China’s initial failure to respond quickly to COVID-19 as it emerged in Wuhan was due to a “political logjam,” the New York Times reports. But the AP reveals that political controls have only tightened in the time since, with new research on the origins of COVID-19 monitored and subject to approval by a task force set up by Xi Jinping.
Zhang Zhan, a freelance video journalist who documented the early days of Wuhan’s lockdown and criticized the government’s response, was convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
The Chinese government hired private companies to “flood social sites with distracting chatter,” among other tactics to tamp down public outrage during the worst parts of the coronavirus epidemic in China.
Western countries have begun rollouts of vaccines from firms like Pfizer and Moderna. But from Latin America to Southeast Asia and the Middle East, leaders hope that Chinese companies like Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm hold the key to curbing COVID-19.
Countries including Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, and Chile are clamoring for doses of CoronaVac, the vaccine candidate made by Sinovac Biotech. Meanwhile, the maker of another of China’s leading vaccine candidates, Sinopharm, applied last month for market approval.
Five Chinese coronavirus vaccines are in Phase 3 clinical trials, but China has not waited for trials to be complete to inject about one million people since July. Preliminary data suggests that China’s vaccines may be less inoculating than those by Pfizer and Moderna.
The Chinese embassy in Australia shared a detailed list of 14 grievances that Beijing has against the country, extending far beyond China’s core interests and directly criticizing internal Australian affairs.
After months of vague accusations that Australia had broken “mutual trust” with China, Beijing has made explicit a list of grievances with the country.
Chinese embassies in at least six countries — Belgium, France, the U.K., India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines — have said that non-Chinese citizens are temporarily banned from coming to China.