Tag Archives: China

Damaged WTO now leaderless as chief Azevedo steps down

By Emma Farge and Philip Blenkinsop

GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The World Trade Organization’s director-general Roberto Azevedo steps down on Monday, leaving the already-damaged global watchdog leaderless as it faces the biggest crisis in its 25-year history.

As the WTO’s influence seeps away, rising international tensions and protectionism during a COVID-induced slowdown, most obviously between China and President Donald Trump’s U.S. administration, make reform of global trade rules ever more urgent.

“This is indeed a new – though alas not unsurprising – low point for the WTO,” said Rohinton Medhora, president of the Center for International Governance Innovation. “The organization has been directionless for some time, several years in fact, and will now be functionally leaderless.”

In particular, the WTO appeals court, which rules on international trade disputes, has been paralyzed by Washington’s blockade on the appointment of new judges.

Azevedo, a Brazilian, is heading for a job at PepsiCo Inc and eight candidates are vying to replace him.

In 1999, a four-month gap leadership vacuum was widely seen as damaging, and guidelines to prevent a repeat envisaged the 164 members selecting a temporary replacement from among four current deputies. But Washington’s insistence on its candidate prevented agreement, leaving a vacuum that will last for months.

U.S. ELECTION

In theory, a winner should be selected by Nov. 7, under an agreed elimination process that seeks to have a new director-general appointed by consensus.

In practice, trade sources say the uncertainty around the presidential election on Nov. 3 in the United States, which has not said publicly which candidate it prefers, could delay matters further. The 2021 budget, due to be set at the end of the year, which Washington might question, could also be a hurdle.

The U.S. administration of President Donald Trump says the WTO, which took almost 20 years to broker its first global agreement, has failed for years to hold China – the world’s second largest economy after the United States – accountable for unfair trade practices. It also says the wider WTO tariff system is unfair to the U.S.

Trump has even suggested quitting the WTO, although no firm plans have been announced.

Peter Ungphakorn, a former WTO staff member who now writes blogs on trade, said there was a risk of a similar “messy selection” of the next full-time chief, citing trade tensions and members’ unwillingness to compromise over the acting director-general.

In theory, day-to-day operations can be handled by the deputies, including the director-general’s key role of selecting panelists to adjudicate on trade disputes.

Negotiations to reduce fishing subsidies in particular are supposed to conclude by the end of the year.

But David Tinline, a former adviser to Azevedo, noted that the red-tape-cutting Trade Facilitation Agreement had needed Azevedo’s interventions to get over the line in 2013.

“What we are not going to have is that galvanizing force of the DG (director-general), pushing people to solve specific problems,” Tinline said.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Sinovac’s coronavirus vaccine candidate approved for emergency use in China- source

BEIJING (Reuters) – Sinovac Biotech Ltd’s coronavirus vaccine candidate CoronaVac was approved in July for emergency use as part of a program in China to vaccinate high-risk groups such as medical staff, a person familiar with the matter said.

China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a unit of state-owned pharmaceutical giant China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), also said it had obtained emergency use approval for a coronavirus vaccine candidate in social media platform WeChat on Sunday.

CNBG, which has two vaccine candidates in phase 3 clinical trials, did not say which of its vaccines had been cleared for emergency use.

China has been giving experimental coronavirus vaccines to high-risk groups since July, and a health official told state media in an interview aired last week that authorities could consider modestly expanding the emergency use program to try to prevent possible outbreaks during the autumn and winter.

Officially, China has given little details on which vaccine candidates have been given to high-risk people under the emergency use program and how many people have been vaccinated.

State media reported in June, prior to the emergency use program, that employees at state firms travelling overseas were allowed to take one of the two vaccines being developed by CNBG, while China’s military had also approved the use of CanSino Biologics’ vaccine candidate.

Seven vaccines against the coronavirus are in final trial stages around the world, and four of them are from China.

But no vaccine has yet passed the final stage of trials proving it is safe and effective – conditions usually required to be met to get regulatory approval for mass use. COVID-19 has killed over 800,000 people worldwide.

(Reporting by Roxanne Liu in Beijing and Miyoung Kim in Singapore; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa)

U.S. imposes sanctions on Chinese national over fentanyl trafficking

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a Chinese national, accusing him of trafficking fentanyl to the United States.

It said in a statement that Taotao Zhang, a chemist and chemical supplier, had shipped illicit synthetic opioids to the United States. The Treasury also blacklisted Hong Kong-based Allyrise Technology Group Co, Limited, of which Zhang is director, accusing it of being a front company for his financial transactions.

Fentanyl is a cheap opioid painkiller 50 times more potent than heroin that has played a major role in an opioid crisis in the United States, where more than 28,000 synthetic opioid-related overdose deaths were recorded in 2017.

U.S. officials say China is the main source of illicit fentanyl. President Donald Trump has accused Chinese President Xi Jinping of failing to meet promises to help stop the flow of the drug into the United States, a charge Beijing rejects.

“The United States remains committed to protecting vulnerable Americans by targeting individuals peddling this deadly drug,” Treasury Deputy Secretary Justin Muzinich said.

Tuesday’s action freezes any U.S. assets of Zhang and the Hong Kong-based company and generally bars Americans from dealing with them.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said it coordinated the move with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; editing by Grant McCool)

Italy says China a key strategic partner, despite U.S. concerns

By Angelo Amante

ROME (Reuters) – Italy and China need to forge closer ties, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Tuesday, potentially putting Rome at odds with Washington, which has raised alarm over Beijing’s economic ambitions.

Di Maio was speaking after talks with the Chinese government’s top diplomat State Councillor Wang Yi, who was beginning a visit to Europe that will also include the Netherlands, Norway, France and Germany.

Italy became the first major Western economy to join China’s international infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, when it signed a raft of accords in 2019. However, the move has yielded little for Italy so far.

“It was a very fruitful meeting,” Di Maio said, adding that he had discussed with Wang how to “relaunch (our) strategic partnership from the economic and industrial view point”.

Wang told reporters it was important for China and the European Union to strengthen relations and deepen cooperation to tackle the coronavirus.

U.S. President Donald Trump blames Beijing for the spread of the disease, which emerged in China last year. He also wants to restrict the global development of Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co., accusing it of acting as a Trojan Horse for Chinese cyber spies.

Italy has not joined the United States in imposing restrictions on Huawei and Di Maio made no reference to the company in his remarks. In an apparent reference to tensions with Washington, Wang said China did not want to see a Cold War.

“A Cold War would be a step backwards,” he said. “We will not let other countries do this for their own private interests, while damaging the interests of other countries.”

Di Maio said he had raised the issue of Hong Kong with Wang, saying its citizens’ rights and freedoms had to be respected.

China unveiled a national security law last month which Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters and the West say breaches the 1984 Sino-British treaty that guaranteed Hong Kong’s autonomy.

Monster swallows monster: Fossil reveals doubly fatal Triassic encounter

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a warm shallow sea about 240 million years ago in what is now southwestern China, a large dolphin-like marine reptile attacked and swallowed an almost equally big lizard-like marine reptile in a savage encounter that left both beasts dead.

Scientists on Thursday described a fossil unearthed in China’s Guizhou Province that reveals this Triassic Period drama in exceptional detail and changes the understanding of “megapredation” in prehistoric seas.

While it long has been presumed that large apex predators preyed upon other big animals – megapredation is defined as feeding on prey of human size or larger – the Chinese fossil represents the first direct evidence of it, as demonstrated by a prehistoric animal’s stomach contents.

The fossil shows the skeleton of a 15-foot-long (5 meters) Guizhouichthyosaurus, a type of marine reptile called an ichthyosaur. Its body design married elements of a dolphin and a tiger shark though it lacked a dorsal fin, also boasting four strong flippers and a mouth full of powerful but blunt teeth.

Inside its stomach was the torso of a 12-foot-long (4 meters) Xinpusaurus, a type of marine reptile called an a thalattosaur. Its body design resembled a komodo dragon with four paddling limbs and teeth equipped for crushing shells. The Xinpusaurus was beheaded in the melee and its tail severed.

“Nobody was there to film it,” but it is possible to interpret what may have occurred between the two animals, said paleobiologist and study co-author Ryosuke Motani of the University of California, Davis.

The Guizhouichthyosaurus literally may have bitten off more than it could chew.

“The prey is lighter than the predator but its resistance must have been fierce,” Motani said. “The predator probably damaged its neck to some extent while subduing the prey. Then it took the head and tail of the prey off through jerking and twisting, and swallowed the trunk using inertia and gravity.”

Motani added, “These activities may have expanded the damage of the neck to the point it was fatal. The neck vertebral columns of these ichthyosaurs are quite narrow and once they could not hold the skull in place anymore, the predator could not breathe. Soon, it died not far from the site of the predation, where the detached tail of the prey lay.”

The fossil bore evidence of this broken neck. The prey in the stomach showed little signs of digestion, indicating the ichthyosaur died soon after swallowing it.

It is among the more dramatic fossils on record, joining others such as one showing the Cretaceous Period dinosaurs Velociraptor and Protoceratops locked in combat and another of the large Cretaceous fish Xiphactinus that had swallowed whole another sizeable fish.

Guizhouichthyosaurus was the largest-known marine predator of its time, about 10 million years before dinosaurs appeared. Its teeth, however, were not the type thought to be needed for megapredation: blunt rather than having cutting edges for slicing flesh.

“Its teeth look like they are good for grasping squids. So, it was a surprise to find such large prey,” said Peking University paleontologist Da-Yong Jiang, lead author of the research published in the journal iScience.

Motani noted that crocodilians also have blunt teeth and attack large prey.

“Megapredation,” Motani said, “was probably more common than we used to think.”

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Drugmakers slash prices to win China’s bulk-buy contracts: state media

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Drugmakers have slashed prices by up to 95% to win state contracts in China’s largest bidding round of its drug procurement program, state media said on Thursday.

Beijing has implemented a national scheme where global pharmaceutical companies and Chinese generic drugmakers vie to sell their products in bulk at public hospitals.

In the latest bidding round for contracts worth hundreds of billions yuan in total, drugmakers cut prices by 53% on average, state media Xinhua reported, citing preliminary results.

It involves 55 types of medicines, more than the previous two rounds.

Drugs open for bidding covered some products that contributed more than $1 billion each to foreign drugmakers’ sales in 2019 but face challenges from generic versions offered by local drugmakers.

They included AstraZeneca Plc’s heart disease treatment Brilinta, and blood-thinner Eliquis, jointly developed by Pfizer Inc. and Bristol Myers Squibb Co (BMS). Contracts for the two treatments were won by Chinese companies, according to preliminary results published by procurement authorities.

A BMS representative said that the company decided not to join the bidding for Eliquis, and that it will speed up introducing new drugs in China.

AstraZeneca did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Foreign companies generally quoted higher prices in Thursday’s bidding and barely secured any contracts, said ICBC International Research analyst Zhang Jialin.

More expensive brand-name drugs still had opportunities in the market not covered by the national procurement scheme, thanks to their higher profile among patients and doctors compared with cheaper generic drugs, Zhang said.

Thursday’s bidding also showed China’s generic drugs market starting to concentrate around a few big players, Zhang added.

Units of Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding won bids for six products, the parent company said in a filing.

For smaller firms, the bulk-buy scheme might risk driving them close to losses, said Wang Yue, a professor at Peking University’s School of Health Humanities.

“Many companies actually have no power to bargain with the government,” he said. “When the market changes, like when labor and logistics costs rise, the (low drug) prices are hard to sustain.”

For most products in Thursday’s bidding, if a single company won the bid, it could provide up to half of the total procurement volume in the first year. If there were at least four winners, 70-80% of the volume could be shared, procurement authorities said in official guidance last month.

(Reporting by Roxanne Liu in Beijing and Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Potter)

Hong Kong will suspend some legal cooperation with U.S., China says

BEIJING (Reuters) – Hong Kong will suspend an agreement on mutual legal assistance with the United States, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, in a tit-for-tat response to Washington ending some agreements with Hong Kong.

The U.S. State Department notified Hong Kong on Wednesday that Washington had suspended or terminated three bilateral agreements with the semi-autonomous city following China’s imposition of a sweeping national security law.

“China urges the U.S. to immediately correct its mistakes,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a news briefing on Thursday as he announced the suspension of the agreement on legal assistance.

The agreement, signed in 1997 before Britain returned Hong Kong to China, specified that the United States and Hong Kong governments would help each other in criminal matters such as transferring people in custody or searching and confiscating proceeds of crime.

The U.S. State Department said earlier the three agreements the United States ended covered “the surrender of fugitive offenders, the transfer of sentenced persons, and reciprocal tax exemptions on income derived from the international operation of ships”.

The U.S. decision followed President Donald Trump’s order last month to end Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law to punish China for what he called “oppressive actions” against the former British colony.

Trump signed an executive order that he said would end the preferential economic treatment for the city following the imposition of the draconian new security law.

The national security law punishes anything China considers secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison and has drawn criticism from Western countries that worry the law will end the freedoms promised when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule.

Beijing and the Hong Kong government have defended the law as necessary to restore order and preserve prosperity after months of at times violent anti-government protests last year.

Hong Kong has become another contentious issue between China and the United States, whose relations were already strained by differences over trade, China’s claims in the South China Sea and its treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority.

(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Editing by Toby Chopra, Robert Birsel)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Concerns grow that kids spread virus

U.S. students are returning to school in person and online in the middle of a pandemic, and the stakes for educators and families are rising in the face of emerging research that shows children could be a risk for spreading the new coronavirus.

Several large studies have shown that the vast majority of children who contract COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, have milder illness than adults. And early reports did not find strong evidence of children as major contributors to the deadly virus that has killed more than 780,000 people globally.

But more recent studies are starting to show how contagious infected children, even those with no symptoms, might be.

Grave situation in renewed South Korea outbreak

Novel coronavirus infections have spread nationwide from a church in the South Korean capital, raising fears that one of the world’s virus mitigation success stories might yet suffer a disastrous outbreak, a top health official said on Thursday.

“The reason we take the recent situation seriously is because this transmission, which began to spread around a specific religious facility, is appearing nationwide through certain rallies,” Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told a briefing.

The positive cases from the rallies include people from nine different cities and provinces across the country. Kim did not identify those places but said 114 facilities, including the places of work of infected people, were facing risk of transmission.

Brazil sees signs spread is slowing

The spread of the coronavirus in Brazil could be about to slow, the Health Ministry said, amid reports the transmission rate has fallen below a key level and early signs of a gradual decline in the weekly totals of cases and fatalities.

The cautious optimism comes despite figures again showing a steady rise in the number of confirmed cases and death toll in the last 24 hours, cementing Brazil’s status as the world’s second biggest COVID-19 hot spot after the United States.

According to ministry data, Brazil saw a drop in the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases to 304,684 last week from a peak of 319,653 in the week ending July 25. The weekly death toll fell to 6,755 from a peak of 7,677 in the last week of July.

Trump touts convalescent plasma as treatment

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday touted the use of convalescent plasma as a treatment for COVID-19 and suggested a reported decision by regulators to put on hold an emergency authorization for its use could be politically motivated. “I’ve heard fantastic things about convalescent plasma,” Trump told a briefing.

An emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the use of blood plasma as a coronavirus treatment has been put on hold over concerns the data backing it was too weak, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The FDA did not respond to a request for comment.

People who survive an infectious disease such as COVID-19 are left with blood plasma containing antibodies the body’s immune system created to fight off a virus. This can be transfused into newly infected patients to try to aid recovery.

China backs Wuhan park after pool party

Chinese state newspapers threw their support behind an amusement park in the central city of Wuhan on Thursday after pictures of a densely packed pool party at the park went viral overseas amid concerns about the spread of COVID-19.

Videos and photos of an electronic music festival at the Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park on July 11 raised eyebrows overseas, but reflected life returning to normal in the city where the virus causing COVID-19 was first detected, the official English-language China Daily newspaper said in a front-page story.

Another story in the Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily, cited Wuhan residents as saying the pool party reflected the city’s success in its virus-control efforts.

(Compiled by Linda Noakes and Karishma Singh; Editing by Mark Potter)

U.S. officially notifies Hong Kong it has ended three agreements: State Dept

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said it notified Hong Kong on Wednesday that Washington has suspended or terminated three bilateral agreements with the semi-autonomous city following China’s imposition of a sweeping national security law.

The ending of the agreements follows U.S. President Donald Trump’s order last month to end Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law to punish China for what he called “oppressive actions” against the former British colony.

The State Department said in a statement the agreements ended covered “the surrender of fugitive offenders, the transfer of sentenced persons, and reciprocal tax exemptions on income derived from the international operation of ships.”

“These steps underscore our deep concern regarding Beijing’s decision to impose the National Security Law, which has crushed the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong,” State Department Spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said.

Trump signed an executive order last month that he said would end the preferential economic treatment for the city following the imposition of the draconian new national security law.

The legislation punishes anything China considers secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison and has drawn criticism from Western countries that worry the law will end the freedoms promised when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Analysts have said U.S.-China ties have deteriorated to their worst level in decades.

Washington this month imposed sanctions on Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and other current and former Hong Kong and mainland officials whom Washington accuses of curtailing political freedom in the financial hub.

The U.S. government has also required goods made in the former British colony for export to the United States to be labelled as made in China after Sept. 25.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Susan Heavey and Marguerita Choy)

China says latest U.S. sailing near Taiwan ‘extremely dangerous’

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s military said on Wednesday the latest U.S. navy sailing near Chinese-claimed Taiwan was “extremely dangerous” and stirring up such trouble was in neither country’s interests.

The U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin sailed through the narrow and sensitive Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, the U.S. navy said, in what have become relatively routine trips in recent months, though they always anger China.

The Eastern Theater Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army said its air and naval forces followed and monitored the U.S. ship throughout its voyage.

“Any words or deeds that … cause trouble in the Taiwan Strait are not in line with the fundamental interests of China and the United States, harm the well-being of compatriots on both sides of the strait, pose real threats to peace and stability in the region and are extremely dangerous”, it said.

Chinese forces will remain on high alert at all times to safeguard China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, it added.

Taiwan’s defense ministry said the U.S. ship was on an “ordinary mission” and passed through the Taiwan Strait in a southerly direction.

The sailing comes a week after U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar visited Taiwan, the highest level U.S. official to travel to the island since Washington broke off diplomatic ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing in 1979.

China responded by sending fighter jets close to Taiwan.

China considers Taiwan a purely domestic matter, and routinely calls it the most sensitive and important issue in its relations with the United States.

(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei)