A union of 650 tattoo artists issued a statement condemning the decision, calling it "retrograde" and "not worth a penny".
"The court is still walking on four feet when all citizens walk upright," said Kim Do-yoon, the union's chief, a renowned tattooist better known as Doy.
Kim said the court had failed to advance since a 1992 Supreme Court decision that copied a Japanese verdict stipulating that tattooing was medical activity, even though Japanese courts have since overturned that ruling.
Kim Sho-yun, vice president of the Korea Tattoo Federation, also criticised the latest ruling, saying the current law is "nonsense" especially given the country's growing tattoo market and rising global status.
"Why do they insist tattooing is a medical procedure even though doctors can't and don't do that?" she tearfully told a news conference in front of the courthouse, vowing to continue the fight.
The popularity of "K-tattoos" has been surging at home and abroad in recent years thanks to their fine-line designs, delicate details and use of bold colours.
While tattoos are usually covered up on television, many Korean celebrities, including members of K-pop bands, have flaunted them on social media.
Polls show most South Koreans support legalisation of tattooing, but medical associations oppose it, saying its use of needles is an invasive procedure that could damage the body.
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol expressed support before this month's election for legalising so-called cosmetic tattoos, which are semi-permanent and popular for enhancing eyebrows, eyelines and hairlines.
SEOUL: After spending two years being socially distanced in his home country of South Korea, Kim Hoe-jun booked a last-minute flight to Hawaii, where he had enjoyed his honeymoon six years ago, giving in to his craving for overseas travel.
"I bought the ticket just a week ago, but it was rather a no-brainer. It felt like I was making up for those two years not being able to go abroad often as I used to before COVID," he said, before boarding the plane from Incheon International Airport on Friday (Mar 31).
Vaccinated and boosted, Kim and his wife are among South Koreans joining in a rush for "revenge travel" - a term that has been trending on social media as people scramble to book overseas trips that were delayed by coronavirus restrictions.
The boom started after Mar 21 when South Korea lifted a seven-day mandatory quarantine for fully vaccinated travellers arriving from most countries. The restriction had been eased last year but was reimposed in December as the highly infectious Omicron variant spread.
The country has largely scrapped its once-aggressive tracing and containment efforts despite a record COVID-19 wave, joining a growing list of Asian countries which have eased quarantine rules, including Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Koreans now appear more ready to travel. Polls showed people are less worried about the implications of catching the virus, and increasingly see its prevention as out of their hands.
Sales of overseas flight tickets on 11st, an e-commerce unit of SK Telecom, South Korea's top mobile carrier, rose more than eight-fold compared with a year before between Mar 11, when the lifting of quarantine was announced, and March 27, the company said.
Kim Na-yeon, 27, was excited to return to Hawaii where she used to live.
"I couldn't dare to travel even in Korea because of COVID," she said. "But now I feel a bit freer with the exemption, so I've decided to go meet old friends and do some sightseeing."
The Helix Bridge is seen next to the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort, during dusk in the central business district of Singapore, November 13, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lam
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MUMBAI, March 30 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Singapore’s centre of gravity is shifting. The pandemic burnished its reputation as a haven for rich Asians looking to park their money. But beyond its role as a “Switzerland of the East”, entrepreneurs, executives and investors — especially from China — are looking at the tiny country as a destination for more active business investment.
The Lion City, home to 5.5 million people at the tip of the Malay peninsula, has benefited enormously from political uncertainty and pandemic pains elsewhere. Take $68 billion DBS Group (DBSM.SI), the top local lender: net new money inflows into its private bank from overseas logged an astonishing 170% increase year-on-year in the first half of 2020, and remain robust. Single-family offices in the city multiplied fivefold between 2017 and 2019, and stood at around 400 in 2020, per official estimates. All the signs suggest that pace is picking up.
Singapore is also slowly shedding its unwelcome nickname “Singa-snore”, referring to the city’s easy pace. Frustrated Western finance executives fleeing Hong Kong’s ham-fisted Covid-19 policies have started relocating to the hub, generating flattering headlines. Much more significant, however, is Singapore’s increasing attractiveness to technology firms.
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The local stock exchange still struggles to attract hot initial public offerings. But that is less of a sore point now that tech champions like Grab , Sea (SE.N) and GoTo are using the city as a base to tap Southeast Asia, home to a population more than twice the United States. Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Zoom (ZM.O) are ramping up for similar reasons. The International Monetary Fund’s ASEAN-5 grouping, including Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, comprise a $3 trillion economy forecast to grow at almost 6% in 2022.
Cryptocurrency geeks are popping up too. Though regulators are being picky about approvals for licences to trade, shunning big names like Binance, they are tentatively embracing the industry with an eye on the potential of related blockchain technologies. That stands in sharp contrast to bans elsewhere. The absence of a tax on capital gains is a sweetener.
But the most striking trend, which gathered pace through the pandemic, is the scaling up of the mainland Chinese presence even as Singapore leans West diplomatically. The government ditched its famous neutrality to sanction Russia read more and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was welcomed read more in the White House on Tuesday.
Some ultra-rich Chinese may be seeking a buffer between their wealth, businesses, and the constant crackdowns from Beijing: Singapore allows family office principals with net investible assets of at least S$200 million ($147 million) to apply for permanent residence. Yet the trend also coincides with excitement about the accelerating digitisation of developing Asia, so there’s a business logic too. ByteDance’s short-video streaming app TikTok has set up shop, while the city is home to Tencent’s (0700.HK) biggest office outside of China for its global interactive entertainment operations. Chinese investment funds are coming too: Sean Tong, co-founder of Chinese private equity firm Boyu, is among the high-profile investors to have relocated.
This is a natural extension of Singapore’s $150 billion relationship with its top trading partner, facilitated by another advantage the city has over Hong Kong; in Singapore 30% of the population speaks Mandarin - the most common dialect in mainland China – as the primary language, compared to only 2% of Hong Kong residents. This is reinforcing its advantage as a place where those doing business in India, Southeast Asia and China can comingle.
Its lenders and airlines look strong too, buttressing its hub image. DBS is leading an overseas push by Singaporean banks into India, China and Taiwan, making bolt on acquisitions partly filling in a retail banking gap left in markets abandoned by Citi (C.N). And its national carrier is in strong position to support regional connectivity. Sovereign wealth fund Temasek threw Singapore Airlines (SIAL.SI) a first-class financial lifeline early during the pandemic; Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific (0293.HK), in contrast, is still struggling.
CHAMPAGNE PROBLEMS
Nothing complicates social relationships like success, however. While rich Singaporeans benefit from the increase in business, many nevertheless bemoan the tacky Bentleys acquired by mainland China arrivistes clogging parking lots. The cost of a large car permit has more than doubled in three years to about S$90,000 ($73,000). Rents for high-end property are soaring and slots at top private schools are growing scarce.
Among the nearly 80% of the population who live in government-developed housing, Singapore’s welcoming attitude to the monied risks driving up the overall cost of living. Headline inflation rose at 4.3% in February, its fastest pace in nine years. So while Singapore quietly courts the wealthy, it is loudly tightening up on employment visas. The government plans to raise goods and services taxes next year and is exploring ways to get more out of the wealthy.
The sustainability of Singapore’s advantage will get a more thorough test after the pandemic disruptions in Asia ease. For all the worries about immigration, the city’s population contracted a second consecutive year in the twelve months through June 2021, driven by a nearly 11% drop in non-residents. Other headwinds include crashing valuations in the tech sector and the risk that Beijing will get prickly about how the hub is helping Chinese capitalists hedge against government policies. Rebalancing Singapore is a delicate affair.
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
CONTEXT NEWS
- Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visited the White House on March 29.
- U.S. President Joe Biden planned to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's role in the Indo-Pacific with Lee at the meeting, Reuters reported, citing a senior administration official.
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Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.
HONG KONG: Hong Kong will gradually resume public services from Apr 1, the government said on Friday (Mar 25), with the global financial hub posting its lowest number of daily infections in about a month.
Government departments will return to normal service by Apr 21, it said in a statement, part of a broader easing of strict coronavirus measures which have created widespread frustration for residents and businesses.
Leader Carrie Lam this week announced the lifting of measures including a ban on dining in restaurants after 6pm, and the reopening of most public venues and sports facilities.
Schools are also due to resume face to face classes by Apr 19.
Many people in the Chinese ruled territory have been working from home since February when a wave of the highly transmissible Omicron variant swept through the city.
The government's announcement signals that many of Hong Kong's 7.4 million residents will return to offices in line with civil servants guidelines.
Health authorities reported 10,405 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, down from 13,074 the previous day. The city hit a record high of over 58,000 infections on Mar 9.
Hong Kong has officially stuck to a "dynamic zero" coronavirus strategy, which aims to curb outbreaks as they occur with contact tracing, testing and isolation. The policy largely protected it from the virus until the beginning of this year.
However the latest wave came as large numbers of elderly remained unvaccinated, causing a spike in infections with Hong Kong registering the most deaths per million people globally in recent weeks.
Since the pandemic began in 2020, Hong Kong has recorded more than 1.1 million infections and more than 6,700 deaths - most of them in the past month.
A photograph taken on March 9, 2022, shows a BP petrol station in the town of Chekhov outside Moscow, Russia. (Photo: AFP)
China’s oil refiners are discreetly purchasing cheap Russian crude as the nation’s supply continues to seep into the market.
Unlike India’s state-run oil refiners, which have issued a number of tenders seeking to buy Russia’s flagship Urals crude among other grades, traders say China’s state processors are negotiating privately under the radar with sellers. The nation’s independent refiners are also quietly buying, according to traders who asked not to be identified as the information is confidential.
Most buyers are shunning Russian crude after its invasion of Ukraine, fearing damage to their reputation or falling foul of sanctions. China’s independent refiners, which account for a quarter of the nation’s processing capacity and are mainly based in Shandong province, bought some ESPO oil that’s loaded at Russia’s eastern port of Kozmino, according to traders.
The recent ESPO purchases by independent refiners, known as teapots, are for May-loading cargoes, and the Chinese processors are continuously making inquiries about Russian oil, traders said. ESPO is a favored grade because it can be shipped to their smaller ports -- that are unable to unload larger vessels -- from a shorter distance, cutting down costs.
Some teapots are working with traders on financing options and checking on the availability of vessels to ship the crude at a reasonable price, and are also considering buying Urals, said traders. The cargoes of Urals purchased by state-run processors are for June delivery, they added.
Trading of Russian oil has mostly shifted away from the public eye after its invasion of Ukraine. Willing buyers and sellers are being forced to engage in private negotiations after some tenders attracted zero bids. Shell Plc got heavy criticism after its purchase of Urals not long after the war started.
Another of Russia’s Far East crude grades -- Sokol -- is also flowing to India. State-run Indian Oil Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. bought some Sokol loading in May from ONGC Videsh Ltd, an equity partner in the Sakhalin-I project, according to traders. Cargoes are loaded from the De-Kastri terminal.
Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and ONGC declined to comment.
Japan’s Sakhalin Oil and Gas Development Co known as SODECO, which also has an equity interest in Sakhalin-I, declined to comment on its future exports of Sokol crude. Traders said some buyers in North Asia are likely to take their already-committed cargoes of the grade in May.
India has so far bought at least 13 million barrels of Urals since late February, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, with Indian Oil purchasing a further 3 million barrels in its latest tender. Volumes to the nation averaged about 128,000 tonnes a month in 2021, Bloomberg calculations based on ship-tracking data show. Urals is shipped from ports in the Baltic and Black Seas.
WASHINGTON: About one-in-three COVID-19 cases in the United States are now caused by the BA.2 Omicron sub-variant of the coronavirus, according to government data on Tuesday (Mar 22) that also showed overall infections still declining from January's record highs.
Despite the rise of the extremely contagious sub-variant also seen in other countries, US health experts say a major wave of new infections here appears unlikely.
US COVID-19 infections have receded sharply since January, although a resurgence in parts of Asia and Europe have raised concerns that one will follow in the United States given previous patterns during the two years of the pandemic.
In the Northeast, including New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, Omicron BA.2 now makes up more than half the cases, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It accounted for 35 per cent of US infections for the week ending Mar 19, CDC said. That compares with 22.3 per cent for the week ending Mar 12, which was revised down from 23.1 per cent, according to a CDC model that estimates proportions of circulating variants.
Top US infectious disease official Dr Anthony Fauci said at a Washington Post event on Tuesday that he does not believe there will be a major surge soon, "unless something changes dramatically".
Still, Fauci noted that cases in the United States generally lag around three weeks behind the United Kingdom, "so if we are going to see an uptick, we should start seeing it within the next week or so".
Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of division of infectious diseases at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, said there was no evidence yet that the rise of BA.2 is pointing to an increase in cases.
"I think the one concern and where people need to remain vigilant is that as we have relaxed many restrictions around masking and gathering, there is a potential opportunity for BA.2 or any variant to gain a foothold," Kuritzkes said.
The sub-variant is more transmissible than the Omicron BA.1 variant that caused the massive winter surge, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. It does not appear to cause more severe disease, however, and early data showed that infection with BA.1 offers strong protection against reinfection with BA.2, the WHO said.
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has put Chinese companies in an increasingly precarious position as they attempt to preserve and expand their business with Russia while navigating what they hope will prove to be short-term disruptions.
DJI, the Chinese drone maker whose equipment is used by both sides in the Ukraine war, typifies those challenges after finding itself in the spotlight last week when a senior Ukrainian official urged the company to stop doing business with Russia.
Russian troops “are using DJI products in Ukraine in order to navigate their missile[s] to kill civilians”, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister, wrote in an open letter posted on Twitter. He demanded that DJI take a series of measures, including sharing more product information and blocking the potential use of its drones by Russian forces. “We call on your company to stop doing business in the Russian Federation until the Russian aggression in Ukraine is fully stopped,” Fedorov added.
While many western technology companies have responded positively to such pleas DJI, the industry leader, rebuffed them as firmly as Chinese diplomats have rebuffed criticism that President Xi Jinping has effectively sided with Russia.
The company tweeted in response to Fedorov that its products did not meet “military specifications” and his other requests were either impractical or required a formal order from the Ukrainian government. “We remain available to discuss these issues at your convenience,” DJI said.
“DJI can’t block products that are purchased and activated in Russia as doing so may violate data compliance rules,” said a person close to the business. “The company doesn’t want to be involved in politics.”
But the person added that if US sanctions threaten DJI’s access to American-made components, it will have no choice but to “exit the Russian market”.
“DJI complies with the laws and regulations of the markets in which we operate,” the company said.
A Beijing-based lawyer who advises Chinese companies on their Russian operations said many were struggling to balance commerce and allegations that they were keeping Russia’s economy afloat after western governments imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Moscow.
“Chinese companies are finding it increasingly difficult to walk a fine line between conducting normal business activities in Russia and bankrolling its war against Ukraine,” the person said.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, China’s economic links with its northern neighbour have also come under strain. According to a recent survey of 322 Chinese exporters by FOB Shanghai, an industry forum, 39 per cent of respondents said the war had “severely” undermined their Russian business.
Importers are not faring much better. Russia’s coal exports to Asia, where China is the biggest buyer, fell to 1.8mn tonnes in the first two weeks of March compared to 62mn tonnes in February, according to Refinitiv, a data provider.
“There is too much risk trading with Russia,” said Frank Yao, owner of a coal trader based in the northeastern city of Dalian. His company cancelled an order from Russia this month because the seller had trouble processing payments after western governments banned some of the country’s banks from Swift, the global financial messaging system.
But many Chinese companies still want to expand their trade with Russian counterparts.
Xibao Metallurgy Materials Group, a manufacturer and distributor of advanced materials based in the central Chinese district of Xixia, recently signed a Rmb300mn ($47mn) deal to build a refractory material plant in Lipetsk, a city in western Russia. Refractory materials are used in heat-intensive industries such as steel making.
Li Shucheng, Xibao’s president, said in an online ceremony on March 10 that he was determined to embark on the project despite “lots of challenges arising from continuous regional conflicts”.
“We have assessed all kinds of potential risks and opportunities and have drawn up a well-founded contingency plan for our investment,” Li added.
In the northeastern city of Changchun, the state-owned commodity trader Jidian International Trade Co has purchased at least 50,000 tonnes of coal from Russia since the war broke out, according to an executive who asked not to be named. “We are still in the business when many of our peers are out,” the person added, noting that the company had signed long-term contracts with Russian coal groups such as SUEK and Elga.
Many of Jidian International’s peers are following suit. The China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association, an industry body, hosted a video conference on March 11 at which a dozen of the country’s big power plants and about 20 Russian coal companies discussed plans to increase bilateral trade just as the US and UK banned Russian oil imports.
“We are actively exploring opportunities to work with our Russian partners,” said an official at Oasis Logistics Corp, a commodity trader in eastern Jiangsu province that was represented at the conference.
Despite a plunge in shipments over recent weeks, many analysts expect coal exports to rebound strongly in coming months. “Russia’s coal shipments to China may increase even further if other Asian countries reduce purchases,” brokerage Yongan Futures said in a report last week, adding that Chinese imports could offset reduced buying from South Korea after Seoul imposed sanctions on Moscow.
Shortly before the war began, Sergey Mochalnikov, a senior official at Russia’s energy ministry, said the country planned to almost double annual coal exports to China to 100mn tonnes.
Chinese demand for Russian coal has been stoked by shortages at home, which contributed to a series of severe power outages last year in many manufacturing areas.
Local mines have been forced to cut back on production in order to meet strict emissions target. The problem has been exacerbated by the suspension of Australian coal imports amid long-running political tensions between Beijing and Canberra.
“China needs Russian coal not because we want to provide support for Putin,” said the official at Jidian International. “We do so because it helps solve our economic problems.”
The logo of China Eastern Airlines at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China March 21, 2022. REUTERS/Tingshu Wangvv
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BEIJING, March 21 (Reuters) - A China Eastern Airlines (600115.SS) Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in mountains in southern China on a domestic flight on Monday after a sudden descent from cruising altitude. Media said there were no signs of survivors.
The airline said it deeply mourned the loss of passengers and crew, without specifying how many people had been killed.
Chinese media showed brief highway video footage from a vehicle's dashcam apparently showing a jet diving to the ground behind trees at an angle of about 35 degrees off vertical. Reuters could not immediately verify the footage.
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The plane was en route from the southwestern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, bordering Hong Kong, when it crashed.
Reuters Graphics
China Eastern said the cause of the crash, in which the plane descended at 31,000 feet a minute according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, was under investigation.
The airline said it had provided a hotline for relatives of those on board and sent a working group to the site. There were no foreigners on the flight, Chinese state television reported, citing China Eastern.
Media cited a rescue official as saying the plane had disintegrated and caused a fire destroying bamboo trees. The People's Daily quoted a provincial firefighting department official as saying there was no sign of life among the debris.
State media showed a piece of the plane on a scarred, earthen hillside. There was no sign of a fire or personal belongings.
The aircraft, with 123 passengers and nine crew on board, lost contact over the city of Wuzhou, China's Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline said.
The flight left Kunming at 1:11 p.m. (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed, and had been due to land in Guangzhou at 3:05 p.m. (0705 GMT).
The plane, which Flightradar24 said was six years old, had been cruising at 29,100 feet at 0620 GMT. Just over two minutes and 15 seconds later, data showed it had descended to 9,075 feet.
Twenty seconds later, its last tracked altitude was 3,225 feet.
Crashes during the cruise phase of flights are relatively rare even though this phase accounts for the majority of flight time. Boeing said last year only 13% of fatal commercial accidents globally between 2011 and 2020 occurred during the cruise phase, whereas 28% occurred on final approach and 26% on landing.
"Usually the plane is on auto-pilot during cruise stage. So it is very hard to fathom what happened," said Li Xiaojin, a Chinese aviation expert.
Online weather data showed partly cloudy conditions with good visibility in Wuzhou at the time of the crash.
President Xi Jinping called for investigators to determine the cause of the crash as soon as possible, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
A Boeing spokesperson said: "We are aware of the initial media reports and are working to gather more information."
Shares of Boeing Co (BA.N) were down 6.4% at $180.44 in premarket trade.
Shares in China Eastern Airlines in Hong Kong closed down 6.5% after news of the crash emerged, while its U.S.-listed shares slumped 17% in premarket trading.
China Eastern grounded its fleet of 737-800 planes after the crash, state media reported. China Eastern has 109 of the aircraft in its fleet, according to FlightRadar24.
The plane crashed during its cruise phase. Five fatal incidents have occurred during the cruise phase in the 10 years from 2010 through 2020, according to data examining global commercial jet airplane accidents compiled by Boeing.
'GOOD RECORD'
Aviation data provider OAG said this month that state-owned China Eastern Airlines was the world's sixth-largest carrier by scheduled weekly seat capacity.
The 737-800 has a good safety record and is the predecessor to the 737 MAX model that has been grounded in China for more than three years after fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
China's airline safety record has been among the best in the world for a decade.
"The CAAC has very rigid safety regulations and we will just need to wait for more details," said Shukor Yusof, head of Malaysia-based aviation consultancy Endau Analytics.
Investigators will search for the plane's black boxes - the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder - to shed light on the crash.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it was ready to assist with China's investigation if asked.
China's aviation safety record, while good, is less transparent than in countries like the United States and Australia where regulators release detailed reports on non-fatal incidents, said Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at industry publication Flightglobal.
"There have been concerns that there is some underreporting of safety lapses on the mainland," he said.
According to Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident was in 2010, when 44 of 96 people on board were killed when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed on approach to Yichun airport.
In 1994 a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xian to Guangzhou crashed, killing all 160 on board in China's worst-ever air disaster, according to Aviation Safety Network.
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Reporting by Beijing and Shanghai newsrooms and Jamie Freed in Sydney; additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Nick Macfie and Hugh Lawson
BEIJING, March 21 (Reuters) - A China Eastern Airlines (600115.SS) passenger jet with 132 people on board crashed in the mountains of southern China on Monday while on a flight from the city of Kunming to Guangzhou, China's Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said.
The jet involved in the accident was a Boeing 737 aircraft and the number of casualties was not immediately known, state broadcaster CCTV said. Rescue services were on their way to the scene, it said. There was no word on the cause of the crash.
The plane was a 6-year-old 737-800 aircraft, according to Flightradar24.
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The CAAC said the aircraft lost contact over the city of Wuzhou. It had 123 passengers and nine crew on board. State media said earlier there were 133 people on board.
"The CAAC has activated the emergency mechanism and sent a working group to the scene," it said in a statement.
Media cited a rescue official as saying the plane had completely disintegrated. A fire sparked by the crash burned down bamboo and trees before being put out.
The flight departed the southwestern city of Kunming at 1:11 p.m. (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed. The flight tracking ended at 2:22 p.m. (0622 GMT) an altitude of 3225 feet (983 metres) with a speed of 376 knots.
It had been due to land in Guangzhou, on the south coast, at 3:05 p.m. (0705 GMT).
The web site of China Eastern Airlines was later presented in black and white, which airlines do in response to a crash as a sign of respect for the assumed victims.
The safety record of China's airline industry has been among the best in the world over the past decade.
According to Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident was in 2010, when 44 of 96 people on board were killed when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed on approach to Yichun airport in low visibility.
The 737-800 model that crashed on Monday has a good safety record and is the predecessor to the 737 MAX model that has been grounded in China for more than three years following fatal crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia.
1994, a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xian to Guangzhou was destroyed in an accident after takeoff, killing all 160 people on board and ranking as China's worst-ever air disaster, according to Aviation Safety Network.
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Reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Jamie Freed in Sydney; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
Leader Carrie Lam said there was a “need” for people to get their hair cut, and then defended beach closures as necessary to prevent gatherings. Many residents had flocked to beaches and coastal parks for leisure activities with playgrounds, schools and most public venues shut.
Hong Kong has officially stuck to a “dynamic zero” coronavirus policy, similar to mainland China, which seeks to curb all outbreaks as soon as they occur.
Authorities this year have implemented the city’s most draconian measures since the pandemic started in 2020. Still infections and deaths have skyrocketed, and Lam has given no clear roadmap how Hong Kong can resume normality.
Tens of thousands have been affected financially by the broad closures, with coaches and clubs losing millions of dollars in revenue, sports associations said.
Around 10 per cent of Hong Kong’s 1,800 fitness centres won’t be able to continue operating, said Sam Wong, executive director of the city’s Physical Fitness Association.
Gym operator Fitness First said this week it was closing its Hong Kong gyms due to the lengthy coronavirus shutdowns.
The city’s Tennis Association said stakeholders from umpires and linesmen to equipment makers were losing significant revenue from the closures. It has urged the government to reopen courts as tennis can “naturally” implement social distancing measures.
At Repulse Bay beach, on Hong Kong’s southern tip, residents looked in frustration at makeshift blockades preventing them from accessing the shore.
“Unscientific and reactive again,” said a resident called Michael who did not want to give his last name.
Many of the city's young athletes were enthused after Hong Kong's strongest-ever Olympics performance in Tokyo last year. Lam said after the Games she would deploy large resources to support the sports industry, but the reality has been much different, residents said.
“While Hong Kong’s politicians are quick to take photos with the swim school’s famous and successful Olympians, they don’t seem to care at all about the financial hardship we have to endure due to poorly-thought-through facility closures,” said Michael Fasching, head coach at swim club Harry Wright International, which trained Olympian Siobhan Haughey.
Russia and China have the tendency to learn the worst from each other: tyrants, famines, purges and, now, internet censorship.
When Russia blocked Facebook and limited Twitter this month, many Chinese internet users were surprised. Wait a moment, they said: The Russians could use Facebook and Twitter? Both social media platforms have been banned in China since 2009.
By blocking online platforms, shutting down the last vestige of Russia’s independent media and making it a crime to refer to the fighting in Ukraine as a war, the Kremlin has made it nearly impossible for the Russian people to get independent or international news after its invasion. Most Russians are taking in an alternative reality.
That’s exactly what China has been doing to its 1.4 billion people for years. Nearly all major Western websites are blocked in the country. A generation of Chinese have grown up in a very different information environment from the rest of the world. Mostly, they are left to believe in what Beijing tells them.
“When people ask me how info environment within the Great Firewall is like,” Yaqiu Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York, wrote on Twitter about China’s censored internet, “I say, ‘imagine the whole country is one giant Qanon.’”
After years of testing and hesitation, Russia is heading toward harsher internet censorship akin to China’s Great Firewall to better control its people. China’s information dark age could be Russia’s future.
“What is darkness?” asked a user on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. “You can’t speak the truth, and you aren’t allowed to see the truth.”
The two countries have the tendency to learn the worst from each other.
Both the Russians and the Chinese were deeply scarred by disastrous eras under Communism, which produced tyrants like Stalin and Mao, gulags and labor camps, and man-made famines that starved millions to death.
Now, Russia is learning from China how to exert control over its people in the social media age.
The Ukraine crisis has only accelerated a process that started years earlier. In late 2015, China and Russia signed a strategic cooperation agreement on internet governance. A few months later, two of China’s most infamous proponents of censorship traveled to Moscow to preach their ideas of the internet to their Russian counterparts.
“Unlimited freedom can lead to terrorism,” China’s internet czar at the time, Lu Wei, told his Russian audience at a forum. “If borders exist, they exist in cyberspace, too,” saidFang Binxing, known as “father of the Great Firewall.”
China has not always been as tightly controlled as it has become under its top leader, Xi Jinping.Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters
China has not always been as tightly controlled as it has become under its top leader, Xi Jinping. In the 1990s and 2000s, investigative journalists broke many stories that led to the downfalls of government officials and to judiciary reforms. The internet and social media made it possible for the public to exchange ideas, debate important topics and pressure the government to respond to their concerns.
There was censorship — at times very strict — and some people went to jail for voicing their political views. But there was a little room for free speech, as there was in Russia for much of President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule.
Then, under Mr. Xi, a new era of control took hold, and it didn’t stop at news media and social media. It reached everything that touches human minds: books and cartoons, films and television, music and classrooms.
The country regulates what textbooks children use, what type of novels writers can publish and what kind of mobile games people can play. And it is all possible because the vast majority of Chinese live in the huge information bubble within the Great Firewall.
The effects are clearly demonstrated in the overwhelmingly pro-Russia, pro-war and pro-Putin online sentiment in China after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. A huge number of Chinese internet users have bought into the disinformation that the Russian and Chinese propaganda machines feed them.
Employees of TV Rain in Moscow as the station prepared to end operations earlier this month.The New York Times
Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, used to be the place to debate democracy and freedom. Now, the biggest influencers on Weibo are state-owned media outlets like the People’s Daily, the Global Times and China Central Television. Bilibili, a user-generated video site that used to be popular among young gamers and comic and anime fans, is now full of nationalistic young people known as little pinks.
It requires a lot of perseverance for someone with independent thoughts to keep a presence on Weibo. A law scholar I know had set up 343 Weibo accounts between 2009 and 2014, only to see them deleted one by one. Some of them survived only a few minutes. Many people quit social media because they couldn’t stand the abuses by government trolls and little pinks. They also don’t want to risk getting jailed for a post.
The news media has suffered an even greater retreat.
After a huge earthquake struck Sichuan Province in May 2008, many Chinese news outlets sent journalists there despite a ban from the Central Propaganda Department. Their powerful, emotional coverage informed the nation of the tragedy and raised questions about the quality of many school buildings.
In China, scenes about homosexuality in the film “Bohemian Rhapsody” were not shown.Alex Bailey/Twentieth Century Fox, via Associated Press
That kind of reporting is long gone. When news happens, the Chinese public has no choice but to accept the government’s version of truth.
In January, when the government of the northwestern city of Xi’an imposed a strict lockdown that created chaos and crises not seen since Wuhan two years ago, few news outlets sent journalists to cover it. The only significant reporting the Chinese public got was a first-person blog post written by a former investigative journalist known by her pen name, Jiang Xue.
A few weeks later, when the public was outraged by a video that showed a woman chained in a doorless shack, it had many questions about her, including whether she was a victim of human trafficking. No journalist was able to conduct any independent investigation. Even though the government issued five statements about her case, many people remain skeptical and are worried that they may never know her real identity.
State censors scrutinize books, videos, films, TV series and just about any creative content much more closely before they reach their audience. The goal is to make sure that everyone, especially the young generation, shares the same values.
A well-known Chinese intellectual has written three books that might never be published. Another famous scholar has written five books with no hope of getting them past the censors.
On Chinese TV, hip-hop singers and soccer players wear long sleeves or use makeup to cover their tattoos, and men’s earrings are blurred so they won’t become a “bad influence” on young people.
China still wants to offer some Western entertainment content, but only in a sanitized format. In the sitcom “Friends,” Ross never explained to his parents that he had split from his wife because she was a lesbian living with another woman. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the Queen biopic, had no scenes involving homosexuality. The Chinese censors put a black dress on the heroine’s nude body in “The Shape of Water.”
Creative talents are now signing contracts that include clauses that make them liable for engaging in immoral behaviors or making politically sensitive comments. Celebrities can have their online presence scrubbed for having a nasty divorce, evading taxes or hiring a prostitute, or for no clear reason at all.
The release of a much-anticipated Chinese thriller was delayed last Christmas because one of the main actors in the movie was accused of taking drugs in 2015. It didn’t matter that the charges against him were dropped. All his shots had to be redone.
I used to doubt that young people would want to watch jingoistic propaganda movies. My generation couldn’t run away from them fast enough, like Russians in the 1980s and 1990s. But I was wrong.
Last year, “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” a government-sponsored movie dramatizing an against-all-odds defeat of the United States during the Korean War, smashed box office records in China.
“The Battle at Lake Changjin,” a government-sponsored movie depicting an against-all-odds victory against the United States during the Korean War, was a box office hit.Getty Images
The most depressing aspect of the information dark age is the collective amnesia.
Young censors are so ignorant about China’s forbidden history that they need to be taught before they start work. Otherwise, they won’t even know to look for references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protests, or to the dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.
Some young people believe it’s their responsibility to report to the authorities on speeches they deem not in line with Communist Party values. Some teachers have lost their jobs or have been punished after their students reported on their “politically incorrect” speech.
Last summer, a local state security bureau in the southeastern province Fujian awarded a college student $1,500 for reporting on an online user spreading “anti-revolutionary information.”
Many Chinese online users see the Great Firewall as necessary to ward off the information and ideological imposition from the West. And after the Kremlin followed suit this month, banning many foreign websites, many in China cheered the decision.
“It’s very necessary to build the Great Firewall,” wrote the Weibo user @icebear_Like_. “Ideology is also a battlefront.”
BEIJING: Older people in China should get vaccinated against COVID-19, senior Chinese health officials said on Friday (Mar 18), adding that deaths among the elderly in the latest wave to hit Hong Kong serve as a lesson for the mainland.
"The outbreak in Hong Kong is a particularly profound lesson for us, an example that if the vaccination rate for the elderly is low, the rate of severe cases and deaths will be high," Wang Hesheng, deputy director of the National Health Commission, told a news briefing.
"We must not regret when it is too late," he said.
Only 19.7 per cent of people aged over 80 in China have received a COVID-19 vaccine booster as of Mar 17, and just 50.7 per cent of that age group have completed their primary vaccinations, said Zeng Yixin, another NHC deputy director.
Densely populated Hong Kong has registered the most deaths per million people globally in recent weeks - more than 24 times that of rival Singapore - due to a large proportion of elderly who were unvaccinated as the highly transmissible Omicron variant ripped through care homes.
Chinese officials have made its clear that China will not any time soon ditch its "dynamic-clearance" policy that aims to contain each flare-up quickly, or loosen its weeks-long quarantine requirement for most international travellers.
These stringent measures have helped mainland China keep its official death toll largely static since 2020, with only two fatalities reported in 2021 and none so far this year.
For mainland Chinese aged 60 to 69, 56.4 per cent have received a booster shot while that falls to 48.4 per cent for those aged 70 to 79, Zeng said.
He added that there are still 52 million people over 60 who have not completed their primary vaccinations.
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