Divine Retribution

Plagues of China
Two cases of the fatal and highly infectious illness, which is related to bubonic plague, were found in Beijing

By Sui-Lee Wee

BEIJING — Two people in China were diagnosed with plague, setting off a panic on Tuesday about the potential spread of the highly infectious and fatal disease and prompting China’s government to warn citizens to take precautions to protect themselves.
Beijing officials said the two infected people came from Inner Mongolia, a sparsely populated region of northern China. 

They sought treatment on Tuesday in a hospital in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, where they were diagnosed with pneumonic plague, according to the government office of the district.
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Weibo, the microblogging site, that there was no need for Beijing residents to panic and that the risks of further transmission are “extremely low.” 

The authorities quickly isolated the patients, conducted epidemiological investigations on the people who could have been exposed and disinfected all the relevant sites, the CDC said. 

They have also strengthened monitoring of patients with fever, it added.
Pneumonic plague is one of three types of infectious disease known as plague caused by the same bacterium, Yersinia pestis. 

Patients diagnosed with pneumonic plague, which causes high fevers and shortness of breath, sometimes first contract the closely related and more well-known disease, bubonic plague.
Fears are mounting in China over a possible outbreak of the disease, once known as the Black Death, which killed tens of millions of people in medieval Europe, and spread through Asia and Africa.
Last month, the authorities in China said they would strengthen quarantine measures to prevent plague from entering the country after Madagascar was struck by a fast-spreading outbreak of the disease. 

It is unclear when the cases were first detected in China but residents are asking why the authorities took so long to diagnose and disclose the problem.
Li Jifeng, a doctor at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital where the two people sought treatment, wrote on WeChat, a social media platform, that the patients sought treatment on Nov. 3. 

That post, which has since been deleted, was published by CN-Healthcare, a website that covers health care news in China. 

Li could not be reached for comment and Beijing Chaoyang Hospital declined to comment.
Li wrote that the patient she saw was a middle-aged man, who had a fever and complained of breathing difficulties for 10 days. 

He sought treatment at a hospital in Inner Mongolia but his condition did not improve. 

His wife also developed a fever and respiratory problems.
“After so many years of specialist training, I’m familiar with the diagnosis and treatment of most respiratory diseases,” wrote Dr. Li. 

“But this time, I looked and looked at it. I couldn’t guess what pathogen caused this pneumonia. I only knew it was rare.”

On why the authorities took so long to make the announcement, Li wrote that signs of any infectious disease need to be repeatedly verified and investigated, and such announcements cannot be “transmitted casually.”
The police quarantined the emergency room in the Chaoyang Hospital on Monday night, the news outlet Caixin reported, citing residents.
On Tuesday, Chinese censors instructed online news aggregators in China to “block and control” online discussion related to news about the plague, according to a directive seen by The New York Times.
Skeptical Chinese internet users have charged the government with being slow to disclose news about the disease, which is transmitted between humans and kills even faster than the more-common bubonic form. 

China has a history of covering up and being slow to announce infectious outbreaks, prompting many people to call for transparency this time.“The plague is not the most terrifying part,” one user wrote on Weibo. 

“What’s even scarier is the information not being made public.”
If left untreated, pneumonic plague is always fatal, according to the World Health Organization. 

But recovery rates are high if detected and treated with antibiotics, within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms, the agency said.
Another user on Weibo called on the government to disclose how the patients arrived in Beijing from Inner Mongolia. 

If the patients traveled on their own using public transportation they could have spread the disease to many people.
“How many people have they encountered potentially?” the user wrote.

“Only 2 kilometers away from Chaoyang Hospital. I’m shaking and trembling.”
According to China’s health commission, six people have died in the country from the plague since 2014. 

The most recent case was recorded earlier this year.
Officials have warned people to avoid traveling to infected areas and contact with rodents.

China's Final Solution

China Spiriting Uyghur Detainees Away From East Turkestan to Prisons in Inner Mongolia, Sichuan
By Shohret Hoshur

Police patrol the area outside Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, in China's East Turkestan colony, June 26, 2017.

Ethnic Uyghurs held in political “re-education camps” in northwest China’s East Turkestan colony are being sent to prisons in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan province, officials have confirmed, adding to the growing list of locations detainees are being secretly transferred to.
In October last year, RFA’s Uyghur Service reported that authorities in the East Turkestan had begun covertly sending detainees to prisons in Heilongjiang province and other parts of China to address an “overflow” in overcrowded camps, where up to 1.1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been held since April 2017.
And earlier this month, RFA spoke to officials in both Shaanxi province and neighboring Gansu province, who confirmed that Uyghur and other Muslim detainees from East Turkestan had been sent to prisons there, although they were unable to provide specific numbers or dates for when they had been transferred.
The first report, which was based on statements by officials in both East Turkestan and Heilongjiang, came in the same month that East Turkestan chairman Shohrat Zakir confirmed to China’s official Xinhua news agency the existence of the camps, calling them an effective tool to protect the country from "terrorism" and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.
As global condemnation over the camp network has grown, including calls for international observers to be allowed into East Turkestan to investigate the situation there, reports suggest that authorities are transferring detainees to other parts of China as part of a bid to obfuscate the scale of detentions of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region.
RFA recently spoke to an official at the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Women’s Prison who said that detainees from East Turkestan had been transferred to detention facilities in the region, but was unable to provide details without obtaining authorization from higher-level officials.
“There are two prisons that hold prisoners from East Turkestan—they are Wutaqi [in Hinggan (in Chinese, Xing'an) League’s Jalaid Banner] Prison and Salaqi [in Bogot (Baotou) city’s Tumd Right Banner] Prison,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
When asked how many Uyghur detainees are held in the prisons, the official said she could not disclose the number “because it is strictly confidential.”
The official said she had attended a meeting on transfers of detainees from East Turkestan and that prior to the meeting attendees had received notices informing them that “we are not allowed to disclose any information regarding the transportation program.”
“Regardless of who is making inquiries, we cannot disclose any information unless we first obtain permission from our superiors,” she said.
An official at the Wutaqi Prison Command Center also told RFA that detainees from East Turkestan are being held at Wutaqi, as well as a second one in Inner Mongolia, without specifying which one.
The official, who also declined to provide his name, said the detainees had been transferred to the two prisons as early as August last year, but was unsure whether they were being permanently relocated to the two prisons or being held there temporarily before they are transferred elsewhere.
“The prisoners are placed in two prisons, but [the officials at the facilities] don’t report to us about what is happening inside,” he said, before referring further inquiries to his supervisor.
“Regarding the number and the exact location of where they are held [in the prisons], I am unable to say,” he said.
The official said he was unsure of whether any detainees from East Turkestan had been sent to Inner Mongolia recently, as information about the transfers is closely guarded.
“It is impossible for me to tell you how many prisoners have been transferred here this month or last month,” he said.
“The authorities are keeping all the information very secret—even we don’t know the details.”

Sichuan transfers
Reports of detainee transfers from East Turkestan to Inner Mongolia followed indications from officials in Sichuan province that prisons there are also accepting those held in East Turkestan "re-education" camps.
When asked which prisons East Turkestan detainees are being sent to in Sichuan, an official who answered the phone at the Sichuan Provincial Prison Administration told an RFA reporter that if he was calling to “visit them,” he would first have to make an official request.
One official at a prison believed to hold detainees from East Turkestan in Yibin, a prefectural-level city in southeast Sichuan, told RFA that he “can’t discuss this issue over the phone” and suggested that the reporter file an official request for information.
But when asked about whether there had been any “ideological changes” to procedures at the facility, a fellow official who answered the phone said “these detentions are connected to "terrorism", so I can’t answer such questions.”
“The transfer of East Turkestan detainees is a secretive part of our work at the prison, so I can’t tell you anything about it,” she added.
The statements from officials in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan province followed recent reports by Bitter Winter, a website launched by the Italian research center CESNUR that focuses on religious in China, which cited “informed sources” as confirming that detainees from East Turkestan are being sent to prison facilities in other parts of the country.
The website, which routinely publishes photos and video documenting human rights violations submitted by citizen journalists from inside China, cited “CCP (Chinese Communist Party) insiders” as saying that more than 200 elderly Uyghurs in their sixties and seventies have been transferred to Ordos Prison in Inner Mongolia.
Bitter Winter also cited another source in Inner Mongolia who said one detainee was “beaten to death by the police” during his transfer, and expressed concern that the victim’s body “might already have been cremated.”
The website has previously said that the Chinese plan to disperse and detain “an estimated 500,000 Uyghur Muslims” throughout China.

Call to action
Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress exile group, told RFA he was “deeply troubled” by the reports of secret transfers of detainees from East Turkestan to prisons in other parts of China, saying the move signalled a “very dark intent” by authorities.
“We simply cannot imagine what kind of treatment they are enduring at the hands of Chinese guards in these prisons, as this is shrouded in complete secrecy,” he said, adding that he was concerned for the well-being of the detainees.
Isa called on the international community to turn its attention to the transfers and demanded that the Chinese government disclose the total number of detainees who had been moved, as well as the location of the prisons they had been sent to.
“If the United Nations, U.S., EU, Turkey and other Muslims nations do not voice their concerns over this troubling development in a timely manner, I fear these innocent Uyghurs will perish in Chinese prisons without a trace,” he said.
China recently organized two visits to monitor re-education camps in East Turkestan—one for a small group of foreign journalists, and another for diplomats from non-Western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Thailand—during which officials dismissed claims about mistreatment and poor conditions in the facilities as “slanderous lies.”
Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations, however, has shown that those in the camps are detained against their will and subjected to political indoctrination, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.
Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained in the camps—equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of East Turkestan.
In November 2018, Scott Busby, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State, said there are "at least 800,000 and possibly up to a couple of million" Uyghurs and others detained at "re-education" camps in East Turkestan without charges, citing U.S. intelligence assessments.
Citing credible reports, U.S. lawmakers Marco Rubio and Chris Smith, who head the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, recently called the situation in East Turkestan "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today."

Plagues of China

China's pig virus threatens its $128 billion pork industry

By Brett Molina

Scientists and officials in China are trying to isolate a deadly pig virus threatening the nation's pork industry.
According to Reuters, an outbreak of Chinese swine fever was discovered on a farm in inner Mongolia. 

Eight pigs died and 14 more were infected.
Since August 1, the virus has spread to seven provinces in China, reports Bloomberg. 

About 40,000 pigs have died, disrupting a pork industry valued at $128 billion.
China has introduced several new rules to attempt to curb the spread of the virus. 

Reuters reports Chinese officials have banned transporting live hogs or pig products from areas bordering a province with an outbreak.
China also introduced bans on feeding kitchen waste or using feed from pig blood, reports Reuters.
Chinese swine fever is a virus affecting pigs. 

There is currently no vaccine to combat the disease, reports Bloomberg. 

Last month, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Association warned the outbreak could move to neighboring countries in Asia, reports The Associated Press.

Fake Empire

Another Chinese Region Faked Fiscal Data, Anti-Corruption Agency Says
REUTERS

BEIJING — Some parts of northern China's Inner Mongolia have fabricated fiscal data, China's anti-corruption agency said, making it the third Chinese region exposed for data falsification after the rust-belt provinces of Liaoning and Jilin.
The latest finding will bolster long-existing scepticism about the reliability of Chinese economic data, reflects local governments' penchant for inflating statistics amid a protracted slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.
In a summary of its findings from an inspection tour of eight provinces and government institutions, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on Sunday that "some places" in the autonomous region had faked data.
It did not provide details.
In January, the northeastern province of Liaoning said in its annual work report that the government had falsified reporting of fiscal data from 2011 to 2014, an incident that prompted authorities to ramp up rhetoric against data fraud and to improve data "quality".

New satellite images show inside China’s ghost cities

By Gus Lubin

China still has a startling number of vacant real-estate developments, judging from new satellite analysis by DigitalGlobe and Business Insider.

Chinese ghost cities have made headlines for nearly a decade, with huge new real-estate developments sitting mostly empty for years. 

Some see them as a sign China is heading for a real-estate crash. 

Others see them as just the typical style of urban expansion for a giant state-run economy.
While some ghost cities are reportedly filling in, the problem isn’t going away. 

A recent Baidu study of phone data gave clear evidence of 50 cities with areas of high vacancy. 

And just this fall China's richest man called Chinese real estate "the biggest bubble in history."
We looked inside some ghost cities with the latest in satellite technology, including time-lapse images, to show what’s making progress and what isn’t. 

See the highlights below.
Chenggong District, Kunming, Yunnan Province,  was labeled a ghost city back in 2012, with reports of 100,000 vacant apartments. 

Five years later, the city still looks very empty — yet skyscrapers are still being built.

Chenggong has big plans, evident in an extensive road grid. 

But the roads are still mostly empty, and many city blocks are still farmland.

A closer look at some of Chenggong’s mostly vacant skyscrapers. 

Note the paved road that transitions to dirt as it moves to the left.

Chenggong, like other ambitious Chinese developments, has dramatic architecture — in this case surrounded by farmland.

Chenggong has several big new university campuses. 

This has sat mostly empty and unfinished for a while, according to DigitalGlobe.

Erenhot is a notorious ghost city in Inner Mongolia. 

Check out our time lapse of one development there: just dirt in 2013 …

... streets full of McMansions in 2015 …

... still-empty streets full of McMansions in 2017.

Ordos, another notorious ghost city in Inner Mongolia, is reportedly adding people but still has lots of unsold housing and unfinished construction. 

This beautiful stadium, for instance, has been sitting unfinished for a long time, according to DigitalGlobe.

Another cool building in Ordos sits dormant, no longer under construction and not in use, according to DigitalGlobe.

Dongsheng District (named by Baidu as a partial ghost city), Ordos City, has large developments like this one sitting dormant. 

The skyscrapers are apparently finished, but the construction equipment is gone, so it appears that work has stopped on the site, DigitalGlobe says.

This development in Dongsheng is up and running but appears to have very few residents.

Ghost city or future city? 

The giant Meixi Lake development, Hunan, looks eerie today, with skyscrapers going up by the dozens and not a lot of residents. 

Then again, prices are still rising in the area, and, according to DigitalGlobe, construction is still going rapidly.

Once called a ghost city, Zhengdong New Area, Henan is reportedly doing quite well. 

Still, the city is building new skyscrapers by the dozens.

Another shot of Zhengdong. 

Will people move in? 

Time will tell.

What has become of China's ghost cities?

There have been many stories in the past about China's countless empty ghost cities, signs of the nation's economic woes. DW examines if these places are still forlorn or bustling with people.
DW

It was 2009 when the first reports hit the Western media: China, the economic miracle, was erecting new cities at a breakneck speed all across the country. 

But nobody wanted to live in them. 

The pictures and anecdotes seemed to be a clear example of China's megalomania and looming real estate bubble. 

"But the full picture is more complicated than that, and every city tells a different story," Haishan Wu, data scientist at Baidu, China's ubiquitous search engine, told DW.
Obtaining that full picture has been a major challenge in recent years, a period when reports of ghost cities mounted. 

Data on the phenomenon has been hard to come by, since the Chinese government does not release vacancy rates for residential buildings. 

That's why researchers have often resorted to unusual methods to get a grasp of the situation, counting lights in apartment windows or analyzing satellite data.

Big Data reveals ghost towns
To get a scientifically-based overview, Wu and his team at Baidu mapped out the 50 biggest ghost cities of China, using the search engine's massive amount of usage data, in a recent study in cooperation with Beijing University.
Detracting tourist cities, which were shown to be only seasonally vacant, approximately 20 permanent ghost cities were identified. 

Most of them are located in the periphery of second and third-tier cities. 

But notably, not all of the overly vacant cities identified were named, because of the delicacy of the information.

China's most famous ghost city Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, is a new addition to the existing city, called Kangbashi, supposed to house one million people

First-tier cities are economic hubs like Beijing and Shanghai, whilst second and third-tier cities are often provincial capitals. 

"Second-tier cities like Chengdu or Harbin do have residential areas that are under occupied. Mostly these are additions to existing cities, making them rather ghost towns than ghost cities," says Wu.
On the commercial side, office spaces even in high-profile second-tier cities like Xi'an and Chengdu are experiencing spiking vacancy rates of 40 to 50 percent. 

Carlby Xie, Senior Director of Colliers International China, told DW that "investors and the government alike are concerned about how slowly the real estate in these cities is selling."

State-controlled urbanization
"The original idea of these satellite cities was to decrease population pressure on the old city centers," Xie explains. 

With unprecedented speed, residential apartments and office spaces were built up around hubs -- or near smaller cities that were supposed to become hubs. 

China is often cited as having used within just three years the amount of concrete the US did in the entire 20th century.
"It was and is a gigantic, unique experiment," Eduard Kögel, urban planner and expert on Chinese cities, told DW. 

The Chinese government intends to move 100 million people from the rural areas into cities by 2020. 

For this purpose, "cities and extensions get built purely based on speculation, but not on direct demand. Massive stretches are built, and it is assumed that the future growth and prosperity will somehow fill the space up."
Sometimes, this assumption seems to prove true. 

Zhengdong, a new district of the provincial capital city of Zhengzhou, was often reported on as one of the biggest Chinese ghost cities, housing rings of empty skyscrapers and encompassing a whopping 150 square kilometers. 

But the recent data gathered by Baidu suggests that it is slowly filling up with residents. 

"There are more and more young people working in this district of Zehngzhou, because the infrastructure has become better than in the old part of town," says Wu.
Nevertheless, in other places, the fate of these yet to be occupied spaces is unclear. 

"In third, fourth or fifth-tier cities, we have recorded very low occupancy rates. This stems from an overly optimistic development at a time of decelerating economy, especially in the tertiary industry," says Xie.

Examples of this can be seen scattered around the country. 

Cities or towns gathering the most media attention were pastiche European cities like Tianducheng, China's version of Paris, complete with a replica Eiffel tower. 

The city was built as a suburb of the provincial capital of Hangzhou. 

Years after its completion, Tianducheng remains largely unoccupied.

Lack of infrastructure and growth
According to the urban planner Kögel, "another reason for the building boom is that leasing the land out to investors to build on is a very crucial part of income for local authorities, who often lack resources." 

This leads to a short-sighted flow of investors building in places that the authorities then do not have enough money to supply with infrastructure, leaving inconveniently placed ghost towns.

Years after its completion, Tianducheng -- China's version of Paris -- remains largely unoccupied

And then, there is Ordos. 

China's most famous ghost city in Inner Mongolia is also actually a new addition to the existing city, called Kangbashi, supposed to house one million people. 

The new district was built on the assumption of continuing growth, but this time almost entirely reliant on natural resources. 

With the crash in demand of the main source of revenue, coal, and a lack of sustainable jobs, the town is now still waiting for its residents.
Baidu's latest research in Ordos shows that true to media reports, very few people live and work in Kangbashi. 

"Even inside the old part of Ordos, we see the labor force declining," Wu says. 

Krueger observes: "It is not very probable that large masses of people will move to the new district Kangbashi in the future, it is still a true ghost city."