Month: July 2021

Jul 21st 2021 HONG KONG’S universities are on summer holiday. Among the few students who remain on campuses, the mood is gloomy. On July 16th police raided the offices of the student union at the University of Hong Kong (see picture). The city’s police chief said some of the union’s leaders may have breached the national-security law that China imposed on the territory in 2020 following months of student-led unrest in the previous year. After Britain ceded control of Hong Kong nearly a quarter of a century ago, its universities…

Advertisement A popular Chinese-Canadian singer, Kris Wu, has lost endorsement and other deals with at least 10 brands including Porsche and Bulgari after a teenager accused him of having sex with her while she was drunk. The former member of Korean boy band EXO denied the accusation, which prompted an outpouring of supportive comments for the woman online and criticism of Wu. “There was no ‘groupie sex’! There was no ‘underage’!” Wu said on his social media account, which has 52 million followers. “If there were this kind of thing,…

Advertisement One of Taiwan’s best-known legislators, Freddy Lim, is the latest political figure to face a possible recall in spite of his fame and popularity. The internationally famous heavy metal rock star turned activist and lawmaker is just one of the many young pan-green political figures caught in recall recoil by the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), which is intent on punishing Lim as the representative of Taipei’s Wanhua, the epicenter of Taiwan’s recent COVID-19 outbreak. Since the successful recall of former Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu of the KMT last year, campaigns…

Advertisement On Friday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked China to be more cooperative with the second phase of the WHO’s investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. The WHO is “asking actually China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic,” Tedros said. On Monday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said bluntly that the “work plan on the second phase origins study proposed by the WHO Secretariat is…

Advertisement Tucked away in a corner of the complex landscape of China is a story about evolving Chinese food preferences. This straightforward story, however, involves larger themes of consequence in China today. One is the question of whether the average Chinese citizen feels safe in giving an opinion on a simple, non-political issue. In contrast, another is the increasing open-mindedness in much of Chinese society toward trying new things. A third is the very national security of China itself as expressed by President and General Secretary of the Communist Party…

No vaccine is fully effective in preventing Covid infection, he said, and while the Chinese vaccines “are not 100% effective, they are still saving many lives”. Experts stress that breakthrough infections do not mean vaccines are pointless, as immunisation helps to stop people from getting very sick with Covid-19. BBC

Jul 17th 2021 IT IS BECOMING clear that China will not, or perhaps cannot, re-open its borders soon. The reasons are many. Chinese leaders have declared that zero tolerance of covid-19 is a mark of good government. Officials are fired if cases are found on their patch, so they lock down whole cities to crush even tiny outbreaks. Ordinary Chinese associate the virus with fear and stigma, knowing that a single infected person may force thousands of neighbours, colleagues or classmates into quarantine. Listen to this story Your browser does…

Advertisement China’s digital yuan, or eCNY, is a trailblazer in the realm of central bank digital currency, getting off the ground at a much quicker speed than counterparts pursued in the West and Japan. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the de facto Chinese equivalent to the Federal Reserve, backs the currency, which can then replace cash in circulation. The revolutionary new currency has thus far made its debut through lottery systems, which allocate funds to users who are randomly selected. Typically, these “winners” receive a set amount of digital…

Advertisement Chinese media outlet Caixin is reporting that China plans to use an mRNA vaccine, jointly developed by China’s Fosun Pharma and German company BioNTech, as a booster shot for those who have been fully vaccinated using Chinese vaccines. “Chinese authorities plan to use the vaccine, which goes by the brand name Comirnaty, as a booster shot for people who have received inactivated-virus vaccines, people close to regulators told Caixin,” according to the report. The vaccines produced by Chinese companies – including China’s two leading COVID-19 vaccine producers, Sinopharm and…

Advertisement The head of the World Health Organization acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the COVID-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak, and he said Thursday he is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus. In a rare departure from his usual deference to powerful member countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the international team that traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of…