Tag Archives: China

WHO team in Wuhan probing COVID-19 origins moves out of quarantine

By Gabriel Crossley

WUHAN, China (Reuters) – A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic left its quarantine hotel in Wuhan on Thursday to begin field work, two weeks after arriving in the Chinese city where the virus emerged in late 2019.

The mission has been plagued by delays, concern over access and bickering between China and the United States, which has accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak and criticized the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of research.

“Thanks, Chinese Health Minister Ma Xiaowei, for a frank discussion on the #COVID19 virus origins mission,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted.

“I asked that the international scientists get the support, access & data needed, and the chance to engage fully with their Chinese counterparts.”

The WHO has not provided details of the mission’s itinerary, although team leader Peter Ben Embarek said in November that the group would likely go to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first known cluster of cases was traced.

The team, made up of independent experts, is due to remain for two more weeks in China, which has used stringent measures, including drastically curtailing international arrivals, to curb the spread of the coronavirus. China has been battling a series of local outbreaks over the past month.

“During the second 14 days, the team will be able to go out under strict medical supervision, continuous testing and the restrictive measures,” Hans Kluge, the WHO’s European regional director, told a news conference from Copenhagen on Thursday.

He said the first two weeks had been productive.

“The team members have been prepared by counterparts in China in different fields, there have been, every day, many, many hours of presentations and exchange of data,” he said.

After leaving their quarantine hotel shortly after 3 p.m. (0700 GMT) without speaking to journalists, team members boarded a bus to a lakeside hotel, where a portion of the building and grounds were cordoned off.

Several team members described long work days during their quarantine, and relief at being able to leave their rooms.

“Slightly sad to say goodbye to my ‘gym’ & my ‘office’ where I’ve been holed up for last 2 wks!!,” team member Peter Daszak said on Twitter, along with photos of exercise equipment and a desk in his hotel room.

The team members’ luggage, loaded onto the bus by workers in protective suits, included yoga mats and what appeared to be a guitar case.

SCIENCE AND POLITICS

The WHO has sought to manage expectations for the investigation.

“There are no guarantees of answers,” WHO emergencies chief Mike Ryan told reporters this month. “It is a difficult task to fully establish the origins and sometimes it can take two or three or four attempts to be able to do that in different settings.”

China’s foreign ministry said the team would participate in seminars, visits and field trips.

“All these activities must be in accordance with the principle of tracking the origin scientifically and with the ultimate goal of preventing future risks and protecting the safety and health of the people,” ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular briefing on Thursday.

The origin of COVID-19 has been highly politicized.

The investigating team had been set to arrive in Wuhan earlier in January, and China’s delay of their visit drew rare public criticism from the head of the WHO, which former U.S. President Donald Trump accused of being “China-centric” early in the outbreak.

China has been pushing a narrative that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in Wuhan, with state media citing the presence of the virus on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers saying it had been circulating in Europe in 2019.

China’s foreign ministry has also hinted on several occasions that the sudden closure of a U.S. army laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland in July 2019 was linked to the pandemic.

Wuhan resident Tu Zhengwang, 28, said it was not certain that the virus had originated in the city.

“It could be other places,” he said. “But if you find the origin, whether it is in Wuhan or other places, you could prevent similar incidents from happening.”

(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley in Wuhan; Additional reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Alex Richardson)

U.S. delays Chinese investment ban’s impact on certain firms

By Susan Heavey and Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday updated its ban on investments in certain Chinese military companies by delaying until May the application of the directive’s restrictions on companies with names similar to those that have been blacklisted.

In a statement posted on the U.S. Treasury Department website, the Biden administration said most investments in companies “whose name closely matches, but does not exactly match, the name of a Communist Chinese military company” would be allowed until May 27, extending the deadline which was originally set to Jan. 28.

The order does not authorize securities transactions with subsidiaries of banned Chinese military companies, it added.

In November, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration moved to prohibit U.S. investments in Chinese companies that Washington said were owned or controlled by the Chinese military in an effort to ramp up pressure on Beijing.

The order required U.S. investors to completely divest their holdings in the firms by Nov. 11, 2021 and was seen as part of a bid by Trump to cement his tough-on-China legacy.

The blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies was mandated by a 1999 law but the Defense Department only began complying by publishing names of the firms last year. The catalogue now includes 44 companies including China’s top chipmaker SMIC and oil giant CNOOC.

Questions have swirled as to how the Biden administration will handle the tough new sanctioning tool but it has so far declined to provide any insight.

Beijing has said the United States lacks evidence and described the ban as wanton oppression of its companies.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Alexandra Alper; Editing by Lisa Lambert, Catherine Evans and Andrea Ricci)

Ten China gold miners confirmed dead after others rescued; one still missing

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Rescuers searching for the remaining workers trapped in a Chinese gold mine after Sunday’s dramatic extraction of 11 survivors found nine bodies, a local official said on Monday, taking the death toll to 10, with one miner still missing.

A total of 22 miners working about 600 meters (2,000 feet) underground were trapped after an explosion at the Hushan mine in Qixia, a major gold-producing region in China’s coastal Shandong province, on Jan. 10.

Eleven were pulled out alive on Sunday after two weeks underground, including one in a very weak condition whom rescue teams had been unable to send supplies to.

Yantai Mayor Chen Fei said rescuers kept searching from Sunday to Monday afternoon and found the bodies of nine miners, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

That means a total of 10 miners are confirmed to have died, following the earlier death in the mine of one worker who had lapsed into a coma, and their remains have been lifted to the surface, Chen said, adding that one miner was still missing.

The search is difficult and water levels are high, but as long as the missing worker has not been found the work will not stop, the CCTV report added.

SUNDAY SALVATION

The 11 miners freed on Sunday were rescued much earlier than expected after it emerged that steel pipes in a blocked mine shaft had prevented debris from falling lower, according to state media.

The air ventilation shaft, which was the most feasible way to bring up the workers, had been cleared to a depth of 368 meters (1,207 feet), Xiao Wenru, chief engineer for the mine rescue, told the Xinhua news agency on Monday.

“It is at this location we discovered that there were some steel pipes supporting the blockage … there is almost no blockage under the steel pipes,” said Xiao.

Xiao told Xinhua on Sunday there had been a breakthrough in rescue efforts after clearing some blockages and finding the “cavities underneath.”

The 11 miners were mostly in good condition. Officials had earlier said they may have to wait another 15 days before they could be rescued due to a blockage along their intended escape route.

China’s mines are among the world’s deadliest. The country recorded 573 mine-related deaths in 2020, according to the National Mine Safety Administration.

(Reporting by Emily Chow; additional reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Michael Perry and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

China says U.S. military in South China Sea not good for peace

By Cate Cadell

BEIJING (Reuters) – The United States often sends ships and aircraft into the South China Sea to “flex its muscles” and this is not good for peace, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday, after a U.S. aircraft carrier group sailed into the disputed waterway.

The strategic South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade flows each year, has long been a focus of contention between Beijing and Washington, with China particularly angered by U.S. military activity there.

The U.S. carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt and accompanied by three warships, entered the waterway on Saturday to promote “freedom of the seas,” the U.S. military said, just days after Joe Biden became U.S. president..

“The United States frequently sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea to flex its muscles,” the foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, told reporters, responding to the U.S. mission.

“This is not conducive to peace and stability in the region.”

China has repeatedly complained about U.S. Navy ships getting close to islands it occupies in the South China Sea, where Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan all have competing claims.

The carrier group entered the South China Sea at the same time as Chinese-claimed Taiwan reported incursions by Chinese air force jets into the southwestern part of its air defense identification zone, prompting concern from Washington.

China has not commented on what its air force was doing, and Zhao referred questions to the defense ministry.

He reiterated China’s position that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and that the United States should abide by the “one China” principle.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen visited a radar base in the north of the island on Monday, and praised its ability to track Chinese forces, her office said.

“From last year until now, our radar station has detected nearly 2,000 communist aircraft and more than 400 communist ships, allowing us to quickly monitor and drive them away, and fully guard the sea and airspace,” she told officers.

Taiwan’s defense ministry added that just a single Chinese aircraft flew into its defense zone on Monday, an anti-submarine Y-8 aircraft.

Biden’s new administration says the U.S. commitment to Taiwan is “rock-solid”.

The United States, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is the democratic island’s most important international backer and main arms supplier, to China’s anger.

(Reporting by Cate Cadell; Writing and additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

China says 10 workers trapped in gold mine are searching for others

By Emily Chow

QIXIA, China (Reuters) – The 10 known survivors trapped since a deadly Jan. 10 gold mine explosion in northern China have been using laser pointers and loudspeakers to try to find their missing colleagues, state media reported on Friday.

The rescue operation, which has been able to get food and medicines to the miners, was expected to take at least another two weeks, authorities have said.

White bottles of food and water sent down to the trapped workers had a note stuck on them saying, “We are all waiting for you, keep going!”, photos shared by propaganda department officials with Reuters on Friday showed.

The food items sent to the workers include millet porridge, quail eggs, pickles and sausages and medical supplies included disinfectant, masks and cotton socks.

“The physical condition, psychological condition and living environment of 10 miners in the middle section of the mine are good,” the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, reported on Friday.

“The miners continued to search for other trapped persons through laser pointer projection and loudspeaker shouting,” it said.

A total of 22 workers were trapped in the Hushan mine by the Jan 10 blast in Qixia, a major gold-producing region under the administration of Yantai in coastal Shandong province.

One has died and 11 were not in contact with the rescue teams, according to a Xinhua radio report on Thursday.

At least 15 days may be needed to clear the “severe blockages” as rescuers continued to drill shafts to reach the 10 men, officials said on Thursday.

At the site, security was tight on Friday and Reuters journalists were not permitted to get close to the rescue operation.

Workers in orange high visibility clothing could be seen operating heavy machinery. At the entrance to the site, a medical tent had been set up to administer COVID tests for rescue workers.

About 570 people are involved in the rescue, the newspaper said.

China’s mines are among the world’s deadliest. It has recorded 573 mine-related deaths in 2020, according to the National Mine Safety Administration.

(Reporting by Emily Chow in Qixia and Beijing newsroom; Writing by Shivani Singh; Editing by Tony Munroe and Philippa Fletcher)

China imposes sanctions on 28 Trump-era officials including Pompeo

By Cate Cadell and Tony Munroe

BEIJING (Reuters) – China said on Wednesday it wanted to cooperate with President Joe Biden’s new U.S. administration, while announcing sanctions against “lying and cheating” outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and 27 other top officials under Donald Trump.

The move was a sign of China’s anger, especially at an accusation Pompeo made on his final full day in office that China had committed genocide against its Uighur Muslims, an assessment that Biden’s choice to succeed Pompeo, Anthony Blinken, said he shared.

In a striking repudiation of its relationship with Washington under Trump, the Chinese foreign ministry announced the sanctions in a statement that appeared on its website around the time that Biden was taking the presidential oath.

Pompeo and the others had “planned, promoted and executed a series of crazy moves, gravely interfered in China’s internal affairs, undermined China’s interests, offended the Chinese people, and seriously disrupted China-U.S. relations,” it said.

The other outgoing and former Trump officials sanctioned included trade chief Peter Navarro, National Security Advisers Robert O’Brien and John Bolton, Health Secretary Alex Azar, U.N. ambassador Kelly Craft and former top Trump aide Steve Bannon.

The 28 ex-officials and immediate family members would be banned from entering mainland China, Hong Kong or Macao, and companies and institutions associated with them restricted from doing business with China.

China has imposed sanctions on U.S. lawmakers in the past year, but targeting so many former and outgoing U.S. officials on inauguration day was an unusual expression of disdain.

Pompeo, who unleashed a barrage of measures against China in his final weeks in office, announced that on Tuesday that the Trump administration had determined that China had committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” against Uighur Muslims.

Blinken said on Tuesday he agreed with Pompeo’s genocide assessment.

“The forcing of men, women and children into concentration camps; trying to, in effect, re-educate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide,” Blinken said.

China has repeatedly rejected accusations of abuse in its western Xinjiang region, where a United Nations panel has said at least 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims had been detained in camps.

Responding to the Xinjiang allegations, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a media briefing on Wednesday: “Pompeo has made so many lies in recent years, and this is just another bold-faced lie.”

“This U.S. politician is notorious for lying and cheating, is making himself a laughing stock and a clown,” she said.

Hua said China hoped “the new administration will work together with China in the spirit of mutual respect, properly handle differences and conduct more win-win cooperation in more sectors.”

“We hope the new U.S. administration can have their own reasonable and cool-minded judgment on Xinjiang issues, among other issues.”

(Reporting by Cate Cadell, Tony Munroe, Ryan Woo and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

China rescuers prepare escape route for trapped gold miners

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Rescue teams on Wednesday drilled new holes down a gold mine in China’s Shandong province, searching for more survivors after an explosion 10 days ago and preparing an escape passage for a group known to still be alive, state media reported.

A total of 22 workers were trapped underground in the Hushan gold mine on the outskirts of Yantai, on China’s eastern coast, following the Jan. 10. blast. Rescuers have managed to deliver supplies to 11 workers, one of whom is in a coma after sustaining a head injury during the explosion.

Another eight of the 11 are in good health, while two are unwell, Shandong’s official Qilu Daily newspaper said, citing the rescue headquarters. One more worker who survived is in another section of the mine and believed to be injured, while the whereabouts of the remaining 10 are unclear, it added.

China has deployed 16 professional rescue teams and dozens of medical personnel to try to save the miners.

Song Xicheng, the medical rescue team leader, told reporters that more than 80 medical personnel were on standby, including nutritionists, neurosurgeons, trauma specialists and psychologists.

The operation involves drilling 10 channels, with one 711 millimeter-(2.33-foot)-wide hole – intended to serve as an escape route – wide enough to lift out the miners, the People’s Daily said. Rescuers could not say when this hole would be finished but admitted they were in a race against time.

An air ventilation shaft that rescuers also want to use to pull the miners to safety has been cleared to a depth of 350 meters (1,148 feet), the report said. The miners were working at a depth of more than 600 meters at the time of the explosion.

A channel previously used to send down supplies has been replaced because water inside was posing a threat to those underground, while another hole is being drilled to search for more signs of life, Beijing Evening News reported.

(Reporting by David Stanway; additional reporting by Tom Daly and Colin Qian; Editing by Stephen Coates and Mark Heinrich)

China’s retrieved lunar samples weigh less than targeted

BEIJING (Reuters) – Lunar rocks retrieved by a historic Chinese mission to the moon weighed less than initially targeted, but China is still willing to study the samples with foreign scientists, the mission’s spokesman said on Monday.

China became the third country ever to secure lunar samples when its unmanned Chang’e-5 probe, named after the mythical moon goddess, brought back 1.731 kg (3.8 lb) of samples last month, falling short of the 2 kg (4.4 lb.) planned.

The probe had estimated the lunar rocks to have a density of 1.6 grams per cubic millimeter, based on data from past missions by other countries, said Pei Zhaoyu, the mission spokesman.

Going by that figure, the probe stopped taking samples after just 12 hours, apparently assessing that the target had been reached.

“However, from tests, the actual density might not be that high,” Pei told reporters. “We originally planned to use 22 hours to complete the work of surface sampling, but, in fact, we stopped after 12 hours.”

But China is still open to cooperating with all nations in studying the samples, he said, including the United States.

For years, U.S. laws have limited its space agency NASA from directly cooperating with China.

“We didn’t set restrictions between countries,” Pei said. “Whether or not two countries could carry out related cooperation is a matter for two sides.”

China has not yet received any access request for samples, he said, adding that the rocks were still in a pre-treatment stage.

(Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard; Writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

U.S. counter-intelligence chief worried about China, Russia threats to vaccine supply chain

By Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. counter-intelligence chief said on Tuesday he was worried about threats from China and Russia to disrupt the coronavirus vaccine supply chain in the United States.

William Evanina, director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told an online Washington Post event that U.S. adversaries were trying to interfere with Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government operation distributing the vaccines.

“Our adversaries are trying to disrupt that supply chain,” he said. Asked which adversaries he was particularly concerned about, he replied, “I would say China and Russia right now.”

The Chinese and Russian embassies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Evanina’s assertion. Russia and China have denied U.S. accusations that hackers linked to both governments tried to steal data from vaccine manufacturers.

U.S. states are scrambling to accelerate inoculations as infections and deaths surge – COVID-19 has claimed on average about 3,200 lives nationwide every day over the past week.

Since the pandemic began more than 10 months ago nearly 375,000 people in the country have died, according to a Reuters count.

Evanina said that his agency was working with the U.S. Army and the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure the safe “transportation” of the vaccines “from the manufacturing site to the end-user inoculation.”

Vaccines available are made by Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna. Nearly 9 million Americans have received the first of two doses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than one-third of the 25 million doses distributed by the federal government.

Public health experts have said no U.S. state has so far come close to using up its federal vaccine allotments, a much slower-than-expected roll-out blamed in part on rigid rules sharply limiting who can be inoculated.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Grant McCool)

Chinese city of Langfang goes into lockdown amid new COVID-19 threat

BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese city of Langfang near Beijing went into lockdown on Tuesday as new coronavirus infections raised worries about a second wave in a country that has mostly contained COVID-19.

The number of new cases in mainland China reported on Tuesday remained a small fraction of those seen at the height of the outbreak in early 2020. However, authorities are implementing strict curbs whenever new cases emerge.

The National Health Commission reported 55 new cases on Tuesday, down from 103 on Monday. Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, accounted for 40 of the 42 locally transmitted infections.

In a village in the south of Beijing that shares a border with Hebei, residents were stopping vehicles and asking to see health-tracking codes on mobile phones.

“We have to be careful as we’re near Guan, where COVID cases were reported today,” said a volunteer security officer surnamed Wang.

At a highway checkpoint, police in protective gowns ordered a car entering Beijing to return to Hebei after the driver was unable to show proof of a negative coronavirus test.

China’s state planning agency said it expected travel during next month’s Lunar New Year period to be markedly down on normal years, with a bigger share of people choosing cars over other transport. Many provinces have urged migrant workers to stay put for the festival.

HOME QUARANTINE

Langfang, southeast of Beijing, said its 4.9 million residents would be put under home quarantine for seven days and tested for the virus.

The government in Beijing said a World Health Organization team investigating the origin of the coronavirus would arrive on Thursday in the city of Wuhan, where the virus emerged in late 2019, after a delay that Beijing has called a “misunderstanding”.

Shijiazhuang, Hebei’s capital, has been hardest hit in the latest surge and has already placed its 11 million people under lockdown. The province has shut sections of highway and is ordering vehicles to turn back.

A new guideline from the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control recommended that taxi and ride-hailing operators suspend car-pooling services, and that drivers should get weekly DNA tests and be vaccinated in order to work, the ruling Communist Party-backed Beijing Daily reported.

As of Jan. 9, China had administered more than 9 million vaccine doses.

Across the country, the number of new asymptomatic cases rose to 81 from 76 the previous day. China does not classify asymptomatic cases as confirmed coronavirus infections.

The total number of confirmed cases reported in mainland China stands at 87,591, with an official death toll of 4,634.

(Reporting by Jing Wang and Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai and Sophie Yu, Roxanne Liu and Lusha Zhang in Beijing; writing by Se Young Lee and Ryan Woo; Editing by Sam Holmes and Kevin Liffey)