Business Point Today

China’s economy is paying the price for the government’s Covid Zero policy with industrial output and consumer spending sliding to the worst levels since the pandemic began and analysts warning of no quick recovery. Industrial output unexpectedly fell 2.9 per cent in April from a year ago, while retail sales contracted 11.1 per cent in the period, weaker than a projected 6.6 per cent drop. The unemployment rate climbed to 6.1 per cent and the youth jobless rate hit a record. China’s economy has taken an enormous hit from the government’s stringent efforts to keep the virus at bay, with major cities like Shanghai locked down for several weeks and restrictions in many other places cutting into spending, shutting factories and blocking supply chains. The government is insisting on sticking with its Covid Zero strategy to curb infections, even though the high transmissibility of the omicron variant puts cities at greater risk of repeatedly locking down and reopening. Shanghai is slowly sta...

With the QUAD summit scheduled to take place in Tokyo on May 24, the Chinese strategy to create choke points in the Indo-Pacific is certainly going to come up for discussion as these steps will have long term effects on the free and open seas. The issue assumes alarming dimensions if the Communist Party of China decides to militarily subsume Republic of Taiwan with its sea-based forces particularly the nuclear submarines crossing the first Island chain encircling mainland China. On April 22, a high-power delegation led by US National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell with Deputy INDOPACOM Commander read the riot act to Solomon Islands Prime Minister over its security pact with Communist China. The message was simple and blunt: if Solomon Islands allow China to establish a Chinese military post or base in far Pacific, then the US would respond in kind. With the QUAD summit scheduled to take place in Tokyo on May 24, the Chinese strategy to create choke points in th...

 Crews searching through the wreckage of the crashed China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 jet have found the second black box. Flight MU5735 crashed into a mountainside in southern China on March 21, killing all 132 people on board. Nine crew members are among the dead. The black box, which records flight data, could shed light on the cause of the crash. It has been sent to Beijing for analysis, state media reported. The first black box, the cockpit voice recorder, was delivered to the Chinese capital after being found last Wednesday. The crash was the deadliest aviation disaster on mainland China for 28 years. The plane was heading to coastal Guangzhou from the south-western city of Kunming when it dived from its cruising altitude at about the time it should have started its landing descent. It briefly appeared to pull out of its nosedive before resuming its plunge to Earth, flight tracking website FlightRadar24 found. Its data showed the aircraft was plummeting about 9,450 metre...