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• Shanghai reports 23,000 Covid-19 cases as economic impact bites Shanghai residents scuffled with hazmat-suited police officers ordering them to surrender their homes to coronavirus (Covid-19) patients, videos on social media showed, providing a rare glimpse into rising discontent in the megacity over China’s inflexible virus response. The city of 25mn and China’s economic engine room has become the heart of the country’s biggest outbreak since the peak of the first virus wave in Wuhan over two years ago, rattling the strict zero-Covid policy. Authorities are rushing to construct tens of thousands of beds to house Covid-19 patients as daily infections top 20,000 – small compared with parts of the world getting used to living with the virus. Some stuck in Shanghai, locked down since early April, have flooded social media with complaints of food shortages and of over-zealous officialdom forcing them into state quarantine, challenging China’s “Great Firewall” of censorship which wipes dissenting views from the internet almost as soon as they appear. Videos circulated late on Thursday showing residents outside a compound shouting at ranks of officials holding shields labelled “police”, as the officers tried to break through their line. In one clip, police appear to make several arrests as the residents accuse them of “hitting people”. The incident began after authorities ordered 39 households to move out of their homes to house virus patients in the development, according to Zhangjiang Group, the developer of the housing complex. It has provided a rare window into public anger in China, where Communist authorities brook little dissent and censors routinely scrub information relating to protests from the Internet. In one live-streamed video, a woman can be heard weeping and asking “why are they taking an old person away?” as officials appeared to put someone into a car. Zhangjiang Group said that it had compensated the tenants and moved them into other units in the same compound. The group recognised that videos of the compound that had “appeared on the Internet” on Thursday and said “the situation had now settled down” after “some tenants obstructed the construction” of a quarantine fence. Search results for the name of the apartment complex disappeared from China’s Twitter-like Weibo by morning yesterday. Some Shanghai residents have poured their anger at the handling of the virus onto the Internet. They have ripped into authorities for allowing food shortages as well as heavy-handed controls, including the killing of a pet corgi by a health worker and a now-softened policy of separating infected children from their virus-free parents. Other videos and audio clips have indicated increasing desperation among city inhabitants, including some showing residents bursting through barricades demanding food. In one unverified viral video, a drone flying through a residential area broadcast a message urging residents to “control your soul’s desire for freedom”. The vast majority of virus cases detected each day are in people with no symptoms – and there have been no deaths officially reported in the city since this outbreak. Shanghai health official Wu Qianyu said on Thursday that there were only nine severe cases, mostly older patients with underlying health conditions. Yet the authorities have vowed that the city “would not relax in the slightest”, preparing over a hundred new quarantine facilities to receive every person who tests positive. Pressure on the city to bring its outbreak under control is mounting from above, with President Xi Jinping warning on Wednesday that strict virus measures “cannot be relaxed” and proclaiming that “persistence is victory”, in a speech published by state media. While the daily tally of Covid-19 cases in Shanghai has fallen slightly, authorities said yesterday that the city’s lockdown threatened to exact a heavier toll on the world’s second-biggest economy. China’s automakers may have to suspend production next month if suppliers in Shanghai and surrounding areas can’t resume work, the chief executive officer of electric-car maker Xpeng said, while airlines and the property sector are also feeling the pain. Shanghai reported 23,000 Covid-19 cases yesterday, down from more than 27,000 the day before. However, the number of symptomatic cases in that tally edged up to a record 3,200, from the 2,573 reported a day earlier. Officials releasing the data did not comment on the reason for the overall fall in the city. China’s efforts to stop the virus with a strict “zero-Covid-19” policy are triggering economic disruptions that are rippling through global supply chains for goods ranging from electric vehicles to iPhones. Xpeng chief executive officer He Xiaopeng issued a dire warning for his sector unless the situation improves. “If the suppliers in Shanghai and its surrounding areas can’t find a way to resume operations and production, in May possibly all of China’s carmakers will have to stop production,” He said on his Wechat social media feed. An April 7 study by Gavekal Dragonomics found that 87 of China’s 100 largest cities by gross domestic product have imposed some form of quarantine curbs. Covid-19 curbs have also devastated travel across the country, with carrier Air China reporting a 70% drop in March traffic from a year ago on Thursday. Home prices stalled for a second month in a row in China’s 70 major cities last month, according to official data released yesterday, as the Covid-19 lockdowns sapped consumer confidence and undermined demand. China’s State Council, or cabinet, said on Wednesday that more policy measures were needed to support the economy, but analysts are unsure if rate cuts would quickly reverse the slump as long as the government maintains its Covid-19 policy. Xian imposes temporary, partial lockdown The northwestern Chinese city of Xian said yesterday that it will temporarily impose a partial lockdown to reduce its 13mn residents’ movement, after reporting dozens of coronavirus (Covid-19) infections this month, as China fights a record wave of cases. Since March, mainland China has been grappling with the worst Covid-19 outbreak since the virus first emerged in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019. Though the numbers remain moderate by international comparisons, the latest wave has put huge pressure on China’s “dynamic-clearance” policy that aims to leave no infections undetected, with tough measures disrupting supply chains and local economies. Chinese President Xi Jinping said there should be no let-up in virus control and prevention efforts while China would strive to minimise the policy’s impact on the economic and social development. Xian, which locked down its residents in December to fight a Delta variant outbreak, found 43 locally transmitted infections in its current Omicron flare-up. The city responded with curbs on residents’ movement from today through to Tuesday (April 16-19), though stopped short of imposing a full lockdown.

China’s financial hub Shanghai reported over 27,000 coronavirus cases yesterday, a new high, a day after President Xi Jinping said that the country must continue with its strict “dynamic Covid clearance” policy and pandemic control measures. Shanghai is battling China’s worst Covid-19 outbreak since the virus first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, with its 25mn residents remaining largely under lockdown, though restrictions were partially eased in some areas this week. Wider curbs to stop the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant have led to logistical and supply chain disruptions that are taking a growing economic toll, adding to expectations that China’s central bank will soon announce more stimulus measures. An April 7 study by Gavekal Dragonomics found that 87 of China’s 100 largest cities by GDP have imposed some form of quarantine curbs. Shanghai residents, meanwhile, have taken to social media to vent frustration over the difficulties of getting enough food and China’s policy that requires anyone testing positive, symptomatic or not, to be centrally quarantined, where many people have complained about poor conditions. Raising hopes for a shift in policy, on Wednesday the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a guide on home quarantining on its social media. The CDC’s guide — quarantine in a well-ventilated room stocked with masks, sanitiser and other gear — raised hopes that the central quarantine rule might be relaxed. However, when asked by a social media user in an online comments section about who might be eligible for home quarantine, the CDC referred to the old rules. Shanghai authorities also gave no hint of any change in approach during yesterday’s briefing.

Shanghai’s vice mayor admitted to shortcomings in the city’s handling of its Covid-19 outbreak as a record 23,600 new cases were reported yesterday. Deputy Mayor Zong Ming was speaking after the United States said it was allowing non-essential staff and their families to leave its consulate in the city. Zong praised the support from the public and the work of front line workers despite public criticism of strict curbs, but said the handling of the virus needed to improve. “We feel the same way about the problems everyone has raised and voiced,” he told a daily briefing. “A lot of our work has not been enough, and there’s still a big gap from everyone’s expectations. We will do our best to improve.” Beijing intervened after the failure of Shanghai’s initial effort to isolate the virus by locking down in stages, insisting that the country stick to its zero-tolerance policy to prevent its medical system from being overwhelmed. Elsewhere on Saturday, the southern megacity of Guangzhou - home to over 18mn people - said it would begin testing across its 11 districts after cases were reported on Friday. In Beijing, the municipal government placed a high-risk area under lockdown after eight confirmed Covid cases in the last two weeks, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, told reporters yesterday.  In Shanghai, where 26mn people are in lockdown, residents have continued to complain about food shortages due to a lack of couriers and uncertainty about when lockdown curbs may end. Yesterday, video footage circulated on Chinese social media of people in hazmat suits scuffling with occupants of a Shanghai housing compound. Some residents shouted, “Send provisions.” Reuters was not able to independently verify the footage. The government said it would conduct more testing and would ease some movement curbs. Some residents of housing compounds with no recent cases said they had been notified by their neighbourhood committees that they could leave their homes to stroll within their compounds. It did not signal a change of approach, however. “The epidemic prevention and control is now at the most critical moment, and we cannot tolerate the slightest slack,” Zong said. Gu Jun, director of the city’s commerce commission, acknowledged problems in distributing food supplies and said distribution centres, supermarkets, and pharmacies should continue operating online as much as possible. E-commerce company JD.com Inc said yesterday it had obtained a licence to deliver goods into Shanghai and hosted a livestreaming sales session joined by more than 3.5mn people. Offered products quickly sold out and the hosts pleaded for patience in response to commentators who complained that they were unable to purchase.  An official also addressed reports of patients recovering from Covid but not being allowed to return to their compounds by neighbourhood committees, emphasising that there was no evidence of any risk from those that had been discharged. On Friday, the US State Department said in a travel advisory it was allowing non-emergency staff and their families to leave the Shanghai consulate due to the surge in cases and the impact of restrictions. It advised US citizens to reconsider travel to China “due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws and Covoid-19 restrictions.” The ripple effects of the curbs in Shanghai and other areas are also being felt elsewhere. Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio said on yesterday it has suspended production after Covid disrupted operations at its suppliers in Shanghai and the provinces of Jilin and Jiangsu. Of Shanghai’s newly reported cases yesterday, 1,015 were recorded as symptomatic, while 22,609 were asymptomatic.

China is battling its biggest spike in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, with millions under lockdown and the healthcare system feeling the pressure. One of the last countries sticking to a zero-Covid strategy, China aims to stamp out every infection with strict lockdowns and by sending all cases to secure facilities. That is placing a strain on China's already under-pressure medical system, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant rapidly moves through the population. Here are some of China's key challenges in the fight against Covid:   - Vaccination rates -   Beijing says more than 1.2 billion people in China had received two doses of a Covid vaccine by mid-March -- nearly 90 percent of the population. It has also launched a booster campaign but more than half of the population has yet to receive a third shot. A major challenge is protecting the elderly, with only around half of Chinese people aged above 80 double-vaccinated and fewer than a fifth having received a booster. Among the over-60s, just over half have received a third shot. Officials have launched a fresh push to encourage older people to get a third dose, after hospitals in Hong Kong were overwhelmed by a wave of severe cases -- mostly unvaccinated elderly patients. China is using homegrown vaccines and has not approved any foreign-made shots, but it has given "conditional" approval to Pfizer's Covid-19 drug Paxlovid. Chinese vaccines have shown a lower rate of efficacy in studies compared with many foreign jabs. However, several Chinese vaccine makers have recently been given the go-ahead for clinical trials on a domestically-made mRNA Covid jab -- the same technology as the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots.   - Hospitals stretched -   China's healthcare system was understaffed and struggling to cope with its huge and ageing population even before the pandemic. According to the National Health Commission, China has only 2.9 general practitioners per 10,000 people. Britain has around the same number for every 1,000 people. Some Chinese regions are woefully under-resourced. In Jilin province, site of a recent Covid cluster, authorities said there were only 22,880 hospital beds for a population of 24 million. Peking University researchers have warned that China could suffer a "colossal outbreak" that would quickly overwhelm its medical system if the authorities relaxed restrictions to a similar degree as in Europe and the United States. It would likely lead to hundreds of thousands of new cases a day, the researchers said.   - Urban-rural divide -   Despite huge reductions in rural poverty, there are still significant differences in access to healthcare between the countryside and cities. Much of China's wealth, equipment and expertise is based in top-tier cities where richer residents can choose between a range of hospitals including international clinics. According to a National Health Commission report last year, China had only 1.6 medical workers per 1,000 people in rural areas and just 1.5 hospital beds. Although nearly 40 percent of the population lives in the countryside, rural China had a total of only 1.4 million hospital beds. Rural Chinese who migrate to cities for work also struggle to access healthcare in the cities due to red tape.   - Maintaining 'zero-Covid' -   Despite being China's most developed city, Shanghai has descended into crisis as authorities scramble to find enough beds for people who test positive. Authorities have said 130,000 new beds are ready or under construction at makeshift venues. About 40,000 beds are being set up at Shanghai's landmark National Exhibition and Convention Center. But most are currently filled by people with mild symptoms or none at all. Meanwhile, Shanghai residents under lockdown have complained about a lack of access to food and medicines unrelated to Covid. "Draconian, heavy-handed zero-Covid control measures" have overwhelmed the medical system, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. This is "an outcome that the zero-Covid strategy is supposed to avoid", he told AFP. Two thousand soldiers and 38,000 medical workers from around the country have been sent to Shanghai as reinforcements. At least two asthma patients died after reportedly being refused medical services due to Covid rules. As pressure on the system grows, some close contacts of patients are being allowed to quarantine at home, while rapid home testing kits have been deployed for the first time. Shanghai health commission chief Wu Jinglei said this week that although the city had 50 percent more ambulances on the road than before the outbreak, it still could not handle all the requests for medical help.

The Shanghai government yesterday said it was trying its best to improve the distribution of food and essential goods to locked-in residents, responding to growing public discontent as Covid curbs stretched into an 11th day. China’s financial hub has fallen largely silent after the city imposed harsh curbs to stem the spread of Covid under the country’s “zero tolerance” policy, with only healthcare workers, volunteers, delivery personnel or people with special permission allowed on the streets. Authorities say that has whittled the number of couriers, who must keep the city’s 26mn residents supplied, to just 11,000. Still operating but overloaded services include Meituan and Alibaba’s Freshippo online grocery platform and its Ele.me service. Lockdowns for the city’s residents east of the Huangpu river began on March 28, while lockdowns for the rest of the city started on April 1. The exercise originally was intended to last five days. The Shanghai branch of China’s Communist Party called on members to “dare show their swords and fight against all kind of behaviour that interferes with and destroys the overall efforts against the pandemic” in an open letter on Wednesday night. Shanghai has sufficient reserves of staples such as rice and meat, but issues have cropped up in distribution and last-mile deliveries because of epidemic control measures, Shanghai’s vice mayor, Chen Tong, said at a news conference yesterday. He said the city would try to reopen some wholesale markets and food stores and allow more delivery personnel out of locked-down areas. Officials will also crack down on price gouging, he added. Many residents are beginning to worry about food and drinking water, as well as obtaining products such as infant formula. Some have complained on social media about having to wake up at dawn for a chance at booking a grocery delivery, but finding them sold out within seconds. Others have turned to community WeChat groups to try to bulk-buy fruit and vegetables. Social media users have also widely shared outrage over individual tragedies, including the alleged suicide of woman after being cyberbullied for paying too little to a delivery worker, and a healthcare worker beating to death a corgi dog after its owner allegedly was taken to quarantine. Shanghai, which has been conducting multiple rounds of testing, reported close to 20,000 new locally transmitted cases for Wednesday, 98% of which it said where asymptomatic.

After finding two black boxes from a crashed China Eastern jet, recovery crews are looking for more airplane debris, nearby video footage and eyewitness accounts, an official at China's aviation regulator said on Monday. Flight MU5735, operated by a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, crashed into a mountainside last Monday, killing all 132 people onboard in mainland China's deadliest aviation disaster in 28 years. "Large-scale air crash investigations that only rely on data provided by the black boxes are often insufficient to tell the full truth of the incident," Zhu Tao, head of the aviation safety office at Civil Aviation Administration of China, told a press conference. "While examining data from the black boxes, we're doing our utmost effort to collect as much plane debris as possible and more footage and witness accounts of the accident," said Zhu. Recovery crews on Sunday found the second black box - the flight data recorder - from the wreckage of the jet. So far, more than 15,000 rescue and search workers have been sent to the scene, covering a total of 370,000 square meters and more than 36,000 pieces of plane wreckage have been found, Zheng Xi, head of the Guangxi Fire and Rescue Corp, told the same briefing. Earth-moving equipment has been brought in to conduct deep excavation work in the hope of recovering more plane parts and personal belongings of the passengers, Zheng added.

Recovery crews on Sunday found the second black box - the flight data recorder - from the wreckage of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 jet that crashed into a mountainside in southern China. Flight MU5735 crashed on Monday, killing all 132 people onboard, mainland China's deadliest aviation disaster in 28 years. Heading to coastal Guangzhou from the southwestern city of Kunming, the plane dived from cruising altitude around the time it should have started its landing descent. The dead included nine crew members. The black box, which could shed light on the cause of the crash, has been sent to Beijing for examination and analysis, state media reported. The other black box - the cockpit voice recorder - was delivered to experts in the Chinese capital after being found on Wednesday. It was too soon to determine the cause of the crash, and crashes are usually the result of a combination of factors, experts said. The second black box was dug out of a slope at the crash site about 9:20 a.m. (0120 GMT) in muddy conditions after rain in recent days. The device, part of which was badly damaged, was recovered 1.5 metres underground and 40 metres from the point of impact, said Zhu Tao, head of aviation safety at the Civil Aviation Administration of China. "Civil aviation investigators at the site confirmed that the storage unit of the flight data recorder has been found," Zhu told a news conference in Guangxi. "Parts of the recorder were seriously damaged, but the outside of the storage unit was in fairly good condition." The crash was the deadliest since a China Northwest Airlines flight from Xian to Guangzhou crashed, killing all 160 people on board. Monday's flight briefly appeared to pull out of its nosedive before resuming its plunge to earth, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24. Its data showed the aircraft was plummeting 31,000 feet per minute. The pilots did not respond to repeated calls from air traffic controllers and nearby planes during the rapid descent, authorities said. The disaster has shocked China, sending social media into overdrive as netizens parsed what little was known for clues. China's cyberspace watchdog ordered internet platforms and websites to clamp down on rumours, conspiracy theories and any online mockery of the disaster. Since the crash, authorities have banned users and closed accounts to deal with more than 167,000 rumours, ranging from the deaths of seven directors of a company to divine prophesies of a plane crash by the end of March. China is leading the crash investigation. The United States has been invited to take part, as the Boeing 737-800 was designed and manufactured there. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it was working with US and Chinese authorities to resolve visa and Covid-19 quarantine issues before participating.

China confirmed late on Saturday that all 132 passengers and crew on a China Eastern Airlines plane that crashed this week had died. Flight MU5735 was travelling from the southwestern city of Kunming to the port city of Guangzhou on Monday when it plummeted from cruising altitude to crash in a heavily forested area of Guangxi region. There had been little hope of finding any survivors. Speaking to reporters on Saturday night, Hu Zhenjiang, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), confirmed that there were no signs of life from the crash site and all 123 passengers and 9 crew members had been killed, state media said. The search team had earlier said it had identified DNA from 120 of the people on board. It is still searching for the second black box, or flight data recorder. It has, however, found an emergency location transmitter from the plane that was close to where the second black box was installed, said Zhu Tao, director of the Aviation Safety Office of CAAC during an earlier press conference. The team is also seeking the data module from the flight data recorder itself. The other black box, the cockpit voice recorder, was found on Wednesday and has been sent to Beijing for examination by experts. The search team has been digging for plane parts in heavy mud both by hand and with machinery. No key compounds from common explosives have been detected in the crash debris, a Guangxi official said.

China Eastern has confirmed there are fatalities after a jet carrying 132 people crashed into a mountain in southern China yesterday, shortly after losing contact with air traffic control and dropping thousands of metres in just three minutes. The Boeing 737-800 flight from the city of Kunming to the southern hub of Guangzhou “lost airborne contact over Wuzhou” city in the Guangxi region yesterday afternoon, according to the civil aviation administration of China (CAAC). The jet was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members. China Eastern confirmed that at least some people involved in the crash had been killed, without providing more information. “The company expresses its deep condolences for the passengers and crew members who died in the plane crash,” the airline said in a statement. The disaster prompted an unusually swift public reaction from President Xi Jinping, who said he was “shocked” and ordered an immediate investigation into its cause. Hundreds of firefighters were dispatched to the scene in Teng county near Wuzhou, state media reported, as nearby villagers rushed to help the rescue effort. “Everyone went to the mountains,” Tang Min, who runs a restaurant a few kilometres from the crash site, said. Fears for the fate of the jet spread yesterday afternoon as local media reported that Flight MU5735 had not arrived as planned in Guangzhou after taking off from Kunming shortly after 1pm (0500 GMT). Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed no data for the flight after 2.22pm. The tracker showed the plane sharply dropped from an altitude of 29,100 feet to 3,225 feet (8,870 to 982 metres) in three minutes, before flight information ceased. Some Chinese media carried a video that appeared to show a plane in a vertical nosedive. AFP could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video. One villager told a local news site the plane had “completely fallen apart” and he had seen forest areas destroyed by the fire caused by the crash. Another villager named Liu told state-run China News Service that he had driven his motorbike to the scene after hearing a loud explosion, and seen scattered debris including an aircraft wing and scraps of clothing. Aerial images of the crash site showed a large crater in the side of a green mountainside. State TV footage followed orange-clad emergency workers battling thick foliage to gather debris. China Eastern changed its website to black and white yesterday afternoon. The company said in a January report that it had 289 Boeing 737-series aircraft in its 751-strong fleet. Chinese media reported that the airline will now ground all the 737-800 jets. Shares in Boeing, which said it was “working to gather more information”, fell in early trading on Wall Street. Xi called for all-out rescue efforts and to determine the “cause of the accident as soon as possible”, according to CCTV, calling for “the absolute safety of the sector and people’s lives”. The arrivals board at Guangzhou airport showed the jet’s flight information for hours after it had crashed, as staff in full PPE held up signs to direct distraught relatives to a separate waiting area. The area was marked by high black screens emblazoned with the word “emergency” and guarded by officials and police. AFP reporters could see loved ones awaiting news and heard sobbing. One airport staffer said her colleagues inside were “focusing on taking care” of relatives of those involved in the crash. One relative told local media she had been due to board the flight but had taken an earlier plane at the last minute. Her sister and four friends had taken the crashed plane, she said, adding she was just “waiting for news”. A man named Ye said a colleague was also onboard.  “When we heard the news....(we) called him over and over for hours, but never got through,” Ye said, adding he had alerted the man’s parents, who were “going through some very complex emotions.” China had enjoyed an enviable air safety record in recent years as the country was crisscrossed by newly-built airports and serviced by new airlines established to match breakneck growth over the last few decades. A Henan Airlines flight crashed in northeastern Heilongjiang province in 2010, killing at least 42 out of 92 people on board, although the final toll was never confirmed. It was the last Chinese commercial flight crash that caused civilian fatalities. The deadliest Chinese commercial flight crash was a China Northwest Airlines crash in 1994, which killed all 160 onboard.

A China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in mountains in southern China on a domestic flight on Monday after a sudden descent from cruising altitude. Media said there were no signs of survivors. The airline said it deeply mourned the passengers and crew, without specifying how many people had been killed. Chinese media showed brief highway video footage from a vehicle's dashcam apparently showing a jet diving to the ground behind trees at an angle of about 35 degrees off vertical. Reuters could not immediately verify the footage. The plane was en route from the southwestern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, bordering Hong Kong, when it crashed. China Eastern said the cause of the crash, in which the plane descended at 31,000 feet a minute according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, was under investigation. The airline said it had provided a hotline for relatives of those on board and sent a working group to the site. There were no foreigners on the flight, Chinese state television reported, citing China Eastern. Media cited a rescue official as saying the plane had disintegrated and caused a fire destroying bamboo trees. The People's Daily quoted a provincial firefighting department official as saying there was no sign of life among the debris. State media showed a piece of the plane on a scarred, earthen hillside. There was no sign of a fire or personal belongings. The aircraft, with 123 passengers and nine crew on board, lost contact over the city of Wuzhou, China's Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline said. The flight left Kunming at 1:11 p.m. (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed, and had been due to land in Guangzhou at 3:05 p.m. (0705 GMT). The plane, which Flightradar24 said was six years old, had been cruising at 29,100 feet at 0620 GMT. Just over two minutes and 15 seconds later, data showed it had descended to 9,075 feet. Twenty seconds later, its last tracked altitude was 3,225 feet. Crashes during the cruise phase of flights are relatively rare even though this phase accounts for the majority of flight time. Boeing said last year only 13% of fatal commercial accidents globally between 2011 and 2020 occurred during the cruise phase, whereas 28% occurred on final approach and 26% on landing. "Usually the plane is on auto-pilot during cruise stage. So it is very hard to fathom what happened," said Li Xiaojin, a Chinese aviation expert. Online weather data showed partly cloudy conditions with good visibility in Wuzhou at the time of the crash. President Xi Jinping called for investigators to determine the cause of the crash as soon as possible, state broadcaster CCTV reported. A Boeing spokesperson said: "We are aware of the initial media reports and are working to gather more information." Shares of Boeing Co were down 5% at 1455 GMT. Shares in China Eastern Airlines in Hong Kong closed down 6.5% after news of the crash emerged, while its U.S.-listed shares slumped 17% in premarket trading. China Eastern grounded its fleet of 737-800 planes after the crash, state media reported. China Eastern has 109 of the aircraft in its fleet, according to FlightRadar24. 'GOOD RECORD' Aviation data provider OAG said this month that state-owned China Eastern Airlines was the world's sixth-largest carrier by scheduled weekly seat capacity. The 737-800 has a good safety record and is the predecessor to the 737 MAX model that has been grounded in China for more than three years after fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. China's airline safety record has been among the best in the world for a decade. "The CAAC has very rigid safety regulations and we will just need to wait for more details," said Shukor Yusof, head of Malaysia-based aviation consultancy Endau Analytics. Investigators will search for the plane's black boxes - the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder - to shed light on the crash. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it was ready to assist with China's investigation if asked. China's aviation safety record, while good, is less transparent than in countries like the United States and Australia where regulators release detailed reports on non-fatal incidents, said Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at industry publication Flightglobal. "There have been concerns that there is some underreporting of safety lapses on the mainland," he said. According to Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident was in 2010, when 44 of 96 people on board were killed when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed on approach to Yichun airport. In 1994 a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xian to Guangzhou crashed, killing all 160 on board in China's worst-ever air disaster, according to Aviation Safety Network.

A China Eastern passenger jet carrying 132 people crashed in southern China on Monday, aviation authorities said, with state media reporting it led to a fire on a mountain and the number of casualties unknown. The Boeing 737 flight from Kunming city to the southern hub of Guangzhou "lost airborne contact over Wuzhou" city in the Guangxi region, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said in an online announcement. "At present, it has been confirmed that this flight has crashed," the CAAC said, adding that it had activated its emergency response and "dispatched a working group to the scene". The plane was carrying 123 passengers and 9 flight crew members, the CAAC said.  An earlier state media report had said there were 133 people on board. State broadcaster CCTV reported that the plane crashed in Teng county near Wuzhou and "caused a mountain fire", citing the provincial emergency management bureau. The report added that rescue teams were dispatched to the scene. One villager told a local news site that the plane involved in the crash had "completely fallen apart" and he had seen nearby forest areas destroyed by a fire caused when the plane crashed onto the mountainside. Fears for the fate of the jet spread on Monday afternoon as local media reported that China Eastern flight MU5735 had not arrived as planned in Guangzhou after taking off from Kunming shortly after 1:00 pm (0500 GMT). There was no immediate response from China Eastern when contacted by AFP. The airline had changed its website to black and white colours on Monday afternoon. "The exact location of the accident was Langnan township in Teng county," a local official told AFP, without giving further details. Flight tracker FlightRadar24 showed no more data for flight MU5735 after 2:22 pm local time, when it had reached Wuzhou. It showed that the plane had sharply dropped from an altitude of 29,100 feet to 3,225 feet in the span of three minutes, before flight information stopped. China had enjoyed an enviable air safety record in recent years in a country criss-crossed by newly built airports and serviced by new airlines established to match the country's breakneck growth over the last few decades. A Henan Airlines flight crashed in northeastern Heilongjiang province in 2010, killing at least 42 out of 92 people on board although the final toll was never confirmed.  It was the last Chinese commercial passenger flight crash that caused civilian casualties. The deadliest Chinese commercial flight crash was a China Northwest Airlines crash in 1994 which killed all 160 onboard. Most of the passengers onboard the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared in March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, were from China. 

China reported two Covid-19 deaths on Saturday, its first in more than a year, underlining the threat posed by an Omicron outbreak that has triggered the country's highest case counts since the pandemic's outset. The National Health Commission said both deaths occurred in Jilin, the northeastern province which has been hardest-hit by a nationwide rise in cases that has prompted lockdowns or tight restrictions in several cities.   The deaths were the first reported in mainland China since January 2021, and bring the country's total death toll in the pandemic to 4,638.  In all, China reported 4,051 new cases on Saturday, down from 4,365 the day before, the health commission said, with more than half of the new cases coming in Jilin. Beijing's communist leadership has touted its low death rate relative to other countries as evidence of the strength of its one-party governance model. The two new deaths were buried in the health commission's daily report, and state-controlled media outlets made little mention of them.   - 'Zero-covid' under pressure -   The coronavirus emerged in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019 but China has largely kept it under control through strict border controls, lengthy quarantines and targeted lockdowns. But the highly transmissible Omicron variant is posing a stern challenge to the effectiveness and long-term viability of the government's "zero-Covid" strategy. In recent weeks some official sources have suggested China may at some point need to co-exist with Covid-19 as other countries are doing, while also warning of the economic impact of mass lockdowns. President Xi Jinping said on Thursday that China would stick with its zero-Covid strategy, while also allowing for a more "targeted" approach. While in the past full lockdowns could be expected for any outbreak, authorities around the country have responded with varying measures to the latest viral spread. Some cities have been closed off, including the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, home to 17.5 million people. But Shenzhen's measures were partially eased following Xi's comments. Shanghai, meanwhile, has moved schooling online and rolled out mass testing, but has averted a full lockdown. Authorities also have said that people with mild cases could isolate at central quarantine facilities, having previously sent all patients with any symptoms to specialist hospitals. But tens of millions of people remain under stay-at-home orders across China due to an outbreak that has sent daily reported new cases soaring from less than 100 just three weeks ago to several thousand per day now. Beijing also has watched nervously as Hong Kong has struggled to contain an Omicron outbreak that has sent deaths in the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city soaring into the thousands.  Mainland China officials have also moved to free up hospital beds over fears the virus could put the health system under strain. Jilin has built eight "makeshift hospitals" and two quarantine centres to stem the current upsurge. State news outlets this week broadcast footage of dozens of giant cranes assembling temporary medical facilities in Jilin, which has only around 23,000 hospital beds for some 24 million residents. The latest flare-ups also have prompted long queues to form outside mass testing sites across China and seen tight controls at ports, raising fears of trade disruption.

The Chinese commercial hub of Shanghai is pushing ahead with a mass testing initiative as it tries to curb a new spike in Covid-19 infections, but some districts were easing lockdown rules in an effort to minimise disruptions. The city, home to about 25mn people, saw symptomatic local community infections hit 57 on March 17, with another 203 domestically transmitted asymptomatic cases, up from eight and 150 respectively a day earlier. Shanghai, which has up to now remained relatively unscathed by the coronavirus, has shut schools and launched a city-wide testing programme that has seen dozens of residential compounds sealed off for at least 48 hours. China has been battling its worst Covid outbreak since the virus first emerged in Wuhan in 2020. It reported 2,388 new local cases with confirmed symptoms on March 17, almost double the count a day earlier. The outbreak is small by international standards and analysts have been debating how much China’s uncompromising “zero-Covid” response will hurt the economy at home and in the world at large. President Xi Jinping signalled on Thursday that the “dynamic clearance” policy to contain the outbreak would not be ditched. “Victory comes from perseverance,” Xi told a Politburo standing committee meeting while calling for more effective measures and efforts to minimise the economic impact, state media reported. The Shanghai government, while stressing there would be no city-wide lockdown as in other cities, said it would test residents on a neighbourhood by neighbourhood basis, and order 48-hour lockdowns while they waited for their results. There were some signs yesterday that it was easing up on its restrictions, with some compounds no longer required to go into a 48-hour lockdown while residents were tested. The head of one residential committee in Changning district said her compound would not be sealed off this weekend as originally planned. At least two other compounds also said testing would be postponed. While officials said on Thursday that Shanghai has ramped up its testing capacity to 3mn per day and planned to increase it to 5.5mn in the near future, some districts also reported shortages of qualified testing personnel. Some residents complained about the lack of clarity when it came to the rules.

Tens of millions of people were under lockdown across China yesterday, as surging virus cases prompted the return of mass tests and hazmat-suited health officials to streets on a scale not seen since the start of the pandemic. China reported 5,280 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, more than double the previous day’s tally, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant spread across a country that has stuck tightly to a zero-Covid strategy. That approach, which pivots on hard localised lockdowns and has left China virtually cut off from the outside world for two years, appears stretched to the limit as Omicron finds its way into communities. At least 13 cities nationwide were fully locked down as of yesterday, and several others had partial lockdowns, with some 15,000 infections reported nationwide in March. Health officials urged people over 60 to get vaccinated — including the third booster jab — as soon as possible. Around 80% of people in that age group are double-vaccinated, according to official data — but Beijing is anxiously watching the situation in Hong Kong, which now has the world’s highest virus death rates due to low inoculation among its oldest residents. Official Jiao Yahui said at a press briefing yesterday that “the risk of severe illness is very high” for people in that age group. The northeastern province of Jilin has been worst hit by Omicron with over 3,000 new cases yesterday, according to the National Health Commission. Residents of several cities there including provincial capital Changchun — home to 9mn people — are under stay-at-home orders. Health officials said over 8,200 Jilin residents have been hospitalised, with the vast majority showing mild or no symptoms. Shenzhen — the southern tech hub of 17.5mn people — is three days into a lockdown with many factories closed and supermarket shelves emptying, while China’s largest city Shanghai is under a lattice of restrictions. City officials said at a press conference yesterday that “it is not necessary to lock down Shanghai at present”, instead opting for more “precise” measures. Scenes of closed neighbourhoods, panic buying and police cordons cast back to the early phase of the pandemic, which first emerged in China in late 2019. Although cases from the chaotic initial outbreak in early 2020 are widely believed to have been under-reported, life since then had largely returned to normal in China under its strict zero-Covid approach.

All 17 million people in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen spent their first full day under lockdown Monday, as restrictions spread across Shanghai and other major cities to combat an outbreak challenging the nation's zero-tolerance Covid strategy. The southern city of Shenzhen imposed the measure to counter an Omicron flare-up in factories and neighbourhoods linked to nearby Hong Kong, which is recording scores of daily deaths as the virus runs rampant. Major Apple supplier Foxconn suspended its operations in Shenzhen, the company said Monday, as the lockdown bit hard into economic activity across the factory hub. Shenzhen is one of ten cities nationwide to have locked down all residents, though the measure was taken Monday in some parts of other major hubs including Dalian, Nanjing and Tianjin, which neighbours the capital. Health officials have warned tighter restrictions could be on their way, as concerns mount over the resilience of China's "zero-Covid" approach in the face of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant. Authorities reported 2,300 new virus cases nationwide on Monday and almost 3,400 a day earlier, the highest daily figure in two years.  "There have been many small-scale clusters in urban villages and factories," Shenzhen city official Huang Qiang said at a Monday briefing. "This suggests a high risk of community spread, and further precautions are still needed." Photos shared with AFP by a Shenzhen resident showed housing compound entrances blocked by large plastic barriers, as residents swapped jokes on social media about their rush to grab laptops from offices before the lockdown. Tech stocks plummeted on the Hong Kong exchange on Monday, as concerns over the impact of the virus spread in Shenzhen -- home to hubs for Foxconn, as well as Huawei and Tencent -- spooked investors.   - Toughing it out -   In Shanghai, residential areas and offices in some neighbourhoods remained sealed Monday as city authorities try to avoid a full lockdown. Police tape, metal gates and rows of community workers in hazmat suits surrounded shuttered shops and homes in closed-off parts of the city. Streets were quieter across the megacity, which reported around 170 new virus cases on Monday -- enough to seed anxiety among businesses over the economic pain ahead. A restauranteur with four outlets in different parts of Shanghai said he has to wade through a morass of hyper-local restrictions, giving an indication of how ordinary life in China is still spun on its head by a pandemic that the rest of the world has learned to cope with. "Different districts adopt different policies," he told AFP, requesting anonymity. "I want to close one and keep the rest open, and see how it goes later. What else can I do except tough it out?" Other outbreak epicentres have been less lucky.   Jilin province in the country's northeast recorded over 1,000 new cases for the second day in a row, and authorities banned residents leaving their cities without police permission. At least five cities in the province have been locked down since the beginning of March, including the major industrial base of Changchun, whose nine million residents were confined at home Friday. An outbreak at Volkswagen Group factories in Changchung prompted three sites to shut Monday for at least three days, according to a spokesman.  Health official Lei Zhenglong told state broadcaster CCTV that more than 10,000 domestic infections had been recorded in March so far across dozens of provinces, and warned the situation in many areas was "still developing". While the caseload is low in global terms, it is deeply alarming in China where authorities have been unrelenting in squashing clusters since early 2020. At least 26 officials in three provinces have been dismissed due to their handling of local outbreaks, state media reported. China has so far managed to control sporadic domestic outbreaks through a combination of snap lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions, but the latest outbreak is testing the limits of its playbook. Top medical expert Zhang Wenhong said Monday that China cannot relax its zero-Covid policy just yet despite the low fatality rate of Omicron. "It is very important for China to continue to adopt the strategy of community Covid-zero in the near future," Zhang wrote on social media.  "But this does not mean that we will permanently adopt the strategy of lockdown and full testing." 

Taiwan's air force grounded its fleet of Mirage 2000 fighter jets on Monday after one crashed into the sea, the second combat aircraft loss in the space of three months though this time the pilot was rescued. The air force said the French-built aircraft took off just after 10 a.m. (0200 GMT) on a training mission from the Chihhang air base in the southeastern city of Taitung and reported it had to return after a mechanical problem. The pilot ejected over the sea south of the air base and was rescued safe and in good condition by helicopter, it added. Air force Inspector-General Liu Hui-chien told reporters the Mirage fleet would be grounded while an investigation was carried out. Taiwan received its first of 60 Mirage jets in 1997, though they have been upgraded several times since then. Six have since been lost in accidents. In January, the air force suspended combat training for its much larger F-16 fleet after a recently upgraded model of the fighter jet crashed into the sea, killing the pilot. Last year, two F-5E fighters, which first entered service in Taiwan in the 1970s, crashed into the sea after they apparently collided in mid-air during a training mission, also from the Chihhang air base. In late 2020, an F-16 vanished shortly after taking off from the Hualien air base on Taiwan's east coast on a routine training mission. While Taiwan's air force is well trained, it has been repeatedly scrambling to see off Chinese military aircraft intruding in its air defence zone in the past two years, though the accidents have not been linked in any way to these intercept activities. China, which claims the democratic island as its own, has been routinely sending aircraft into Taiwan's air defence zone, mostly in an area around the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands but sometimes also into the airspace between Taiwan and the Philippines.

All 17 million people in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen began their first full day under lockdown Monday, as restrictions spread across Shanghai and other major cities to combat an outbreak challenging the nation's zero-tolerance Covid strategy. The southern city of Shenzhen imposed the measure on Sunday to counter an Omicron flare-up in factories and neighbourhoods linked to nearby Hong Kong, which is recording scores of daily deaths as the virus runs rampant. Major Apple supplier Foxconn suspended its operations in Shenzhen, the company said Monday, as the lockdown bit hard into economic activity across the factory hub. Shenzhen is one of ten cities nationwide to have locked down all residents, though the measure was taken Monday in some parts of other major hubs including Dalian, Nanjing and Tianjin, which neighbours the capital. Health officials have warned tighter restrictions could be on their way, as concerns mount over the resilience of China's "zero-Covid" approach in the face of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant. Authorities reported 2,300 new virus cases nationwide on Monday and almost 3,400 a day earlier, the highest daily figure in two years. "There have been many small-scale clusters in urban villages and factories," Shenzhen city official Huang Qiang said at a Monday briefing. "This suggests a high risk of community spread, and further precautions are still needed." Photos shared with AFP by a Shenzhen resident showed housing compound entrances blocked by large plastic barriers, as residents swapped jokes on social media about their rush to grab laptops from offices before the lockdown. Tech stocks plummeted on the Hong Kong exchange on Monday, as concerns over the impact of the virus spread in Shenzhen -- home to hubs for Foxconn, as well as Huawei and Tencent -- spooked investors. In Shanghai, China's most populous city, residential areas and offices in some neighbourhoods remained sealed Monday as city authorities try to avoid a full lockdown. The metropolis reported around 170 new virus cases on Monday, enough to seed anxiety among businesses over the economic pain ahead. A restauranteur with four outlets in different parts of Shanghai said he has to wade through a morass of hyper-local restrictions, giving an indication of how ordinary life in China is still spun on its head by a pandemic that the rest of the world has learned to cope with. "Different districts adopt different policies," he told AFP, requesting anonymity. "I want to close one and keep the rest open, and see how it goes later. What else can I do except tough it out?" Other outbreak epicentres have been less lucky. Jilin province in the country's northeast recorded over 1,000 new cases for the second day in a row, and authorities tightened restrictions Monday to ban residents leaving their cities without police permission. At least five cities in the province have been locked down since the beginning of March, including the major industrial base of Changchun, whose nine million residents were confined at home Friday. While the caseload is low in global terms, it is deeply alarming in China where authorities have been unrelenting in squashing clusters since early 2020. In recent days, at least 26 officials in three provinces have been dismissed due to their handling of local outbreaks, state media reported. China has so far managed to control sporadic domestic outbreaks through a combination of snap lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions, but the latest outbreak is testing the limits of its playbook. Top medical expert Zhang Wenhong said Monday that China cannot relax its zero-Covid policy just yet despite the low fatality rate of Omicron. "It is very important for China to continue to adopt the strategy of community Covid-zero in the near future," Zhang wrote on social media. "But this does not mean that we will permanently adopt the strategy of lockdown and full testing."

A Chinese city of 9mn was ordered into lockdown yesterday and Shanghai shut its schools as authorities scrambled to halt a Covid-19 outbreak that has pushed nationwide cases to their highest levels in two years. Changchun, the capital of northeastern Jilin province and an important industrial base, ordered residents to stay at home, allowing one person out every two days to buy “daily necessities”. The city also halted all public transport, ordered schools and businesses shut and said it would institute mass testing. China’s daily coronavirus case count soared past the 1,000 mark this week for the first time since the pandemic’s early days in 2020. That is up from fewer than 100 cases just three weeks ago as the highly transmissible Omicron variant challenges China’s zero-Covid approach to tackling the pandemic. Covid-19 was first detected in China in late 2019 but the government has kept its case count extremely low by international standards with a combination of snap lockdowns, mass testing and largely closed borders. There were 1,369 cases across more than a dozen provinces, according to yesterday’s daily official count. Jilin, which has reported hundreds of cases in recent days, is one of more than a dozen provinces facing upticks along with major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Shanghai yesterday ordered its schools to close and shift to online instruction for the foreseeable future after dozens of cases emerged in the eastern economic hub in recent days. And as cases increased, the country’s National Health Commission announced yesterday that they would introduce the use of rapid antigen tests. The kits will now be available online or at pharmacies for clinics and ordinary citizens to buy for “self-test”, the health commission said, although nucleic acid tests will continue to be the main method of testing. The government has invested much of its prestige in its ability to control Covid-19, and yesterday’s measures appeared to pour cold water on hopes China would scrap its disruptive zero-tolerance approach anytime soon. The drawbacks of a zero-Covid approach have been laid bare in Hong Kong, where mixed messages from the local government have fuelled hoarding of food supplies and public fears that people will be taken away to isolation. Mainland China’s most recent major lockdown came in December when the city of Xi’an kept its 13mn people home for two weeks due to an outbreak. But in the face of rising pandemic fatigue, top Chinese officials have in recent weeks urged local officials throughout the country to avoid such drastic steps. As cases have climbed since late February, only relatively soft or highly targeted measures have been taken in affected areas. In Shanghai, however, authorities have increasingly moved to quickly lock down individual schools, businesses, restaurants and malls over close-contact fears. This has given rise to online images of students and teachers in the city confined for up to 48 hours on campuses, and patrons locked in restaurants or malls while awaiting testing. Social media chat groups have buzzed with each temporarily shuttered mall, and long lines have appeared outside hospitals as people rush to obtain a negative Covid test. “Every day I go to work, I don’t know if I can come home,” said one Shanghai social media user.

China's Red Cross will provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine "as soon as possible", Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday, as he praised his country's friendship with Russia as "rock solid". China has refused to condemn Russia's attack on Ukraine or call it an invasion while asking Western countries to respect Russia's "legitimate security concerns.". Wang said the causes of the "Ukraine situation" were "complex" and had not happened overnight. "Solving complex problems requires calmness and rationality, rather than adding fuel to the fire and intensifying contradictions," he told a news conference on the sidelines of the annual meeting of China's parliament. China is willing to continue to make its own efforts to resolve the humanitarian crisis and the country's Red Cross will "as soon as possible" provide a batch of aid to Ukraine, Wang said, without giving details. Russian President Vladimir Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping hours before the start of last month's Winter Olympics in Beijing and they signed a wide-ranging strategic partnership aimed at countering US influence and said they would have "no 'forbidden' areas of cooperation". Wang said the friendship between China and Russia was "rock solid" and prospects for cooperation bright. "No matter how sinister the international situation is, both China and Russia will maintain their strategic determination and continuously push forward the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination in the new era."

China's factory-gate inflation eased to its slowest pace in six months and consumer price growth also softened in January amid weakening property sector demand, new coronavirus curbs and government efforts to rein in surging materials costs. The producer price index (PPI) increased 9.1% from a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement on Wednesday, slower than the 9.5% growth tipped by a Reuters poll and a 10.3% gain in December. It was the weakest pace since July. While producer prices in the world's second-largest economy remain elevated thanks to critical supply issues and home and abroad, China's relatively benign consumer inflation contrasts with cost pressures seen in most other economies. Analysts believe cooling inflation could provide room for the People's Bank of China (PBOC) to ease policy to support the slowing economy, even as major central banks elsewhere tighten policy. "Inflation concerns are unlikely to hold back the (People's Bank of China) from more policy loosening measures," said Sheana Yue, China Economist at Capital Economics. China's consumer price index (CPI) inched up 0.9% last month from a year earlier. Economists in a Reuters poll had expected a 1% rise following a 1.5% uptick in December. "Lower inflation reflects the weak domestic demand," said Zhiwei Zhang, Chief Economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. "Macro policies have turned more supportive but it takes time for the impact to be transmitted to the economy." The Chinese economy, particularly its vast manufacturing sector, has struggled with elevated production costs due to high global energy prices. In January, coal mining and washing prices surged 51.3% year-on-year and oil and gas extraction prices jumped 38.2%. China's state planner earlier this month said global inflation is likely to persist for some time, but expressed confidence in the country's ability to cope with abnormal price fluctuations. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said it expects producer price inflation to slow further this year while consumer price inflation picks up.   LUXURY TO EASE The PBOC has cut interest rates and pumped cash into the financial system to lower borrowing costs, with more easing steps expected. Capital Economics' Yue expects further policy rate cuts before the middle of the year. The scope to ease is a rare luxury enjoyed by China, in contrast to developed central banks, which have either begun raising interest rates or are widely expected to this year. read more At the same time, policymakers are wary of loosening credit conditions too much and too fast, which could re-ignite speculation-driven spikes in property prices. The property sector has cooled due to curbs on borrowing by developers and increasingly wary buyers. "On interest rate cuts, policymakers do not want to undo all the results they achieved last year in the property market," said Nie Wen, chief economist at Hwabao Trust. "They finally managed to curb the fast-rising (property) prices, so any cuts to interest rates will be structural and aimed at supporting the real economy, rather than further stimulating the property market."