The country has been closed to most foreigners since last March to stem the spread of coronavirus which it has largely brought under control at home, stranding many foreigners with jobs and family inside China overseas.

But Chinese embassies in several countries have issued notices saying the country will open visa applications to select people who have taken a China-made jab.

The Chinese Embassy in the US said in a statement dated Monday that it would begin to process “visa applicants inoculated with Chinese Covid-19 vaccines”.

This would apply from this week to those visiting the Chinese mainland for work resumption, business travel, or for “humanitarian needs”, such as reuniting with family members.

Beijing is driving forward its inoculation plan for its vast domestic population with four domestically produced vaccines approved so far. But it has yet to approve any foreign-made jabs.

China has also shipped its vaccines overseas as it works to blunt foreign criticism of the initial spread of the virus from its shores.

The embassy statement said this applied to those who had either had two doses of the vaccine or a single-dose at least 14 days before applying for the visa.

Chinese embassies in other countries including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Italy and Sri Lanka have published similar statements.

Those arriving in China will still have to face a gruelling quarantine of up to three weeks.

China’s vaccines have been rolled out in several countries around the world, including Turkey, Indonesia and Cambodia.

The Philippines received 600,000 vaccine doses from China two weeks ago, kickstarting its inoculation drive.

But they are not readily available everywhere, including in India or Sri Lanka.

And Beijing has struggled to gain international trust for its vaccine candidates, hindered by a lack of transparency on test results.

But Chinese companies are still set to export nearly 400 million doses of home-grown vaccines overseas, state media has reported.

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The  Minister also listed driving concerted national synergy for research into care strategy and further researches into advertised “cure drugs” from local and international claimants; and others.

Dr. Osagie Ehanire disclosed much of the strategies for the management of COVID-19 by the Health authority under his watch, at the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 Press Briefing held Monday.

The  Minister said that the cooperation with the WHO on treatment regimen Solidarity trial also has states like Lagos, Ogun, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kano and FCT enrolled.

Dr. Ehanire further revealed that of the multinational teleconference with Chinese medical and academic experts in Beijing, wherein senior management of the Federal Ministry of Health and clinical case managers in our hospitals, have been participating, “much insight was gained into the treatment strategy of China and other matters of common interest were discussed.”

Concerning the multinational teleconference also, the Honourable Minister said “the learning from this intervention are invaluable in re-examining our methods.”

The  Minister however warned that for Nigeria’s response to COVID-19 to stand a better chance of being effective, it has to be concerted and collaborative saying that this requisite synergy should cut across tiers of government, levels of care and should  build on partnerships to get it right for Nigeria.  “It must be sustained and or extended, with room for interstate collaboration.”

Dr. Ehanire further disclosed that “So far, our efforts are yielding result as shown in states where panic and scare were initially rife, but now subsumed.”

ThisDay Dome Treatment Centre to be opened:

The  Minister of Health also disclosed that the ThisDay Dome treatment centre, a project of the Coalition against COVID-19 (Cacovid) is complete and ready for commissioning, Tuesday,  revealing that the   Minister of FCT will participate in the event.

Of the features of the ThisDay Dome Treatment Centre, Dr. Ehanire said it is fully self-contained, coming with a PCR Laboratory, a fully equipped Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and an incinerator. “This over 260 bed facility adds tremendous boost to the FCT capacity and capabilities.”

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“There is enormous evidence that this is where it began,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

But while highly critical of China’s handling of the matter, Pompeo declined to say whether he thought the virus had been intentionally released.

President Donald Trump has been increasingly critical of China’s role in the pandemic, which has infected nearly 3.5 million people and killed more than 240,000 around the world.

He has insisted that Beijing recklessly concealed important information about the outbreak and demanded that Beijing be held “accountable.”

News reports say Trump has tasked US spies to find out more about the origins of the virus, at first blamed on a Wuhan market selling exotic animals like bats, but now thought possibly to be from a virus research laboratory nearby.

Pompeo, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told ABC that he agreed with a statement Thursday from the US intelligence community in which it concurred “with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified.”

But he went further than Trump, in citing “significant” and “enormous” evidence that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory.

“I think the whole world can see now, remember, China has a history of infecting the world and running substandard laboratories,” Pompeo said.

He said early Chinese efforts to downplay the coronavirus amounted to “a classic Communist disinformation effort. That created enormous risk.”

“President Trump is very clear: we’ll hold those responsible accountable.”

AFP

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Trade war with the United States bears much of the blame (or gets the credit, depending on one’s perspective), but even if Washington and Beijing were to sign a deal tomorrow, China would not regain its old momentum.

Official Ministry of Finance (MOF) figures, not surprisingly, offer a soothing picture of moderate decline, but private sources tell a much more dramatic story. According to the American Enterprise Institute’s well-regarded China Global Investment Tracker (CGIT), Chinese overseas investments of all kinds in the first half of this year averaged only $27.5 billion, half the rate averaged during the same time in 2018 and barely a quarter the rate of 2017’s first half.  This year’s figures are lower than any time since 2008. Construction contracts, largely in the third world as part of China’s Belt and Road initiative, have fallen off, too, but less dramatically. China clearly has become much less engaged with the world than it was.

Two things have caused this retreat. One is a growing hostility among host countries toward Chinese investment. Especially developed countries, the United States in particular, have balked over the Chinese practice of extracting technology. Suspicions along these lines have held up approvals for Chinese purchases and other direct flows of funds. Some familiar with Chinese practice have gone a step further. The European Chamber of Commerce has warned against developing a dependence on China and Chinese funds. This combination of concerns and suspicions have centered primarily on China’s huge state owned enterprises and less on private Chinese investment. But if private investment has fallen off less dramatically, this growing reluctance in the West has had its effect there, too.

More significant is China’s relative shortage of hard currency. Despite Beijing’s efforts to make the yuan a global currency, it is little used in currency transactions – no more than 2% of the total in fact – and so is of little use in overseas purchases.  Meanwhile the trade war with the United States has already begun to cut into Beijing’s supplies of foreign exchange.  Beijing actually anticipated the problem and in 2017 and began to ration foreign exchange even before the White House added any tariffs. The first major investment declines occurred in late 2018, when the While House first imposed 10% tariffs on a range of Chinese products. The next drop coincided with this past spring’s increased tensions. To be sure, Beijing’s foreign exchange hoard remains huge, but officials are wary of how rapidly it has shrunk, falling some 25% from almost $4 trillion at its peak in 2014 to barely over $3 trillion during the first half of this year.  Beijing’s rationing of these financial resources has affected the state-owned sector in particular. Private companies have a greater willingness and ability to borrow hard currencies abroad.

Within the investment pullback, North America, which historically has accounted for some 17% of China’s overseas investment flows, has seen the biggest drop. No doubt, the hostility created by trade friction has played a role.  But China has also pulled back in Europe, where British and Swiss destinations have long dominated.  Australia and Singapore, which historically have accounted for about 10% of Chinese overseas investment flows, have seen less relative shortfall but some nonetheless.

China has concentrated its remaining financial resources on less developed countries. The reasons are two fold.  First, activities in these countries center more on construction contracting than investing. Such efforts may require subsidies, but they demand little hard currency. Indeed, China collects fees on many of these projects. Second, Beijing has clearly made its Belt and Road initiative (BRI) a political priority. This effort at land trade routes between China on one side and Europe and the Middle East on the other may not generate the secure financial returns that investments in the developed world offer, but monies spent in these projects pay Beijing huge political dividends by tying these countries to China and by advancing a project that China has touted as an alternative to U.S.-led, mostly maritime trade arrangements. BRI historically has captured more than three-fifths of China’s overseas construction volumes with almost three quarters of the monies involved in energy and transportation in such places as Pakistan and Iran, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Preliminary figures for 2019 show that as all other efforts have diminished BRI has captured a still larger proportion of China’s efforts.

Even if China and the United States were to sign a trade deal tomorrow, these trends would likely persist. Though trade would increase with a new treaty, the terms would no doubt create a more even balance than previously, making it highly unlikely that China could replenish its reserves of hard currency quickly, if at all. At the same time, suspicions of Beijing’s agenda and practices, especially China’s state-owned enterprises, will persist, trade deal or no. Political imperatives will, of course, keep China focused on BRI and its construction projects.  For the investment flows, the best to expect is stability. It seems that for better or worse, the world has already seen the high water mark of Chinese investment flows.

Source : Forbes

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