Day: March 10, 2022

Health authorities in China said on Thursday they are battling a rising wave of COVID-19 infections across 31 provinces and cities, with more than 500 newly confirmed cases in the last 24 hours.

The National Health Commission said more than 400 cases were locally transmitted, and clustered in the northeastern province of Jilin, the eastern province of Shandong and the western province of Gansu.

Roads were blocked and residential areas placed under lockdown in 16 provinces and cities on Thursday.

A resident of Shandong’s Qingdao city who gave only the nickname John said there were 66 newly confirmed cases in the province, and that an expressway had been closed in the vicinity of Laixi, one of the hardest-hit areas, which is administered by Qingdao.

“The epidemic in Qingdao is in Laixi, where a number of school students were infected,” John told RFA. “The source of the infection is still unclear, so security is very tight everywhere.”

“All highways in Laixi are closed, and schools have been closed on a large scale, and all classes are now online,” he said. “The schools in the area where I live are also closed.”

The local government has expanded mass compulsory PCR testing after failing to trace the source of the local outbreak.

Meanwhile, Shenzhen resident Zhang Hai said the city had reported 15 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases during the past 24 hours, with five new cases reported in Dongguan.

“The fundamental reason is that there is no truthful, open, impartial and independent investigation that can take place,” Zhang said of the ongoing outbreak, which comes despite the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s insistence on a zero-COVID strategy.

“If this issue is not clarified, how can you control the spread of the virus?” he said.

Tests, closures

A video clip uploaded by a resident of Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong, showed long lines of people waited for PCR tests in the city.

“All staff are undergoing PCR tests now, and they are waiting in line here on Shipu Road,” the person shooting the video comments.

In another online video clip, authorities ask residents waiting in line to show their smart ID cards and mobile phones.

“Show your ID cards, your smart phones, and go to Shanghuatou Square,” they call out to those waiting.

Authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang issued a “non-essential stay at home” order for residents of some parts of Yongjia county, with all public places closed and all gatherings canceled across the city of Wenzhou.

Jiangsu resident Zhang Jianping said he was asked by security to show a negative PCR test to get into a court building in Jiangsu’s Wuxi city on Thursday.

“The court said today that they want me to show more than two PCR test reports [after] I came to Wuxi from Changzhou,” he said. “They refused to let me inside.”

More than 165 cases of COVID-19 were newly confirmed in Jilin, 134 of which were in Jilin city and 23 in Changchun city, with officials contacting thousands of people in a bid to track the spread of the infections.

Four new cases were reported in Shanghai since March 9, with 76 asymptomatic infections. Authorities in the city’s Xuhui district have ordered public spaces including cultural, tourist and entertainment venues to close temporarily to halt the spread of the virus.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Authorities in Hong Kong have revoked bail for former healthcare union chief and democracy activist Winnie Yu, putting her back behind bars on International Women’s Day.

Yu, 34, had been out on bail awaiting trial for “subversion” under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from July 1, 2020.

She is among 47 defendants charged with the same offense in connection with an unofficial democratic primary election in the summer of 2020 that was deemed to be an attempt to overthrow or undermine government power because it aimed to maximize the number of pro-democracy members of the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo).

Soon after the primary, the government announced that LegCo elections slated for September would be postponed to December 2021, and rewrote electoral rules to ensure that only candidates loyal to the government and the CCP would be allowed to stand.

The Hong Kong national security police issued a statement on March 7 saying that a 34-year-old woman had her bail revoked “on suspicion of violating her bail conditions.”

Media reports later identified the woman as Yu, a nurse and founder of the now-disbanded healthcare union, the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, for public sector healthcare workers.

Yu was arrested after reporting as required to her local police station, the reports said.

She had been granted bail by the High Court on July 28, 2021 on condition that she refrain from “directly or indirectly making, distributing or reproducing in any way any remarks or related acts that violate the national security law or that amount to crimes of national security under Hong Kong law.”

Yu was also proscribed from “directly or indirectly organizing, arranging or participating in public or private elections of any level in any way, except by voting, contacting foreign officials, parliamentarians or members of parliament at any level and other persons serving the above in any way, directly or indirectly, and leaving Hong Kong.”

Yu’s bail was revoked because of posts she made to social media criticizing the government’s handling of the current wave of COVID-19 in the city, which has left nearly 3,000 people dead and hospitals overwhelmed.

The national security law judge at the bail hearing found that Yu had violated the conditions of her bail, and couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t do so again.

As Yu left the court, she called out to her supporters in the public gallery: “Take care of my cat for me!”

Her jailing came as top Chinese lawmaker Li Zhanshu praised the electoral changes that followed the democratic primary, saying they ensured the city is being “administered by patriots.”

“The new system provides fundamental political and institutional safeguards for good governance of Hong Kong,” Li told the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC).

Meanwhile, Hong Kong politician Tam Yiu-chung, who sits on the NPC standing committee, said Li’s comments suggested that further electoral changes could be in the pipeline.

“There’s no mention of any concrete details,” Tam said in comments reported by government broadcaster RTHK. “I believe maybe something is still being studied. If the NPC standing committee needs to enact laws, we’ll do it.”

“These are matters for the central government to decide,” he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

A Chinese military aircraft crashed in the South China Sea earlier this month, the Taiwanese intelligence agency said Thursday, providing a possible explanation for China’s closure of a part of the Gulf of Tonkin near Hainan island.

Chen Ming-tong, director general of the National Security Bureau, told the Parliament’s Foreign and National Defense Committee that the crash prompted the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to set up a navigation exclusion zone in the adjacent waters to carry out search-and-rescue, and also military training.

Chen didn’t provide any further details, citing sensitivities surrounding the source.

He did however warn that as the world is focused on the war in Ukraine, China is taking advantage of the situation to “test the limits of the U.S. and other South China Sea claimants.”

On March 4, the Hainan Maritime Safety Administration issued a navigation warning banning ships from entering an area in the Gulf of Tonkin that was closed for military drills until March 15.

Part of the area lies within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry protested, asking China to respect its EEZ and continental shelf.

China’s Foreign Ministry replied, saying that “it is reasonable, lawful and irreproachable for China to conduct military exercises on its own doorstep.”

Vietnam and China reached an agreement to demarcate their share of most of the Gulf of Tonkin in 2000 but their negotiation on the mouth of the gulf has stagnated.

China has not acknowledged any plane crash recently and continues to conduct daily incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.

A Chinese military spokesperson said at the annual session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing on Wednesday that the PLA will not tolerate any “Taiwan independence” move.

Wu Qian reiterated the threat that the PLA would “hit every time” there are such moves, according to the state-run Global Times.