BEIJING SWIFT TO CURB NEW COVID CASES

Beijing is taking swift steps to curb a new cluster of local COVID-19 infections that has led to more than 50 new cases in the past four days, including shuttering a major wholesale market linked to all new infections, imposing a partial lockdown in its vicinity and ramping up mass testing and screening in key areas.

The capital reported eight new confirmed cases as of 7 am on Sunday and added 36 new infections on Saturday, with the majority found in its southern Fengtai district but also affecting five other districts.

A large number of the newly confirmed patients work at or have been to Fengtai's Xinfadi wholesale market, which sells a wide range of agricultural, meat and seafood products, and the remaining ones had direct or indirect exposure to the market, the city's health commission said.

The State Council's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism said during a meeting on Sunday that the strictest epidemiological survey and comprehensive investigation into the origin of the source will be rolled out in Xinfadi and its nearby areas.

The meeting stressed expanding testing to cover all key areas and key populations while tightening control of movement in affected communities, launching rigorous screening and enforcing centralized quarantine of all confirmed cases and their close contacts, suspected cases as well as people with fever.

Precautions against hospital-acquired infections must be strengthened and all agricultural product markets, catering venues and related logistics facilities nationwide will be disinfected, according to the meeting.

Following the new infections in Beijing, a number of regions across the country are taking measures to monitor travelers from the capital.

Parts of neighboring Tianjin and Hebei province have released notices requiring thorough screening of people who had traveled to affected areas in Beijing and calling for tighter inspections of fresh produce, meat and seafood products.

Tongliao, a city in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, said all people who come from areas of Beijing that are at medium or high risk of the virus' spread will be placed under centralized quarantine for 14 days and take multiple tests.

Health authorities in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, said on Sunday that people are discouraged from traveling for nonessential reasons to areas seeing new infections.

ECONOMIC RECOVERY CONTINUES IN MAY

China's economy continued to recover in May from the shocks generated by the COVID-19 epidemic as major economic indicators showed improvement, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

Industrial output expanded 4.4 percent year-on-year last month, 0.5 percentage points faster than the previous month.

Retail sales dropped 2.8 percent year-on-year, but contractions narrowed 4.7 percentage points from April's decline.

Fixed-asset investment in the first five months contracted 6.3 percent year-on-year, recovering from a 10.3 percent decline in the first four months.

Meanwhile, the country's service production index turned positive in May, up 1 percent year-on-year. This compared with a 4.5 percent decline in April, showing the service sector is on a path to recovery.

AUTHORITIES, BUSINESSES ENSURE GOOD FOOD SUPPLY

Authorities and businesses are working to guarantee Beijing has an adequate supply and delivery of vegetables and fruit following the capital's largest wholesale vegetable market being closed after its link to a new cluster of COVID-19 cases was detected.

Wang Hongcun, a senior Beijing Bureau of Commerce official, said emergency measures have been put in place to guarantee the food supply during the closure of Xinfadi wholesale market in Fengtai district.

The market has been temporarily closed since 3 am Saturday and service at a nearby long-distance bus terminal has also been suspended since that day.

Massive quantities of vegetables and fruit have been arranged to maintain Beijing supplies.

"The supply of daily necessities in Beijing ran smoothly on Saturday, in an orderly manner and with a stable supply provided for major supermarkets," Wang said at a news briefing in the capital on Sunday.

"However, owing to disease prevention and control measures, the prices of vegetables at some supermarkets and markets rose and some varieties of vegetables have been out of stock for a short period," he added.

Wang said on Saturday that Xinfadi market provides 90 percent of the capital's vegetables and fruit and its temporary closure could affect supply.

Vegetables and fruit previously traded at the market have been moved to five designated areas for wholesale trading. These temporary trading venues will not be open to the general public.

Coordinated efforts to ensure market supply were called for at a meeting presided over by Beijing's Party Secretary Cai Qi on Saturday morning.

It was decided at the meeting that communication between the capital and neighboring cities' markets should be strengthened to ensure a constant and abundant vegetable supply for Beijing, as well as that district officials in the capital should keep in mind that ensuring the availability of Beijing residents' daily necessities was essential.

"Our long-term cooperative production bases helped with timely vegetable and fruit supply for more than 90 communities and 40 workplaces in Beijing," he said.

RIVALRY WITH CHINA A NO-WIN STRATEGY FOR US

As governments worldwide confront the terrible choice between saving lives from COVID-19 and protecting people's livelihoods, economic indicators highlight the intensity of the dilemma. Unemployment has skyrocketed, trade has plunged, and the global economy is facing its worst downturn since the Great Depression. There is only one way to limit the novel coronavirus pandemic's economic fallout: Sino-US cooperation.

But China and the United States have been at odds lately. Since 2017, the US administration has pursued an aggressive containment strategy, wielding trade barriers as its favorite weapon.

Far from spurring a change of heart, the COVID-19 crisis seems to have deepened the US administration's commitment to antagonism to the point that blaming China for the outbreak appears to have taken precedence over protecting American lives. In its latest document "Strategic Approach to the People's Republic of China", the US administration has reiterated its reasoning: a supposedly "clear-eyed" assessment has confirmed China as a strategic competitor in economic, ideological and national-security terms.

The US does not, the document claims, "seek to contain China's development", and "welcomes cooperation by China to expand and work toward shared objectives". But US engagement with China will be "selective and results-oriented", always advancing US national interests.

As the COVID-19 death toll in the US has crossed the 110,000 mark, Washington has no greater interest than containing the coronavirus. And with more than 38 million unemployment claims having been filed in just nine weeks, limiting the pandemic's economic costs must also be worthy of cooperation.

Make no mistake, neither confronting a threat that doesn't respect borders nor safeguarding an economy that is deeply integrated with the rest of the world can be done alone. Yet it is far from clear that the US will subordinate geopolitical rivalry to these vital objectives.

On the contrary, just in the last month, the US Commerce Department introduced new technology restrictions targeting Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, and the Senate passed a bill that could de-list some Chinese enterprises from trading on US stock exchanges. And, while acknowledging the "wide scientific consensus that the virus was not manmade or genetically modified", US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently declared that there is "enormous evidence" to show that it originated in a laboratory in China.

Amid acute emotional and economic trauma, the desire to identify and punish a culprit can certainly be tempting. For the US president, it has emerged as a central feature of his re-election campaign−and a useful way to avoid blame for his administration's failures in containing the pandemic. But history shows the folly of such an approach: policies intended to punish the losers of World War I set the stage for the Great Depression and eventually led to another world war.

CALL TO BOYCOTT SCHOOLS WIDELY CRITICIZED IN HONG KONG

The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, civic groups and educators blasted some opposition activists and organizations over the weekend for using young students as pawns for their political gain while jeopardizing the SAR's interests.

Their criticism came as opposition activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung teamed up with the Hong Kong Secondary School Action Platform and some 20 trade unions to organize an online ballot to rally support for general strikes and class boycotts to oppose the national security legislation for the city.

Chief Secretary for Administration Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said the SAR government severely condemned the move. It might harm Hong Kong as the city is struggling to recover after being hard hit by last year's social unrest and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he said in a blog post on Sunday.

The proposed national security law will stabilize Hong Kong and provide the city with an opportunity to get back on track and move on, Cheung said, calling on students in the city not to join the vote or any class boycott, and stay away from being used as "political pawns".

Talking to the Chinese-language newspaper Ta Kung Pao on Friday, Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung Yun-hung said the SAR's Education Bureau will play its role in protecting students and creating a better learning environment for the young generation.

He also said that changes to Hong Kong's education system are urgently needed, in a bid to instill a sense of national identity among students.

The education chief issued an open letter to all principals of the city's primary schools and secondary schools on Wednesday, noting the government strongly denounced the ballot and the class boycott, as both of them treat students as political bargaining chips.

Schools should not allow students to join the vote or any class boycott, Yueng said in the letter.

The Hong Kong Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (Provincial) Members Association described such a move as "shameful" as the organizers were using students to advance their political agenda.

SALMON CALLED UNLIKELY VIRUS SOURCE

Experts said it is extremely unlikely for seafood like salmon to be the carrier of the novel coronavirus, which was found on cutting boards for imported salmon at Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale market, China's new hot spot of COVID-19 infection.

Beijing reported 36 new domestically transmitted cases on Saturday, all having direct or indirect links to Xinfadi market, the biggest wholesale food and vegetable market for the city. The market has been shut down to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Zeng Guang, a senior researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Sunday that, based on preliminary analysis of the two early cases, the coronavirus strain in the latest outbreak is different from the ones found in China, and early data suggest it is a mutated variety from Europe.

However, Zeng stressed that people should take this finding with a grain of salt as more testing is being conducted to confirm the origin of virus.

Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the CDC, said in a statement on Saturday that fish in their natural habitat cannot catch coronavirus, however, they can be contaminated by workers during capture or transportation.

China imports about 80,000 tons of cooled and frozen salmon each year, according to news site Jiemian.com. Chile, Norway, the Faeroe Islands, Australia and Canada are the main sources of salmon imports.

Wu said that it cannot be concluded that salmon is the source of infection just because novel coronavirus was detected on cutting boards.

"Our seafood products are typically stored and transported in cold containers, thus it is possible for the virus to be preserved for a long time and increase the likelihood of infecting people," he said.

Wu said Beijing's new outbreak could have two possible explanations. The first may be the influx of meat and seafood to the market from all over the country and around the world. Some of it may have been contaminated by workers during processing and transportation, then the virus jumped from produce to people.

The second possibility is person-to-person transmission. "The infected person who brought the virus into the market might be asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms, and the hustle and bustle of the market led to the cluster of new infections," he said.

Wu said there is no need to panic as Beijing has moved swiftly to contain the outbreak. "The know-how accumulated over the last few months, and with the use of advanced technologies like big data, has served us well in our contact tracing and diagnosis initiatives," he said.

"The valuable information we are collecting will be instrumental in Beijing's prevention efforts and may even reveal new insights into the mysteries of the virus' mode of transmission," he added.

Gao Xiaojun, spokesman for the Beijing Health Commission, said on Saturday that of the 40 environmental samples collected from the market that were later tested to contain the virus, only some came from salmon cutting boards.

CANTON FAIR MOVES TO CLOUD

The Canton Fair, also known as the China Import and Export Fair, has been moved to the cloud for the first time since its inception 63 years ago, Sina Finance reported on Monday.

About 50 virtual exhibition areas have been launched to promote supply and purchase side matchmaking and business negotiations all day long since opening on June 15.

In addition, 24-hour online services including IP protection, finance and convenient customs clearance are provided to guarantee the interests of foreign trade companies are protected.

The establishment of new platforms and supporting measures will provide new opportunities to explore the international market and new engines for the world's economic and trade cooperation, analysts said.

Many participating companies, including electrical appliances manufacturer Midea Group and machinery company SUMEC Group, have been actively preparing for the livestream with the aid of new technology.

About 60 to 70 percent of customers have confirmed they will attend the online exhibition, which indicates people are optimistic about Chinese products and strengthens confidence in fair participation, said Yang Yongqing, President of SUMEC Group.

Holding the 127th Canton Fair online is not only an important measure to tackle challenges brought by COVID-19, but also showcases China's determination to stabilize foreign trade, said Pang Ran, associate researcher at the Ministry of Commerce Research Institute.

Making full use of information technologies including internet, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, this year's Canton Fair showed an innovative method of cooperation for foreign and domestic companies and inspired confidence to find opportunities amid challenges.

The Canton Fair has been held every spring and autumn in Guangzhou, capital of southern China's Guangdong province, since its founding in 1957, and is seen as a barometer of China's foreign trade.

HIGH-ALTITUDE HIGHWAY BUILT ON HERDSMEN'S DOORSTEP

A 34-kilometer-long plateau highway has made transport much easier for the herdsmen grazing their animals in Rangtang county, Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture, Southwest China's Sichuan province.

The road, winding its way between an altitude of 3,500 to 4,200 meters, has linked two townships in the county, one on alpine meadow and the other on the foot of the mountain.

Three villages living on raising livestock are now connected by the highway. Before the road was built, the herders had to make a detour to sell yaks, milk, herbs collected from the mountains at the town on the bottom.

When the whole construction work completes in July, the travel distance between the two towns will be shortened by 43 kilometers.

"It took about four hour's ride by horse for herders to reach the town to sell milk. Now the time has reduced to only 30 minutes. So, the sale price has increased from 4 yuan ($0.98) to 7 yuan per 500 grams as the milk is fresher," said He Dongming, vice-director of the transport bureau of the county.

With an investment of 50 million yuan, the project is part of a poverty eradication plan under the Ministry of Transport aimed at improving local infrastructure in Rangtang county.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy. - Howard W. Newton