference to the prospect of war.
“The Taiwan issue is the biggest tinderbox between China and the United States,” Qin Gang told the US public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR), on Friday. “If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in the military conflict.”
Continue reading...The 11,000 foreign athletes, media crews and guests will be met at the airport by workers in biohazard suits
Before Zhang Hua goes down for breakfast, he puts on a mask and rubber gloves. He leaves his hotel room and walks through halls while keeping a safe distance from others. Then he boards a specially commissioned bus driven along dedicated lanes to his job assisting foreign broadcasters preparing for the Winter Olympics.
In the media centre he takes his daily Covid test, and he could eat a meal delivered by a robot. Depending on where he’s staying, Zhang may be allowed to visit his hotel gym later, or go to another hotel’s restaurant, but otherwise this is the only journey he can take.
Continue reading...From the beginning, China’s response to coronavirus has been to quash outbreaks with ultra-strict lockdowns. But has the Omicron variant left its leaders trapped in the wrong strategy?
Ever since the first Covid-19 outbreak was detected in Wuhan, China has countered the virus with incredibly harsh social measures designed to restrict interpersonal contact and eliminate opportunities for the disease to spread. Closed borders, mass testing and entire neighbourhoods and cities quarantined in response to a single case – that’s what it has taken to maintain China’s strict “Covid zero” policy. And it’s been successful: officially, China’s lost fewer than 5,000 people to coronavirus since the start of the pandemic – that’s fewer than the number of people in the US killed by the virus in the past week.
As our China affairs correspondent, Vincent Ni, tells Michael Safi, for Chinese leaders, Covid zero isn’t just a policy – it’s a major achievement for their authoritarian system of government. But with the mutation of the Omicron variant now causing shutdowns in cities across the country, Covid zero is presenting officials with a new dilemma: what’s the exit strategy?
Continue reading...An image titled The Dancing Dreams of a Mountain Girl, depicting a young mountain girl dancing for her grandmother in a village in China, is the overall winner of an international photo competition celebrating Chinese culture. The Global SinoPhoto awards invited photographers to tell Chinese stories, imagining, interpreting and inspiring connections between Chinese culture and the rest of the world. The awards covered four categories: water (as 2022 is the year of the water tiger), home, work and play, and environment.
The Museum of East Asian Art (MEAA) in Bath is to exhibit the winning entries from 16 February until 14 May 2022
Continue reading...President signals more cautious approach to climate crisis and says China must ‘overcome notion of rapid success’
China’s ambitious low-carbon goals will not be realised easily and should not come at the expense of energy and food security or the “normal life” of ordinary people, its president, Xi Jinping, has said, signalling a more cautious approach to the climate emergency as the economy slows.
China, the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, has been under pressure to “enhance ambition” and take more drastic action to tackle global heating. In the past two years, Beijing has also made a number of pledges to show its commitment.
Continue reading...The English actor, who has worked with Chinese directors from Jackie Chan to Zhang Yimou, reveals how a chance meeting at the visa office in Beijing changed his life
If the Chinese film industry needs a stock foreign villain, I’m their first port of call. I was a Gatling gun-wielding mercenary in 2015’s Wolf Warrior, one of the first of the new wave of military blockbusters, and a hitman in Jackie Chan’s Kung Fu Yoga in 2017, among many others. And I recently played an American colonel in the Korean war in The Battle at Lake Changjin, the most expensive and successful Chinese film ever: it made $909m (£675m) last year.
It’s surreal – coming from humble beginnings in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire – to find myself in the middle of a massive field in Hubei province filming the likes of The Battle at Lake Changjin. You’d think you were in a real-life warzone – there were hundreds of tanks supplied by the government. I grew up watching Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Jet Li movies, which kickstarted my passion for China. I originally came here to study martial arts in 2004. Then I came back 10 years later to work as a financial consultant, which I didn’t really enjoy.
Continue reading...The belt and road initiative is ensnaring vulnerable countries in debt via corrupt infrastructure projects. Slavery reparations from former colonial powers could help turn the tide
As Transparency International (TI) publishes their annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) this week, it will be interesting to see where certain countries land: 2021 has been a bumper year for corruption.
In Britain, corruption has been on the minds of journalists, academics and practitioners alike, as Boris Johnson tries to get himself run out, the only hope of him continuing his innings lying with Sue Gray.
Continue reading...Vrije Universiteit will also return €250,000-plus it received in 2021 for rights centre that denied forced labour camps exist in Xinjiang
A decision by a leading Dutch university to refuse all further Chinese funding for a controversial study centre has sparked fresh concern about Beijing’s apparent attempts to influence debate at European educational institutions.
Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit (VU), the fourth largest university in the Netherlands, has said it will accept no further money from the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing and repay sums it recently received.
Continue reading...Chinese tech giant Tencent says ownership dispute behind rebranding of prime minister’s account to ‘Australian Chinese new life’
The owner of the Chinese social media platform WeChat insists there is “no evidence of any hacking or third-party intrusion” of Scott Morrison’s account.
Coalition members have vowed to boycott WeChat in retaliation for the prime minister’s account being taken over and rebranded as “Australian Chinese new life” earlier this month.
Continue reading...UK transport secretary says testing rules for travellers into country will change from 4am on 11 February; new France rules come into force
That’s it from me, Helen Livingstone, for today. I’m handing you over to my colleague Martin Belam.
Before I go, here’s a roundup of what’s been happening over the past 24 hours:
Continue reading...Young Chinese women want to get educated and prioritise their careers, a trend that has alarmed the authorities battling a demographic crisis
Early this month, China’s state news agency Xinhua posted a video reminding young Chinese men born in the year 2000 that they are now finally eligible to get married. “Post 00s have reached legal marriage age,” it declared.
The hashtag swiftly popped up in the “top-searched list” of Weibo hot topics, but many read it as the government’s attempt to put pressure on them. “Who dares to get married these days? Don’t we need to make money?” one questioned. “Stop nagging me!” said another.
Continue reading...Ex-leader targets UK foreign secretary’s remarks on potential China aggression in the Indo-Pacific, adding Britain suffers from ‘relevance deprivation’
The former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has accused Liz Truss of making “demented” comments about Chinese military aggression and urged the British foreign secretary to hurry “back to her collapsing, disreputable government”.
Keating, in a blistering op-ed, also said Britain “suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation” and its tilt to the Indo-Pacific lacks credibility.
Continue reading...Beijing government says officials in Henan province were found to have deliberately underreported the disaster
Officials in a Chinese province deliberately underreported or concealed 139 deaths from last year’s devastating flood disaster, the country’s central government has said, amid arrests of some of those involved.
Record-breaking rainstorms hit Henan province in central China between 17 and 23 July, overflowing reservoirs, breaching riverbanks, and overwhelming public transport systems and roads in major cities. In the city of Zhengzhou, more than 600mm of rain, equivalent almost to an average year, fell in just three days, flooding metro stations and a cross-city tunnel.
Continue reading...Influencers told to extol country’s virtues on social media despite diplomatic boycotts of Beijing Games over human rights record
An army of western social media influencers, each with hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, Instagram or Twitch, is set to spread positive stories about China throughout next month’s Winter Olympics.
Concerned about the international backlash against the Beijing Games amid a wave of diplomatic boycotts, the government has hired western PR professionals to spread an alternative narrative through social media.
Continue reading...Hardline approach to pandemic risks damaging global economy, says Kristalina Georgieva
China, the world’s second largest economy, should review its zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic or risk damaging the global recovery, according to the head of International Monetary Fund.
Kristalina Georgieva said Beijing should reassess the use of lockdowns to limit the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant since it became clear the harm to human health was less severe than the Delta variant.
Continue reading...Victor Dawes says the group should build closer ties to mainland China amidst concerns about the rule of law
The newly elected leader of Hong Kong barristers says that his profession should avoid politics and build closer ties to mainland China, as concerns grow about rule of law in the financial hub.
The Hong Kong Bar Association has been a vocal defender of human rights and its previous leader had criticised a Beijing-imposed national security law, drawing fierce condemnation from Chinese officials.
Continue reading...Africa’s unprecedented population growth will impact geopolitics, global trade, migration and almost every aspect of life. It’s time for a reimagining of the continent
In 2022 the world’s population will pass 8 billion. It has increased by a third in just two decades. By 2050, there will be about 9.5 billion of us on the planet, according to respected demographers. This makes recent comments by Elon Musk baffling. According to him, “the low birthrate and the rapidly declining birthrate” is “one of the biggest risks to civilisation”.
Fertility rates in Europe, North America and east Asia are generally below 2.1 births per woman, the level at which populations remain stable at constant mortality rates. The trajectory in some countries is particularly arresting. The birthrate in Italy is the lowest it has ever been in the country’s history. South Korea’s fertility rate has been stuck below one birth per woman for decades despite an estimated $120bn (£90bn) being spent on initiatives aimed at raising it. Japan started the century with 128 million citizens but is on course to have only 106 million by 2050. China’s population will peak at 1.45 billion in 2030, but if it proves unable to raise its fertility rate, the world’s most populous country could end the century with fewer than 600 million inhabitants. This is the “big risk” alluded to by Musk. The trouble is, his statement seems to imply that “civilisation” does not include Africa.
Continue reading...Organising committee official warns against ‘any behaviour or speech that is against the Olympic spirit’
Any athlete behaviour that is against the Olympic spirit or Chinese rules or laws will be subject to “certain punishment”, a Beijing 2022 official has said in response to a question about the possibility of athlete protests at next month’s Winter Games.
It comes shortly after human rights advocates told athletes they were better off staying silent for the duration of the Games and amid concerns over the online security of attendees’ data contained in a mandatory phone app.
Continue reading...Beijing faces a demographic timebomb, with population growth at its lowest for six decades
“Of all things in the world, people are the most precious,” Mao Zedong said soon after taking power, believing China needed more soldiers and workers. The advent of peace saw the population rocket from 540 million to 969 million over the next three decades. Authorities abruptly switched to curbing births and brutally implementing the “one-child” policy.
These days, most Chinese couples are curtailing their families – or going without – by choice. The population now stands at 1.4 billion; a sixth of the global total. But last year’s birthrate was the lowest since 1949, and the rate of population growth the lowest since the Great Famine six decades ago. The pandemic has seen dramatic drops in births in many places. But in China, the shift is part of a pronounced long-term trend. Several experts believe that last year marked the population peak.
Continue reading...