Colombo: China has given debt-ridden Sri Lanka the financing assurances required by the IMF to unlock a USD 2.9 billion bailout package for the country, days after India strongly backed the island nation’s efforts to secure the loan from the global lender to recover from its worst-ever economic crisis.
The Sunday Times newspaper reported that China’s Exim Bank delivered a letter on Saturday granting Sri Lanka a two-year moratorium on repayment and agreeing with the International Monetary Fund’s extended fund facility (EFF).
The report was confirmed by Sri Lankan officials who did not want to be named.
The Chinese response came close on the heels of India stepping in first to issue the necessary assurances last week.
India’s ministry of finance last week issued a letter to the IMF to confirm its support to Sri Lanka on the issue of debt restructuring, ahead of the visit by the external affairs minister S Jaishankar to Colombo which concluded on Friday.
Jaishankar during his visit also announced that India has given the required assurances to Sri Lanka for the bailout package.
Sri Lankan officials said that China had agreed to a short-term suspension of what Sri Lanka owed and expects Sri Lankan creditors to get together to work out the medium and long-term commitments.
The IMF in September last year approved Sri Lanka a 2.9 billion dollar bailout package over 4 years pending Sri Lanka’s ability to restructure its debt with creditors — both bilateral and sovereign bond holders.
By the end of June 2022, Sri Lanka owed nearly USD 40 billion to bilateral, multilateral and commercial loans, according to the figures released by the Treasury.
Chinese loans amounted to 20 per cent of the total debt owed and 43 per cent of the bilateral loans.
Sri Lanka in April declared its first-ever debt default in its history as the economic crisis triggered by forex shortages sparked public protests.
Months-long street protests led to the ouster of the then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in mid-July. Rajapaksa had started the IMF negotiations after rejecting to tap the global lender for support.
With assurances from creditors, the 2.9 billion dollar facility could get the IMF board approval in March, officials said.
Sri Lanka has introduced painful economic measures such as tax hikes and utility rate hikes. Trade unions and opposition groups have organised protests against such measures.
The IMF bailout has been put on a halt as Sri Lanka pursues talks with creditors to meet the global lender’s condition for the facility to help it get through its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948. Earlier, Sri Lanka completed its debt restructuring talks with Japan.
The IMF facility would enable the island nation to obtain bridging finance from markets and other lending institutions such as the ADB and the World Bank.
Beijing: About 80 per cent of China’s population has been infected with COVID-19, that is nearly eight in 10 people, a prominent government scientist has claimed, CNN reported.
Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention has claimed that the present “wave of epidemic has already infected about 80% of the people” in the country of 1.4 billion population.
Wu Zunyou’s claim comes amid concerns that the travel rush that takes place around the Lunar New Year holiday time could spread the virus to the countryside and lead to the second wave of infections.
Speaking on his personal social media account, Wu claimed that the scenario was unlikely as many people in China have already been infected with COVID-19. Wu claimed that the possibility of a large scale COVID-19 rebound is very small in China.
“In the next two to three months, the possibility of a large-scale Covid-19 rebound or a second wave of infections across the country is very small,” CNN quoted Wu Zunyou as saying.
On Thursday, Chinese health authorities said that visits to clinics for fever and COVID-19 hospitalizations in China have reduced since their peaks in late December and early January respectively.
The authorities have said that the number of people infected with COVID-19 who need critical care in hospitals has also peaked. Nearly 60,000 people infected with COVID-19 died in Chinese hospitals between December 8 and January 12 after Beijing abruptly ended its “zero-Covid” policy, CNN reported citing government data.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization’s executive director for health emergencies Mike Ryan said that the numbers released by China “under-represent the true impact of the disease” with regards to hospital, ICU admissions and deaths.
Meanwhile, more than 26 million passenger trips were taken on the eve of the Lunar New Year, CNN reported citing Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported. Over 4.1 million people travelled by train and 756,000 people travelled by air for holiday reunions on the day prior to the start of the Lunar New Year, as per the news report.
China’s road transport system registered over 20 million passenger trips on the eve of the Lunar New Year, a rise of 55.1 per cent witnessed from 2022, CNN cited CCTV report. As of Friday, China’s transport system managed more than 560 million passenger trips in the first 15 days of the 40-day ongoing Spring Festival travel.
“He has never experienced what a traditional new year is like because he was too young three years ago and he had no memory of that,” said Si Jia, who brought her 7-year-old son to the Qianmen area near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to experience the festive vibe and learn about traditional Chinese culture.
Nearly 53,000 offered prayers at Beijing’s Lama Temple but the crowds appeared to be smaller compared to pre-pandemic days. The Tibetan Buddhist site allows up to 60,000 visitors a day, citing safety reasons, and requires an advance reservation.
Throngs of residents and tourists swarmed pedestrian streets in Qianmen, enjoying snacks from barbecue and New Year rice cake stands, and some children wore traditional Chinese rabbit hats. Others held blown sugar or marshmallows shaped like rabbits.
At Taoranting Park, there was no sign of the usual bustling new year food stalls despite its walkways being decorated with traditional Chinese lanterns. A popular temple fair at Badachu Park that was suspended for three years will be back this week, but similar events at Ditan Park and Longtan Lake Park have yet to return.
The mass movement of people may cause the virus to spread in certain areas, said Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control. But a large-scale Covid-19 surge will be unlikely in the next two or three months because about 80% of the country’s 1.4 billion people have been infected during the recent wave, he wrote on the social media platform Weibo on Saturday.
The center reported 12,660 Covid-19-related deaths between Jan. 13 and 19, including 680 cases of respiratory failure caused by the virus and 11,980 fatalities from other ailments combined with Covid-19. These are on top of 60,000 fatalities reported last week since early December. The statement on Saturday said the deaths occurred in hospitals, which means anyone who died at home would not be included in the tally.
China has counted only deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official Covid-19 death toll, a narrow definition that excludes many deaths that would be attributed to Covid-19 in much of the world.
In Hong Kong, revelers flocked to the city’s largest Taoist temple, Wong Tai Sin, to burn the first incense sticks of the year. The popular ritual was suspended the last two years due to the pandemic.
Traditionally, big crowds gather before 11 p.m. on Lunar New Year’s Eve, with everyone trying to be the first, or among the first, to put their incense sticks into the stands in front of the temple’s main hall. Worshippers believe those who are among the first to place their incense sticks will stand the best chance of having their prayers answered.
Resident Freddie Ho, who visited the temple on Saturday night, was happy that he could join the event in person.
“I hope to place the first incense stick and pray that the New Year brings world peace, that Hong Kong’s economy will prosper, and that the pandemic will go away from us and we can all live a normal life,” Ho said. “I believe this is what everyone wishes.”
Meanwhile, the crowds praying for good fortune at the historic Longshan Temple in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, were smaller than a year ago even as the pandemic has eased. That is partly because many had ventured to other parts of Taiwan or overseas on long-awaited trips.
As communities across Asia welcomed the Year of the Rabbit, the Vietnamese were celebrating the Year of the Cat instead. There’s no official answer to explain the difference. But one theory suggests cats are popular because they often help Vietnamese rice farmers to chase away rats.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chinese diplomats are fanning out with a new softer message for international partners and adversaries alike. Gone is the aggressive “wolf warrior” rhetoric. In its place, a warmer tone and a promise of economic cooperation.
Vice Premier Liu He took Beijing’s diplomatic olive branch to the exclusive annual huddle of the global political and business elite in Davos, Switzerland this week. With a heated transatlantic trade spat exploding in panel after panel and melting the Swiss Alpine snow, Liu offered a kinder, gentler Beijing.
“China’s national reality dictates that opening up to the world is a must, not an expediency. We must open up wider and make it work better,” Liu said on Tuesday.
The Chinese charm offensive drove a lot of private conversations in Davos amid the World Economic Forum gathering. Executives are eager to learn more — and as always to explore opportunities in a market as big as China’s. The shift, if real, would signal a return to something the Davos crowd considers more normal: a somewhat predictable, business-friendly Chinese communist leadership, more interested in making money than waging fights against internal critics or outside enemies. The improved economic relationship between China and Australia has fueled such optimism.
Western officials have heard the message as well, but are suspicious that the outreach is more diplomatic sparkle than an indication of substantive changes. They are leery that the growing economic and military threat posed by China remains despite the velvet gloves.
The shift has been gathering steam for weeks after China’s President Xi Jinping offered a warmer tone in his meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Bali in November. Xi urged a return to “healthy and stable growth” in bilateral relations.
That has set in motion a cascade of Chinese initiatives seemingly aimed at repairing the harm done by years of “wolf warrior”-style diplomacy; saber-rattling across the Taiwan Strait; a more bellicose military posture in the Indo-Pacific; economic coercion; and high-tech espionage.
China’s Foreign Ministry is rolling out a rhetorical red carpet for U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit in early February. Europe is bracing for a multi-country diplomacy spree by former Foreign Minister Wang Yi. On Wednesday in Zurich, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s meeting with Liu reaped an invitation to visit China “in the near future.” And the Chinese Foreign Ministry signaled gentler public messaging by banishing pugnacious spokesperson Zhao Lijian to the bureaucratic backwater of the ministry’s Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs last week.
Western officials still have their guard up, though — particularly since Chinese diplomats were until recently issuing outright threats to their host countries.
“We are seeing a warmer Beijing that’s keen to talk about a business-as-usual approach, and there are fewer wolf warrior narratives,” an EU official told POLITICO on condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to speak on the record. “However, a softer face doesn’t necessarily mean a softer heart.”
Russia’s friend
That skepticism springs from the fact that Beijing isn’t matching its rhetorical expressions of bilateral goodwill with any substantive policy shifts. China’s “no limits” alignment with Russia continues even after Moscow’s war on Ukraine and record numbers of Chinese military aircraft regularly menace Taiwan. Beijing denies its well-documented abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and continues what the U.S. calls “unfair trade practices” that sustain billions of dollars of U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports.
There are also suspicions that China is seeking to prevent the imposition of additional crippling U.S. export restrictions on high-technology items such as semi-conductors — and slow down or derail U.S. efforts to persuade its allies to do likewise.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing | Pool photo by Ed Jones/Getty Images
“Xi wants the American boot off his neck — he can’t stomach any more tech containment or more sanctions and recognizes that a lot of [Beijing’s] foreign diplomacy has backfired and he wants to lower the temperature,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Beijing’s uptick in diplomatic outreach aims to “seek a reprieve from Washington’s regulatory assault on China’s tech sector, and then lay the groundwork to stimulate China’s economy after this current COVID wave subsides,” Singleton said.
China is in desperate need of an international image overhaul. The results of a Pew Research survey published in June indicated “negative views of China remain at or near historic highs” in 19 European and Asian countries due to concerns about human rights and perceptions of a growing Chinese military threat. Pew Research Center survey results released in September revealed that 82 percent of Americans in 2022 had “an unfavorable opinion of China,” an increase from 76 percent the previous year.
Beijing’s change in tone reflects its alarm at the Biden administration’s success in rallying international support for his China-countering Indo-Pacific Strategy. That has included arch-rival Japan’s embrace of closer defense ties with the U.S. underwritten by a multibillion-dollar investment in Tokyo’s military.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s sense of vulnerability is heightened by China’s raging COVID outbreak and an economy pummeled by three years of lockdown linked to the country’s now-defunct zero-COVID policy. “There’s recognition [in Beijing] that — wait a minute, the U.S. is not going anywhere, it is still a major geopolitical power — and so China has to reengage with the United States,” said Victor Shih, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the University of California, San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.
Uphill struggle
But old habits die hard. Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, the incoming Chinese ambassador to the U.S., accused the Biden administration of “besieging China through geopolitics such as the Indo-Pacific Strategy,” in a speech on Monday. And besides Zhao’s removal from the Foreign Ministry press briefing platform, Xi hasn’t fired or demoted any senior “wolf warrior” diplomats, points out Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
EU officials in Brussels are preparing for a visit by Wang, the former Chinese foreign minister who has been promoted into the 24-person Politburo, the Communist Party’s ruling body, to oversee foreign affairs.
But Wang faces an uphill struggle in convincing Europe of a shift in China’s diplomatic settings. The EU is angered by Xi’s close relationship with Moscow despite Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. In response, European leaders have started exploring the diversification of sources of key imports, including those from China.
In conversations with their European counterparts, Beijing officials and diplomats have adopted the tactic of highlightingrecent transatlantic disputes to try to persuade the Europeans that the U.S. — even after the Donald Trump era — remains an untrustworthy ally.
“They like to repeat the U.S. ‘gains’ in the Russian war against Ukraine, as well as the IRA,” another European official said, referring to the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which is seen by many Europeans as a protectionist policy unfavorable to EU businesses. China claims that the U.S. military-industrial complex stands to gain from the war, while Europe suffers more from the energy crisis than the U.S.
Beijing is also reaching out to traditional allies in the U.S. business community to amplify its more benign messaging. Wang sat down in Beijing last month with John Thornton, former Goldman Sachs president and the current executive chair of Barrick Gold Corporation. That meeting signaled that “China is open to dialogue with the United States at all levels,” current Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang tweeted.
China’s former Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly | Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images
Similar outreach to the European business community may fall flat.
“China heavily subsidizes its industry and restricts access to its market for EU companies,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. “We need to focus on de-risking rather than decoupling. This means using all our tools to deal with unfair practices.”
But Beijing will hope that persisting with the warmer rhetoric will pay off even if the fundamentals don’t change.
“There are elements of Wall Street and certain constituencies in the U.S. government that are extremely receptive to talk about stability and predictability in the U.S.-China relationship after a very volatile two years,” said Singleton from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “But it’s an illusion.”
Matt Kaminski contributed reporting from Davos, Switzerland.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
In a significant development, India has reportedly surpassed China as the world’s most populous country. According to projections from the World Population Review (WPR), India’s population was 141.7 crore as of the end of 2022. That’s a little more than 50 lakh more than the 141.2 crore declared by China on January 17.
India’s population momentarily surpassed China’s population as China mistakenly reported right number of Covid deaths in the country. However, China regained its position after rectifying the Covid death reports.
China called WPR report misleading and claimed there are a very few deaths in China due to Covid.
Speaking to The New York Times, Elon Musk said “I assure the world that increasing population isn’t a threat as I am already building houses in Mars and exploring lives in Uranus.
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To better understand how they develop and reproduce in a zero-gravity environment, China is reportedly planning to send monkeys to its recently launched Tiangong space station. The experiment would be carried out in the largest module of the space station, which is primarily used for life sciences experiments, according to the South China Morning Post, which cited Chinese scientists Zhang Lu, who oversaw scientific research for the space station.
After examining smaller organisms such as fish and snails, Mr. Zhang stated that “some studies involving mice and macaques (monkeys) will now be carried out to see how they grow or even reproduce in space.” He thinks that by conducting these studies, we will learn more about how organisms adapt to microgravity and other space environments.
According to the report, experts did note that there are still a number of challenges associated with conducting such studies on animals with complex life forms, such as rats and primates. They pointed out that during the Cold War, Soviet researchers were able to train a few mice to overcome their physical limitations and engage in sexual activity for the duration of an 18-day space mission. But none of them gave birth after returning to Earth, and there were no indications of pregnancy.
According to Kehkooi Kee, a professor at Tsinghua University’s school of medicine, the difficulties of conducting a life sciences experiment in space rose exponentially with the size of the animals used. According to the outlet, he continued, “The astronauts will need to feed them and handle the waste.”
The absence of gravity, according to some earlier ground experiments, may harm testicles and other reproductive organs, causing test animals’ levels of the sex hormone to significantly decline.
However, Mr. Kee continued by stating that “these experiments will be necessary” as more countries plan for long-term habitation in orbit around the Moon or Mars and as larger animals, particularly monkeys, exhibited more similarities to humans.
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