By Lidia Kelly
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia on Sunday added
to growing pressure on China over its handling of the novel coronavirus,
questioning its transparency and demanding an international
investigation into the origins of the virus and how it spread.
The
coronavirus is believed to have emerged in a market selling wildlife in
the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. It has spread around
the world infecting some 2.3 million people and killing nearly 160,000
of them, according to Reuters calculations.
Australia's foreign minister, Marise Payne, said her concern about China's transparency was at a "a very high point".
"The
issues around the coronavirus are issues for independent review, and I
think that it is important that we do that," Payne told ABC television.
"In fact, Australia will absolutely insist on that."
Australia
has managed to get its epidemic under control before it strained its
public health system, reporting 53 new cases on Sunday. They took its
total to 6,586, according to the health ministry data.
There have
been 71 deaths in Australia. The rate of increase in new cases has been
below 1% for seven consecutive days - much lower than in many other
countries.
Payne's call for an enquiry into the outbreak comes at
time of tense ties between her country and its most important trading
partner.
Relations have deteriorated amid Australian accusations
of Chinese meddling in domestic affairs and concern about what Australia
sees as China's growing, and undue, influence in the Pacific region.
"My
trust in China is predicated in the long-term," Payne said. "My concern
is around transparency and ensuring that we are able to engage openly."
Australia's call for an investigation comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has been stepping up his criticism of China.
Trump
and his senior aides have also accused China of a lack of transparency
after the coronavirus broke out. On Saturday, Trump said China should
face consequences if it was "knowingly responsible" for the pandemic.
By Michael Kahn and Robert Muller
PRAGUE
(Reuters) - Czech lawmakers took aim on Friday at the government's
decision buy protective equipment from China to limit the coronavirus
outbreak and called for the next batch of supplies to come domestically
or from closer to home.
The Senate approved a resolution for the
government to search for products made at home or within the European
Union rather than further abroad.
"Self-sufficiency in medical
supplies is the first step towards country security," chair of the
Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee Pavel Fischer told Reuters.
"And
that means it is high time to call on the government not to rely on an
air bridge to China but to create conditions for moving strategic
production to the Czech Republic and more broadly to the EU."
The
move will add pressure on the government to buy at home and is the
latest by a European country to boost domestic industries as the
pandemic cripples the global economy. Some countries have imposed export
bans on medicines to avoid causing shortages in the bloc.
The
resolution also underlines the debate over whether China has used the
pandemic to rebuild influence in a country where it had until recently
found a more hospitable reception than in western Europe, investing
little and winning influence from Czech lawmakers, the president and the
region's richest businessman.
Billionaire Petr Kellner's Home
Credit is the only western consumer finance lender in China while
President Milos Zeman has sought to curry favour with Beijing since
taking office in 2013.
But fizzled investments, cybersecurity
warnings over Huawei and a Prague mayor, who defied China by forming his
own diplomatic path with moves such as signing a sister-city agreement
with Taipei, have dented the relationship.
Facing an acute
shortage of protective gear for medical staff in the early days of the
coronavirus outbreak, the government reached a deal to buy masks and
other equipment from China, where the virus first emerged.
When
the gear arrived, Prime Minister Andrej Babis credited in a speech the
close ties of Zeman and former Defence Minister Jaroslav Tvrdik -- a key
figure in China's trade and diplomacy offensive in past years -- with
China for sealing the agreement.
Tvrdik -- the former
vice-chairman of Chinese group CEFC Europe -- is currently the only
non-Chinese board member of CITIC Europe Holdings, which owns property
in Prague and controls some companies.
The government must decide
before May 5 whether to extend its deal to buy supplies from abroad,
mainly from China, according to Interior Minister Jan Hamacek who has
said that in the early stages of the crisis only China had the capacity
to make the needed deliveries.
Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib said domestic companies may be able to fill the gap.
"It
turns out we had a lot of manufacturing capabilities in the Czech
Republic. The Czech underestimated the opportunity to solve the issue
using internal capacities and preferred deliveries through China," he
told Reuters.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn and Robert Muller; Editing by Josephine Mason)
FILE PHOTO: Mayor of Prague Zdenek Hrib and Taipei city Mayor Ko Wen-je sign a partnership agreement in Prague
The criticisms of China over its handling of the coronavirus have been ramping up for weeks.
In
an interview with Yahoo Finance, influential Texas Senator Ted Cruz
pushed for a series of investigations with an eye toward punishing
China. At issue is its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has now
infected more than 2 million people around the world.
The former
presidential contender says that “for months and years to come after
this crisis” the U.S. is going to be “reassessing and fundamentally
changing the United States’ relationship with China.”
Cruz’s remarks came before the news emerged
that the city of Wuhan was raising its death toll from the novel
coronavirus by 50%. The about-face will almost surely further embolden
China’s critics around the world.
‘It may have been an accidental release’
Perhaps
the most controversial point in the interview was when Cruz brought up
the idea that the virus might have begun in a government lab in China.
“I'm
not suggesting it was a deliberate release, but that it may have been
an accidental release of the virus that they were studying in government
labs,” Cruz said, adding, if it’s true, “there has to be real
accountability if the Chinese government bears direct responsibility for
the origin of this virus.”
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The Trump administration on Saturday condemned Hong Kong's
arrests of 15 activists, including veteran politicians, a publishing
tycoon and senior barristers, describing them as "inconsistent" with
China's international commitments.
The raids mark the biggest
crackdown on the pro-democracy movement since the beginning of
anti-government protests across the former British colony in June last
year.
"The United States condemns the arrest of pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
"Beijing
and its representatives in Hong Kong continue to take actions
inconsistent with commitments made under the Sino-British Joint
Declaration that include transparency, the rule of law, and guarantees
that Hong Kong will continue to 'enjoy a high degree of autonomy',"
Pompeo said.
U.S. President Donald Trump last November signed into
law legislation backing protesters in Hong Kong despite angry
objections from Beijing.
The legislation requires the State
Department to certify, at least annually, that Hong Kong retains enough
autonomy to justify favorable U.S. trading terms that have helped it
maintain its position as a world financial center. The law also
threatens sanctions for human rights violations.
In a separate
statement, U.S. Attorney General William Barr called the arrests "the
latest assault on the rule of law and the liberty of the people of Hong
Kong."
"These events show how antithetical the values of the
Chinese Communist Party are to those we share in Western liberal
democracies," he added, saying the arrests and other actions
"demonstrate once again that the Chinese Communist Party cannot be
trusted."
Among those detained on charges of illegal assembly were
Democratic Party founder Martin Lee, 81, publishing tycoon Jimmy Lai,
71, and former lawmaker and barrister Margaret Ng, 72, according to
media and political sources.
(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick and Sarah Lynch; Editing by Sam Holmes)
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Trump leads daily coronavirus response briefing at the White House in Washington
Washington
(AFP) - US President Donald Trump warned on Saturday that China could
face consequences if it was "knowingly responsible" for the coronavirus
pandemic.
"It could have been stopped in China before it started
and it wasn't," Trump told reporters at a White House briefing. "And now
the whole world is suffering because of it."
Trump was asked
whether China should suffer consequences over the pandemic which began
in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December and has left more than 157,000
people dead around the world.
"If they were knowingly responsible, certainly," he said. "If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake.
"But if they were knowingly responsible, yeah, then there should be consequences," Trump said.
"Was it a mistake that got out of control or was it done deliberately?" he asked. "That's a big difference between those two.
"In
either event they should have let us go in," he said. "We asked to go
in early. And they didn't want us in. I think they knew it was something
bad and they were embarrassed."
"They said they're doing an
investigation," the president continued. "So let's see what happens with
their investigation. But we're doing investigations also."
The
Trump administration has said it doesn't rule out that the novel
coronavirus was spread -- accidentally -- from a laboratory researching
bats in Wuhan.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian --
who previously alleged that the US military may have brought the virus
into China -- has rejected US media reports on the subject and said
there is "no scientific basis."
Trump also cast doubt on official Chinese figures showing the country has suffered just 0.33 deaths per 100,000 people.
"The number's impossible," he said. "It's an impossible number to hit."
The
United States, according to a chart displayed at the briefing, has had
11.24 deaths per 100,000 people while France has had 27.92 and Spain
42.81.
US
President Donald Trump points to China's mortality rate from
coronavirus at a White House briefing, a number he described as
"impossible" (AFP Photo/Sarah Silbiger)
By Aditya Kalra and Aftab Ahmed
NEW
DELHI (Reuters) - India has stepped up scrutiny of investments from
companies based in neighbouring countries, in what is widely seen as a
move to stave off takeovers by Chinese firms during the coronavirus
outbreak.
India's trade ministry said in a notification dated
April 17 the changes to federal rules on investment were meant to curb
"opportunistic takeovers/acquisitions". It did not mention China.
Investments
from an entity in a country that shares a land border with India will
require government approval, it said, meaning they can not go through a
so-called automatic route.
"These times should not be used by other countries to take over our companies," a senior government official told Reuters.
Similar
restrictions are already in place for Bangladesh and Pakistan. But up
to now, they have not applied to China and India's other neighbours
including Bhutan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Nepal.
"This will
certainly impact sentiment among Chinese investors. However, greenfield
investments will not be impacted," said Santosh Pai, a partner at Indian
law firm Link Legal that advises several Chinese companies.
Australia
has also said all foreign investment proposals will be assessed by a
review board during the coronavirus crisis to prevent a fire sale of
distressed corporate assets. Germany has taken similar measures.
A February report by research group Gateway House said Chinese foreign direct investment into India stood at $6.2 billion.
China's
Bytedance has plans to invest $1 billion in India, while automakers
including Great Wall Motor Co Ltd and MG Motor, a unit of China's SAIC,
have said they intend to invest millions.
Delano Furtado, a
partner with law firm Trilegal, said the notification may also impact
Chinese companies with existing investments in the country.
"Any follow-on investments in those entities may now require approvals," he said.
India's
notification also said government approval would also be needed to
change the ownership of an Indian entity that had existing foreign
investment.
(Editing by Euan Rocha and Andrew Heavens)
FILE
PHOTO: Students wear masks of China's President Xi Jinping as other
waves national flags of India and China, ahead of the informal summit
with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at a school in Chennai
Some of India's biggest startups including financial services firm Paytm, e-commerce giant Flipkart, social media operator ShareChat, and food delivery firm Zomato are backed by Chinese VCs.
HDFC, India's biggest bank, said earlier this month that Bank of China had raised its stake in the mortgage lender by over 1%.
Rahul
Gandhi, the former head of political party Indian Nation Congress,
urged the ruling government earlier this month to take measures to
prevent "foreign interests from taking control of any Indian corporate
at this time of national crisis."
The revision in policy comes at a time when major investors in India have cautioned local startups to prepare for a tough period ahead.
Earlier this month, they told startup founders that raising fresh
capital is likely be more challenging than ever for the next few months.
Recent data from research firm Tracxn showed that Indian startups have already started to face the pressure.
Local
startups participated in 79 deals to raise $496 million in March, down
from $2.86 billion that they raised across 104 deals in February and
$1.24 billion they raised from 93 deals in January this year, according
to Tracxn. In March last year, Indian startups had raised $2.1 billion
across 153 deals, the firm said.
India ordered a nationwide
lockdown last month in a bid to curtail the spread of the coronavirus
disease. But the move, as in other markets, has come at a cost. Millions
of businesses and startups are facing severe disruptions.
Late last month, more than 100 prominent startups, VC funds, and industry bodies requested New Delhi to provide them with a relief fund to combat the disruption.
If the
deadly and destructive made-in-China COVID-19 crisis has a silver
lining, it is this: The strengths and weaknesses of particular leaders,
governments, and institutions around the world have been exposed by the
pandemic, thus providing an impetus for reform.
The World Health
Organization (WHO) has come under particular scrutiny at a time of
rising skepticism about the ability of international institutions to act
responsibly and transparently independent of corrupt political
influence. The U.S., which is by far the single largest funder of the
WHO, has enormous leverage in this case, and is now beginning to use it:
The Trump administration, angered by the WHO’s role in the pandemic
crisis, recently announced that it would suspend and review the $400
million annual American contribution to the group.
Dr. Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, bears primary
responsibility for its missteps in responding to the crisis,
particularly its crucial early delay in classifying COVID-19 as a Public
Health Emergency of International Concern. It is thus appropriate to
inquire about his background and the motivations that have driven his
actions in this pandemic.
Tedros, a trained microbiologist who did
earn an MSc in the immunology of infectious diseases at the University
of London, was Ethiopia’s minister of health from 2005 to 2012, and
subsequently its minister of foreign affairs from 2012 to 2016. He was
also served on the nine-member executive committee of the Tigray
People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), one of four ethnically based political
parties making up the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF), the brutal authoritarian regime that ruled Ethiopia with an iron fist from 1991 to 2019.
When
Tedros sought to become WHO director-general in 2017, he met with
fierce opposition to his candidacy from Ethiopians angry with his
service to and defense of the country’s abusive regime, as well as his
record as minister of health. He was ultimately confirmed despite allegations
that, as minister of health, he directed the cover-up of three deadly
cholera epidemics by simply insisting that they were Acute Watery
Diarrhea (AWD), apparently hoping to avoid the impact that the public
admission of a cholera epidemic might have had on Ethiopian tourism and
the image of his party.
In retrospect, that episode bears a
striking, chilling resemblance to the WHO’s response to the
coronavirus’s appearance in China.
For as long as he could, Tedros
was happy to validate Beijing’s clumsy efforts to minimize and downplay
the viral outbreak in Wuhan. While China was actively covering up the
virus and censoring information about it, Tedros lavished praise on Xi
Jinping’s response as “transparent,” “responsible,” and “setting a new
standard of the world.” Even as international pressure grew, he delayed
declaring the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of
International Concern. When the declaration was finally made
on January 30, 2020, he was careful to say that, it was “not a vote of
no confidence in China. On the contrary, WHO continues to have the
confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak.”
Days
later, at a time when China had reported 361 deaths from the virus — and
when, we know now, the actual number of Chinese deaths was actually
much higher — Tedros, echoing the Chinese government’s stance, remained adamantly opposed
to restrictions that would “unnecessarily interfere with international
trade and travel” in an effort to stop the pandemic’s spread. Until at
least as late as February 29,
shortly before the extent of the pandemic’s global reach and threat
began to become clear, WHO was still officially opposed to such
restrictions. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in turn, was all too
happy to criticize the United States and other countries that had
imposed early travel restrictions on China as having “violated the WHO’s
advice.”
Meanwhile, plenty of countries believed the CCP and
Tedros’s WHO, and chose not to implement necessary border controls
against the epidemic. As a result, the virus began to spread from
country to country across the globe, until even those nations that had
tried to restrict travel from affected areas early on were powerless to
stop it from invading their shores.
What makes all of this even
less forgivable is that the Tedros-led WHO was informed of the truth
about the virus at a time when life-saving action could have been taken,
and chose to ignore it. On December 31, 2019, scientists in Taiwan,
which continues to be excluded from the WHO due to Chinese pressure,
notified WHO officials of evidence of “human-to-human” transmission, but
the officials did not pass on this information to other countries.
(Ironically, Taiwan, forced to deal with the threat without any help
from the WHO, fared better than many other countries in the end, because
its natural distrust of the CCP meant it was not fooled by Beijing’s
efforts to downplay the outbreak’s seriousness.)
For as long as he
could, Tedros ignored Taiwan’s warnings and validated China’s grossly
negligent lies. But when the world finally began to awaken to the threat
of COVID-19, Tedros almost immediately began blaming the international
community for its earlier inaction. On March 11, 2020, as the WHO
declared that the coronavirus had become a global pandemic, Tedros had
the gall to say that “some countries are struggling with a lack of
resolve,” that the WHO was “deeply concerned . . . by the alarming
levels of inaction,” and that “some countries are not approaching this
threat with the level of political commitment needed to control it.”
There
is a lesson to be learned from WHO’s response to this global crisis,
and it concerns the corruption of international institutions by
authoritarian regimes. Tedros favors dictators because he is favored by
them, and vice-versa. His candidacy for director-general of the WHO was
endorsed by health ministers from Algeria and numerous other
nondemocratic countries. The World Health Assembly approved him for the
post with an overwhelming 133 votes out of 185, despite
strong opposition from many Ethiopians who knew his derisory domestic
record. China was a major backer of Tedros’s candidacy, as was his own
TPLF party, which spent millions of dollars on his campaign.
Not
surprisingly, Tedros’s record at the WHO has been one of whitewashing
and coddling dictatorships. On October 18, 2017, only three months into
his tenure as director-general, Tedros appointed Zimbabwe’s Robert
Mugabe, one of the longest-ruling and most brutal dictators on the
planet, to serve as a WHO goodwill ambassador focused on tackling non-communicable diseases in
Africa. “I am honored to be joined by President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, a
country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at
the center of its policies to provide healthcare to all,” he said at a
conference in Uruguay announcing the decision. (After the appointment
was widely condemned by influential leaders in the health sector,
politicians, and human-rights defenders, he eventually rescinded it.)
Of
course, one need not even mention Tedros’s general affinity for
dictators to explain his direction of the WHO’s response to the
coronavirus pandemic. The CCP and Tedros clearly enjoy a reciprocal
relationship, one based on material interests as well as common values.
The CCP donated generously to Ethiopia while Tedros was the Ethiopian
foreign minister, and provided forceful backing of his campaign to lead
the WHO. In response to the widespread criticism of the organization’s
mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak, Chinese state-run media outlets
have vigorously defended Tedros, claiming he is being “attacked by the
West” for “helping us.”
The ultimate, primary responsibility for
the COVID-19 pandemic lies with CCP authorities, who concealed the
outbreak from the beginning and suppressed the spread of accurate
information about it. But Tedros also bears significant responsibility
for aiding and abetting the CCP’s coverup. He is a living testament to
the success of Beijing’s aggressive efforts to coopt international
institutions to its will, efforts that must be stopped sooner rather
than later. And his actions have endangered hundreds of thousands if not
millions of lives across the globe. The free citizens and governments
of the world should not rest until he is removed from his post atop the
WHO.
— Jianli Yang is the founder and president of Citizen
Power Initiatives for China. Aaron Rhodes is the president of the Forum
for Religious Freedom-Europe, the human-rights editor of Dissident magazine, and the author of The Debasement of Human Rights.
By Natalia Zinets
KIEV
(Reuters) - A Kiev court has rejected an appeal by Chinese investors to
unfreeze the shares of a Ukrainian aircraft engine maker, a setback for
the Chinese company that has sought to acquire the Ukrainian firm in a
deal opposed by the United States.
China's Skyrizon Aircraft
Holdings Limited bought a majority stake in the aircraft engine maker
Motor Sich, but the shares were frozen in 2017 pending an investigation
by Ukraine's security service (SBU). Washington wants the deal scrapped.
The
United States and China have competed for influence in Ukraine since
its relations with Moscow soured when Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea
peninsula in 2014.
In its ruling, the court kept the shares
frozen, citing the SBU probe into whether selling Motor Sich sabotages
national security by allowing sensitive technology into foreign hands.
The ruling was dated March 13, shared with the parties this week and
reviewed by Reuters on Friday.
Skyrizon plans further appeals,
said a lawyer involved in the case, speaking anonymously due to the
political sensitivity of the case. Zelenskiy's office, the U.S. embassy
and the Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for comment. Motor
Sich and the SBU declined comment.
Motor Sich severed ties with
Russia, its biggest client, after the annexation of Crimea. The wrangle
over its future has held up efforts to find new markets, and supporters
of a quick resolution say it is now operating at less than half
capacity.
"Motor Sich has become a hostage to the geopolitical
situation," former Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh, chairman of an
industrial union which has called for the government to resolve the
dispute quickly, told Reuters.
The state's anti-monopoly committee
has launched its own investigation and says it is waiting to receive
more documents before deciding whether to sanction the sale.
President
Volodymyr Zelenskiy's administration has had to balance strengthening
ties to Beijing with keeping the United States, its biggest military aid
donor, onside. In recent weeks, Beijing and Washington have both
offered aid to Ukraine to fight the coronavirus.
At the moment it
is a very difficult task when we have the biggest powers in the world
and their interests are in conflict in Ukraine," Oleksandr Danylyuk, a
former top security official under Zelenskiy, told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Ilya Zhegulev; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Peter Graff)
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said China's
role in the global coronavirus pandemic is likely to force countries to
rethink their telecommunications infrastructure, including the adoption
of China-based Huawei's 5G networks.
Asked about use of Huawei and
5G, Pompeo told Fox Business Network in an interview: "I am very
confident that this moment -- this moment where the Chinese Communist
Party failed to be transparent and open and handle data in an
appropriate way -- will cause many, many countries rethink what they
were doing with respect to their telecom architecture."
"And when
Huawei comes knocking to sell them equipment and hardware, that they
will have a different prism through which to view that decision."
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Toby Chopra) FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Trump leads daily coronavirus response briefing at the White House in Washington
