The richest man in China opened his own Twitter account last month, in the middle of the Covid-19 outbreak. So far, every one of his posts has been devoted to his unrivalled campaign to deliver medical supplies to almost every country around the world… The billionaire entrepreneur is the driving force behind a widespread operation […]
Unsubstantiated theories linking the new pathogen to a Wuhan virus institute, the laboratory which contributed to the genome sequencing and identification of the virus in January, keep coming back to life despite debunking from mainstream science. Read Here – South China Morning Post
China called on the United States to stop blaming it for the coronavirus pandemic, saying it was “also a victim”, as international pressure mounts on Beijing over its handling of the crisis. Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the global community should work together instead of casting blame or demanding compensation. Read Here – South […]
Either Beijing will find innovative ways that benefit debtor nations or it will be seen as just another predatory lender in a long history of empire builders. The backlash to China’s presence in lands around the world will soon follow, along with fractured political and economic relationships that become difficult, if not impossible, to mend. […]
China’s economy shrank by 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020, the first contraction since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, confirming the economic damage done by the coronavirus pandemic. Over the first three months of the year, the world’s second largest economy faced an extensive shutdown as it battled to […]
In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations. Read Here – APNews
Two months ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping looked like he would emerge from the novel coronavirus pandemic with his legitimacy and his ambitions for Chinese global leadership in tatters. Today, as the Chinese government lifts its lockdown on the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, Xi can present himself instead as a forceful […]
Back in January, when the pandemic now consuming the world was still gathering force, a Berkeley research scientist named Xiao Qiang was monitoring China’s official statements about a new coronavirus then spreading through Wuhan and noticed something disturbing. Statements made by the World Health Organization, the international body that advises the world on handling health […]
Over recent weeks, the United States and China have been using increasingly strong rhetoric around COVID-19. The war of words had real-life consequences in late March when a meeting of the G7 failed to agree a joint statement following US State Department’s insistence on referring to the virus as the “Wuhan Virus”. How have the two […]
As most Southeast Asian governments anticipate China’s potential reaction and adjust their behaviours accordingly, China no longer needs to exert explicit pressure. The COVID-19 crisis has made this trend more obvious, highlighting not only the internalisation of this “privileged relationship” but also a more disturbing – but unspoken – reality: Southeast Asian countries’ acceptance of […]
looking beyond borders 