A huge forest fire broke out in southwestern China’s Sichuan province at 07:51 UTC (15:51 LT) on Monday, March 30, 2020. As of Tuesday, March 31, authorities confirmed 19 fatalities, including 18 firefighters and one farmer guide. The blaze has spread across 1… Read More ›

Month: March 2020
Cadence Column: Asia, March 30, 2020
Blame! Both general theories about where this virus originated fail to do two things: They don’t acquit anyone and they don’t tell us how to treat it. The theories no longer seem to matter since fear has taken over the… Read More ›
Can China return to normalcy while keeping the coronavirus in check?
Life is almost back to normal in much of China. Shops, restaurants, bars, and offices are open for business. Manufacturing activity is picking up. Traffic once again jams the highways of major cities. Three-quarters of China’s workforce was back on… Read More ›
Is China’s factory farming to blame for coronavirus?
Scientists are tracing the path of Sars-CoV-2 from a wild animal host – but we need to look at the part played in the outbreak by industrial food production. Where did the virus causing the current pandemic come from? How… Read More ›
An overview of China’s economy and how coronavirus affected it
China has been the highest contributor to global economic growth for more than a decade. The capitalist market reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 paved the way for its impressive growth journey. China has set one of the best… Read More ›
To slow virus, China bars entry by almost all foreigners
Worried that international travelers might trigger a second wave of coronavirus infections, China announced late Thursday night that it was suspending practically all entry to the country by foreigners and was halting almost all international passenger flights as well. The… Read More ›
China to divert Beijing-bound international flights amid rise in imported coronavirus cases
China on Sunday (March 22) reported 46 new cases of the coronavirus, the fourth straight day with an increase, with all but one of those imported from overseas, and further stepped up measures to intercept cases from abroad as the… Read More ›
Man who died on bus in China tests positive for ‘hantavirus’
A passenger who died on a bus in China has tested positive for a completely different virus than COVID-19 — one more fatal that often produces very similar symptoms, according to state-run media. The unidentified victim from Yunnan province died… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, March 23, 2020
China’s in trouble—deep trouble. America pauses with the same hush of silence that swept the country from the outskirts of Washington to New Orleans in 1812, gathering around the radio in 1941, or staring at the same TV images on… Read More ›
Coronavirus drives the U.S. and China deeper Into global power struggle
Many experts warn that an international health and economic crisis calls for more cooperation, not confrontation, between Washington and Beijing. When President Trump took the podium at the White House briefing room one afternoon last week, his prepared remarks included… Read More ›
Photo shows “corona” crossed out and replaced with “Chinese” in Trump’s briefing notes
President Trump’s notes from Thursday’s coronavirus briefing show someone crossed out the word “Corona” in coronavirus and replaced it with the word “Chinese.” This picture captured by Washington Post Photographer Jabin Botsford, comes as Trump has stepped up his efforts to scapegoat China for… Read More ›
China says coronavirus pandemic exposed global health system’s shortcomings
China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 160,000 people globally has exposed shortcomings in the global health system. Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters during a daily briefing that China calls… Read More ›
China is avoiding blame by trolling the world
The evidence of China’s deliberate cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan is a matter of public record. In suppressing information about the virus, doing little to contain it, and allowing it to spread unchecked in the crucial early days… Read More ›
China’s handling of coronavirus ‘ruined their international brand’
Hoover Institution Fellow Victor Davis Hanson said on Wednesday that China’s handling of the coronavirus “ruined their international brand,” having potential serious repercussions on its economy as foreign companies may exit. “[China] knew that that virus was not only epidemic… Read More ›
China’s economy suffers heavy blow as epidemic paralyzes activity
China’s industrial output contracted at the sharpest pace in 30 years in the first two months of the year as the fast spreading coronavirus and strict containment measures severely disrupted the world’s second-largest economy, data showed on Monday. Urban investment… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, March 16, 2020
News around the world has blacked out. Everything is about this new virus that should be called the “pneumoniavirus”, also known as Wuhan’s 2019-nCoV, everything—the news, the politics, the economy, the maps, organ harvesting. But, that wasn’t the only Western… Read More ›
Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok owner ByteDance, gears up for the global stage
The founder of China’s ByteDance, owner of the wildly successful TikTok app, has for years aspired to make ByteDance the first Chinese firm to rival U.S. internet giants on the global stage. On Thursday Zhang Yiming made a key move… Read More ›
China says coronavirus peak has passed as epicenter logs single-digit new cases
China’s coronavirus epidemic has passed its peak, its top health commission said on Thursday, as it logged just eight new infections in Hubei province, the first time the epicenter of the outbreak recorded a daily tally of less than 10…. Read More ›
Coronavirus outbreak tests China’s president Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping is surely having the worst 2020 of any major international leader to date. Much of this can be put down to the knock-on effects of the COVID-19 outbreak in the city of Wuhan and Xi’s belated attempts to… Read More ›
China credibly accused of organ-harvesting atrocity
Last week, the Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China issued its final report concluding that China engages in the systematic human-rights atrocity of killing political and other prisoners and harvesting their organs. (I wrote… Read More ›
China’s coronavirus problem is an opportunity for Taiwan
The island nation has been showing its East Asian neighbors the advantages of democracy and free markets. As the coronavirus wreaks political and economic havoc on the nations of East Asia, one has stood out as a literal island of… Read More ›
Don’t let the Chinese government escape blame for coronavirus’s initial spread
From almost the very beginning of the COVID-19/coronavirus crisis in January and early February, it’s often been asked whether it might be the “Chinese Chernobyl.” Could the crisis expose the weakness of the mix of oppression, information control, and social… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, March 9, 2020
Things are fairing worse and worse for China, but better and better for Taiwan. The KMT-Nationalist party is abandoning its long-standing agreement to cooperate with the Chinese Communists, much how the American Democratic party is abandoning socialism within its ranks…. Read More ›
Coronavirus hit to airlines could top $100 billion
The coronavirus epidemic could cost passenger airlines up to $113 billion in lost revenue this year, an industry body warned on Thursday, more than three times a projection it made just two weeks ago as the virus continues to spread… Read More ›
China urges overseas Chinese to stay home as imported virus cases rise
Chinese authorities on Tuesday asked overseas Chinese to reconsider or minimize their travel plans as the coronavirus epidemic spreads across the world and prompts an uptick of imported cases arriving in the country. Travelers from countries with severe coronavirus outbreaks… Read More ›
Chinese police place Britons in enforced isolation after ferry trip, but Chinese nationals not detained
Jo Davison and her partner were relaxing in their flat in Shenzhen, China, when the phone rang. She was told by the Chinese authorities that they had been exposed to the coronavirus at close proximity and that officials were on… Read More ›
China has made eating wild animals illegal after the coronavirus outbreak, but ending the trade won’t be easy
A strict ban on the consumption and farming of wild animals is being rolled out across China in the wake of the deadly coronavirus epidemic, which is believed to have started at a wildlife market in Wuhan. Although it is… Read More ›
China factory activity dives to worst on record as coronavirus paralyzes economy
China’s factories were dealt a devastating blow in February as the coronavirus epidemic triggered the sharpest contraction in activity on record, a private survey showed on Monday, with the health crisis paralyzing large parts of the economy. The Caixin/Markit Manufacturing… Read More ›
US Navy warns China ‘you don’t want to play laser tag with us’ after a Chinese destroyer fired a military-grade laser at a US aircraft
The US Navy warned China on social media after one of the Asian nation’s warships fired a military-grade laser at a US aircraft, telling them: “You don’t want to play laser tag with us.” US Pacific Fleet said in a… Read More ›
Cadence Column: Asia, March 2, 2020
Wuhan 2019-nCoV will not end the world. But, it is throwing the world into panic. The long-time NIAID director steps out of lock with the president and gives a sobering warning about how viruses actually spread. Bad as the truth… Read More ›
Coronavirus: NASA images show China pollution clear amid slowdown
Satellite images have shown a dramatic decline in pollution levels over China, which is “at least partly” due to an economic slowdown prompted by the coronavirus, US space agency Nasa says. Nasa maps show falling levels of nitrogen dioxide this… Read More ›