Category Archives: China

China coronavirus: UK Cobra committee meets as death toll rises to 26 – live news

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UK emergency committee to discuss outbreak as more than 33 million people affected by lockdown measures in China

Calls for stricter outlawing of the trafficking and consumption of wild game - which has been linked to the emergence of Coronavirus in Chinese cities - have been reverberating on Chinese social media.

An interesting piece from Jessica Colwell on What’s on Weibo, which reports on social media trends in China, reports that the Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market which has been linked to the outbreak has been closed down but criticism of such markets has been fierce.

The hashtag “Support the banning of wild game markets” (#支持禁绝野味市场#) was topping the list of trending topics for much of Thursday and was viewed 270 million times.

Another hashtag, “The source of the new coronavirus is wild animals” (#新型冠状病毒来源是野生动物#), topped the list on Wednesday and has been viewed 990 million times. Online commenters are lambasting the practice of eating illegal wild game such as civet cats, the cause of the 2003 SARS virus, and bats, the suspected cause of the Wuhan coronavirus (snakes have also been suggested as a possible source of the coronavirus outbreak).

Britain’s public health authorities have put out these slides as part of an information campaign about the coronavirus outbreak

No confirmed cases of Wuhan coronavirus have been detected in the UK and the risk to the UK population is low. If you have travelled to the affected area, make sure you know what to do if you experience symptoms: https://t.co/vvIWp72flo pic.twitter.com/hzV5A3dy4f

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New Zealand needs to show it’s serious about addressing Chinese interference | Anne-Marie Brady

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Wellington has restricted foreign political donations but its lax approach to Beijing suggests economic interests still trump national security concerns

Transparency International announced yesterday that New Zealand is the least corrupt country in the world. This is excellent news, but New Zealand cannot afford to rest on its laurels.

Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index assesses whether countries have a corrupt judiciary and public sector. Some other aspects where corruption can also occur, such as political funding, are not included in the index.

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Wuhan in lockdown as residents barred from leaving Chinese city stricken by coronavirus – video

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Authorities have shut down public transport and airports to prevent Wuhan's 11 million residents from leaving the city as they look to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Police have been seen patrolling railway stations and setting up roadblocks

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From loo roll to dumplings: Hong Kong protesters weaponise purchasing power

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The ‘yellow economic circle’ movement aims to promote locally owned businesses – and shun Chinese ones

Emily Mak works in finance but every lunchtime in the run-up to lunar new year on Saturday she heads to a bustling Hong Kong market street to distribute lai see packets to customers who have ordered them online.

Her packets – red envelopes used to hold a traditional new year gift of money for children – are emblazoned with pro-democracy messages. The profits of the more than 20,000 packets she has sold will be donated to young protesters experiencing hardship.

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Protesters who demanded Huawei CFO’s release revealed to be paid actors

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More than a dozen people outside Vancouver courtroom with ‘Free Meng’ signs were promised C$100 for two hours’ work on a movie

Protesters calling for the release of a senior Chinese telecommunications executive arrested in Canada have admitted they were paid actors, in the latest twist in a closely watched extradition case that has chilled relations between Ottawa and Beijing.

More than a dozen people joined a demonstration on Monday outside a Vancouver courtroom where the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou is fighting extradition to the US for alleged fraud related to sanctions against Iran.

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Coronavirus: China bars 11m residents from leaving city at centre of outbreak

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Government unveils new countermeasures as country prepares for lunar new year and death toll doubles to 17

Chinese authorities have suspended all outbound transport from Wuhan, the city at the centre of an outbreak of the mysterious Sars-like coronavirus, which has so far killed 17 people.

Bus, subway, ferry and long-distance passenger transportation networks from the city were suspended from 10am local time on Thursday, state media reported. The city’s airport and train stations were also closed to outgoing passengers.

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The Guardian view on the new coronavirus: be alert, not afraid | Editorial

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An outbreak of a pneumonia-causing virus in China is creating alarm. It is sensible to be concerned, but an overreaction would be a mistake

Every so often, our vague awareness of our vulnerability as a species crystallises around a specific threat. At first, we note with unconcern a handful of cases of a new illness, somewhere far away. Soon it begins to spread. The deaths mount. We start to wonder whether we are being complacent rather than sensible, and whether we are living through the early montage in a disaster movie, in which families bicker over breakfast as news reports on the killer virus play unnoticed in the background. Could this be a new pandemic which will sweep the globe killing tens of millions, as Spanish flu once did?

The story of the new coronavirus, first reported in Wuhan, China, last month, now seems to be reaching the point where public indifference tips into worry and even fear. It causes pneumonia; Beijing says six people have died and 300 have been infected as it has spread. On Monday, officials confirmed that there was human-to-human transmission. Sales of face masks have soared. Cases have been reported in Thailand, Japan, the Philippines and elsewhere, though all confirmed incidents involve patients who had been in China. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization will hold an emergency meeting.

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Coronavirus: Chinese hospitals not testing patients, say relatives

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Number of cases, and deaths, could be much higher than those cited in official reports if claims are true

On 12 January Huang got news his healthy 65-year-old mother had been checked into a hospital in the central Chinese city of Wuhan with a fever and a cough.

There had been reports of a strange new virus with similar symptoms, and the hospital staff were dressed in full hazmat suits. Still, Huang’s mother was not tested for the mystery illness, nor quarantined from other patients.

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Tony Blair is wrong. Africa won’t be the answer to Britain’s post-Brexit problems

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Far from promising an economic miracle, the UK has missed the boat on a continent on the brink of a painful debt crisis

Tony Blair’s cheerleading for the UK-Africa investment summit is of a piece with much of the former prime minister’s recent career. Trading in grand-sounding ideas, often very short on detail, he brings the pitch of an evangelist crossed with a lobbyist to the world’s biggest problems.

Blair’s latest piece of rhetorical woo-woo unites (and promises to address) a series of disparate preoccupations: eradicating poverty and encouraging good governance in Africa while solving the issue of Britain’s trading relationships post-Brexit. All seasoned with just a hint of post-colonial hubris.

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Coronavirus: Australia to screen passengers on flights from China for potentially fatal illness

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Sars-like virus can be transmitted by human contact and has infected more than 200 and killed three

Australia will begin screening passengers on high-risk flights from China for signs of a new Sars-like coronavirus following confirmation from the Chinese health authorities that the virus has begun spreading from human to human.

The outbreak was first reported in Wuhan City in China on New Year’s Eve and tied to a seafood market, but officials have since confirmed that it has spread to other humans who had not frequented the market, as well as to health workers.

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Should the world be worried about the coronavirus in China?

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Experts fear latest strain of virus may spread across planet from person to person

It is a novel coronavirus – that is to say, a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals, or possibly seafood. Many of those infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city. New and troubling viruses usually originate in animal hosts. Ebola and flu are examples.

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China confirms human-to-human transmission of coronavirus

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Authorities on alert ahead of lunar new year holiday as 139 new cases of strain detected

China’s National Health Commission has confirmed human-to-human transmission of a mysterious Sars-like virus that has spread across the country and fuelled anxiety about the prospect of a major outbreak as millions begin travelling for lunar new year celebrations.

Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert and head of the health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China’s Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected, China’s official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

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Coronavirus: China reports 17 new cases of Sars-like mystery virus

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Three of the new cases are severe, with experts worried about the disease’s spread ahead of lunar new year

China reported 17 new cases of the mysterious Sars-like virus on Sunday, including three in a severe condition, heightening fears ahead of China’s lunar new year holiday, when hundreds of millions of people move around the country.

The new coronavirus strain has caused alarm because of its connection to severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-03.

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‘Hong Kong is at a crossroads’: inside prison with the student who took on Beijing

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Political activist Joshua Wong was 20 when he was sentenced in 2017 to six months for his role in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy ‘umbrella movement’

The last words I said before I was taken away from the courtroom were: “Hong Kong people, carry on!” That sums up how I feel about our political struggle. Since Occupy Central – and the umbrella movement that succeeded it – ended without achieving its stated goal, Hong Kong has entered one of its most challenging chapters. Protesters coming out of a failed movement are overcome with disillusionment and powerlessness.

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Coronavirus: Australia’s top health official says there is ‘no current need’ to enhance airport screening

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Sars-like virus has infected nearly 50 people in China, killing two, with cases also detected in Japan and Thailand

Australia’s top health official says there is “no current need” to enhance existing airport screening measures to target an unknown Sars-like virus that has infected nearly 50 people in China and killed two since it was reported on New Year’s Eve.

Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, said authorities in Australia were “watching developments very closely” but had not issued a travel warning.

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Propaganda and sexism prove powerful contraceptives for Chinese women

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China’s push for more births fails to convince a generation of only-children

China’s government has been trying to manage a public U-turn on one of its biggest, longest running and most powerful policy and propaganda campaigns for several years now, urging a generation of only-children – born under its one-child policy – that they should have more babies themselves.

But the posters, public information campaigns and official exhortations appear to have had almost no discernible effect. Beijing on Friday reported its lowest birthrate since the founding of Communist China over seven decades ago.

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China’s birthrate falls to lowest level despite push for more babies

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Efforts by policymakers to bolster the population after decades of strict family planning seem to be failing

China’s birthrate has fallen to the lowest level since the Communist country was founded in 1949, in a sign that efforts to head off a demographic crisis have so far failed.

There were 14.6 million births in China in 2019, a drop of about 500,000 from the year before and the third year in a row that the number of births fallen, according to a report from the National Bureau of Statistics published on Friday. It was the lowest number in seven decades, with the exception of 1961, the last year of a famine that left tens of millions dead.

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Coronavirus: more cases and second death reported in China

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Experts fear numbers affected may be higher than first thought as US begins screening passengers arriving from Wuhan

More cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in the Chinese city of Wuhan and a second person has died, according to local authorities. It comes as disease-modelling experts warned that far more people may have been affected by the previously unknown virus than thought.

The Wuhan municipal health commission said in a statement that four patients diagnosed with pneumonia on Thursday were in a stable condition, taking the total number of cases to nearly 50. The statement released in the early hours on Saturday is the first confirmation of new cases by the commission in nearly a week.

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UK channels aid budget as it seeks closer ties with Africa post-Brexit

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£395m trade boost is aimed at countering China’s spending on the continent

Britain has unveiled plans to channel part of the £14bn aid budget through the City as it seeks to exploit the global reach of the finance sector to boost investment in Africa.

Details of the £395m package were announced by the international development secretary, Alok Sharma, ahead of a high-level UK-Africa investment summit next Monday.

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Hong Kong could keep semi-autonomy for longer, says Lam

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Leader says ‘one country, two systems’ deal could continue if city shows loyalty to China

Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has said the “one country, two systems” framework under which the city is meant to enjoy autonomy from China could be extended beyond 2047 if loyalty to Beijing is upheld.

In her first appearance at the Legislative Council since October, Lam answered a question from a lawmaker about what might happen in 2047, the year the semi-autonomous territory is meant to return to Chinese rule.

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