Coronavirus outbreak: Beijing drug store fined $434,530 for mask price hike

Current Affairs
Japanese Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura on Tuesday cautioned that A medication store in Beijing will be fined 3 million yuan ($434,530) for climbing the cost of face covers by just about multiple times the online cost in the midst of the coronavirus episode, the Beijing civil market controller said on Wednesday.
The controller has given a notification of authoritative punishment to Beijing Jimin Kangtai Pharmacy for pointedly raising the cost of N95 veils, it said in an announcement on its site.
Jimin Kangtai raised the cost of 3M brand veils to 850 yuan for every container, while the cost of a similar kind of covers sold online was 143 yuan for each case, state TV said.
The Beijing city controller has ventured up supervision on costs of scourge defensive types of gear and rebuffed criminal operations, for example, accumulating or manufacturing data about value climbs. It has examined 31 instances of value infringement since Jan. 23, it said.

The coronavirus flare-up, which began in the focal city of Wuhan before the end of last year, has executed 132 individuals and tainted about 6,000 in China...Read More

China records first coronavirus death in Beijing as toll climbs to 106

Current Affairs
The new strain of coronavirus spreading across China claimed its first victim in Beijing, officials said on Tuesday, as the death toll climbed to 106, the United States warned citizens against trips to the country and financial markets recoiled again at the potential impact on the world's second-biggest economy.
Amid mounting concern about the virus on Chinese social media, the National Health Commission said in a statement that all but six of those killed by the previously unknown flu-like virus were in Wuhan, Hubei province. Though cases of the virus have been confirmed in other countries, no fatalities have been reported outside China.The city of 11 million, where the virus emerged late last year, is now under effective lockdown. Footage shared on China's Twitter-like Weibo social media platform showed residents of apartment compounds in the city chanting "Wuhan, you can do it!" and singing the national anthem out of their windows.
Tuesday's death toll was up from 81 as of the day before, while the number of total confirmed cases in China surged to 4,515 as of Jan. 27, from 2,835 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said.Global stocks fell, oil prices hit three-month lows, and China's yuan dipped to its weakest level in 2020 as investors worried about damage to the economy from travel bans over the Lunar New Year holiday period, which China extended in a bid to keep people at home.

Officially known as '2019-nCoV', the newly identified coronavirus can cause pneumonia, but it is still too early to know just how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads.U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday offered China whatever help it needed, while the State Department said Americans should "reconsider" visiting all of China due to the virus.Canada, which has two confirmed cases of the virus and is investigating 19 more potential cases, warned its citizens to avoid travel to Hubei province...Read More

Hong Kong police seal off university, protesters set main entrance ablaze

International News
Pro-democracy demonstrators holed up in a Hong Kong university campus set the main entrance ablaze Monday to prevent surrounding police moving in, after officers warned they may use live rounds if confronted by deadly weapons.
The police warning, which came after one officer was struck by an arrow, marked a further escalation of the near six-month crisis engulfing the city.
China has repeatedly warned that it will not tolerate dissent, and there are growing concerns that Beijing could intervene directly to end the spiralling unrest.
Several loud blasts were heard around dawn on Monday before a wall of fire lit up an entrance to the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), AFP reporters said, as what appeared to be a police attempt to enter the campus was repelled by protesters determined to hold their ground.
Police said they had fired three live rounds in the early hours of Monday at a protest site near the university but that no one appeared to have been hit.
Intense clashes throughout Sunday, which saw a police officer hit in the leg by an arrow and protesters meet police tear gas with volleys of petrol bombs, rolled overnight across the Kowloon district, as a call went out to defend the besieged campus.
There, protesters had hunkered down under umbrellas from occasional fire from police water cannon and hurled Molotov cocktails at an armoured vehicle, leaving it ablaze on a flyover near the campus.

Police declared the campus a "riot" scene -- rioting is punishable by up to 10 years in jail -- and blocked exits as spokesman Louis Lau issued a stark warning in a Facebook live broadcast."I hereby warn rioters not to use petrol bombs, arrows, cars or any deadly weapons to attack police officers," he said....READ MORE

Chinese students flee Hong Kong as campuses turn into battlegrounds

International News
Having fled Hong Kong universities they had thought were a ticket to success, Chinese students from the mainland sit in hostels and noodle shops in the neighbouring city of Shenzhen wondering how they'll complete their studies.
With campuses turned into blazing battlegrounds, courses cancelled and anti-China sentiment growing more virulent, students from mainland China are getting out of Hong Kong with little idea if they will ever go back.
"It's really just not safe any more and I don't see it getting any better," said one twentysomething student leaning on a suitcase outside a restaurant in Shenzhen, which abuts Hong Kong.
Fears intensified this week because of a widely circulated video of a mainland student being beaten by protesters at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Anger boiled over there following after the death of a student who fell from a car park as police used teargas against protesters.
"The discrimination towards mainlanders is growing worse," said 22-year-old Frank, a postgraduate student who had just left the university for Shenzhen. "They're so prejudiced towards us mainlanders and that's not going to change, so why go back?" Before anti-government protests erupted in Hong Kong more than five months ago, there were some 12,000 students among more than one million mainland Chinese living in Hong Kong, according to official figures.
The pace of departures accelerated this week as intensifying violence turned campuses into nightmarish scenes of blazing petrol bombs and swirling teargas.

Dozens of mainland students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong were so fearful they called police and fled by police boat from a dock near the Sha Tin campus on Wednesday to avoid having to use roads blockaded by black clad protesters....READ MORE

A long list of economic problems await Hong Kong. How they can be fixed

International News
Beyond Hong Kong’s current political turmoil, a long list of economic problems await the city’s current and future rulers.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, on Wednesday unveiled more than 220 initiatives in housing, land supply and livelihood support, in a recognition that economic policy has a role to play in alleviating some of the city’s frustrations. She also acknowledged that Hong Kong entered a recession in the third quarter and warned of an “unprecedented” economic challenge.
That’s a start, though observers say the long-standing growth model -- as a low-tax, low-regulation entrepot for finance and trade -- has become an element in the political unrest, rather than the main solution.
Huge income inequality, markets controlled by insiders and a spiraling cost of living -- especially of housing -- are by now hallmarks of Hong Kong’s brand of capitalism, alongside the “world’s freest economy” label perennially awarded by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning U.S. policy group.
From using the city’s fiscal firepower to breaking the dominance of conglomerates and raising the standard of public facilities, there exists a range of proposals from economists and other experts for a way forward. In some areas, the government is already moving ahead. In others, a fundamental shift -- and the political consensus to make it -- is required.
Use Reserves to Tackle Housing

Many in the city question the political will of Hong Kong’s government officials to take bold, aggressive action in a range of policy areas. This criticism often arises in relation to the city’s HK$1.17 trillion ($149 billion) fiscal reserve, which some contend has grown steadily for years while the city’s problems were allowed to fester...READ MORE

US and China are fighting a trade war and Australia is reaping the benefits

International News

Luckily for Australia, the U.S.-China trade war happened.
Australia faced a personal-credit crunch, housing slump and weak business confidence, threatening to derail the longest-running growth streak in the developed world. Then it got a trade boost as U.S.-China relations soured.
Australia ships around a third of its exports to China, mostly commodities such as iron ore and coal that are used by heavy industry and in the building of apartments. Those exports are in demand as Beijing accelerates construction spending to head off damage caused by Washington raising tariffs.
Trade has been so buoyant that Australia logged its first current-account surplus—a measure of trade and financial flows with other countries—since 1975 in the second quarter of this year. That has provided some much-needed juice to Australia’s economy, on a 28-year run without a recession, as other headwinds to growth intensify. Australia’s gross domestic product expanded at its slowest pace since the financial crisis in the second quarter.
“It seems like a contradiction,” said AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver. “We are hearing all this talk about trade wars, which should obviously affect trade, and yet we have a record trade surplus that’s been far greater than anyone expected.”
Australia’s trade experience is unusual for a U.S. ally, some of whose economies have become collateral damage in the trade dispute. Germany’s exports in June fell 8% on a year earlier, and its current-account surplus has declined.

 Global trade volumes grew 4.4% in the first quarter of 2018, when the first U.S. tariffs were imposed, from the same period a year before, according to the International Monetary Fund...Read More

'Prepared to die': Hong Kong protesters embrace hard-core tactics

International News

In 2014, a protester named Chloe camped out on city streets, chanted slogans and planted “seeds of hope,” part of a 79-day occupation of major roads. The protesters’ demands for greater democracy were ignored.
This summer, the civil servant, who is in her 20s, has zip tied metal barriers together to block roads and dug bricks out of sidewalks to throw at police. Her primary role is to be “arrest support”—ready to hire lawyers for detained protesters and help their families with an emergency plan.“Some of them are prepared to die for the movement,” said Chloe. “I am also willing to die for it.”
Hong Kong’s protests against the mainland government’s increasing reach are emerging as bigger, more frequent and more violent than previous pro-democracy movements. In a contrast to 2014, when demonstrations were largely led by students, the current action has been embraced by a broader cross-section of Hong Kong society—including civil servants, pop stars, doctors, shopkeepers and people of all ages. And those taking part in more radical acts of civil disobedience are finding wider support.
Hard-core current protesters have largely rejected the strategies of veteran leaders, whose approach is seen to have failed. Actions are mostly organized by anonymous leaders of small groups. In 2014, named student leaders became well known figures.

 The shift in attitude means Hong Kong’s resistance has become the biggest open rebellion against China’s ruling Communist Party since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.“There’s a feeling among many that there’s no other option, that some physical confrontation is the only way for the regime to listen to the voices of Hong Kongers,” said Jeffrey Ngo, chief researcher at pro-democracy group Demosisto. Mr. Ngo said he doesn’t use violence himself in the current protests, but understands why some have resorted to it....Read More

China purchases could undercut Donald Trump's larger trade goal

International News

At the heart of President Trump’s negotiations with China is a troubling contradiction: The United States wants to use the trade talks to encourage the country to adopt a more market-oriented economy. But a key element of a prospective deal may end up reinforcing the economic power of the Chinese state.

Negotiators are still working out deal terms, but any agreement seems certain to involve China’s promise to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of American goods. For Mr. Trump, this is an essential element that will help reduce the United States’ record trade deficit with China and bolster farmers and other constituencies hurt by his trade war.

But those purchases will be ordered by the Chinese state, and most will be carried out by state-controlled Chinese businesses, further cementing Beijing’s role in managing its economy and potentially making United States industries even more beholden to the Chinese.

“It seems like those types of really simplistic purchasing commitment type of arrangements would actually reinforce state ownership rather than discourage it,” said Rufus Yerxa, the head of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents the United States’ largest exporters.

After months of talks, the two sides are inching closer to an agreement. Robert Lighthizer, Mr. Trump’s top trade negotiator, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, discussed the remaining sticking points with their Chinese counterparts on Thursday evening and Friday in Beijing. Mr. Mnuchin, in a tweet on Friday, said the talks had been “constructive.”


 Both sides are trying to iron out an agreement by this week, to coincide with a visit to Washington by Liu He, the Chinese special envoy charged with negotiating the deal...Read More

Mark Zuckerberg's call to regulate Facebook, explained

International News

Facebook has faced months of scrutiny for a litany of ills, from spreading misinformation to not properly protecting its users’ data to allowing foreign meddling in elections.
Many at the Silicon Valley company now expect lawmakers and regulators to act to contain it — so the social network is trying to set its own terms for what any regulations should look like.
That helps explain why Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post on Saturday laying out a case for how he believes his company should be treated.

In his post, Mr. Zuckerberg discussed four policy areas — harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability — which he said the government should focus attention on.
Here’s an annotated analysis of Mr. Zuckerberg’s post and what he is seeking to do with each area.

Harmful content

First, harmful content. Facebook gives everyone a way to use their voice, and that creates real benefits — from sharing experiences to growing movements. As part of this, we have a responsibility to keep people safe on our services. That means deciding what counts as terrorist propaganda, hate speech and more. We continually review our policies with experts, but at our scale we'll always make mistakes and decisions that people disagree with.


 So-called harmful content across Facebook is an enormous category, spanning abuse and bullying to the recent live-streamed shootings at two mosques in New Zealand...Read More

China's ban on 737 MAX spooks Boeing's hopes of $10 bn trade deal windfall

International News

China's move to ground Boeing Co's 737 MAX jetliners following the deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash has cast a shadow over the American planemaker's immediate hopes for a major jet order linked to a US-China trade deal, industry sources said.

Evidence of a major potential order for more than 100 jets worth well over $10 billion at list prices had risen in recent weeks as Washington and Beijing reported some progress in trade talks to resolve a months-long trade war.

Those expectations were fanned by signs of pent-up demand stemming not only from a drop in China's public purchases as the two sides descended into a tariff war, but also because China placed no private orders for Boeing aircraft in 2018, according to trade and industry sources familiar with the matter.

Now, those sources say it is uncertain how quickly China will be willing to give the 737 MAX the expected new endorsement after ordering its own airlines to stop flying the jet - though much could change as Ethiopian investigators assemble clues to the second deadly crash of the brand-new model in five months.

On Wednesday, the United States joined a wave of nations grounding the 737 MAX in the wake of Sunday's crash in Ethiopia, which killed all 157 people onboard. The planes will be grounded for weeks, U.S. lawmakers said on Thursday.


 Analysts said the crash has added uncertainty for America's largest exporter over sales to China."It is definitely on their list of concerns because China is Boeing's biggest single export market," Teal Group aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia said...Read More