Mr Wu has denied plying her with alcohol, and also rejected other allegations that he had enticed girls to have sex in return for benefits, raped girls while they were unconscious, and had sex with minors. Under Chinese law, under-18s are considered minors, while the age of sexual consent is 14. BBC
Advertisement Residents laid bouquet after bouquet, the neatly tied yellow and white flowers standing on end, on Tuesday outside an entrance to a subway station in central China where 14 people died last week after a record-breaking downpour flooded large swaths of Henan province. Torrents of water rushed into a subway line in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, trapping a train with hundreds of passengers between two stations. The deluge drowned some and left others gasping for breath in chest-high water until emergency crews could reach them. “I’m filled with grief,”…
Advertisement Despite early failures, Chinese government efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have been overwhelmingly successful. Curiously, Beijing has failed to capitalize on this success to increase its global reputation. Instead, a continued ban on most foreign nationals entering the country, scientifically questionable quarantine regimes for international arrivals, as well as hostility toward independent investigations into the origin of the virus have made this all but impossible. At the same time, recent concerns about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines have also threatened to undermine the results of Beijing’s vaccine diplomacy.…