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Imran Khan arrives in China for talks on CPEC, IMF bailout

Agencies
November 2, 2018

Beijing, Nov 2:  Imran Khan arrived in Beijing on Friday in what is termed as the most significant visit to China by a Pakistani Prime Minister in recent years as the all-weather allies grapple to iron out differences over the multi-billion CPEC and Islamabad approaching 'friendly nations' to avoid a tough IMF bailout package.

Khan arrived in the early hours for his four-day visit, official sources said.

He is scheduled to hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang on shoring up the all-weather ties. Both the countries are expected to sign several agreements.

He will also attend China's International Import Expo on November 5 in Shanghai during the visit, billed as the most significant one by a Pakistani Prime Minister to China in recent years.

Reports in the Pakistan media said Khan was accompanied by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Finance Minister Asad Umar, Advisor on Commerce and Trade Abdul Razzak Dawood, Railways Minister Sheikh Rasheed among others.

Khan's visit evoked considerable interest here as it comes in the wake of his past criticism of the USD 50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects and remarks by his ministers to cut down some of the projects over debt concern.

The cricketer-turned-politician, during his first visit to China, is also expected to seek more Chinese loans to avoid approaching International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout package.

He secured USD three billion funding from his recent visit to Saudi Arabia besides differed payment for oil imports worth about USD three billion for a year.

Pakistan has already approached the IMF but is concerned about the stringent conditions the international lender may impose specially to scrutinise the CPEC projects.

For its part, China is also concerned about critical remarks made by Ministers from Khan's Cabinet.

While Dawood told the Financial Times that some of the agreements were unfair to Pakistani companies and should be put on hold for a year, Rashid said that Pakistan wants to cut the size of the USD eight billion Karachi-Peshawar rail line, the biggest project of the CPEC, by USD two billion.

The statements evoked serious concerns in China as the CPEC is the flagship project of Xi's pet project multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The CPEC has also become a major irritant in India-China relations with New Delhi voicing its opposition to the infrastructure project as it traverses through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Khan, however, assured his support to the CPEC when Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Islamabad in September.

China also agreed to address his concerns that the CPEC projects were mainly benefitting the dominant Punjab region and the new projects will focus on the western region of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

From Beijing's point of view, Pakistan's criticism of the project was a shocker, specially after China's takeover of Sri Lanka's Hambantota port on a 99-year lease as debt swap.

China is concerned over cash-strapped Pakistan's plans to approach the IMF for a bailout package amid assertions by the global lender officials to scrutinise the CPEC loans.

Beijing is also uncomfortable over Pakistan roping in Saudi Arabia to invest in Balochistan bordering Iran.

The province is key to the CPEC as it terminates at the strategic Gwadar port. The CPEC connects China's Xinjiang province with Gwadar through a rail, road and pipeline network.

China do not want the CPEC projects to get caught in the Saudi-Iran rivalry. For its part, China has been giving a top billing for Khan's visit and vehemently deny the debt concerns.

Khan's visit to China will provide an "opportunity" for the two countries to open a "new chapter" of bilateral relations "under the new circumstances," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Monday.

Lu also refuted criticism that the CPEC is causing financial and debt problems for Pakistan, saying Islamabad has already made it clear that debts incurred by the CPEC only account for a very small portion of Pakistan's total debts and is not a reason why the country is experiencing financial difficulties.

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News Network
July 4,2020

Geneva, Jul 4: The World Health Organization has updated its account of the early stages of the COVID crisis to say it was alerted by its own office in China, and not by China itself, to the first pneumonia cases in Wuhan.

The UN health body has been accused by US President Donald Trump of failing to provide the information needed to stem the pandemic and of being complacent towards Beijing, charges it denies.

On April 9, WHO published an initial timeline of its communications, partly in response to criticism of its early response to the outbreak that has now claimed more than 521,000 lives worldwide.

In that chronology, WHO had said only that the Wuhan municipal health commission in the province of Hubei had on December 31 reported cases of pneumonia. The UN health agency did not however specify who had notified it.

WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference on April 20 the first report had come from China, without specifying whether the report had been sent by Chinese authorities or another source.

But a new chronology, published this week by the Geneva-based institution, offers a more detailed version of events.

It indicates that it was the WHO office in China that on December 31 notified its regional point of contact of a case of "viral pneumonia" after having found a declaration for the media on a Wuhan health commission website on the issue.

The same day, WHO's epidemic information service picked up another news report transmitted by the international epidemiological surveillance network ProMed -- based in the United States -- about the same group of cases of pneumonia from unknown causes in Wuhan.

After which, WHO asked the Chinese authorities on two occasions, on January 1 and January 2, for information about these cases, which they provided on January 3.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference on Friday that countries have 24-48 hours to officially verify an event and provide the agency with additional information about the nature or cause of an event.

Ryan added that the Chinese authorities immediately contacted WHO's as soon as the agency asked to verify the report.

US President Donald Trump has announced that his country, the main financial contributor to WHO, will cut its bridges with the institution, which he accuses of being too close to China and of having poorly managed the pandemic.

The WHO denies any complacency toward China.

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Agencies
August 5,2020

Ninety per cent of a sample group of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in China's Wuhan city where the pandemic broke out have reported lung damage and five per cent of them are again in quarantine after testing positive for the virus, according to a media report on Wednesday.

A team at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University led by Peng Zhiyong, director of the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, has been conducting follow-up visits with '100 recovered patients' since April.

The first phase of this one-year programme finished in July. The average age of the patients in the study is 59.

According to the first phase results, 90 per cent of the patients' lungs are still in a damaged state, which means their lungs ventilation and gas exchange functions have not recovered to the level of healthy people, state-run Global Times reported.

Peng's team conducted a six-minute walking test with the patients. They found that the recovered patients could only walk 400 metres in six minutes while their healthy peers could walk 500 metres in the same period.

Some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines even three months after being discharged from the hospital, Liang Tengxiao, a doctor from the Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, was quoted as saying by the report.

Liang's team is also conducting follow-up visits with recovered patients aged above 65.

The results also showed that antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 10 per cent of the 100 patients have disappeared.

Five per cent of them received negative results in Covid-19 nucleic acid tests but positive results in Immunoglobulin M (IgM) tests, and thus have to be quarantined again, the report said.

IgM is usually the first antibody produced by the immune system when a virus attacks. A positive result in an IgM test usually means that a person has just been infected by the virus.

It is still unclear if this means these people have been infected again.

The 100 patients' immune systems have not fully recovered as they showed a low level of B cells -- - a primary force for killing viruses in the human body -- but a high level of T cells which only recognise viral antigens outside infected cells.

"The results revealed that the patients’ immune systems are still recovering," Peng said.

The patients also suffered from depression and a sense of stigma. Most of the recovered patients told the team that their families were not willing to have dinner with them at the same table, the report said.

Less than half of the recovered patients have returned to work, it said.

The findings are significant as the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan city.

Hubei province for which Wuhan is the provincial capital has reported a total of 68,138 confirmed Covid-19 cases till now. The disease has claimed 4,512 lives in the province, according to the official data.

China reported 27 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including 22 locally-transmitted cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Wednesday.

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Agencies
January 9,2020

Kashmir, Jan 9: US Ambassador to India Kenneth I Juster along with envoys from 15 other countries arrived in Srinagar on a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, the first visit by diplomats since the abrogation of the erstwhile state's special status in August last year.

The Delhi-based envoys arrived in Srinagar by a special chartered flight at Srinagar's technical airport where top officials from the newly carved out union territory received them, officials said.

Later in the day, they would be going to Jammu, the winter capital of the newly created Union Territory, for an overnight stay. They will meet Lt Governor G C Murmu as well as civil society members, they said.

Besides the US, the delegation will include diplomats from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Norway, Maldives, South Korea, Morocco, and Nigeria, among others.

Brazil's envoy Andre Aranha Correa do Lago was also scheduled to visit Jammu and Kashmir. However, he backed out because of his preoccupation here, the officials said on Wednesday.

Envoys from the European Union (EU) countries are understood to have conveyed that they will visit the union territory on a different date and are also believed to have stressed on meeting the three former chief ministers -- Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti -- who are under detention.

Officials said envoys of several countries had requested the government for a visit to Kashmir to get a first-hand account of the situation in the Valley following the August 5 decision to abrogate provisions of Article 370 and bifurcate it into two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

This is the second visit of a foreign delegation to Jammu and Kashmir since August 5. Earlier, Delhi-based think tank International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies, a Delhi-based think tank took 23 EU MPs on a two-day visit to assess the situation in the union territory.

The government had distanced itself from the visit with Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy informing Parliament that the European parliamentarians were on a "private visit".

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