BEIJING/SHANGHAI: China set out urgent plans to protect rural communities from COVID-19 on Friday as millions of city-dwellers planned holidays for the first time in years after the government abandoned its stringent system of lockdowns and travel curbs.
China's move last week to start aligning with a world that has largely opened up to live with the virus, followed historic protests against President Xi Jinping's signature 'zero-COVID' policies designed to stamp out COVID-19.
But the excitement that met this dramatic u-turn has quickly given way to concerns that China is unprepared for the coming wave of infections, and the blow it could deliver to the world's second-largest economy.
China reported 2,157 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections for Dec. 15 compared with 2,000 a day.
The official figures, however, do not capture the whole picture as testing has dropped, and are at odds with signs of wider spread in cities where long queues outside fever clinics and empty pharmacy shelves have become a common sight.
There is particular concern about China's hinterland in the run up to local Lunar New Year holidays starting on Jan. 22.
Rural areas are likely to be inundated with travelers returning to their hometowns and villages, which have had little exposure to the virus during the three years since the pandemic erupted.
China's National Health Commission on Friday said it was ramping up vaccinations and building stocks of ventilators, essential drugs, and test kits in rural areas. It also advised travellers to reduce contact with elderly relatives.
Mainland China's international borders remain largely shut, but recent decisions to abandon testing prior to domestic travel and disable apps that tracked people's journey history have freed up people to move around the country.
One of China’s most populous provinces Henan cancelled all holidays for healthcare staff until the end of March to ensure “a smooth transition” as COVID-19 restrictions ease, state media reported late Thursday.
Multiple cities across the country of 1.4 billion people also opened new vaccination sites to encourage the public to take booster shots, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.
“Go all out” was the message from China’s state asset regulator in a statement late Thursday that urged government-owned drug makers to ensure supplies of COVID-19 related medicines to meet “the rapid increase” in demand.
SF Express, one of China’s largest courier services, said on its official WeChat account that it sent in workers from across the country to keep deliveries going in Beijing amid staff shortages and soaring demand.
It also said it had started a “fast track” for emergency shipments such as medicines and daily necessities, with demand in the capital 300 percent above normal levels.
The COVID-19 scare in China also led people in Hong Kong, Macau and in some neighborhoods in Australia to go in search for fever medicines and test kits for family and friends on the mainland.
Thanks to the government’s previously uncompromising controls, China got off lightly compared with many other countries during the pandemic over the past three years, but now many Chinese are resigned to catching the virus at some point.
“Everyone will get it, I guess,” a 29-year-old Beijing resident who requested to be identified by her surname Du, said on the streets of Beijing.
Analysts fear China will pay a price for letting the virus rapidly rip through a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.
That has dented prospects for near-term growth, even if the opening up should eventually revive China’s battered economy.
JPMorgan on Friday revised down its expectations for China’s 2022 growth to 2.8 percent, which is well below China’s official target of 5.5 percent and would mark one of its worst performances in almost half a century.
China is bracing for “a transitional pain period”, analysts at the bank said, adding they expected infections to spike after the Lunar New Year before the economy starts to recover in mid-2023.
The holidays will be a “big testing ground for how far these COVID-19 cases are going to rise,” said Rob Drijkoningen, co-head of emerging market debt at Neuberger Berman.
President Xi, his ruling Politburo and senior government officials are holding their annual Central Economic Work Conference this week, sources said.
China’s top state planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, said “arduous efforts” are needed to sustain the recovery in growth due to an adverse external environment and the global economy’s loss of momentum.
Companies that are already suffering from China’s policy shift are the swathes of firms involved in its quarantining, COVID-19-tracking and movement-monitoring products and services, which had become big employers over the past three years.
China’s yuan firmed on Friday as traders remained optimistic that more measures to support the economy would emerge from the conference.
China braces for COVID-19 spread to countryside as holidays near
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China braces for COVID-19 spread to countryside as holidays near
- Millions set to travel across country for Lunar New Year
- National Health Commission ramping up vaccinations and building stocks of ventilators, and test kits in rural areas
At least five dead in Pakistan building collapse: police
- Up to 100 people had been living in the building
- Roof and building collapses are common across Pakistan
Rescuers and residents in the mega port city of Karachi worked together to pull people from the debris after the incident at around 10:10 a.m. (0510 GMT).
“We have so far retrieved five dead bodies and six injured people,” a senior local police official, Arif Aziz, said.
Up to 100 people had been living in the building, he added.
Saad Edhi, of the Edhi welfare foundation that is leading the rescue operation, said there could be “at least eight to 10 more people still trapped,” describing it as a “worn out building.”
He put the death toll at four.
Roof and building collapses are common across Pakistan, mainly because of poor safety standards and shoddy construction materials in the South Asian country of more than 240 million people.
But Karachi, home to more than 20 million, is especially notorious for poor construction, illegal extensions, aging infrastructure, overcrowding, and lax enforcement of building regulations.
After decades of service, Taiwan retires its last F-5 fighter jets
- To keep pace with increased threats from mainland China, Taiwan has been upgrading both its manned and unmanned aerial assets
HUALIEN, Taiwan: After decades in service, Taiwan’s Vietnam-era F-5 fighter jets are being retired as part of the island democracy’s transition to more advanced hardware.
To keep pace with increased threats from mainland China, Taiwan has been upgrading both its manned and unmanned aerial assets, including purchasing 66 of the latest generation F-16V fighters and upgrading existing aircraft to modern specifications.
China claims the island as its own territory and has never dropped its threat to invade since the sides split amid civil war in 1949.
The air force invited journalists on Friday to witness one last flyby by the F-5, which first entered service with Taiwan in 1965 and most of which have now been converted to trainers, reconnaissance planes or decoys.
The planes began moving into a backing role 30 years ago when Taiwan began acquiring more modern American F-16s, French Mirage 2000s and domestically developed Ching Kuos.
The F-5 is one of the world’s most widely produced jets, with Taiwan the largest operator at one point with 336, producing some 100 domestically. Dozens of countries still use them, including the US, which uses them as pretend opponents in training exercises.
The planes gained favor for their high speed and maneuverability, alongside their low cost and ease of maintenance. For Taiwan, they guarded the skies above the Taiwan Strait against mainland China’s Soviet and domestically built fighters.
Taiwan’s F-5s were based along the eastern coast, separated from China by both the 160 kilometer (100 mile)-wide Taiwan Strait and Taiwan’s formidable Central Mountain Range.
Rio to host BRICS summit wary of Trump
- The city, with beefed-up security, will play host to leaders and diplomats from 11 emerging economies
- Tensions in the Middle East, including Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, will weigh on the summit
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: A summit of BRICS nations will convene in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday and Monday, with members hoping to weigh in on global crises while tiptoeing around US President Donald Trump’s policies.
The city, with beefed-up security, will play host to leaders and diplomats from 11 emerging economies including China, India, Russia and South Africa, which represent nearly half of the world’s population and 40 percent of its GDP.
Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will have to navigate the absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who will miss the summit for the first time.
Beijing will instead be represented by its Prime Minister Li Qiang.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who is facing a pending International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant, will not travel to Brazil, but is set to participate via video link, according to the Kremlin.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, fresh from a 12-day conflict with Israel and a skirmish with the United States, will also be absent, as will his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, a Brazilian government source said.
Tensions in the Middle East, including Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, will weigh on the summit, as well as the grim anticipation of tariffs threatened by Trump due next week.
“We’re anticipating a summit with a cautious tone: it will be difficult to mention the United States by name in the final declaration,” Marta Fernandez, director of the BRICS Policy Center at Rio’s Pontifical Catholic University said.
China, for example, “is trying to adopt a restrained position on the Middle East,” Fernandez said, pointing out that Beijing was also in tricky tariff negotiations with Washington.
“This doesn’t seem to be the right time to provoke further friction” between the world’s two leading economies, the researcher said.
BRICS members did not issue a strong statement on the Iran-Israel conflict and subsequent US military strikes due to their “diverging” interests, according to Oliver Stuenkel, an international relations professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
Brazil nevertheless hopes that countries can take a common stand at the summit, including on the most sensitive issues.
“BRICS (countries), throughout their history, have managed to speak with one voice on major international issues, and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be the case this time on the subject of the Middle East,” Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said.
However, talks on finding an alternative to the dollar for trade between BRICS members are likely dead in the water.
For Fernandez, it is almost “forbidden” to mention the idea within the group since Trump threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on countries that challenge the dollar’s international dominance.
Brazil, which in 2030 will host the COP30 UN climate conference, also hopes to find unity on the fight against climate change.
Artificial intelligence and global governance reform will also be on the menu.
“The escalation of the Middle East conflict reinforces the urgency of the debate on the need to reform global governance and strengthen multilateralism,” said foreign minister Vieira.
Since 2023, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Iran and Indonesia have joined the BRICS, formed in 2009 as a counter-balance to leading Western economies.
But, as Fernandez points out, this expansion “makes it all the more difficult to build a strong consensus.”
A bill setting new limits on asylum-seekers passes in the Dutch parliament
- The Dutch Red Cross has estimated 23,000 to 58,000 people live in the Netherlands without an official right to residence
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A pair of bills cracking down on asylum-seekers wishing to settle in the Netherlands has passed in the Dutch parliament after wrangling and soul-searching by some lawmakers who feared the law would criminalize offering compassionate help to undocumented migrants.
The legislation cuts temporary asylum residency from five to three years, indefinitely suspends the issuance of new asylum residency permits and reins in family reunions for people who have been granted asylum. It passed in the lower house late Thursday evening but could still be rejected in the upper house.
The Dutch Red Cross has estimated 23,000 to 58,000 people live in the Netherlands without an official right to residence.
Taking tough measures to rein in migration was a policy cornerstone for the four-party coalition led by the Party for Freedom of anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders. The coalition collapsed last month after just 11 months in office, and migration is expected to be a key issue ahead of the snap election Oct. 29.
Wilders pulled the plug on the coalition saying it was taking too long to enact moves to rein in migration. His coalition partners rejected the criticism, saying they all backed the crackdown. His party currently holds a narrow lead in opinion polls over a center-left two-party bloc that recently agreed to a formal merger.
The opposition Christian Democrats withdrew their support for the legislation put to the vote Thursday over a late amendment that would criminalize people living in the Netherlands without a valid visa or asylum ruling — and would also criminalize people and organizations that help such undocumented migrants. The amendment was introduced by a member of Wilders’ party and passed narrowly because a small number of opposition lawmakers were not present for the vote.
The vote took place in the final session of parliament before lawmakers broke for the summer. The upper house will consider the legislation after it returns from the recess. If Christian Democrats in the upper chamber reject it, the legislation will be returned to the lower house.
Russia hammers Kyiv in largest missile and drone barrage since war in Ukraine began
- Russia launched 550 drones and missiles across Ukraine overnight, the country’s air force said
- Ukrainian air defenses shot down 270 targets, including two cruise missiles
KYIV: Waves of drone and missile attacks targeted Kyiv overnight into Friday in the largest aerial attack since Russia’s war in Ukraine began, injuring 23 people and inflicting damage across multiple districts of the capital.
Russia launched 550 drones and missiles across Ukraine overnight, the country’s air force said. The majority were Shahed drones, while Russia used 11 missiles in the attack.
Throughout the night, Associated Press journalists in Kyiv heard the constant buzzing of drones overhead and the sound of explosions and intense machine gun fire as Ukrainian forces tried to intercept the aerial assault.
Kyiv was the primary target of the attack. At least 23 people were injured, with 14 hospitalized, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Ukrainian air defenses shot down 270 targets, including two cruise missiles. Another 208 targets were lost from radar and presumed jammed.
Russia successfully hit eight locations with nine missiles and 63 drones. Debris from intercepted drones fell across at least 33 sites.
The attack came hours after President Donald Trump held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and made his first public comments on his administration’s decision to pause some shipments of weapons to Ukraine.
That decision affects munitions, including Patriot missiles, the AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile and shorter-range Stinger missiles. They are needed to counter incoming missiles and drones, and to bring down Russian aircraft.
It’s been less than a week since Russia’s previous largest aerial assault of the war. Ukraine’s air force reported that Russia fired 537 drones, decoys and 60 missiles in that attack.
Emergency services reported damage in at least five of the capital’s 10 districts. In Solomianskyi district, a five-story residential building was partially destroyed and the roof of a seven-story building caught fire. Fires also broke out at a warehouse, a garage complex and an auto repair facility.
In Sviatoshynskyi district, a strike hit a 14-story residential building, sparking a fire. Several vehicles also caught fire nearby. Blazes were also reported at non-residential facilities.
In Shevchenkivskyi district, an eight-story building came under attack, with the first floor sustaining damage. Falling debris was recorded in Darnytskyi and Holosiivskyi districts.
Ukraine’s national railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, said drone strikes damaged rail infrastructure in Kyiv.
