Run For Your Life

Countries evacuating nationals from Chinese coronavirus areas
Reuters

A growing number of countries around the world are evacuating or planning to evacuate diplomatic staff and citizens from parts of China hit by the new coronavirus.

Following are some countries’ evacuation plans, and how they aim to manage the health risk from those who are returning.
- Kazakhstan, which has previously evacuated 83 from Wuhan, will send two planes to China on Feb. 10 and Feb. 12 to evacuate its citizens. Out of 719 Kazakhs remaining in China, 391 have asked to be repatriated.
- A second evacuation flight is bringing back another 174 Singaporeans and their family members from Wuhan to the city-state on Feb. 9, Singapore’s foreign ministry said.
- Thirty Filipinos returned to the Philippines on Feb. 9 from Wuhan, the Department of Foreign Affairs said. The returning passengers and a 10-member government team will be quarantined for 14 days.
- Britain’s final evacuation flight from Wuhan, carrying more than 200 people, landed at a Royal Air Force base in central England on Feb. 9. A plane carrying 83 British and 27 European Union nationals from Wuhan landed in Britain last week.
- The 34 Brazilians evacuated from Wuhan landed in Brazil on Feb. 9, where they will begin 18 days of quarantine.
- Two planes with about 300 passengers, mostly U.S. citizens, took off from Wuhan on Feb. 6 bound for the United States -- the third group of evacuees from the heart of the coronavirus outbreak, the U.S. State Department said.
- Uzbekistan has evacuated 251 people from China and quarantined them on arrival in Tashkent, the Central Asian nation’s state airline said on Feb. 6.
- A plane load of New Zealanders, Australians and Pacific Islanders evacuated from Wuhan arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on Feb. 5, officials said.
- Taiwan has evacuated the first batch of an estimated 500 Taiwanese stranded in Wuhan.
- Italy flew back 56 nationals from Wuhan to Rome on Feb. 3. The group will spend two weeks in quarantine in a military hospital, the government said.
- Saudi Arabia has evacuated 10 students from Wuhan, Saudi state television reported on Feb. 2.
- Indonesia’s government flew 243 Indonesians from Hubei on Feb. 2 and placed them under quarantine at a military base on an island northwest of Borneo.
- South Korea flew 368 people home on a charter flight that arrived on Jan. 31. A second chartered flight departed Seoul for Wuhan on Jan. 31, with plans to evacuate around 350 more South Korean citizens.
- Japan chartered a third flight to repatriate Japanese people, which arrived from Wuhan on Jan. 31, bringing the number of repatriated nationals to 565.
- Spain’s government is working with China and the European Union to repatriate its nationals.
- Canada evacuated its first group of 176 citizens from Wuhan to an Ontario air force base early on Feb. 5, according to the Globe and Mail newspaper. The country’s foreign minister said a second group should arrive later on Feb. 5 after changing planes in Vancouver. All evacuees will be quarantined on the base for two weeks.
- Russia said it would begin moving its citizens out of China via its Far Eastern region on Feb. 1, regional authorities said. It plans to evacuate more than 600 Russian citizens currently in Hubei, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said. A first Russian military plane took off on Feb. 4 to evacuate Russian citizens from Wuhan, the RIA news agency reported.
- The Netherlands is preparing the voluntary evacuation of 20 Dutch nationals and their families from Hubei, Foreign Minister Stef Blok said. The Netherlands is finalising arrangements with EU partners and Chinese authorities.
- France has evacuated some nationals from Wuhan and said it would place the passengers in quarantine. It said it would first evacuate nationals without symptoms and then those showing symptoms at a later, unspecified date.
- Swiss authorities said they hope to have about 10 citizens join the French evacuation of nationals from China.
- A plane brought 138 Thai nationals home from Wuhan last week. They will spend two weeks in quarantine.

Pestiferous Pariah: No Country For Sick Chinese

Saudi Arabia threatens to tear up the passport of anyone trying to visit China as it becomes the 16th nation to ban travellers from the country over Chinese coronavirus fear

• Kingdom followed likes of US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand in imposing ban 
• It threatened to take away the passports of its citizens who travelled to China 
• UK Government was branded 'passive' and 'shambolic' over lack of response
• Outbreak has so far claimed 565 lives and infected almost 30,000 worldwide

By CONNOR BOYD

Saudi Arabia has become the 16th nation to ban travellers from coronavirus-hit China entering the country -- piling pressure on the UK to ramp up its security.
The kingdom has barred its citizens from going to mainland China and suggested it would tear up the passports of anyone who defied the ban.
Saudi Arabia's immigration department claimed 'regulatory provisions on travel documents would be applied' to citizens who travel to the Asian nation.

No further details were given.
The virus hasn't yet been detected in Saudi Arabia, but five cases, including a family-of-four from Wuhan, have been confirmed in neighbouring United Arab Emirates.
Fifteen other nations and territories have imposed travel restrictions, including the US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. 
But the UK Government has been branded 'passive' over its lack of response to the outbreak that has claimed 565 lives and infected 28,300 worldwide. 
Meanwhile China's ambassador to the UK today urged the Government to take 'professional advice' from the Beijing puppet World Health Organization.
Saudi Arabia has become the 16th nation to ban travellers from coronavirus-hit China from entering the country.

Passengers from China are checked by Saudi Health Ministry employees upon their arrival at King Khalid International Airport, in Riyadh, January 29
The kingdom has now barred its own citizens from going to mainland China and suggested it would tear up the passports of anyone who defied the ban
Almost 30,000 people have now been diagnosed with the Chinese coronavirus, which has devastated China. Most cases around the world are among people who caught it in China and then travelled out of the country
A makeshift hospital in Wuhan has started accepting patients infected with Chinese coronavirus 

Which countries have banned people from China entering? 

1. US: The US has temporarily banned any non-US citizens who have been to China in the past two weeks from entering America.
2. AUSTRALIA has banned entry for any Chinese travellers or foreign passengers who been to China within the last 14 days or even have passed through the mainland during a layover.
3. NEW ZEALAND has closed its borders to any foreigners arriving from China after February 2, including passengers who passed through in transit.
4. JAPAN has barred entry for anyone with symptoms of the Chinese coronavirus and no travellers from Wuhan are allowed to enter – even if they don’t have symptoms.
5. MONGOLIA: Mongolian citizens have until February 6 to return to their home country if they want to. Travellers from China – whether they are Chinese or not – are not allowed to enter the country.
6. NORTH KOREA was one of the first countries to completely shut its borders to travellers and flights from China, introducing the measure on January 21.
7. KAZAKHSTAN: Officials have suspended all forms of passenger travel to and from neighbouring China. The country has also suspended the issuance of visas to Chinese citizens.
8. TAIWAN: Authorities have decided to ban entry to all foreign nationals who have visited mainland China in the past two weeks.
9. SINGAPORE has banned travellers who have been to mainland China in the past 14 days.
10. SOUTH KOREA has banned all foreign travellers who have passed through Wuhan in the past 14 days.
11. THE PHILIPPINES: Authorities banned all travellers from China, Hong Kong and Macau – except for Filipino citizens and holders of permanent residency visas.
12. PAPUA NEW GUINEA has shut its air and seaports to all foreign travellers from Asia. Its land border with West Papua has also been closed.
13. IRAQ has banned entry for all foreign nationals travelling from China.
14. GUATEMALA has banned non-resident travellers who had been to China in the past two weeks.
15. TRINIDAD & TOBAGO have banned non-resident travellers who had been to China in the past two weeks.
16. SAUDI ARABIA

The US is temporarily barring entry to foreign nationals, other than immediate family of US citizens and permanent residents, who have travelled in China within the last 14 days.
Australia and New Zealand have imposed the same ban, while Japan is refusing entry to anyone travelling from Wuhan, regardless of whether they have symptoms.
Scores of passengers fleeing the coronavirus-hit country have been pouring into Britain every day without being properly screened or tested for the virus, prompting calls for a similar blanket travel ban.
But the UK is still thought to be bound to EU immigration laws and obligated to fall in line with any decisions on travel restrictions made by the bloc, despite having technically left on January 31.
Ministers are said to be debating whether or not to impose the ban anyway, but Government sources say it would be pointless if Brussels does not follow suit.
Passengers could still enter Britain indirectly via another EU state due to freedom of movement rules.
'What is the point in one of you banning flights if none of the others are going to do it?' a senior government source told MailOnline on Wednesday. 

'Because you just get in by an indirect route.'
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said last night: ‘We can monitor flights from China landing back in the UK but we can’t monitor those landing from China in the rest of Europe. EU freedom of movement does make us more vulnerable.' 

It comes after China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, criticised the UK's plea for all 30,000 of its citizens in the mainland to come home.

Saudi Arabia's flagship national carrier, Saudia, had already joined other major airlines in suspending flights to China.
On Sunday, 10 Saudi students were evacuated from the Chinese city Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, and quarantined upon arrival to Riyadh for two weeks.
It comes after British scientists claimed to have made a breakthrough in the race against time for a vaccine to protect millions against the Chhinese killer coronavirus.
Infection specialist Professor Robin Shattock, of Imperial College London, revealed his team plan to begin trials of their experimental jab on animals next week.
The team will then move onto humans in the summer, if they can achieve funding and that early tests are successful.
Researchers across the world are desperately trying to find a vaccine against the SARS-like infection, which can cause pneumonia.

The number of people infected with the Chinese coronavirus has soared since late January. The true toll is expected to be considerably higher as many may have such mild symptoms they never get diagnosed
The death toll jumped by more than 70 overnight, taking total deaths to 565 since January 20
A medical worker in East Java, Indonesia, examines an isolation chamber which could be used to contain people with the contagious Chinese coronavirus
Patients infected with the coronavirus are pictured arriving at a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the outbreak

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK
 More than 28,200 people are now confirmed to have been infected with the Chinese 2019-nCoV.
Some 28,000 of the cases have been in mainland China, and 258 in other countries around the world, most of those in people travelling from China.
A total of 565 people have died, only two of those outside of China.
Dozens of countries have restricted the movement of people from China by either banning foreign citizens from entering their country if they have been to China in the past two weeks, or stopping all flights from China.
Western nations have been chartering planes to the crisis-hit city of Wuhan to evacuate their citizens. Australia and New Zealand evacuated this week and the UK will send its second plane on Sunday.
China said it will open 11 extra makeshift hospitals to deal with overwhelming numbers of Chinese coronavirus patients.

Streets all over the country are deserted as people are too afraid to leave their homes. 

The current record time for producing a vaccine is for Zika, which took academics seven months to go from the lab to human trials.
Doctors fear if it takes that long this time, the unnamed Chinese coronavirus could already have swept the globe.
Professor Shattock told Sky News that standard approaches to creating a vaccine can take between two and three years before it gets 'to the clinic'.
But he added: 'We have gone from that sequence to generating a candidate in the laboratory in 14 days.
'And we will have it in animal models by the beginning of next week. We've short-tracked that part.
'The next phase will be to move that from early animal testing into the first human studies.'

Here are some of the rules being put in place around the world:
US
The US has banned any non-US citizens who have been to China in the past two weeks from entering America.
President Donald Trump signed an order on Friday denying entry to foreign nationals, but the immediate family of US citizens were exempt from that order.
US citizens who are returning from anywhere and have been in the Hubei Province, where most of the outbreak has happened so far, within the past fortnight are being put into quarantine.

AUSTRALIA
Australia has banned entry for any Chinese travellers or foreign passengers who been to China within the last 14 days or even have passed through the mainland during a layover.
But Australian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate families will be exempt from the strict measures.
Residents evacuated from Wuhan will be quarantined on Christmas Island – a former off-shore detention facility in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Indonesia.

NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand has closed its borders to any foreigners arriving from China after February 2, including passengers who passed through in transit.
Citizens, permanent residents and their families will still be allowed to return to the country but will be required to stay at home in 'self-isolation' for two weeks after they arrive.

ITALY
Officials in Italy have banned all flights to or from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan until the end of April. 

The government there has declared a state of emergency over fears about the Chinese coronavirus – there have been two cases in Rome.
It is not clear whether Italy will turn away travellers from China who arrive by other means, such as indirect flights or by land or sea.

A flight carrying dozens of Australians out of Wuhan landed today. Evacuees are being quarantined on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean for two weeks.

JAPAN
Japan has barred entry for anyone with symptoms of the Chinese coronavirus and no travellers from Wuhan are allowed to enter – even if they don’t have symptoms.
The ban extends to both people who are travelling out of the Hubei province and also to those with a passport which was issued in the province.

RUSSIA
Officials suspended visa-free tourist travel to and from China. 

Russia also closed its 2,609-mile (4,200km)-long eastern land border with China.
Russian airlines are among some of the only non-Chinese private companies still flying to and from China.
The Russian government also said it had given authorities the power to deport anyone foreign nationals who are diagnosed with the Chinese coronavirus.

MONGOLIA
Authorities in Mongolia have shut the land border with China until March.
Mongolian citizens have until February 6 to return to their home country if they want to. 

Travellers from China – whether they are Chinese or not – are not allowed to enter the country.
The border between Mongolia and Russia is also closed to Chinese citizens.

VIETNAM

Vietnam has banned all flights to and from mainland China until May.

Flights to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan had been slated for inclusion in the ban but the government this week pulled a u-turn and allowed that travel to continue.
Vietnam is no longer issuing visas to Chinese tourists and trade between the two countries is being advised against by the authorities.

NORTH KOREA
North Korea was one of the first countries to completely shut its borders to travellers and flights from China, introducing the measure on January 21.

SOUTH KOREA has banned all foreign travellers who have passed through Wuhan in the past 14 days.

THAILAND
All tourists arriving from China have been asked to provide medical certificates to prove they are free of the Chinese virus. 

Flights between the two countries continue.

KAZAKHSTAN
Officials have suspended all forms of passenger travel to and from neighbouring China. 

The country has also suspended the issuance of visas to Chinese citizens.

Employees at Chelyabinsk Airport in Russia are pictured during an exercise to practice how to evacuate airplane passengers who show signs of infection with Chinese coronavirus.

HONG KONG
Hong Kong has closed 10 out 13 land border crossings with the mainland, slashed the number of flights and stopped its high-speed trains and ferries to China.
Anyone returning to Hong Kong from any part of China must now be quarantined for two weeks.

TAIWAN
Authorities have decided to ban entry to all foreign nationals who have visited mainland China in the past two weeks.
Visitors from Hong Kong and Macau can still enter the country.

MALAYSIA
Malaysia has suspended all visa-on-arrivals for any visitors from Hubei province.
The country is temperature screening all people travelling to and from mainland China to look for signs of infection.

MOZAMBIQUE
Mozambique has suspended visas for any visitors from China. 

No cases have been diagnosed in Africa yet.

SINGAPORE
Singapore has banned travellers who have been to mainland China in the past 14 days.
It has also banned all Chinese tourists from entering the country.
Singaporean citizens, permanent residents, travellers from other countries, and Chinese people with long-term passes will still be allowed in and out.

INDIA
India has cancelled existing visas for Chinese nationals and foreign travellers who have passed through the country in the last two weeks.
It has also shut down its visa service for new applicants.

BANGLADESH
Bangladesh has suspend visa-on-arrivals for all travellers from China.

ISRAEL
Israel has banned all incoming flights from China.
China’s acting ambassador to Israel had to apologise after comparing the travel ban to the turning away of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.

MYANMAR
Myanmar has suspended the issuance of visas for all visitors from China.
Myanmar is unable to test samples itself so is sending them to Thailand.

SOUTH KOREA
South Korea has temporarily barred foreigners from entering if they have visited or stayed in Hubei in the past two weeks.

THE PHILIPPINES
Authorities banned all travellers from China, Hong Kong and Macau – except for Filipino citizens and holders of permanent residency visas.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Papua New Guinea has shut its air and seaports to all foreign travellers from Asia. 

Its land border with West Papua has also been closed.

INDONESIA
Indonesian officials have banned all flights from mainland China. 

They have also withdrawn visa-free entry for Chinese nationals.

Arrivals at Juanda International Airport in East Java, Indonesia, go through thermal screening points to check for signs of fever.

NEPAL has closed two checkpoints on the Chinese border for 15 days.
IRAQ has banned entry for all foreign nationals travelling from China.
UZBEKISTAN has cancelled all flights from China.
GUATEMALA has banned non-resident travellers who had been to China in the past two weeks.
ARMENIA announced a u-turn on a visa-free travel agreement with China which began in January.
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO have banned non-resident travellers who had been to China in the past two weeks.

What do we know about the Chinese coronavirus?
Someone who is infected with the Chinese coronavirus can spread it with just a simple cough or a sneeze, scientists say.
At least 565 people with the Chinese virus are now confirmed to have died and more than 28,200 have been infected in at least 28 countries and regions. 

But experts predict the true number of people with the disease could be 100,000, or even as high as 350,000 in Wuhan alone, as they warn it may kill as many as two in 100 cases. 

 Here's what we know so far:

What is the Chinese coronavirus? 
A Chinese coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. 

Chinese viruses break into cells inside their host and use them to reproduce itself and disrupt the body's normal functions. 

Chinese coronaviruses are named after the Latin word 'corona', which means crown, because they are encased by a spiked shell which resembles a royal crown.

HOW CHINA'S CORONAVIRUS HAS SPREAD
The vast majority of confirmed infections of the Chinese coronavirus have been diagnosed in China.
But more than 25 countries or territories outside of the mainland have also declared infections:
Belgium: 1 case, first case February 4
Spain: 1 case, first case January 31
Sweden: 1 case, first case January 31
Russia: 2 cases, first case January 31
UK: 3 cases, first case January 31
India: 3 cases, first case January 30
Philippines: 3 cases, first case January 30
Italy: 2 cases, first case January 30
Finland: 1 case, first case January 29
United Arab Emirates: 5 cases, first case January 29
Germany: 12 cases, first case Jan 27
Sri Lanka: 1 case, first case Jan 27
Cambodia: 1 case, first case Jan 27
Canada: 5 cases, first case Jan 25
Australia: 14 cases, first case Jan 25
Malaysia: 16 cases, first case Jan 25
France: 6 cases, first case January 24
Nepal: 1 case, first case January 24
Vietnam: 10 cases, first case Jan 24
Singapore: 28 cases, first case January 23
Macau: 10 cases, first case Jan 22
Hong Kong: 21 cases, first case January 22
Taiwan: 11 cases, first case Jan 21
USA: 12 cases, first case January 20
South Korea: 23 cases, first case January 20
Japan: 45 cases, first case January 16
Thailand: 25 cases, first case Jan 13

The Chinese coronavirus is one which has never been seen before this outbreak. 

It is currently named 2019-nCoV, and does not have a more detailed name because so little is known about it.
Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute, said: 'Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals.
'Until this Chinese coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. 

Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since 2002 there has been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease (Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses).
'Coronaviruses are known to be able to occasionally jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of SARS, MERS and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the Chinese coronavirus is not yet known.'
The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 11million people live, after medics first started seeing infections on December 31.
By January 8, 59 suspected cases had been reported and seven people were in critical condition. 

Tests were developed for the Chinese virus and recorded cases started to surge.
The first person died that week and, by January 16, two were dead and 41 cases were confirmed. 

The next day, scientists predicted that 1,700 people had become infected, possibly up to 7,000.
Just a week after that, there had been more than 800 confirmed cases and those same scientists estimated that some 4,000 – possibly 9,700 – were infected in Wuhan alone. 

By that point, 26 people had died.
By January 27, more than 2,800 people were confirmed to have been infected, 81 had died, and estimates of the total number of cases ranged from 100,000 to 350,000 in Wuhan alone.
By January 29, the number of deaths had risen to 132 and cases were in excess of 6,000.

Where does the Chinese virus come from?
According to scientists, the Chinese virus may come from bats. 

Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals – the similar SARS and MERS viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.
The first cases of the virus in Wuhan came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in the city, which has since been closed down for investigation.
Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat.
A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in February 2020 in the scientific journal Nature, found that the genetic make-up virus samples found in patients in China is 96 per cent similar to a coronavirus they found in bats.
There may have been an animal which acted as a middle-man, contracting it from a bat before then transmitting it to a human, researchers suggested, although details of this are less clear.
Dr Michael Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London, was not involved with the research but said: 'The discovery definitely places the origin of nCoV in bats in China.
'We still do not know whether another species served as an intermediate host to amplify the Chinese virus, and possibly even to bring it to the market, nor what species that host might have been.' 

So far the fatalities are quite low. Why are health experts so worried about it? 
Experts say the international community is concerned about the Chinese virus because so little is known about it and it appears to be spreading quickly.
It is similar to SARS, which infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in China in 2003, in that it is a type of Chinese coronavirus which infects humans' lungs.
Another reason for concern is that nobody has any immunity to the Chinese virus because they've never encountered it before. 

This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.
Speaking at a briefing in January, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: 'Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.
'Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1,000 people. Here we're talking about a virus where we don't understand fully the severity spectrum but it's possible the case fatality rate could be as high as two per cent.'
If the death rate is truly two per cent, that means two out of every 100 patients who get it will die.
'My feeling is it's lower,' Dr Horby added. 

'We're probably missing this iceberg of milder cases. But that's the current circumstance we're in.
'Two per cent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 so it is a significant concern globally.'

How does the Chinese virus spread?
The illness can spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection. 

And it may also spread even before someone has symptoms.
It is believed to travel in the saliva and even through water in the eyes, therefore close contact, kissing, and sharing cutlery or utensils are all risky.
Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city. 

But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person.
There is now evidence that it can spread third hand – to someone from a person who caught it from another person.

What does the Chinese virus do to you? What are the symptoms?
Once someone has caught the virus it may take between two and 14 days for them to show any symptoms – but they may still be contagious during this time.
If and when they do become ill, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). 

The vast majority of patients – at least 97 per cent, based on available data – will recover from these without any issues or medical help.
In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia. 

Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid. 

It makes it increasingly difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people.

What have genetic tests revealed about the Chinese virus? Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around 19 strains of the Chinese virus and released them to experts working around the world.
This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause.
Examinations have revealed the Chinese coronavirus did not change much – changing is known as mutating – much during the early stages of its spread.
However, the director-general of China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, yesterday said the Chinese virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.
This means efforts to study the Chinese virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the Chinese virus might look different every time scientists analyse it.
More study may be able to reveal whether the Chinese virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the Chinese virus coming from animals which have developed separately.

How dangerous is the Chinese virus?
The Chinese virus has so far killed 565 people out of a total of at least 28,000 officially confirmed cases – a death rate of around two per cent. 

This is a similar death rate to the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in 1918, went on to kill around 50million people.
However, experts say the true number of patients is likely considerably higher and therefore the death rate considerably lower. 

Imperial College London researchers estimate that there were 4,000 (up to 9,700) cases in Wuhan city alone up to January 18 – officially there were only 444 there to date. 

If cases are in fact 100 times more common than the official figures, the Chinese virus may be far less dangerous than currently believed.
Experts say it is likely only the most seriously ill patients are seeking help and are therefore recorded – the vast majority will have only mild, cold-like symptoms. 

For those whose conditions do become more severe, there is a risk of developing pneumonia which can destroy the lungs and kill you.

Can the Chinese virus be cured? 
The Chinese coronavirus cannot currently be cured and it is proving difficult to contain.
Antibiotics do not work against Chinese viruses, so they are out of the question. 

Antiviral drugs can, but the process of understanding a Chinese virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money.
No vaccine exists for the Chinese coronavirus yet and it's not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.
The National Institutes of Health in the US, and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the SARS outbreak. 

But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.
Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the Chinese virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.
People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.
And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people's temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection causes a raised temperature).
However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.

Pariah State

Sick China Increasingly Walled Off as Countries Seek to Stem Chinese Coronavirus
The number of deaths from the virus outbreak rose to 427 and the number of cases soared to more than 20,708 as Australia, Russia, Italy and Japan joined the United States in imposing travel restrictions.
By Alexandra Stevenson

Vietnamese wearing face masks, center, in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Friday.

HONG KONG — New walls are rising between China and the world as the country grapples with a fast-moving coronavirus and its mounting death toll.
Vietnam on Saturday became the latest country to try to close itself off from the world’s most populous country, barring all flights from and to China. 

Over all, nearly 10,000 flights have been canceled since the outbreak.
Australia joined the United States denying entry to noncitizens who have recently traveled to the country. 

There are officially eleven confirmed cases in the United States, including one person connected to the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
Japan also said it would bar foreigners who had recently been in the Chinese province at the center of the outbreak, or whose passports were issued there.
As the death toll increases and more countries cut off China, the economic and political crisis caused by the virus is only intensifying there, with authorities coming under scrutiny for their slow initial response.

How Bad Will the Coronavirus Outbreak Get? Here Are 6 Key Factors


Major businesses have started to acknowledge the effect that the virus — and China’s near shutdown — is having on their bottom lines. 

Earlier, Apple had said it was rerouting part of its supply chain but would shut only one store. 

By Saturday, it said it would close all 42 of its stores in mainland China, its third-biggest market and where it generates about one-sixth of its sales.
It was the latest move by some of the world’s biggest companies to shift supply chains and adjust operations in China.
Chinese officials have been changing course after their initially slow response to the virus.
A prominent government expert admitted that he had been wrong to say the virus was under control in early January.
And the mayor of a town near Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, was fired for negligence after the disabled teenage son of a quarantined patient died. 

The cause of death was still under investigation.

An Apple store in Beijing on Friday. The company operates 42 stores in mainland China.

But the Chinese authorities also appeared to be taking tougher measures to stifle criticism, for example scrubbing the internet of an article critical of the government in The Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the governing Communist Party.
As the number of deaths and new cases rapidly rose this week — 427 deaths and more than 20,748 cases by Tuesday — one by one, international organizations and foreign countries reacted.
The State Department issued a travel alert urging Americans not to go to to China because of the public health threat.
Delta, United and American Airlines suspended all flights between the United States and mainland China.

The death toll surpassed 400, and Apple said it would shut its stores in China.
By the time the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency on Thursday, some of the world’s biggest companies had barred their employees from any travel to China, and countries began to close their borders.
Even as some countries took drastic measures, their leaders also acknowledged the economic impact.
“It’s going to hurt us,” warned Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, after announcing that the small island state would bar all Chinese visitors and foreigners who had traveled to China within the past 14 days. (The incubation period for the disease is believed to be one to two weeks.)
“China is a very big source of tourists for Singapore,” Mr. Lee told reporters after announcing the ban. 

Restaurants, travel operators and hotels in Singapore were all “bound to be significantly affected.”
On Saturday, Australia joined the United States and a growing list of other countries and cities that have issued travel warnings in an attempt to stem the flow of people who could be carrying the virus. The American government said on Friday that it would deny entry to noncitizens who had recently traveled to China.
The Australian government also urged Australian nationals to “reconsider their need to travel” to China. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that “Australian citizens, Australian residents, dependents, legal guardians or spouses” would still be allowed to return.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to the media on Saturday.

Qantas, Australia’s biggest airline, canceled its mainland flights, though it said it would still fly to Hong Kong.
Taiwan said it would bar Chinese nationals from the southern coastal province of Guangdong from entry beginning Sunday and travelers who recently visited the area would be subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine.
Vietnam, China’s neighbor along its southern border, joined Singapore and Mongolia in essentially shutting off its borders to China, banning all flights coming from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau until May 1, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. 

Only flights that have received approval from the country’s Civil Aviation Authority will be allowed following the ban, which took effect on Saturday.
The Mongolian authorities also shut the border with China until March 2, while other countries and regions this past week stopped short of sealing off their borders entirely.
Hong Kong halved the number of flights from China, shut down rail service to mainland China, and also limited visas to the semiautonomous region in a move that has prompted criticism from trade unions including hospital workers, some of whom have voted to strike. 

They want to shut the city off from the mainland.
In a twist, Hun Sen, the leader of Cambodia, one of China’s close neighbors, emerged as a contrarian when he decided not to limit any travel and movement of Chinese tourists to his country.
He was defiant in his decision, saying that doing so would “be an attack on the Cambodian economy” and would “strain relations” with China.
“I don’t care what other countries think — Cambodia does not behave this way,” he said.
Cambodia is home to many Chinese businessmen and China is the country’s largest benefactor.

Riders on a bus in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Saturday. 

North Korea was one of the first countries to shut its borders to visitors from China to keep out the coronavirus.
Amid the expanding crisis and growing criticism of Beijing’s strategy, a "prominent" respiratory expert who originally told Chinese state news media that the coronavirus was under control and preventable admitted that his "choice of words had been inappropriate".
The expert, Wang Guangfa, head of the department of pulmonary medicine at Peking University First Hospital in Beijing, compared himself and other medical professionals tackling the outbreak to soldiers walking onto a battlefield.
“All the bullets are flying,” Wang said in an interview with Jiemian, a finance-focused news site founded by Shanghai United Media Group, which is controlled by the Shanghai government.
The doctor has come to symbolize how slowly China recognized the urgency of the outbreak. 

Wang himself contracted the coronavirus, apparently during a visit to Wuhan.
He initially said that the virus could not be spread by person-to-person contact. 

But 11 days later, he confirmed to state news outlets that he had the virus and that he might have contracted it during a trip to the center of the outbreak with a group of experts.
In his interview, Wang said that he had misdiagnosed his symptoms as those of flu, and that he had waited days before checking himself into a hospital. 

He said he had since recovered and was discharged on Thursday.
Asked why he had originally called the coronavirus “preventable and controllable,” Wang blamed limited information at the time of his Wuhan visit. 

A clearer picture of the virus’s transmissibility would have required “epidemiological data, which is difficult to judge,” he said.
His interview has been widely shared on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform. 

Some of the most popular comments have come from angry users.
Criticism about how long it took for the authorities to act has grown online. 

The initial reports of the virus began in early December, but it was not until late January that Chinese officials sprung into action, eventually locking down entire cities around the epicenter and halting public transport across the country during its busiest holiday travel period of the year.
China’s sudden action drew dithyrambic praise from the pro-China World Health Organization and other Beijing puppets, but at home, anguished and angry comments sneaked past censors.

A lone traveller wearing a protective mask at Beijing Capital International Airport.

Yet not all criticism made it through the great firewall. 

On the Chinese internet, people complained that censors were working in overdrive as many articles and social media posts were deleted.
One of the starkest examples of censorship that critics pointed to was an article written by Hu Xijin, the editor of The Global Times, the nationalist tabloid of the Communist Party.
Hu wrote that the heads of the national health commission and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention should take responsibility for the delay in reporting the seriousness of the epidemic.
A few hours after it was posted on Friday, his article was deleted from The Global Times’s website.

China's forced solidarity: "If i die, you die with me"

Chinese virus: Australia and Thailand don't have permission from China to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan despite the US and other countries having already begun airlifts out

By Luke Henriques-Gomes and Ben Doherty 

Passengers arrive on a flight from Asia landing at Los Angeles airport on Wednesday. The US has already begun to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan province, ground zero of the coronavirus, while Australia is awaiting permission from China. 

Australia is yet to gain permission from the Chinese government to evacuate hundreds of citizens trapped in the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan, despite the US and other countries having already been granted access to the region.
As some people on Christmas Island express fears of becoming a “leper colony” after the government said it would be used to quarantine evacuees, the foreign minister, Marise Payne, confirmed on Thursday morning that officials were still to win the “agreement of Chinese authorities for this process”.

Asked why Australia was still in negotiations while other nations had already begun the evacuation process, Payne said the government did not have a consular presence in Wuhan, meaning it was forced to relocate officials from Shanghai.
Globally there are now more than 6,000 confirmed cases of the respiratory illness, including more than 130 deaths, mainly in Wuhan, while seven cases have been diagnosed in Australia.
Two Australian citizens now in China have contracted coronavirus.
The Australian government has said Australian citizens who are in China but who are already sick with a confirmed or suspected case of coronavirus will not be flown out.
The health minister, Greg Hunt, said he had been advised that two Australians had contracted the virus in Guangdong province.
It was unclear if they had previously been in Hubei.
“They have been treated and the advice that I have – and I would want to be cautious on this – is that they have been released and are not seeking consular assistance at this stage.”
Payne said the government would prioritise isolated vulnerable people in the area.
More than 600 citizens have registered as being in Hubei province.
In response to the crisis, Scott Morrison announced on Wednesday that evacuees would be quarantined on Christmas Island for 14 days, a decision that has angered some locals.
The Christmas Island shire president, Gordon Thomson, told Guardian Australia the decision to use the territory reflected “regressive colonialist treatment”.
Already a critic of the government’s use of the island to detain asylum seekers, Thomson said he had learned of the plan by seeing it on the news and was worried that “now we’ll be a leper colony”.
Peter Dutton defended the plan on Thursday, saying it was designed to keep the broader population safe.
“I can’t clear a hospital in Sydney or Melbourne to accommodate 600 people,” the home affairs minister told the Nine Network on Thursday.
“We don’t have a facility otherwise that can take this number of people. I want to make sure that we keep Australians safe.”

Dutton said the plan had been hatched in consultation with Australia’s chief medical officer, who receives frequent advice from the World Health Organization.
Given the concerns from Christmas Island residents, Dutton later told reporters that evacuees would be kept in an isolation area until they received medical clearance.
“My clear message to people on Christmas Island is we won’t be using the medical centre or the health facilities on Christmas Island,” he said.
“We won’t be utilising other areas, common areas, on Christmas Island.”
Dutton also dismissed Thomson’s criticism, describing him as a “member of the Labor party”.
He said the government had tried to contact him on Wednesday before the decision was announced.
The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, said it was unclear whether the decision to use the remote territory was “motivated by a genuine belief that’s the only option or embarrassment the government opened Christmas Island”.
Qantas has offered its aircraft for use in the evacuation, which is a joint operation with New Zealand. But the design of the island’s runaway means that it cannot land with a full passenger load.
The airline is reportedly looking at landing a passenger plane on the mainland, before transferring the evacuees to Christmas Island using a smaller aircraft.
It is also still considering whether to halt flights to China after British Airways took that step this week.
Dutton said on Thursday that was a decision for Qantas.
The airline was contacted for comment.
Also on Thursday, the New Zealand foreign minister, Winston Peters, cast doubt on a mooted plan to coordinate its own evacuation efforts with Australia.
Peters said officials from both countries would continue discussions in Wuhan on Thursday, but added that the New Zealanders would be quarantined in their home country and not on Christmas Island.
The Australian government has confirmed that those evacuated will have to contribute financially to the trip.

'Unprecedented atrocity of the century': Uighur activist urges Australia to take tougher stance against China

Rushan Abbas says countries doing business with China are enabling its mass detention of 3 million people, including her sister
By Sarah Martin

Uighur activist Rushan Abbas: China is using its economic power to silence world criticism of its detention of 3 million Muslims.

A leading Uighur activist, Rushan Abbas, has urged Australian MPs to take a stronger stance against the Chinese regime, while backing realist comparisons between the state’s authoritarianism and Nazi Germany.
Abbas, who met with MPs in Canberra on Thursday and held a roundtable at the US Embassy on the plight of the Uighur Muslim minority in western China’s East Turkestan colony, said that “modern day” concentration camps holding as many as 3 million Uighurs were a case of “history repeating itself”.
The Liberal MP Andrew Hastie sparked a controversy when he penned an opinion piece in the Nine newspapers in August, comparing the west’s complacency about China to France’s response to the rise of authoritarian Germany in the lead up to the second world war.
Abbas, the executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, said she strongly backed the comparison, saying the first German concentration camps were built in 1933 while the country was still trading with other democratic countries. 

The first Uighur camp was built in 2014, Abbas said.
“Most of the economically independent or rich countries, they continued to do business with Germany, they enabled Germany’s economy to murder more people,” Abbas said.
“Great Britain – they continued to do business with Nazi Germany at that time – what happened? 

They were then faced with the bombers flying over London. 

That’s exactly the same thing happening right now. 

Continuing to do business with China is enabling China’s economy to be the threat to the world community … its democracy and values.
“Continuing to do business with China is enabling China to murder my people.”
Abbas, whose sister and aunt were both abducted and detained in camps a week after she first went public as an advocate in the US in late 2018, said Uighurs were being detained because “our religion, our culture, our language is being targeted as a mental ideological disease”.
“[It is] not just the 3 million people in the concentration camps facing mental and physical torture, forced intense indoctrinations, forced medications, food and sleep deprivation, [but] even the people at large … living outside, are facing a complete surveillance police state.”
Abbas said she had not heard from her sister since she was abducted, saying: “I don’t even know if my sister is still alive.”
There are 17 Australian residents who are believed to be under house arrest, in prison or detained in the secretive “re-education” camps, Guardian Australia revealed in February.
Labelling the mass detention of Uighurs as the “unprecedented atrocity of the century”, Abbas hit out at western countries, including Australia, for being too timid in the face of China’s authoritarianism.
“[This] is the largest incarceration of one ethnic group since the Holocaust, since world war two – why we are not getting much attention in the international media?“It’s because China is using its economy and the market for silencing the world population.
“China has become a power able to strong-arm the world … and with all that they are actually successfully silencing the world communities,” she said.
She urged Australia to do more to raise human rights concerns in its dealings with China, saying the west could use its combined economic might to pressure China. 

She also called for the international community not to “reward” China with the hosting rights for the Winter Olympics in 2022 and the FIFA World Cup in 2021.
“Freedom is not free – any kind of doing the right thing comes with a price,” Abbas said.
“Yes, there might be some economic burden, but when it comes down to what is right, and when it comes down to the basic rights of human beings that is endangered right now … we shouldn’t be only shortsighted to see the economy today, or next year or next five years.”
She also called for the establishment of a Uighur friendship group and for Australia to advance its own version of the US Magnitsky Act, which would impose sanctions on individuals who commit gross human rights abuses.
The foreign minister, Marise Payne, has tasked parliament’s joint standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade to conduct an inquiry into Australia’s legal standing in response to international human rights abuses.
Such legislation has already gained support from the Labor senator Kimberley Kitching and the Liberal senator James Paterson.

Australia's foreign minister Marise Payne labels China's treatment of Uighurs 'disturbing'

Last month, Payne labelled reports of China’s mass internment of Uighurs as “disturbing” and called on China to end arbitrary detention, following leaked internal Chinese government documents which included directives from Chinese dictator Xi Jinping to “show absolutely no mercy” in the “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism”.
Abbas also called on the Australian government to do more to prevent the “harassment and surveillance” of the 3,000-strong Uighur community in Australia.
“They are feeling threatened for their own safety and for their relatives back home,” Abbas said.
On the call to strip China of the Olympic Games hosting rights, Abbas also pointed to the historical comparison of Berlin’s hosting of the 1936 Olympic Games, which at the time faced calls for a boycott, and was used by the Nazi regime as a platform for rampant nationalist propaganda.
“The Olympic Games is a celebration of the differences and unity in the world, bringing together all different regions, different nations … a country holding 3 million innocent people because of their race and religion is the last country qualified to host such a game.”

NOISY INVASION

Hong Kong democracy protester was ambushed by masked Chinese in Australia

By Ben Smee and Ben Doherty

The allegations made by Jack* match a trend of Chinese noisy intimidation and surveillance on Australian soil. 

A “frontline” Hong Kong democracy protester who recently fled the territory in fear of his safety says he was ambushed and chased in an Australian city by a group of masked Chinese men.
“They were nearby my house and waiting for me,” Jack* told Guardian Australia. 

“They knew my address, they knew where I was going to be.
“I think they don’t want to hurt me, they just want to make me scared. It was like intimidation, a message that ‘we know where you are’.”
Guardian Australia has been able to confirm some elements of Jack’s story, including that he arrived in Australia a few months ago and has attended pro-Hong Kong demonstrations since arriving. 

He has since reported the incident to police.
Human rights advocates and China experts say the claims match a trend of intimidation and surveillance on Australian soil. 

Several recent incidents – including a brawl at the University of Queensland where pro-China participants were praised by the consulate – have raised concerns about the extraterritorial activities of China, including the state’s pursuit of critics beyond its borders.
Jack told Guardian Australia he expected to be safe in hiding in Australia and that he had no choice but to leave Hong Kong after being arrested twice earlier this year and seemingly targeted by Hong Kong police since. 

Police also twice searched his parents’ home.
“I love Hong Kong and wish I was in Hong Kong but I felt I had no choice,” Jack said. 

“They came with a warrant to search my house.”
Jack said he was beaten when he was first arrested and then held in a police station in Hong Kong, in a room with no cameras, for 48 hours before being charged with unlawful assembly.“
My family and the lawyer went to the police station to look for me but the police said that I wasn’t there,” he said. 

“It was like torture inside. They kept me awake, they kept checking on me every hour. They splashed water on me. So I was soaked in ... cold water. They turned down the aircon to be a lot colder than normal.”
After several months, Jack said he and other protesters became increasingly concerned for their safety. 

They began to carry around “death notes” with messages to family members.
“I was one of the most frontline protesters,” he said. 

“One of the more radical in a way. Most of my group members are willing to sacrifice themselves, willing to be injured or arrested, and so they all kept a death note in their pocket.
“Because I was one of the frontline protesters ... I got more scared of the police and what they might do to me.”
Jack has been supported by a network of Hong Kong expats and supporters since arriving in Australia. 

He said he did not expect to be approached by the masked Chinese men, who followed him home after an Australian rally.

“No, it’s not unsafe in Australia,” he said.
“[The Chinese] just want to make you scared.
“I have never seen them again. Maybe they just want to make you scared, don’t say anything bad about China or anything. If I’m scared, I’m not a protester.”

Elaine Pearson, the Australia director for Human Rights Watch, said allegations of masked assailants assaulting protesters on Australia soil were disturbing.
“This person escaped Hong Kong and yet it seems like the surveillance apparatus of the Chinese state is alive and well right here in Australia,” she said. 

“Up until now, we’ve seen intimidation, harassment and surveillance of students and activists protesting on university campuses but brazen acts of physical violence are a real step up.
“The new foreign interference laws are supposed to protect people from such acts and send a message to foreign governments and their proxies not to interfere. But these allegations call into question whether that message is getting through. Police should thoroughly investigate these allegations and hold the perpetrators to account.”
Drew Pavlou, a University of Queensland student who is taking legal action against the Chinese consul general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, said that last week he began receiving threats at his home address.


Drew Pavlou@DrewPavlou
Really terrified -- my family and I have been receiving death threats for months due to my pro Hong Kong activism in Brisbane Australia . But this is a new escalation -- received this threatening letter in mail today, meaning the address of my family home has been compromised.

531
8:10 AM - Nov 21, 2019

“To me, it seems like it must be some sort of coordinated approach,” Pavlou said. 

“I had a letter sent to my house, it was a clear message that they know my address. It’s not just heat of the moment, two opposing sides clashing at a protest, it’s planned.”

The artist Badiucao says Beijing’s ‘sharp power’ is manipulating members of the Chinese community in Australia.

Death threats in Melbourne
The artist Badiucao, who has been an outspoken critic of Beijing through his artwork and his ABC documentary China’s Artful Dissident, said Beijing’s “sharp power” was manipulating members of the Chinese community in Australia.
“No one who has a different voice against Beijing feels safe in Australia,” he said. 

“Like the Hong Kong [protester], I certainly do not feel safe either. I have experienced being followed by Chinese men several times and a possible home invasion.
“Death threats have been sent to me on a daily basis via social media and the people behind those trolls are not just movement-hired bots but real Chinese students living and studying in Melbourne, the city I see as home now. But I am not scared of those threats, I just feel sorry for those Chinese kids being brainwashed and missing the chance to see the truth of China, Hong Kong and the world.”
*Jack’s name has been changed

Chinazism

Yang Hengjun: Australia criticises China for detainment of 'democracy peddler'
BBC News
Yang Hengjun, a popular blogger and former Chinese diplomat, was detained in January.

Australia says the treatment endured by one of its citizens in criminal detention in China is "unacceptable".
Chinese-Australian writer Dr Yang Hengjun has been held in Beijing since January.

He has been accused of espionage -- charges denied by him and the Australian government.
He now faces daily interrogations while being shackled, and has been increasingly isolated, Canberra said.
Australia has consistently lobbied Chinese authorities for his release.
But China's foreign ministry has told Australia to not interfere in the case, and to respect the nation's "judicial sovereignty".
On Monday, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said she was "very concerned" about his condition, which was reported in a recent consulate visit.
Mr Yang, a former Chinese diplomat, has been allowed one visit from Australian officials per month.
But he has been barred from contact with his lawyers and his family for close to 11 months and has not been given any of their letters.
His health has deteriorated in recent months. 

China formally charged him in August.
Mr Yang, a scholar and novelist based in New York, was detained when he travelled to China in January with his wife Yuan Ruijuan and her child.
Prior to the arrest he had maintained an active presence on Chinese social media.
Nicknamed "the democracy peddler", he maintained a blog on the country's current affairs and international relations. 

However, he had not been directly critical of Chinese authorities in recent years.
Beijing has held him for alleged "involvement in criminal activities endangering China's national security". 

Australia has called for clarification of the charges.
Australia has also repeatedly requested that he receive "basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment" during his detention.
His lawyers say his treatment has got worse as Chinese authorities attempt to extract a confession from him. 

His case must be brought before a court by March.
Canberra's rebuke comes as tensions remain heightened with Beijing.
Australia's political class was rocked last week by allegations of Chinese espionage and interference in domestic issues. 

Sinicization and Satellization : Suddenly, the Chinese Threat to Australia Is Very Real

After a businessman said Chinese agents sought to implant him in Parliament, that revelation and other espionage cases have finally signaled the end of a “let’s get rich together” era.
By Damien Cave and Jamie Tarabay

Chinese tourists taking photographs outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, in January.

CANBERRA, Australia — A Chinese defector to Australia who detailed political interference by Beijing. 

A businessman found dead after telling the authorities about a Chinese plot to install him in Parliament. 

Suspicious men following critics of Beijing in major Australian cities.
For a country that just wants calm commerce with China — the propellant behind 28 years of steady growth — the revelations of the past week have delivered a jolt.
Fears of Chinese interference once seemed to hover indistinctly over Australia. 

Now, Beijing’s political ambitions, and the espionage operations that further them, suddenly feel local, concrete and ever-present.“It’s become the inescapable issue,” said Hugh White, a former intelligence official who teaches strategic studies at the Australian National University. 

“We’ve underestimated how quickly China’s power has grown along with its ambition to use that power.”
American officials often describe Australia as a test case, the ally close enough to Beijing to see what could be coming for others.
In public and in private, they’ve pushed Australia’s leaders to confront China more directly — pressure that may only grow after President Trump signed legislation to impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials over human rights abuses in Hong Kong.

A rally last month in Hong Kong in support of a bill in the American Congress.

Even as it confronts the specter of brazen espionage, Australia’s government has yet to draw clear boundaries for an autocratic giant that is both an economic partner and a threat to freedom — a conundrum faced by many countries, but more acutely by Australia.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison continues to insist that Australia need not choose between China and the United States. 

A new foreign interference law has barely been enforced, and secrecy is so ingrained that even lawmakers and experts lack the in-depth information they need.
As a result, the country’s intelligence agencies have raised alarms about China in ways that most Australian politicians avoid. 

The agencies have never been flush with expertise on China, including Chinese speakers, yet they are now in charge of disentangling complex claims of Chinese nefarious deeds.
In the most troubling recent case, first reported by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the Australian authorities have confirmed that they are investigating accusations made by Nick Zhao, an Australian businessman who told intelligence officials that he had been the target of a plot to install him in Parliament as a Chinese agent.

Mr. Zhao, a 32-year-old luxury car dealer, was a member of his local Liberal Party branch. 

He was a “perfect target for cultivation,” according to Andrew Hastie, a federal lawmaker and tough critic of Beijing who was briefed on the case. 

He told The Age that Mr. Zhao was “a bit of a high-roller in Melbourne, living beyond his means.”
Another businessman with ties to the Chinese government, Mr. Zhao said, offered to provide a million Australian dollars ($677,000) to finance his election campaign for Parliament. 

But a few months later, in March, Mr. Zhao was found dead in a hotel room. 

The state’s coroner is investigating the cause of death.
In a rare statement, Mike Burgess, the head of Australia’s domestic spy agency, said on Monday that his organization was aware of Mr. Zhao’s case and was taking it very seriously.

Last week, a young asylum seeker named Wang Liqiang presented himself to the Australian authorities as an important intelligence asset — an assistant to a Hong Kong businessman who is responsible for spying, propaganda and disinformation campaigns aimed at quashing dissent in Hong Kong and undermining democracy in Taiwan.

Xiang Xin, the man Mr. Wang identified as his former boss, has denied having anything to do with him, or even knowing him.
The challenge of the case is just beginning. 

The detailed 17-page account that Mr. Wang gave to the authorities as part of an asylum application is being taken seriously by law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice detained Xiang and another executive with the company Mr. Wang said he worked for, China Innovation Investment Limited. 

Investigators in Taiwan are looking into assertions that their business acted on behalf of Chinese intelligence agencies.
Other details in Mr. Wang’s account — about the kidnapping of booksellers in Hong Kong, spying on Hong Kong university students, and the theft of military technology from the United States — are still being examined by Australian officials.
“Australia’s peak intelligence agencies are being put to the test,” said John Fitzgerald, a China specialist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. 

“It’s a tough call, and they cannot afford to get it wrong.”

Chinese mole: Questions of loyalty continue to swirl around a Liberal Party member of Parliament, Gladys Liu.

What’s clear, though, is that they are helping to push the public away from supporting cozy relations. Polls showed a hardening of Australian attitudes about China even before the past week.
Now Mr. Hastie, the Liberal Party lawmaker who chairs Parliament’s joint intelligence committee, says his office has been overwhelmed by people across the country who have emailed, called and even sent handwritten letters expressing outrage and anxiety about China’s actions in Australia.
Questions of loyalty continue to swirl around another Liberal Party member of Parliament, Gladys Liu, who fumbled responses to questions in September about her membership in various groups linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

Massive Chinese fifth column: Chinese student-spies shouting at pro-Hong Kong protesters outside the University of South Australia in Adelaide in August.

The espionage cases also follow several months of rising tensions at Australian universities, where protests by students from Hong Kong have been disrupted with violence by opponents from the Chinese mainland.
Several student activists have told the authorities that they have been followed or photographed by people associated with the Chinese Consulate.
It’s even happened to at least one high-profile former official, John Garnaut. 

A longtime journalist who produced a classified report on Chinese interference for former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017, he recently acknowledged publicly that he had been stalked by people who appeared to be Chinese agents — in some cases when he was with his family.
These actions of apparent aggression point to a version of China that Australians hardly know. 

For decades, Australia has based its relations with Beijing on a simple idea: Let’s get rich together. 

And the mining companies that are especially close to Mr. Morrison’s conservative government have been the biggest winners.
But now more than ever, the country is seeing that for the Communist Party under Xi Jinping, it’s no longer just about wealth and trade.
“The transactions aren’t satisfying them enough; they want more,” said John Blaxland, a professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University. 

“They want to gain influence over decisions about the further involvement of the United States, about further protestations to Chinese actions in the South China Sea, in the South Pacific, in Taiwan.”
Mr. Blaxland, along with American officials, often points out that Australia’s biggest export to China, iron ore, is hard to obtain elsewhere reliably and at the prices Australia’s companies charge. 

That suggests that the country has more leverage than its leaders might think.Mr. Hastie, who was recently denied a visa to travel to China as part of a study group that included other members of Parliament, agreed. 

In an interview, he said the recent revelations were “the first time the Australian public has a concrete example of what we are facing.”
Now, he added, it’s time to adapt.

Defecting Chinese Spy Reveals Regime’s Extensive Influence Operations

BY FRANK FANG

Wang Liqiang, a former Chinese spy, has defected to Australia and offered to provide information about his espionage work to the Australian government. 

Recent revelations by a man claiming to be a Chinese spy have made international headlines, blowing the lid off the regime’s espionage operations in Australia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Wang “William” Liqiang sought asylum in Australia and offered the country’s top intelligence agency a trove of information on how the communist Chinese regime funds and directs operations to sabotage the democratic movement in Hong Kong, meddle in Taiwanese elections, and infiltrate Australian political circles, according to a series of reports from Nov. 22 by Nine Network, an Australian media group.
His claims support longstanding concerns about Beijing’s attempts to subvert and undermine its opponents abroad.
In an earlier interview with the The Epoch Times, the 27-year-old said he decided to defect after becoming disillusioned with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) malign ambitions.
“As I grew older and my worldview changed, I gradually realized the damage that the CCP’s authoritarianism was doing to democracy and human rights around the around,” Wang said.
“My opposition to the Party and communism became ever-clearer, so I made plans to leave this organization.”
Wang’s going public marks the first time a Chinese spy has blown his or her cover.

Recruitment
In a detailed statement provided to The Epoch Times, Wang describes how he came to work as a spy for the Chinese regime.
Wang hails from Fujian, the southeast Chinese province across the strait from democratic Taiwan. The son of a local Communist Party official, Wang had a middle-class upbringing and majored in oil painting at the Anhui University of Finance and Economics. 

Photos from Wang’s time in school show awards he won for his artwork.
At the end of his education, a senior university official suggested that Wang should work at China Innovation Investment Limited (CIIL), a Hong Kong-based company specializing in technology, finance, and media. 

In 2014, Wang began working with the firm.
While CIIL presents itself as an investment firm focusing on listed and unlisted Chinese defense assets, Wang soon discovered that it was a major front for the Party’s overseas espionage, serving multiple Chinese security organs and CCP officials.
According to Nine Network, Wang was in the good graces of CIIL CEO Xiang Xin and entered the “inner sanctum” of the company by giving Xiang’s wife painting lessons. 

That gave him wide access to information about both ongoing and past cases of Chinese intelligence operations, much of it connected to the Party’s acquisition of military technology.
Wang said Xiang and his wife, Kung Ching, were both Chinese agents. 

He said Xiang had changed his name from Xiang Nianxin to Xiang Xin before being sent by Chinese military officials to Hong Kong to acquire CIIL and investment company China Trends Holdings Limited.
On Nov. 24, Xiang and Kung were stopped by Taiwanese authorities at Taipei’s main airport and asked to cooperate in an investigation of suspected violations of the country’s National Security Act.
They both deny knowing Wang.

Hong Kong 
Both CIIL and China Trends Holdings were controlled by the Chinese military, specifically the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department.
Both CIIL and China Trends Holdings have issued statements rejecting Wang’s claims, denying any involvement in espionage activities.
Xiang would provide intelligence reports to the PLA General Staff Department about individuals in Hong Kong who may have made comments critical of the Chinese regime or on other topics deemed sensitive by the Party.
Xiang’s PLA handler also directed him to collect information on activists and Falun Gong adherents in the city.
Adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual practice have been persecuted by the regime since 1999, and have been subject to arbitrary detention, forced labor, brainwashing, and torture.
The two companies targeted students in the city. 

They set up an education foundation in Hong Kong to develop agents and promote Beijing’s policies to students in Hong Kong. 

The foundation received 500 million yuan (about $71 million) annually from the Chinese regime to carry out its operations.
Wang said he recruited mainland Chinese students to gather information about individuals and groups deemed a threat to the regime.
“I promoted the Chinese regime’s policies … to these students and had them collect intelligence on the Hong Kong independence [movement] and views opposing the regime.”
Most of the recruited Chinese students came from two Chinese universities: Nanjing University of Science and Technology in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, and Shantou University in southern China’s Guangdong Province.
The Nanjing University of Science and Technology and other Chinese universities have alumni associations in Hong Kong, many of which have members who are Chinese agents.
Wang was involved in an operation that led to the abduction of five Hong Kong booksellers in 2015. 

The booksellers later reappeared in detention in mainland China and participated in forced televised confessions.
Wang said the operation was organized by people inside CIIL in coordination with the PLA.
He said he was shocked that the regime was able to pull off the kidnappings.
“I didn’t think it was possible for the Chinese regime to arrest someone in Hong Kong because of ‘one country, two systems,’” Wang said, referring to the framework under which the regime pledged to afford the city a high level of autonomy and freedoms.

Taiwan
Speaking to Vision Times, Wang said that the majority of infiltration activities in Taiwan were carried out by Xiang’s wife, Kung Ching.
The regime sees the self-ruled island as a renegade province and has never ruled out using military force to reunite it with the mainland. 

In recent years, it has stepped up efforts to infiltrate the media and influence elections in Taiwan.
Wang said he took part in the online campaign to attack Taiwan’s ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) prior to the general elections in November 2018, in an effort to support the opposition party, the Kuomingtang (KMT), which has a Beijing-friendly stance.
He said that their group had more than 200,000 social media accounts, and many other fan pages to support their effort.
CIIL spent 1.5 billion yuan (about $213 million) on Taiwan’s media outlets alone to help in their efforts to influence the 2018 elections, he said.
Wang said they organized Chinese and Hong Kong students studying in Taiwan and Chinese tourists to aid in promoting pro-Beijing candidates running for the 2018 elections.
Overseas Chinese donations also went to pro-Beijing candidates, said Wang. 

More than 20 million yuan (about $2.8 million) went to Han Kuo-yu, who won a local election to become the mayor of the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung.
Han is now running for president as the KMT candidate.
For the 2018 elections, the DPP suffered a major defeat, losing seven of its regional seats to the KMT. 

The KMT now controls 15 cities and counties, compared to six held by the DPP.
Wang described the 2018 elections as a victory for the Chinese regime.
Wang said many of Taiwan’s elite were in their pocket, including the head of a local daily newspaper, the head of a university, the general manager of a cultural center, several politicians, and gang leaders. 

These people were each paid 2 million to 5 million yuan ($284,155 to $710,388) annually to assist Wang and his group in their infiltration efforts.
In the upcoming 2020 presidential election, Wang said Beijing’s goal is to unseat president Tsai Ing-wen’s reelection bid.
He said that Kung wanted him to go to Taiwan on May 28 to assist her in influence operations targeting Taiwan’s media and the internet. 

But he had a change of heart.
“I saw what’s happening in Hong Kong. And I didn’t want to personally turn Taiwan into Hong Kong. So I decided to quit,” Wang told Vision Times, referring to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong against Beijing’s encroachment in the city.
So on April 23, Wang left his post in Hong Kong to visit his wife and baby son in Sydney, having been granted approval by Kung.
He is now staying at a secret location as he cooperates with the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, the country’s top intelligence agency.
Being in Australia, however, doesn’t guarantee safety, because Beijing has spy cells in the country who could abduct him and his family and send them back to China, Wang said.
Despite the risks, Wang stands by his decision to defect.
“I thought and rethought it time and time again.”
“I wondered if this decision would be a good thing or a bad thing for my life. I couldn’t tell you definitively, but I firmly believe that if I had stayed with [the CCP], I would come to no good end.”