Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 251

Chinese flock to Hong Kong to get private Covid booster shots

Private services offering Chinese travellers access to mRNA vaccines are attracting droves of mainlanders to Hong Kong and Macau seeking a booster shot that their government has refused to approve. As part of its dismantling of the country’s zero-Covid policy last month, China’s government also lifted quarantine and other border restrictions. It prompted a wave of interest in overseas travel,

Chinese warned not to visit elderly relatives as Covid spreads from cities

People in China have been warned against travelling to visit their elderly relatives during the lunar new year holiday, as Covid spreads rapidly through cities and into regional and poorer areas. Prof Guo Jianwen, a member of the state council’s pandemic prevention team, urged people “don’t go home to visit them” if elderly relatives had not yet been infected. “You have all kinds of ways to show

China to take ‘golden shares’ in tech firms Alibaba and Tencent

China is to take “golden shares” in two of its biggest tech companies, Alibaba and Tencent, as Beijing extends its influence on the country’s star tech firms and its most powerful and wealthy business people. Beijing’s move marks a shift away from imposing hefty fines and sanctions in its two-year tech crackdown, which was launched after Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, criticised regulators,The

How COVID Misinformation Swamped Chinese Social Media

Last month, a self-identified “biologist with a Ph.D. from an American university” wrote on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo that he had tested positive for XBB — an offshoot of Omicron — just five days after a separate COVID-19 infection. The post, made as case counts were skyrocketing in China, was quickly reshared by well-known influencers, including Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei.The post tapped

In China, a Dark New Black Market Emerges: Fake COVID Medication

Chinese laboratories are raising the alarm over a new potential danger to public health amid a massive wave of COVID-19 infections: a growing trade in fake antiviral medication. China is experiencing a severe shortage of approved antivirals such as Paxlovid, manufactured by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which has opened the door to a thriving black market for COVID medication in recent weeks.

The Forgotten Romantic Who Became Britain’s First Sinologist

When we think of great early Western scholars of Asia, Thomas Manning’s name does not come up in the same sentence as William Jones or Jean Francois Champollion. Yet Thomas Manning pursued fame with relentless self-confidence and energy. In the end, fame didn’t so much elude him as cease to interest him.As a young man, Manning set himself an especially challenging life goal, to become Britain’s

Ghana fishing: Abuse, corruption and death on Chinese vessels

When it comes to abuse and corruption on Chinese fishing vessels in Ghana, Bright Tsai Kweku has seen it all. He has seen Chinese crew treating local fishermen like "slaves", he says. "They beat them, they spit on them, they kick them," Mr Kweku says. "I have been through that before."Mr Kweku works as a bosun - an officer in charge of equipment and the crew. He says he has been forced to work

Jack Ma to give up control of fintech giant Ant Group

The billionaire founder of Ant Group, Jack Ma, is to give up control of the Chinese fintech giant after a regulatory crackdown. Ant Group said that after the change no-one would have overall control. The formerly flamboyant Mr Ma has seldom been seen in public since criticising China's financial sector in 2020. Following that criticism, Ant Group's planned stock market flotation was abruptly

Sri Lanka's central bank urges China and India to reduce its debts

Sri Lanka's central bank has urged China and India to agree a write-down of their loans as soon as possible. The crisis-hit Indian Ocean state defaulted on its debt repayments and negotiated a $2.9bn (£2.4bn) bailout. But the International Monetary Fund will not release the cash until China and India first agree to reduce Sri Lanka's billions of dollars of debt.The governor of Sri Lanka's central

Attack from space would trigger collective defence, say US and Japan, amid China fears

The US and Japan have said that an attack in space would trigger their security treaty, as senior officials from both countries warned that Chinarepresents the “greatest strategic challenge” to regional security. “We agree that [China] is the greatest shared strategic challenge that we, our allies and partners face,” the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday after meeting his