International

China's foreign ministry on Friday rejected comments by US President Joe Biden that the closure of Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper signaled intensifying repression by Beijing in the semi-autonomous city. Also on Friday, China approved the promotions of two officials in a move that critics said would further tighten Beijing's grip. Hong Kong's security secretary John Lee was appointed chief secretary - the first time a security specialist has taken the number two position in the territory since its handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997. Biden said on Thursday that Apple Daily's demise was a "sad day for media freedom". Other foreign officials also expressed concern that it represented a further stifling of freedoms in Hong Kong, a trade gateway and international financial center. Apple Daily had been a thorn in Beijing's side, mixing pro-democracy discourse with celebrity gossip and investigations of those in power. It was forced to end a 26-year run after authorities froze the company's funds. Its closure follows the imposition of a national security law last year in response to huge pro-democracy protests in 2019. Hundreds of loyal readers lined up at newsstands across the city to buy last editions. "I hope reporters can stay true to their faith and keep working hard," said Tse, 60, a former medical worker, as she queued for a paper. Biden called on Beijing to stop targeting the independent press and to release detained journalists and media executives. "People in Hong Kong have the right to freedom of the press. Instead, Beijing is denying basic liberties and assaulting Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratic institutions," he said. Apple Daily had been "a much-needed bastion of independent journalism in Hong Kong," Biden said in a statement. "Through arrests, threats, and forcing through a National Security Law that penalizes free speech, Beijing has insisted on wielding its power to suppress independent media and silence dissenting views," he said, vowing continued US support for the people of Hong Kong. China's foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian dismissed the criticism at a news conference in Beijing on Friday. "The US leader's position is factually baseless," Zhao said. Officials in Hong Kong and China have repeatedly said media freedoms are respected but not absolute, and cannot endanger national security. The shutdown deals the most serious blow yet to Hong Kong's media freedoms and could potentially destroy the city's reputation as a media hub, advocacy groups say. U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Thursday criticised the detention of Apple Daily owner Jimmy Lai. Speaking to the 2021 Society of Publishers in Asia press awards ceremony held in Hong Kong, Bachelet said the security law was leading journalists to self-censor to avoid clashing with "vaguely formulated offences". Lai has been in jail since December over unauthorized rallies during the pro-democracy protests. He is facing three national security charges, including colluding with a foreign country and is already serving several sentences for taking part in unauthorized rallies. British foreign minister Dominic Raab called on China to respect its commitments to free media under an agreement with Britain over how Hong Kong would be ruled after 1997. In anticipation of big demand for its final print run, the Apple Daily printed one million copies, or more than 10 times its usual. Some staff expressed anger and frustration. "(After) today, there is no press freedom in Hong Kong," said Dickson Ng, 51, a designer at the paper. "I feel very disappointed and angry." Last week, 500 officers raided the newspaper's headquarters, sifting through reporters' notes and other material. Five executives were arrested, and two - chief editor Ryan Law and Cheung Kim-hung - were charged with conspiracy to commit collusion with a foreign country and denied bail. On Wednesday, a columnist for the paper was arrested under the security law. In the reshuffle, Police Chief Chris Tang took over John Lee's position as security secretary following Lee's promotion to chief secretary. Known for his hawkish stance, Lee had spearheaded the city’s disciplinary forces, including the police, in the crackdown that has seen mass arrests of democratic activists and politicians. "The promotion of John Lee and Chris Tang completes the swift and total transformation of Hong Kong into a police state," said Samuel Chu of the Hong Kong Democracy Council.

At least 18 people were killed and 16 injured when a fire broke out at a martial arts school in central China in the early hours of Friday, according to a local government statement. Local media reported that most of the victims were boarding pupils aged between seven and 16. The fire had been extinguished and authorities were investigating the cause of the blaze, the statement from Zhecheng county government said. There were 34 boarding students on the premises when the fire broke out, according to local government staff quoted by Beijing Toutiao News. The wounded -- four of whom had severe injuries -- were rushed to a local hospital, where an unnamed doctor told local media they were ‘doing everything they could’ to save them. The manager of the centre in Henan province has been arrested by police, the statement said. Provincial party chief Lou Yangsheng told local media that the tragedy was a ‘profound lesson’ which all cities and counties in Henan should learn from to eliminate future risks. Henan is the birthplace of traditional Chinese martial arts, and is home to many kung fu academies. Among the largest is the famous Shaolin Martial Arts School, which has hundreds of teachers and tens of thousands of students, according to its website. The Shaolin Monastery in the city of Dengfeng is also famed for its fighting monks. Social media users started to call for better fire safety standards online as a hashtag for the fire quickly garnered over 1.5 million views. Fatal fires are common in China, where safety regulations are widely flouted and enforcement is often lax. More than two dozen people were killed in two blazes in Beijing's migrant neighbourhoods in 2017. The first fire, which killed 19 people in November that year, prompted authorities to begin tearing down unsafe buildings in the capital, driving hundreds of thousands of residents out in the middle of winter. A huge blaze that swept a 28-storey Shanghai residential block in 2010 killed 58 people. The accident comes at a sensitive time for China's ruling Communist Party as it ramps up security preparations before its 100th anniversary celebrations on July 1. Following a spate of deadly mine accidents in the past few weeks, local authorities this month suspended operations at coal mines in Henan, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces in the run-up to the anniversary. In one week in June alone, over 30 workers were killed in two separate gas explosions at mines in Henan and Hubei.      

Bitcoin tumbled more than 10 per cent Monday after China broadened a crackdown on its massive cryptocurrency mining industry with a ban on mines in a key southwestern province. Chinese mines power nearly 80 percent of the global trade in cryptocurrencies despite a domestic trading ban since 2017, but in recent months several provinces have ordered mines to close as Beijing turns a sharp eye to the industry. Authorities in the province of Sichuan ordered the closure of 26 mines last week, according to a notice widely circulated on Chinese social media and confirmed by a former bitcoin miner. The price of bitcoin sank to as low as $32,309. The unit has taken a severe hit in recent weeks, having hit a record near $65,000 in April, partly because of Beijing's crackdown. The notice reportedly instructed power companies to stop supplying electricity to all cryptocurrency mines by Sunday. It vowed a "complete clean-up" and ordered local governments to carry out a "dragnet-style investigation" to find and shut down suspected crypto mines. The province represents one of the largest bases for mining in the country. A former cryptocurrency miner told AFP they had "closed everything" in line with the requirements in recent days. "There have been working groups coming to check... making sure we shut down operations and removed the machines," he said. Sichuan, a mountainous region in southwest China, is home to a large number of cryptocurrency mines, which require a colossal amount of energy supplied by the province's cheap and abundant hydropower. According to a report in the state tabloid the Global Times, the closure of mines in the province has resulted in the shutting down of more than 90 percent of the country's bitcoin mining capacity. Beijing has turned the screw on cryptocurrency miners to stamp out financial risks from speculation, although environmental concerns about the gas-guzzling mines is also a factor. Chinese media reported that electricity supply to all crypto mines across the province was stopped at midnight Sunday, as the topic trended on social media. Sichuan is China's second most intensive mining region after Xinjiang in the country's northwest, according to Cambridge University's Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. All crypto mines in the sparsely populated but coal- and hydropower-rich regions of Inner Mongolia and Qinghai were also ordered to shut down in recent months, with citizens encouraged to report illegal mines. Last month, the value of bitcoin dived after three Chinese financial industry bodies reasserted a ban on financial institutions from offering cryptocurrency services, warning against risky speculation by traders. China is in the midst of a wide-ranging regulatory crackdown on its fintech sector, whose biggest players -- including Alibaba and Tencent -- have been hit with big fines after being found guilty of monopolistic practices.

The number of Covid-19 jabs administered in China has passed the one billion mark, health officials said Sunday, more than a third of the doses given worldwide. The announcement by the National Health Commission comes after the number of shots administered globally surpassed 2.5 billion on Friday, according to an AFP count from official sources. It is unclear what percentage of China's population has now been inoculated but its vaccination drive got off to a slow start after a successful fight against the virus left little sense of urgency to get jabbed. A lack of transparency and previous vaccine scandals have also led to resistance among residents. Authorities have set an ambitious target of fully vaccinating 40 percent of the country's nearly 1.4 billion people by the end of this month. Some provinces are offering vaccines for free to encourage people to roll up their sleeves. Residents in central Anhui province have been given free eggs, while some living in Beijing have received shopping coupons. A recent outbreak of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus in the southern city of Guangzhou has also served as a wake-up call for many dragging their feet. China reported 23 new coronavirus cases Sunday. The country has four conditionally approved vaccines, whose published efficacy rates remain behind rival jabs by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have 95 percent and 94 percent success rates respectively. China's Sinovac previously said trials of its shot in Brazil showed around 50 percent efficacy in preventing infection and 80 percent in preventing cases requiring medical intervention. Sinopharm's two vaccines have efficacy rates of 79 percent and 72 percent respectively, while the overall efficacy for CanSino's stands at 65 percent after 28 days. Many of them require two doses. China is expected to produce more than three billion vaccine doses this year, state news agency Xinhua reported in April. Health authorities have not said when China will reach herd immunity or what proportion of its vaccine doses will be sold abroad.

The first astronauts arrived at China’s new space station yesterday in the country’s longest crewed mission to date, a landmark step in establishing Beijing as a major space power. The trio blasted off on a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwest China’s Gobi desert, and their craft docked around seven hours later at the Tiangong station, where they will spend the next three months. State broadcaster CCTV showed a live feed from inside the spacecraft during the journey, with the three astronauts lifting their helmet visors after it reached orbit as one smiled and waved at the camera. Another floated a pen just off his lap in zero gravity, as he browsed the flight manual. Around seven hours after lift-off, space officials confirmed that the craft had docked with Tianhe, the core module of the country’s new space station. The Shenzhou-12 craft — having separated from the Long March rocket — had “successfully docked with the forward port of the core module” of the Tiangong station, said the China Manned Space Agency, as state TV showed live footage. By yesterday evening, the astronauts were shown on television entering the core module, one of them making a 360-degree flip in the process. The group will be setting up their living quarters and are expected to open the door to the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft — which docked earlier with the core module — today morning. The mission’s commander is Nie Haisheng, a decorated air force pilot in the People’s Liberation Army who has already participated in two space missions. The two other members are also from the military. The Tianhe module of the space station has separate living spaces for each of the astronauts, a “space treadmill” and bike for exercise, and a communication centre for e-mails and video calls with ground control. Huang Weifen of the China Manned Space Programme said the astronauts would perform two spacewalks during the mission, both lasting around six or seven hours. She also said the trio would wear newly-developed spacewalk suits. The launch – of China’s first crewed mission in nearly five years – is a matter of huge prestige in China, as Beijing prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of the ruling Communist Party on July 1 with a massive propaganda campaign. To prepare, the crew underwent more than 6,000 hours of training, including doing hundreds of underwater somersaults in full space gear. The Chinese space agency is planning a total of 11 launches through to the end of next year, including three more manned missions that will deliver two lab modules to expand the 70-tonne station, along with supplies and crew members. China’s space ambitions have been fuelled in part by a US ban on its astronauts on the International Space Station, a collaboration between the US, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan. The ISS is due for retirement after 2024, even though Nasa has said it could potentially remain functional beyond 2028. Tiangong will be much smaller than the ISS, and is expected to have a lifespan of at least 10 years. China has said it would be open to international collaboration on its space station although it has yet to give specific details. Zhou Jianping, chief designer for the space programme, said “foreign astronauts are certainly going to enter the Chinese space station one day”. “There are a number of countries that have expressed a desire to do that and we will be open to that in future,” he said. Beijing said in March it was also planning to build a separate lunar space station with Russia, and this week the two countries issued a “roadmap” for potential collaboration opportunities. A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft and a crew of three astronauts, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi desert in northwest China on June 17, 2021, the first crewed mission to China's new space station. (AFP/Greg Baker)  

A senior Chinese epidemiologist said the US should be the priority in the next phase of investigations into the origin of Covid-19 after a study showed the disease could have been circulating there as early as December 2019, state media said yesterday. The study, published this week by the US National Institutes for Health (NIH), showed that at least seven people in five US states were infected with Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, weeks before the US reported its first official cases. A China-World Health Organisation (WHO) joint study published in March said Covid-19 most likely originated in the country’s wildlife trade, with the virus passing into humans from bats via an intermediary species. But Beijing has promoted the theory that Covid-19 entered China from overseas via contaminated frozen food, while a number of foreign politicians are also calling for more investigations into the possibility it leaked from a laboratory. Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-owned tabloid the Global Times that attention should shift to the US, which was slow to test people in the early stages of the outbreak, and is also the home of many biological laboratories. “All bio-weapons related subjects that the country has should be subject to scrutiny,” he was quoted as saying. Commenting on the US study on Wednesday, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said it was now “obvious” the Covid-19 outbreak had “multiple origins” and that other countries should co-operate with the WHO. The origin of the pandemic has become a source of political tension between China and the US, with much of the recent focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in Wuhan where the outbreak was first identified in late 2019. China has been criticised for its lack of transparency when it comes to disclosing data about early cases as well as the viruses studied at WIV. A report by a US government national laboratory concluded that it was plausible that the virus had leaked from the Wuhan lab, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. A previous study has raised the possibility that Sars-CoV-2 could have been circulating in Europe as early as September, but experts said this didn’t necessarily mean it did not originate in China, where many Sars-like coronaviruses have been found in the wild.

China launched a spacecraft on Thursday carrying three astronauts to part of a space station still under construction for the longest stay in low Earth orbit by any Chinese national. A Long March 2F rocket transporting the Shenzhou-12, or ‘Divine Vessel’, bound for the space station module Tianhe blasted off at 9:22 a.m. Beijing time (0122 GMT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gansu province. Shenzhou-12 is the third of 11 missions - four of which will be crewed - needed to complete China's first full-fledged space station. Construction began in April with the launch of Tianhe, the first and largest of three modules. The astronauts Nie Haisheng, 56, Liu Boming, 54, and Tang Hongbo, 45, are to work and stay on Tianhe, the living quarters of the future space station, for three months. During their sojourn on the cylinder-like Tianhe, slightly bigger than a city bus, the three men will test the module's technologies including its life-support system. The men will also be monitored for how they fare in space physically and psychologically for an extended period of time. An upcoming mission to the space station will last six months. ‘This will be the first crewed flight in the space station (construction) phase, and I'm lucky to be able to have the 'first baton',’ Nie told reporters in Jiuquan a day before the launch. The veteran astronaut has been hailed by his team as a bastion of stability and a teacher figure who constantly challenges others with tough questions.   ‘As long as we have him in our hearts, we have nothing to fear,’ fellow astronaut Wang Yaping, who is part of the Shenzhou-12 backup team, told state media previously. ‘In our crew, elder brother Nie is like the needle that stills the sea,’ she said. Liu Boming, like Nie, was from the first batch of astronauts selected in the 1990s for China's space programme. Known for his intellect, Liu is often addressed by his colleagues as ‘Little Zhuge’, the renowned military strategist who lived in China two millennia ago. On the Shenzhou-7 mission in 2008, Liu famously used a crowbar to pry open the hatch after it refused to open. Former air force pilot Tang Hongbo, 45, was from a later batch of astronauts, and trained for more than a decade before being selected for his first spaceflight on Shenzhou-12. ‘I've waited for 11 years, and finally I'm ready, and I can contribute my strength,’ Tang told reporters on Wednesday. Since 2003, China has launched six crewed missions and sent 11 astronauts into space, including Zhai Zhigang, who carried out China's first space walk ever on the 2008 Shenzhou mission.    

China has tripled its daily Covid-19 vaccine rollout in June, inoculating 44% of its population with at least one dose, but its health experts warn against a quick border reopening, citing an uneven rollout and the low rate of full vaccinations. China rolled out 17.3 million doses per day in June on average, up sharply from 4.8 million in April, as it expanded the list of approved vaccines to seven by adding three more locally-developed shots, and continued to boost production. But the rollout has been uneven. By the first week of June, major cities of Beijing and Shanghai fully inoculated nearly 70% and 50% of their residents respectively, but the rate in Guangdong and Shandong provinces remained below 20%. ‘(China) is such a big country... Once any of its places open up, it will have a big impact on places that haven't reached high vaccination levels,’ Feng Zijian, a researcher at Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said earlier this month. Feng said that China is yet to reach a consensus on what vaccination rate will safely allow adjusting virus control measures, including loosening requirement of quarantine or virus testing for inbound travellers. China will also wait and see how Japan handles its virus outbreak and the Tokyo Olympics next month before deciding how quickly Beijing needs to loosen its border controls, a person familiar with the situation said. China is also stepping up vaccinations in preparation to host the Winter Olympics early next year. Several counties and districts of Zhangjiakou city in northern China, which will host some of the Games, are urging residents to get vaccinated, saying it is a ‘necessary contribution’ that they should make for the international event. As part of the city's vaccination campaign, more than 1,800 unvaccinated visitors were dissuaded from entering a park in the Xuanhua district earlier this month and guided to nearby inoculation sites, according to a social media post by the district-level authorities. ‘There isn't much time and the task is heavy,’ Wu Weidong, head of the city-level committee of the Communist Party, said in a statement earlier this month. It said the city is still short of its vaccination target without detailing its target or inoculation rate. ZERO TOLERANCE China has kept local transmission in check by conducting large-scale COVID tests and seal up neighbourhoods and streets when new cases emerged. It refuses to abandon this ‘zero-tolerance’ playbook, even though local outbreaks are tiny compared with those in other countries. Zhang Wenhong, director of an expert team on Covid-19 treatment in Shanghai city, said at a recent conference it would be too early to drop the policy or fully open up until the full vaccination rate hits at least 70%. For China, the flip side of low local transmission has been difficulty in gauging clearly how effectively China's vaccination campaign will help contain the spread of the virus. Some countries such as Britain and Chile are battling a surge in new cases even as they have among the highest vaccination rates in the world, a cautionary tale for China. Chile, which used a vaccine developed by China's Sinovac as its major vaccination tool, said on Monday it would extend a Covid-19 emergency through September, as cases have soured to some of their highest levels since the pandemic began.  

Astronauts blasting off on Thursday for China's first crewed mission to its new space station will have a choice of 120 different types of food and ‘space treadmills’ for exercise, China's space agency said. The mission will be China's longest crewed space mission to date and the first in nearly five years, as Beijing pushes forward with its ambitious programme to establish itself as a space power. The astronauts will spend three months on the Tiangong station, which has separate living modules for each of them as well as a shared bathroom, dining area, and a communication centre to send emails and allow video calls with ground control. The trio will be able to work off their range of dinner options -- which officials assured reporters were all nutritious and tasty -- on the special treadmills or exercise bikes. The Long March-2F rocket that will get them there will lift off at 9:22 am local time (0122 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwest China's Gobi desert, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said Wednesday. ‘Over the past decades, we have written several glorious chapters in China's space history and this mission embodies the expectations of the people and the party itself,’ the mission's commander, Nie Haisheng, told reporters at a press conference. His team has undergone over 6,000 hours of training, including hundreds of underwater somersaults in full space gear, to get accustomed to their suits for spacewalks. Nie was among the first batch of Chinese astronauts selected for training in 1998, and has already been on two space missions. He is a decorated air force pilot, and the others in his team are also members of the Chinese military. Asked what he would pack for the long trip, Nie -- speaking to reporters from behind a glass wall to keep the astronauts quarantined -- said his bag was full of ‘things for entertainment and for hosting mini get-togethers’. Crew member Tang Hongbo said in a separate interview with state broadcaster CCTV that he had taken videos of everyday life with his son and wife to watch on the space station. - Construction in orbit – Their Shenzhou-12 spacecraft will dock with the main section of the Tiangong space station, named Tianhe, which was placed in orbit on April 29. Another 11 missions are planned over the next year and a half to complete the construction of Tiangong in orbit, including the attachment of solar panels and two labouratory modules. The astronauts will be kept busy testing and maintaining the systems onboard, conducting spacewalks and undertaking scientific experiments. Footage from CCTV showed them preparing by working in a pool with spacesuits on to simulate making repairs to the station during a spacewalk. The mission is a matter of prestige for the Chinese government as it prepares to mark the 100th birthday of the ruling Communist Party on July 1. ‘Over the past decades, we have been struggling every minute to realise our space dreams,’ said Liu Boming, the third member of the Shenzhou-12 crew. ‘(I) have dedicated myself to the cause.’ China's desire for a human outpost of its own in Earth orbit was fuelled by a US ban on its astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). ‘We are willing to carry out international cooperation with any country that is committed to the peaceful use of outer space,’ Ji Qiming of the CMSA told reporters on Wednesday. The ISS -- a collaboration between the US, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan -- is due for retirement after 2024, although NASA has said it could potentially remain functional beyond 2028. Tiangong is expected to have a lifespan of at least 10 years.  

Beijing on Tuesday accused NATO of exaggerating the threat from China and ‘creating confrontation’, after a vow from the Western allies to work together to counter the ‘systemic challenges’ posed by its policies. NATO leaders made the commitment on Monday, as US President Joe Biden renewed Washington's transatlantic ties at his first summit with the allies. In a broad statement of intent, the leaders said China's increasingly assertive actions in building a nuclear arsenal and space and cyber warfare capabilities threatened the international order. In an angry response, a statement from the Chinese mission to the European Union called for NATO to ‘view China's development rationally, stop exaggerating various forms of 'China threat theory' and not to use China's legitimate interests and legal rights as excuses for manipulating group politics (while) artificially creating confrontations’. It added that NATO's accusations were a ‘slander of China's peaceful development, a misjudgement of the international situation and its own role, and it is the continuation of a Cold War mentality and the group's political psychology at work’. Military tensions have increased over the past year between China and rival powers including the United States and India, with flashpoints like the Himalayan border, Taiwan and the South China Sea. China's military budget -- the second largest in the world after the US, though still less than a third of Washington's -- is set to increase by 6.8 percent in 2021, the finance ministry announced in March. Beijing has also poured billions into its space programme in a bid to make up ground on pioneers Russia and the United States. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the allies would seek to cooperate with China on global issues like climate change -- but decried Beijing's increasingly assertive stance on other issues. - G7 criticism – The exchange came a day after the Chinese embassy in Britain hit back at the G7 for ‘political manipulation’ after the group criticised China's human rights record. In a communique after a three-day summit in England, G7 leaders slammed China over abuses against pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and minorities in the Xinjiang region. Human rights groups say China has rounded up an estimated one million Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang into internment camps, which Beijing says is to eradicate religioud extremism. Biden called for China to ‘start acting more responsibly in terms of international norms on human rights’. As well as human rights, tensions have soared between Washington and Beijing on a number of fronts in recent years, including trade, technology and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. - 'Critically important' alliance – In the summit communique, NATO leaders also warned Russia's President Vladimir Putin, whom Biden will meet on Wednesday in Geneva, that his country's military build-up and provocative behaviour on NATO's eastern frontier ‘contribute to instability along NATO borders and beyond’. When he arrived at the NATO headquarters in Brussels for a summit with his 29 counterparts, Biden stressed that the alliance was ‘critically important’ to US security. ‘I think that there is a growing recognition over the last couple of years that we have new challenges,’ Biden told Stoltenberg at bilateral talks just ahead of the main summit. ‘We have Russia that is not acting in a way that is consistent with what we had hoped, as well as China,’ he said. ‘I want to make it clear: NATO is critically important for US interests in and of itself. If there weren't one, we'd have to invent it,’ he said.    

China denounced on Monday a joint statement by the Group of Seven leaders that had scolded Beijing over a range of issues as a gross interference in the country's internal affairs, and urged the grouping to stop slandering China. The G7 leaders on Sunday took China to task over human rights in the heavily religious region of Xinjiang, called for Hong Kong to keep a high degree of autonomy and underscored the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait - all highly sensitive issues for Beijing. China's embassy in London said it was strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposed to mentions of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan that distorted the facts and exposed the ‘sinister intentions of a few countries such as the United States’. With the Covid-19 pandemic still raging and global economy sluggish, the international community needs unity and cooperation of all countries rather than ‘cliquey’ power politics sowing division, it added. China is a peace-loving country that advocates cooperation, but also has its bottom lines, the embassy said. ‘China's internal affairs must not be interfered in, China's reputation must not be slandered, and China's interests must not be violated,’ it added. ‘We will resolutely defend our national sovereignty, security, and development interests, and resolutely fight back against all kinds of injustices and infringements imposed on China.’ 'COUNTERING CHINA' Taiwan's government welcomed the G7 statement, saying the Chinese-claimed island will be a ‘force for good’ and that they will continue to seek even greater international support. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday's statement from G7 was a significant move forward for the group as leaders rallied around the need to ‘counter and compete’ with China on challenges ranging from safeguarding democracy to the technology race. China's embassy said the G7 should do more that is conducive to promoting international cooperation instead of artificially creating confrontation and friction. ‘We urge the United States and other members of the G7 to respect the facts, understand the situation, stop slandering China, stop interfering in China's internal affairs, and stop harming China's interests.’ The embassy also said work on looking at the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic should not be politicised, after the G7 in the same statement demanded a full and thorough investigation of the origins of the coronavirus in China. The joint expert group on the virus between China and the World Health Organization has been conducting research independently and following WHO procedures, the embassy added. ‘Politicians in the United States and other countries ignore facts and science, openly question and deny the conclusions of the joint expert group report, and make unreasonable accusations against China.’    

At least 12 people were killed and nearly 140 others injured when a gas line exploded in a residential compound in central China’s Hubei province yesterday, local officials said. Rescue workers are uncertain how many people may still be trapped under the debris, according to a statement from the disaster management bureau in the city of Shiyan. Videos shot by witnesses and verified by Beijing News show several buildings reduced to rubble and rescuers carrying shocked survivors on stretchers. The blast ripped through a vegetable market that was filled with shoppers and people eating breakfast, an eyewitness told state-run Global Times. “I heard a loud bang and immediately ducked under the table, thinking it was an earthquake,” a man who owns a small restaurant near the explosion site told the newspaper. State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of buildings with charred walls and shattered windows. Rescuers were seen lifting large slabs to pull out those trapped underneath. The blast occurred in a two-story building that earlier housed a vehicle frame manufacturer. Several survivors told local media that the gas pipeline had fallen into disrepair after the factory was moved last year. “In March, workers from the gas company came and asked whether I got a smell of gas,” one survivor who runs a stall in the market told local website Health Times. “After asking around, they just left.” The explosion took place at about 6:30am local time (2230 GMT) and an investigation was underway to determine the cause of the blast, the statement said. Around 900 residents in the area have been evacuated as surrounding buildings may have been damaged by the blast, the city government said. About 2,000 rescue workers have been deployed on the site. Images verified by Health Times show a firefighter who was also injured and a fire truck damaged by a second, smaller blast. The severely injured were airlifted to bigger hospitals. State news agency Xinhua put the number of seriously injured at 37. Long lines of volunteers were seen outside blood banks as hospitals put out a call for donors. The Ministry of Emergency Management has also sent a team to assist with the rescue operation. In a rare move, Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a statement urging local officials to “learn profound lessons from the incident” and double down on efforts to prevent such incidents. “All regions and relevant departments must draw lessons from one another investigate various safety hazards and prevent major emergencies,” he said. “Those responsible must be held to account,” Xinhua quoted him as saying. Industrial accidents are common in China due to weak safety standards and corruption among officials tasked with enforcing them. The blast comes a day after eight people were killed and three others injured when toxic methyl formate leaked from a chemical handling facility in the southwestern city of Guiyang. A massive 2015 explosion at a chemical warehouse in the port city of Tianjin killed 173 people in one of the worst industrial accidents in China in recent years.

At least 12 people were killed and nearly 140 others injured when a gas line explosion ripped through a residential compound in central China's Hubei province on Sunday, local officials said. Rescue efforts were continuing, according to a statement from the disaster management bureau in the city of Shiyan, although it was unclear how many people may still be trapped under the debris. Videos shot by witnesses and verified by Beijing News show several buildings reduced to rubble and rescue workers carrying shocked survivors on stretchers. The blast ripped through one of the city's vegetable markets that was filled with shoppers and local residents eating breakfast, an eyewitness told state-run Global Times. "I heard a loud bang and immediately ducked under the table, thinking it was an earthquake," a man who owns a small restaurant near the explosion site told the newspaper. State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of buildings with charred walls and shattered windows. Rescuers are seen raking through the debris with shovels and gloved hands. The explosion took place at about 6:30 am local time (22:30 GMT) and an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the blast, the statement said. The Ministry of Emergency Management has also sent a team to assist with the rescue operation. Industrial accidents are common in China due to weak safety standards and corruption among officials tasked with enforcing them. The blast comes a day after eight people were killed and three others injured when toxic methyl formate leaked from a chemical handling facility in the southwestern city of Guiyang.

Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow was released Saturday from prison on the second anniversary of the city's huge democracy rallies, with police out in force and protests now all but banned. Two thousand officers have been placed on standby after social media calls for residents to commemorate the failed democracy demonstrations. Authorities have kept a coronavirus prohibition on public gatherings despite the city recording just three local infections in the last month. A Beijing-imposed national security has also criminalised much dissent and most of the city's democracy leaders have been arrested, jailed or fled overseas. On Saturday morning, one of those figures walked free from prison. Chow, 24, was mobbed by waiting media but made no comment. She wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase "You are doing so great". Chow hails from a generation of activists who cut their teeth in politics as teenagers and became an inspiration for those who chafe under Beijing's increasingly authoritarian rule. She spent around seven months behind bars for her role in a 2019 protest outside the city's police headquarters. Fellow youth activists Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam were sentenced in the same case. Chow's release comes at a sensitive time. Two years ago on June 12, thousands of protesters surrounded the city's legislature in an attempt to stop the passage of a bill that could have allowed extraditions to mainland China's opaque judicial system. Riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the huge crowds. Footage of the clashes deepened public anger, and fuelled what became an increasingly violent movement calling for full democracy that raged for seven straight months. Huge crowds rallied week after week in the most serious challenge to China's rule since Hong Kong's 1997 handover. Beijing's leaders have dismissed the call for democracy, portraying those who protested as stooges of "foreign forces" trying to undermine China. They have since overseen a sweeping crackdown that has successfully curbed dissent and radically transformed the once outspoken semi-autonomous city. The spear tip of that crackdown is the national security law. More than 100 people have been arrested under the new law, including Chow. She has not yet been charged but dozens of others have, including jailed pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai. Most have been denied bail and they face up to life in jail if convicted. Protests have been all but illegal for the last year in Hong Kong but anniversary events can focus attention. On Friday, two activists from Student Politicism, a pro-democracy group, were arrested on suspicion of advertising an unauthorised assembly. Last week authorities banned an annual candlelight vigil to commemorate victims of Beijing's deadly 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. But many Hong Kongers still quietly signalled defiance by turning on mobile phone lights and lighting candles that evening. Western nations say China has torn up Hong Kong's "One Country, Two Systems" model -- a pre-handover promise that the city would keep key freedoms and autonomy. China's leaders say the security law was needed to return stability. As Chow was being released, Beijing's top envoy in Hong Kong was speaking to hundreds of dignitaries at an event themed around next month's 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Luo Huining hit out at western media coverage, international criticism and those who "cry for the end of one-party rule" -- a popular pro-democracy slogan in Hong Kong. "They are the real enemies of Hong Kong's prosperity and stability," Luo said.

Solar panel ‘wings’ spread out and two camera ‘eyes’ pointing ahead, China's Mars rover Zhurong struck a birdlike pose as it explored the red planet in photos released by the country's space agency Friday. Zhurong's touchdown in May was the first ever successful probe landing by any country on its first Mars mission -- a milestone in China's ascent to space superpower status. The rover, named after a mythical Chinese fire god, has since been studying the topography of a vast Martian lava plain known as the Utopia Planitia. Photos published by the China National Space Administration showed tracks in the red soil left by Zhurong, which the agency described as ‘China's imprint’, after it drove onto the planet's surface form a landing platform adorned with a large Chinese flag. The six-wheeled, solar-powered, 240-kilogramme (530-pound) Zhurong is expected to spend three months taking photos, harvesting geographical data, and collecting rock samples. The space agency said on Friday that the Mars mission's ‘engineering tasks were carried out smoothly as planned,’ and that the equipment were currently ‘in good condition.’ China has now sent astronauts into space, powered probes to the Moon and landed a rover on Mars -- one of the most prestigious of all prizes in the competition for dominion of space. The United States and Russia are the only other countries to have reached Mars, and only the former has operated a rover on the surface. Several US, Russian and European attempts to land rovers on Mars have failed in the past, most recently in 2016 with the crash-landing of the Schiaparelli joint Russian-European spacecraft. The latest successful arrival came in February, when US space agency NASA landed its rover Perseverance, which has since been exploring the planet.  

Beijing yesterday accused Washington of “paranoid delusion” after the US Senate passed a sweeping industrial policy bill aimed at countering the surging economic threat from China. America’s political parties overcame partisan divisions to support pumping more than $170bn into research and development, one of the most significant achievements in Congress since Joe Biden’s presidency began in January. The US Innovation and Competition Act represents the largest investment in scientific research and technological innovation “in generations”, according to senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. “We are in a competition to win the 21st century, and the starting gun has gone off,” Biden said. “As other countries continue to invest in their own research and development, we cannot risk falling behind.” The bill is seen as crucial for US efforts to avoid being out-manoeuvred by Beijing as the adversaries compete in the race for technological innovation. The foreign affairs committee of China’s top legislature called the bill an attempt to interfere in the country’s internal affairs and deprive it of its “legitimate right to development through technology and economic decoupling”, state media reported. “The bill shows that the paranoid delusion of egoism has distorted the original intention of innovation and competition,” said the National People’s Congress foreign affairs committee, according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency. It said the bill was “full of Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice”. The package, a key provision of which addresses a shortage of semiconductors that has slowed US auto production this year, will help US industry bolster its capacity and improve technology. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives. “Today, the Senate took a critical bipartisan step forward to make the investments we need to continue America’s legacy as a global leader in innovation,” US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement praising the passage of the bill. “This funding isn’t just about addressing the current semiconductor chip shortage, it is about long-term investments,” she said. Schumer called the measure “one of the most important things this chamber has done in a very long time, a statement of faith in America’s ability to seize the opportunities of the 21st century”. The proposal aims to address a number of technological areas in which the US has fallen behind its Chinese competitors. The bill allocates $52bn in funding for a previously approved plan to increase domestic manufacturing of semiconductors.

China has approved the emergency use of a Covid-19 vaccine for those as young as three, the drugmaker confirmed Tuesday, making it the first country to offer jabs to young children. Since the coronavirus first emerged in central China, Beijing has mostly managed to bring the country's outbreak under control, and has administered over 777 million vaccine doses after a sluggish start. A spokesperson for Sinovac told AFP its vaccine had been approved for use on children. "In recent days, the Sinovac vaccine was approved for emergency use in three- to 17-year-olds," the spokesperson said. But he did not confirm when the young children would be able to start receiving the shots, saying the schedule for the rollout will be decided by the National Health Commission "according to China's current epidemic prevention and control needs and vaccine supply". The company has completed early phase trials of the vaccine in children and adolescents, with results to be published shortly in the Lancet scientific journal, the spokesperson added. State broadcaster CCTV reported over the weekend that an unnamed official in the State Council's epidemic response task force had said vaccines had been approved for children, and "the safety and effectiveness" had been proven. A spokesperson for China's other major vaccine, Sinopharm, said that experts had demonstrated the effectiveness of its vaccine in children, but didn't confirm whether it had been approved for use. Chinese officials have said they are aiming to inoculate 70 percent of the population of 1.41 billion by the end of this year. The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved both the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines for emergency use in adults aged 18 and older, and both jabs are being administered in several countries around the world. While the WHO does not currently recommend vaccinating children against coronavirus, the United States, Britain, Singapore and the European Union have approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those as young as 12. China reported 33 new Covid-19 cases Tuesday, including 19 in southern Guangdong province where authorities have been battling a local outbreak.

Long rows of trucks have lined roads in southwestern China to try and block the path of 15 wild elephants that have caused havoc on the outskirts of a city of millions. The elephants wandered 500 kilometres north from their natural habitat -- the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in Yunnan province -- and have stomped through rural communities near the provincial capital Kunming, home to more than eight million people. State broadcaster CCTV on Sunday showed a long convoy of trucks parked along a small countryside road, lined on both sides by lush green foliage, in a bid to keep the herd away from densely populated areas. ‘We are here to block the elephants,’ one truck driver in a red vehicle told CCTV. ‘Traffic police officers said they need some trucks. As long as I'm needed, I will stay here.’ Authorities have also mobilised thousands of people to track the herd's movements with drones and infrared cameras. CCTV showed the elephants wandering casually into villagers' backyards over the weekend, leaving flattened trees and crumpled garage doors in their wake. ‘The herd was wandering in the village all day long,’ one nervous villager told CCTV. ‘We came out and saw an elephant about three meters tall. It really scared us.’ State TV showed food and bowls scattered on the floor of one kitchen after an elephant had trampled through. Since mid-April, the elephants have wrecked around 56 hectares of crops, causing an estimated 6.8 million yuan ($1.07 million) in losses, CCTV said. It is not clear exactly why they migrated from their original habitat. Chinese social media users have been captivated by the journey and have widely speculated on possible causes. One user on the Twitter-like Weibo platform posted a screenshot of several news articles about rainforest destruction in the elephants' habitat, writing: ‘I hope officials can give a response.’ It received more than 31,000 likes since it was posted Sunday. ‘The media always focus on the 'cute' aspect of the elephants' migration, which I find quite disgusting,’ read a reply that received over 6,000 likes. ‘Normally animals migrate when there's not enough to eat.’ The wild elephant population in southwestern Yunnan is around 300, up from 193 in the 1980s, reported official news agency Xinhua. But there have been more reports of such elephants wandering into villages and harming crops in recent years, with the plants they usually eat gradually replaced by non-edible varieties as forests expand, said local officials.  

The United States will donate 750,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses to Taiwan as part of the country's plan to share shots globally, US Senator Tammy Duckworth said on Sunday, offering a much-needed boost to the island's fight against the pandemic. Taiwan is dealing with a spike in domestic cases but has been affected like many places by global vaccines shortages. Only around 3% of its 23.5 million people have been vaccinated, with most getting only the first shot of two needed. Speaking at Taipei's downtown Songshan airport after arriving on a three-hour visit with fellow Senators Dan Sullivan and Christopher Coons, Duckworth said Taiwan would be getting 750,000 doses as part of the first tranche of US donations. "It was critical to the United States that Taiwan be included in the first group to receive vaccines because we recognise your urgent need and we value this partnership," she said at a news conference after the group arrived from South Korea. She did not give details of which vaccines Taiwan would get or when. Taiwan Health Minister Chen Shih-chung told reporters he was hoping to find out soon which firm's shots they would get. Taiwan has complained about China, which claims the democratically-ruled island as its own, trying to block the island from accessing vaccines internationally, which Beijing has denied. Standing by Duckworth's side, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu thanked the United States for the donation. "While we are doing our best to import vaccines, we must overcome obstacles to ensure that these life-saving medicines are delivered free from trouble from Beijing," he said. China has offered Taiwan Chinese-made vaccines, but the government in Taipei has repeatedly expressed concern about their safety, and in any case cannot import them without changing Taiwanese law, which bans their import. The senators also met with President Tsai Ing-wen at the airport, who said the vaccines, along with those Japan donated last week, would be a great help in their fight against the virus. "The vaccines are timely rain for Taiwan, and your assistance will be etched on our hearts," Tsai told the senators, in footage released by her office. US senators and congressmen visit Taiwan routinely in normal times, but coming in the middle of an upswing in infections on the island when its borders remain largely closed to visitors is a strong show of support. Unusually, they also arrived on a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III freighter, rather than a private jet as is generally the case for senior US visitors. Taiwan's vaccine arrivals have been gathering pace. Japan delivered to Taiwan 1.24 million doses of AstraZeneca PLC's coronavirus vaccine on Friday for free, in a gesture that more than doubled the amount of shots the island has received to date.

A man armed with a knife killed six people and wounded 14 others in a city in eastern China, state media reported Sunday. The attack occurred Saturday afternoon in the streets of Anqing, Anhui province, 430 kilometres west of Shanghai, state television CCTV said. The suspect was arrested and an investigation was under way to determine the circumstances of the attack that unfolded in a pedestrian shopping street, Anqing Public Security Bureau said in a statement released on the Weibo social network. Quoting the bureau, CCTV said the suspect was 25 years old, unemployed and "angry". The authorities had earlier reported five dead. A badly injured victim died in hospital on Saturday, CCTV said. Knife attacks are not uncommon in China, which heavily restricts access to firearms. In April, a man with a knife killed two children and injured 16 others at a nursery school in southern China. In 2018, a man who stabbed nine children to death and wounded another 11 in northern China was sentenced to death.