China

BEIJING, Mar.2 (APP): Pakistan is an important neighbour of Afghanistan and will continue to play a pivotal role in the peace and reconciliation process in that country, Cheng Xizhong, visiting professor at Southwest University of Political Science and Law said on Monday.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of ethnic Uighurs were moved to work in conditions suggestive of “forced labor” in factories across China supplying 83 global brands, an Australian think tank said in a report released on Sunday.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) report, which cited government documents and local media reports, identified a network of at least 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces where more than 80,000 Uighurs from the western region of Xinjiang have been transferred.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong, grappling months of sometimes violent anti-government unrest, is to spend about HK$500 million ($64.3 million) on police protective equipment, including six armored vehicles, to help combat the threat of “local terrorism”.

Police chief Chris Tang was speaking on Monday after the government announced in its budget last week that police funding would be HK$25.8 billion, up 25 percent from the previous year, drawing widespread criticism from pro-democracy activists.

BEIJING, Mar 2 (NNN-XINHUA) – Nearly 3,000 beds have been set up by 63 military hospitals, designated to treat patients with the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), with over 10,000 military medics working at the front line, a military official said today (Monday).

As of Sunday, the designated hospitals of the armed forces and military medical teams, dispatched to the virus-hit Hubei Province, had treated 4,450 COVID-19 patients, with 1,000 cured, said Chen Jingyuan, a health official with the Logistic Support Department of the Central Military Commission, in Beijing.

1 March 2020; AFP: The Xuda Shoes Company is usually bustling at this time of year, with workers having long returned from a Lunar New Year holiday in their hometowns to kick-start production of tens of thousands of shoes daily.

But China's coronavirus epidemic has changed all that.

Only about one-third of the roughly 1,000-strong workforce at Xuda's factory in the eastern export hub of Wenzhou are around, the rest blocked by virus-induced travel disruptions and safety measures.

Beijing, Feb 29 (AFP/PTI) China's manufacturing activity fell to its lowest level on record in February as official data on Saturday confirmed the massive damage the deadly coronavirus epidemic has caused to the world's second-largest economy.

The announcement comes as the epidemic has rapidly spread to a growing number of countries, pushing stock markets to their lowest levels since the 2008 global financial crisis over fears that the coronavirus could wreak havoc on the world economy.

Beijing, Feb 29 (PTI) Forty seven more people have died of the deadly coronavirus, rasing the death toll in the country to 2,835 while the number of confirmed cases climbed to 79,251, Chinese health officials said on Saturday.

China's National Health Commission (NHC) in its daily report on Saturday said it received reports of 427 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection and 47 deaths on Friday.

(AP) --- Fear of the spreading coronavirus has led to a global run on sales of face masks despite medical experts’ advice that most people who aren’t sick don’t need to wear them.

Many businesses are sold out, while others are limiting how many a customer can buy. Amazon is policing its site, trying to make sure sellers don’t gouge panicked buyers.

In South Korea, hundreds lined up to buy masks from a discount store. Rumors that toilet paper and napkins could be used as masks have emptied store shelves in Asia of paper goods over the past few weeks.

BEIJING, Feb 27 (APP): The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a further $2 million to help developing countries in Asia and the Pacific contain the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and improve resilience to this and other communicable diseases.

BEIJING (AP) — As the worst-hit areas of Asia continued to struggle with a new virus, with hundreds more cases reported Thursday in South Korea and China, worries about infection and containment spread across the globe.

For the first time, the coronavirus has caused more new cases outside China, the epicenter of the outbreak, than inside the country. With Brazil on Wednesday confirming Latin America’s first case, the virus has reached every continent but Antarctica.