File photo. Visitors view the Chinese military's J-16D electronic warfare airplane, left, and the KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft at right during 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition on 29 September in Zhuhai in southern China's Guangdong province (Associated Press)
China’s military is expanding its airbases near Taiwan by deploying its new fighter jets, which are designed for electronic warfare, according to satellite imagery and a People’s Liberation Army source.
China has sent a record number of warplanes, 148 in just the past week, to the island’s air defence identification zone as part of its strategy to ramp up its military intimidation of the self-ruling democracy and test its air defences.
On Monday, a record 56 Chinese warplanes intruded into Taiwan’s airspace, prompting Taipei’s defence ministry to scramble its air defence system and issue warnings. The show of force marked the fourth straight day of intrusions by aircraft belonging to the People’s Liberation Army. Taiwan has described these incursions as “irresponsible provocative actions”, while the US, Japan and Australia urged China to end its military threats.
The satellite image showing China’s airbases near eastern Taiwan was released by Canada-based Kanwa Defence Review and it shows a J-16D fighter jet being housed at an airbase in Jiangxi province, China.
Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the defence magazine, said the satellite imagery showed the J-16D had been deployed to the Xiangtang airbase in Nanchang, Jiangxi, in May. One satellite image showed hangars at the airbase that can accommodate advanced fighter jets like the J-16D.
A separate image from January showed another airbase in Changxing county, Zhejiang province, being expanded with new hangars and other infrastructure being built.
Both airbases are run by the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command, according to South China Morning Post.
“All the airbases along the southeast coast are being expanded and upgraded to house more fighter jets as more and more large-scale air incursions are in the pipeline,” Mr Chang said. “The deployment of 52 aircraft [in the first sortie] on Monday shows the PLA’s aviation combat strength. I expect more types of PLA aircraft will be sent in future, with the biggest sorties involving more than 100 [planes].”
A PLA source in Beijing, China, on the condition of anonymity, confirmed to South China Morning Post that the J-16D fighter jet had been deployed to an eastern airbase near Taiwan. He said that the military activity near Taiwan was “part of combat-readiness training”.
“The escalation of air incursions from the PLA means more fighters from Taiwan need to carry out scramble missions, which increases the chance of collision because there aren’t any rules of engagement,” Mr Chang added.
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said that he had spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about Taiwan.
Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-Cheng told the island’s parliament that tensions with China were at their worst in 40 years. He also warned that Beijing could have the ability to mount a full-scale invasion of the democratic island by 2025.
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, has also called China’s recent actions around Taiwan “provocative” and warned of the risks of “miscalculation”.
HONG KONG - For months now on Friday nights, Hong Kong's Lan Kwai Fong district looks just like how it was pre-pandemic: bars and pubs opening their doors till 4am to local and expat partygoers wearing costumes and hats and dancing to live performances, while chatter fills restaurants that can now sit up to 12 customers a table.
In a city still chasing a zero-Covid-19 strategy, borders may be mostly shut to non-residents but life has largely returned to normal.
Students attend lessons in schools, the office crowd goes about its daily routine, trains and buses are crowded, and hospitals cope with patient load.
People are more relaxed now, although there are still signs of caution. For instance, face masks are still worn, cinemas do not allow food and drinks, and karaoke lounges no longer serve buffets.
On Wednesday (Oct 6), Hong Kong recorded six imported cases. There has been no locally transmitted cases in the territory of 7.4 million people for almost two months.
The scene today is a far cry from the red alert phase in November last year, when clusters popped up islandwide, sparked by dance clubs for socialites. The high alert lasted for months, with the government tightening social distancing rules and rolling out ambush lockdowns on buildings, during which everyone on the premises were tested.
By late February, social distancing rules had eased and life slowly went back on track.
Experts have attributed Hong Kong's success in staving off another wave of outbreaks to a combination of strict border controls and quarantine, social distancing, as well as aggressive contact tracing, testing, screening and surveillance.
Although the Delta variant was found in the community in June, Hong Kong managed to quickly snuff it out so that it did not spread in what is largely a Covid-19-naive population. Since the city saw its first patient on Jan 23, 2020, it has had only about 12,200 cases and 213 deaths.
Epidemiologist Ben Cowling at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) thinks the city's most important measure in keeping a lid on cases is its strict on-arrival hotel quarantine that can go up to 21 days.
But the flip side of having some of the world's toughest border rules and quarantine measures is how it has taken a toll on the Asian financial hub's recovery, which has been uneven.
That said, its economy continued to grow in the second quarter by 7.6 per cent from a year ago, buoyed by improving global economic conditions and a stable pandemic situation.
The tough stance on overseas arrivals, however, has drawn flak from businesses. In a rare open letter to Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam in August this year, the European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong cautioned that the city's business reputation was at risk.
But Mrs Lam replied that many local and international companies had told her repeatedly that they want to enter mainland China to talk to investors and consumers, so Hong Kong's priority has been on its borders with the mainland.
Zero-Covid-19 strategy
In a bid to reopen its borders with the mainland and Macau, Hong Kong has adopted their strategy of zero local infection.
Its priority has been to control the pandemic and prevent imported cases from spreading the virus to the community.
During the flare-up of cases last November, the government tightened rules, including shutting dance clubs, limiting diners to two per table, closing entertainment venues and suspending schools.
From late January, ambush lockdowns were conducted. These were overnight operations where typically one or two buildings or streets identified as sites of infections were sealed off. Everyone in the affected area was tested and had to remain on the premises till given the all-clear, usually by morning. Those who refused to be tested risked a fine of HK$5,000 (S$873). About a dozen Covid-19 cases were detected from late January to end-May.
With no local transmission now, such lockdowns have tapered off but this is a tool officials can still use to quickly detect possible spread.
The city is also maintaining contact tracing and social distancing rules such as mask-wearing and limiting public gatherings to four.
Hong Kong's priority has been to control the pandemic and prevent imported cases from spreading the virus to the community. PHOTO: AFP
It has also introduced more relaxed measures for diners and eateries under a tiered approach. For example, more people can sit at a table and eateries can operate for longer if both staff and diners are vaccinated.
The government takes a multi-bureau approach in tackling the pandemic, where the various ministries discuss and seek the opinions of an expert panel. The Executive Council, together with the Chief Executive, will then make decisions based on the recommendations. As the situation stabilised, the government has done away with daily press conferences and now sends out press releases daily.
Consultant Morgan Lam, 35, said Hong Kongers like her are tired of the strict policies.
"I don't think it's back to normal. It's the bare minimum of returning to a normal life since there are still regulations on patrons per table, wearing of masks and group sizes in public, a travel ban, quarantine, among other things," she said.
Expat Siobhan Ho, in her 30s, thinks the border measures are too strict but there are some perks.
"The silver lining is that once in the city, it feels like a safe bubble. Other than the lack of freedom to travel, life feels normal," she said.
Border controls
Local media has reported that the border with China can reopen to Hong Kongers only before February 2022 at the earliest, after Hong Kong officials develop a health app that must meet Beijing's conditions for allowing quarantine-free travel into the country.
Currently, Hong Kong has three categories for countries - high risk, medium risk and low risk.
Only fully vaccinated Hong Kong residents can enter the city if they are from the 25 high-risk places, including Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Strict rules have effectively closed off Hong Kong to most international travellers. PHOTO: REUTERS
The medium-risk category includes Australia, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. All Hong Kong residents from these places are allowed in, as well as fully vaccinated non-residents.
New Zealand is the only one considered low risk. Residents of Hong Kong and non-residents can enter regardless of vaccination status.
All arrivals must take a nucleic acid test before the flight and face at least seven tests in Hong Kong, besides a mandatory quarantine of between seven and 21 days in designated hotels. The riskier the places the travellers come from, the longer the quarantine period.
The strict rules effectively close off the city to most international travellers.
In the past two weeks, Hong Kong recorded 76 imported cases.
Testing, contact tracing
Hong Kong's low Covid-19 cases in the past five months have helped officials and healthcare staff cope.
That said, the healthcare system came under immense pressure in previous waves of the pandemic. But the situation ebbed with aggressive mass testing to identify patients, and the cooperation of residents, who stayed home.
Last September, the government rolled out a voluntary two-week mass testing exercise that detected more than a dozen carriers from about 1.8 million people.
Currently, testing is mandatory for workers in certain sectors such as construction and food and beverage. Unvaccinated staff of places such as nursing homes and government departments are also subject to nasal and throat swabs every one to two weeks.
"More frequent testing - that is, on an alternate day or at least twice per week for staff regularly exposed to imported cases - is needed to allow early detection before there are more than two generations of transmission," said Dr Leung Chi Chiu of the Hong Kong Medical Association.
This is because rapid containment by conventional contact tracing is virtually impossible when transmission links become blurred after multiple generations of community transmission, he added.
Vaccination
Hong Kong offers two Covid-19 vaccines - Sinovac and Pfizer-BioNTech.
About 63 per cent of its eligible population - those aged 12 and above - have had two doses of a vaccine, while 67 per cent have had at least the first shot.
The expert panel advising the government has said there is no urgency for booster shots since there has been no outbreak for months. It is of the view that a third dose would not be needed until two to three months before borders reopen.
Vaccine hesitancy is high and officials face the most resistance from the elderly. PHOTO: AFP
Dr Leung noted that the vaccination rate among those aged over 70 is still very low in Hong Kong. It is "in no position to retreat to the second line of defence of the healthcare system and allow natural infection to close any remaining gap in herd immunity before the infection turns endemic", he said.
Ms Lam, who is fully vaccinated, said she feels that Hong Kong's vaccination rate "is decent". But she thinks that the more infectious variants like Delta have "exposed the weaknesses of the first-generation vaccines".
"It's unlikely that Hong Kong will hit herd immunity since this is an ageing population and one where seniors make up a good proportion of the population," she said.
Government data released last year showed that in 2019, seniors aged 65 and above, at 1.3 million people, made up 18 per cent of the population.
Immunity, hygiene
Dr Carol Tan of the Good Life Medical Centre thinks Hong Kong's virus resilience could be linked to the population's "immune fitness" or level of immunity, as well as high personal hygiene.
She cited a study by the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami which found that having a flu jab before lowers a Covid-infected person's likelihood of getting severe body-wide infection, blood clots, stroke or even having to be treated in an intensive care unit.
The research's co-author, Dr Devinder Singh, said influenza vaccination "can dually act to prevent a coronavirus and influenza 'twindemic'".
Said Dr Tan: "If you have yearly flu vaccines, you're more able to combat viral infections. Hong Kong, like the UK, has been doing yearly flu jabs."
She added that immune fitness is linked to the process of immune dysfunction that occurs with age. "I think immune fitness is not just about vaccination but also about lifestyle, diet and better control of chronic diseases," said Dr Tan.
And vaccine efficacy is dependent on multiple factors, including immune fitness, vaccine type, how it is produced and the dosage, she added.
As at end July this year, between 38 and 60 per cent of Hong Kong children aged six months to 12 years had taken the flu jab, while between 12 and 45 per cent of seniors aged 50 and above had it.
A 2019 Singapore national population health survey showed that only 17.4 per cent of people aged 18-74 took a flu jab within the past 12 months of the poll.
But other experts pointed out that the study does not show causation nor suggest a clear causal link on how flu jabs would help.
Dr Tan also said another factor that helps keep infections down is Hong Kong's high personal hygiene awareness, driven by past experiences.
The city was scarred by the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak that infected more than 1,700 people and led to 299 deaths or a fatality rate of about 17 per cent.
For now, experts are concerned about winter - when people spend more time indoors and the virus lives longer in cold weather - which will be a test of control measures globally.
"Some countries may achieve herd immunity by vaccination, including the third dose, some unfortunately by major outbreaks and some by both," said Dr Leung.
"When some form of herd immunity has been achieved in different parts of the world, Covid-19 will be closer to an endemic disease and the world may be more ready to live with it like influenza."
SINGAPORE - People infected with any known variant of the coronavirus, including the Delta variant, may soon have access to a pill for Covid-19 treatment once the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) gives the green light for it, said the Ministry of Health (MOH).
It said on Thursday (Oct 7) in response to queries from The Straits Times that it has signed an agreement with MSD Pharma - known as Merck in the United States and Canada - to purchase molnupiravir.
Molnupiravir is an antiviral pill to treat Covid-19 by targeting an enzyme that the virus needs to make copies of itself, by introducing errors into its genetic code.
This particular enzyme - known as the viral polymerase - does not change across the different variants, making the drug effective across the Gamma, Delta and Mu variants.
Data from clinical trials suggests the drug is most effective when given early in the course of infection, said MSD.
The drug will be available for use after MSD submits its data to HSA and obtains authorisation for use in Singapore. The timeline for approval is dependent on the company's submission of data to HSA, said MOH.
As MOH closely tracks the progress of Covid-19 therapeutic candidates under development globally, the addition of molnupiravir to its portfolio of Covid-19 treatment ensures that there is a range of treatment options for different patient groups, it added.
MOH said it is unable to disclose more information, such as on how many courses of the drug will be procured, citing commercial sensitivities and confidential undertakings in the purchase agreement.
WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - President Joe Biden plans to meet virtually with Chinese President Xi Jinping before the end of the year, a senior US official said, with tensions escalating between the world's two largest economies.
Plans for the meeting were announced in a conference call with reporters following about six hours of meetings on Wednesday (Oct 6) between White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and a senior Chinese foreign policy adviser, Yang Jiechi, in Zurich.
"We continue to believe that leader-level engagement is an important part of our effort to responsibly manage the competition with China – especially given the coalescing of power in Chinese leadership," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday.
"We’re still working through what that would look like when, and of course the final details so we don’t quite have them."
In the last month, China has ratcheted up tension around Taiwan, sending scores of warplanes into the island's air-defence-identification zone.
At the same time, the US and several allies, including Japan and Britain, have conducted naval drills in nearby waters.
The Biden administration this week also pledged to hold Beijing accountable on commitments made in the phase-one trade agreement negotiated by former president Donald Trump and vowed to defend American interests.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai is set to meet with her counterpart, Vice-Premier Liu He, as soon as this week to discuss what the US regards as China's shortfalls in the agreement and Beijing's harmful industrial policies.
According to a Chinese government statement about the Sullivan-Yang meeting published by Xinhua, Yang said that China attaches importance to Biden's positive remarks recently and noted that the US said it does not intend to contain China or engage in a new cold war.
The statement called the conversations with Sullivan comprehensive, candid and in-depth exchanges on the two countries' relations as well as international and regional issues of shared interest.
Biden officials had been frustrated with the lack of seriousness shown by Beijing to engage on matters of mutual interest. Lower-level meetings and talks had not yielded progress, leading to the Sept 9 call between the presidents that was intended to help set the terms of the relationship.
The US official said Sullivan and Yang discussed areas of mutual agreement such as climate change, but that Sullivan also raised areas of friction, such as human rights issues including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and disputes over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Sullivan also made clear the US does not accept linking progress on climate change to concessions on any other bilateral issue. He also was frank about US concerns over China's actions around Taiwan. The US official declined to characterise Yang's response.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has criticised China's recent military maneuvers, urging leaders in Beijing to cease the provocations.
"The actions we've seen by China are provocative and potentially destabilising," Blinken said on Wednesday in an interview in Paris with Bloomberg Television.
"What I hope is that these actions will cease because there's always the possibility of miscalculation, of miscommunication, and that's dangerous."
LONDON: Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum ordered the phones of his ex-wife and her lawyers to be hacked as part of a "sustained campaign of intimidation and threat" during the custody battle over their children, England's High Court has ruled.
Mohammed used the sophisticated "Pegasus" software, developed by Israeli firm NSO for states to counter national security risks, to hack the phones of Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, half-sister of Jordan's King Abdullah, and some of those closely connected to her, according to the rulings.
Those working for him also tried to buy a mansion next door to Haya's estate near the British capital, intimidatory action that the court ruled had left her feeling hunted, unsafe and like she "cannot breathe anymore".
The latest rulings come 19 months after the court concluded that Mohammed had abducted two of his daughters, mistreated them and held them against their will.
"The findings represent a total abuse of trust, and indeed an abuse of power to a significant extent," Judge Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division in England and Wales, said in his ruling.
The sheikh rejected the court's conclusions, saying they were based on an incomplete picture.
"I have always denied the allegations made against me and I continue to do so," he said in a statement.
"In addition, the findings were based on evidence that was not disclosed to me or my advisers. I therefore maintain that they were made in a manner which was unfair."
Mohammed, 72, and Haya, 47, have been involved in a long, bitter and expensive custody battle since she fled to Britain with their two children, Jalila, 13, and Zayed, 9. She said she feared for her safety amid suspicions that she had had an affair with one of her British bodyguards.
Among those targeted by the hacking was Haya's lawyer Fiona Shackleton, a member of Britain's House of Lords who represented British heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles in his divorce from his late first wife Princess Diana.
The activity came to light in August last year after Shackleton was urgently tipped off by Cherie Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that she and Haya had been hacked, the court was told.
Blair is also a prominent lawyer who worked as an external adviser for NSO.
At the same time a cyber expert from the University of Toronto's internet watchdog Citizen Lab, which researches digital surveillance, also alerted Haya's lawyers after tracking the hacking, the court heard.
Once the hacking was uncovered, NSO cancelled its contract with the UAE, Haya's lawyers said. The Israeli firm said it could not immediately comment on the case, but said it took action if it received evidence of misuse of Pegasus.
Shackleton and Blair declined to comment.
Mohammed is regarded as the visionary force behind Dubai's ascent into a global commercial hub. He has sought to burnish the Gulf city's reputation on issues such as human rights and equality.
There is no indication that last year's ruling caused any major damage to him personally or to the UAE. Last month Britain and the UAE announced a "new, ambitious Partnership for the Future" involving billions of dollars in trade and investment.
LONG, EXPENSIVE BATTLE
Reporting restrictions on McFarlane's findings after a year of hearings were lifted on Wednesday.
"I do not feel that I can move freely forward as things stand now, while I am and feel hunted all the time, and I am forced to look over my shoulder at every moment of the day," the British-educated princess said in one witness statement.
The legal costs of the case have run into millions of pounds, with the case involving some of Britain's most prominent lawyers. The costs of one appeal alone was cited by the court as costing £2.5 million.
The sheikh, who is vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, initially sought to have the children brought back to Dubai, but has since suffered repeated defeats in the English courts.
In a judgment released on Wednesday, McFarlane ruled that the children should live with their mother.
In a ruling published last March, the judge concluded that Mohammed had subjected Haya to a campaign of intimidation which made her fear for her life.He concluded the sheikh had arranged for his daughter Shamsa, then aged 18, to be kidnapped in 2000 off the streets of Cambridge in central England and flown back to Dubai.
