China emits more greenhouse gas than the entire developed world combined, a new report has claimed.
 
The research by Rhodium Group says China emitted 27% of the world's greenhouse gases in 2019.
 
The US was the second-largest emitter at 11% while India was third with 6.6% of emissions, the think tank said.

Beijing challenges Australia for slice of the Antarctic runways

China has announced plans for a large year-round airport 17 miles from its Zhongshan ice research station, also in east Antarctica and within the 42 per cent of the continent claimed by Australia.

NYSE to Delist Chinese Telecoms Carriers After Rejecting Appeals
Delistings to follow Trump-era investment ban and Biden-era review

WHO gives emergency approval to first Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, Sinopharm

Anti-China alliance coalescing in South China Sea

Japan recently announced a new package of defense aid to the Philippines, the first-ever under the official development assistance (ODA) mechanism. At the same time, the United Kingdom is deploying its largest-ever naval flotilla to the region in recent memory, led by the newly-minted aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.
 
An Australian and American company, meanwhile, are finalizing the takeover of a major shipyard in the strategically-located Subic Bay in the Philippines, part of a broader bid to ward off Chinese investment in the Southeast Asian country’s critical infrastructure.

US officials obtained the papers which were written by military scientists and senior Chinese public health officials in 2015 as part of their own investigation into the origins of Covid-19, reports The Australian.
 
Chinese scientists described SARS ­coronaviruses - of which Covid is an example - as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons”.
 
They boasted the viruses could be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before”.

We write to request documents that will assist us in our inquiry into the origins of SARS- CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. As leaders on the Congressional Committee with jurisdiction over public health, we strongly support a comprehensive investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the possibility of an accidental laboratory leak. Accordingly, we request that the U.S. Department of State release unclassified documents and declassify other documents for public release, as appropriate, related to the assertion in the Department’s January 15, 2021 Fact Sheet that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China collaborated with the Chinese military in conducting classified research, including laboratory animal experiments.1

China has lent billions of dollars to African nations (shaded red showing which countries have accepted cash, with darker colours indicating higher levels of debt) while building ports, power stations, railways and roads. Beijing has also built a military base in Djibouti (right), but is planning more - with 'likely sites' in Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Seychelles (blue pentagons). But is is the possibility of a new naval base on the west coast (shaded blue) that has caused fresh alarm in the US

Meanwhile, China has lent at least $153billion to African governments to finance the development - according to the China-Africa Research Initiative - though the real total is thought to be far higher once other types of financing such as grants and direct investment are included.
 
The projects don't stop there. According to The Heritage Foundation, China has built no fewer than 186 government buildings in 40 out of 54 African countries, developed 70 per cent of the continent's 4G networks, and even built sensitive intra-governmental communications networks for 14 nations.

@cgtnamerica
Chinese tourists add a major boost to China’s economy. What's impact and impact and outlook? Jonathan Kao, Managing Dir. for Greater China, BCD Travel, on impact and outlook. #China #ChineseTourism

@spectatorindex
 
Israel: 121
UAE: 110
Chile: 80
UK: 75
US: 75
Germany: 40
Spain: 39
Canada: 39
Italy: 37
France: 35
Norway: 34
Turkey: 29
Saudi: 28
Brazil: 21
China: 20
Mexico: 15
Russia: 14
India: 11
Indonesia: 7.8
Japan: 3.3
 
(Our World in Data)

China, Fauci and the Origins of Covid
Did the virus come from a Chinese lab funded by the celebrated doctor’s U.S. government institute?

In an exhaustive account of the viral possibilities published this week by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nicholas Wade argues that the Chinese lab is the most likely source of the world-wide agony.

Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led by China’s leading expert on bat viruses, Shi Zheng-li or “Bat Lady,” mounted frequent expeditions to the bat-infested caves of Yunnan in southern China and collected around a hundred different bat coronaviruses...

“It is clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was systematically constructing novel chimeric coronaviruses and was assessing their ability to infect human cells and human-ACE2-expressing mice,” says Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and leading expert on biosafety.

It’s documented that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were doing gain-of-function experiments designed to make coronaviruses infect human cells and humanized mice. This is exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS2-like virus could have emerged. The researchers were not vaccinated against the viruses under study, and they were working in the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 laboratory. So escape of a virus would not be at all surprising.

Proponents of natural emergence have a rather harder story to tell... No one has found the bat population that was the source of SARS2, if indeed it ever infected bats. No intermediate host has presented itself, despite an intensive search by Chinese authorities that included the testing of 80,000 animals. There is no evidence of the virus making multiple independent jumps from its intermediate host to people, as both the SARS1 and MERS viruses did. There is no evidence from hospital surveillance records of the epidemic gathering strength in the population as the virus evolved. There is no explanation of why a natural epidemic should break out in Wuhan and nowhere else. There is no good explanation of how the virus acquired its furin cleavage site, which no other SARS-related beta-coronavirus possesses, nor why the site is composed of human-preferred codons. The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities.