Locked down and running out of food: Xinjiang residents vent on social media
There hasn’t been an official announcement but people in Ili Kazakh prefecture say they have been confined to their homes since early August after Covid-19 outbreak
They have complained about shortages of food and supplies and difficulties accessing medical care, as well as conditions in quarantine facilities

Some residents have complained about food shortages becoming acute in the prefecture in recent days, with one post on Weibo showing a Uygur man in tears because his three children had not eaten for days. Others said they could not get access to medical care, with one post including a photo of a Uygur boy with a high temperature waiting for treatment. Neither post could be verified independently.

One video posted to Weibo that has since been removed showed a man standing on a window ledge shouting “I’ve had enough”. Another video showed a couple and their newborn baby outside their residential complex at night, unable to return home after the woman had given birth in a hospital.

On Friday, the government of Korla in the Bayingolin Mongol autonomous prefecture, also in Xinjiang, apologised for failing to adjust the Covid-19 risk levels of residential areas when they should have, and keeping people confined to their homes for too long causing “emotional distress” for some.

Zhanjiang, China – September 6, 2022 – BASF is inaugurating  the first plant of its Zhanjiang Verbund site today. It will supply an additional capacity of 60,000 metric tons of engineering plastics compounds per year in China, bringing BASF’s total capacity of engineering plastics in Asia Pacific to 420,000 metric tons from 2023. The new plant will enable BASF to meet the growing demand of its customers, particularly in the automotive and electronics industries.

As announced in July 2018, the BASF Zhanjiang Verbund site will be the company’s largest investment to date, with up to €10 billion by 2030, and operated under the sole responsibility of BASF. The next startup is planned for 2023 covering a plant for the production of thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU).  

China is beset by severe economic problems. Growth has stalled, youth unemployment is at a record high, the housing market is collapsing, and companies are struggling with recurring supply chain headaches.
 
The world's second biggest economy is grappling with the impact of severe drought and its vast real estate sector is suffering the consequences of running up too much debt. But the situation is being made much worse by Bejing's adherence to a rigid zero-Covid policy, and there's no sign that's going to change this year.

Nationwide, at least 74 cities had been closed off since late August, affecting more than 313 million residents, according to CNN calculations based on government statistics. Goldman Sachs last week estimated that cities impacted by lockdowns account for 35% of China's gross domestic product (GDP).

He now expects Chinese GDP to grow by just 3% this year, missing Beijing's official target of 5.5% by a wide margin. Other analysts are even more bearish. Nomura cut its forecast to 2.7% this week.

China's job market has deteriorated in the past few months. Most recent data showed that the unemployment rate among 16 to 24 year-olds hit an all-time high of 19.9% in July, the fourth consecutive month it had broken records.
That means China now has about 21 million jobless youth in cities and towns. Rural unemployment isn't included in official figures.
"The most worrying issue is jobs," said ANZ's Yeung, adding that youth unemployment could climb to 20% or higher.

@GOPoversight
 
In a briefing to Republican staff, TikTok admitted the possibility that China has requested and received Americans' user data without TikTok even being aware.
 
This raises serious questions about whether data has fallen into the hands of CCP intelligence.

TikTok also confirmed the following:
 
Some TikTok offices are leased under their China-based parent company, ByteDance.
 
TikTok U.S. offices share servers & IT networks with China-based ByteDance.
 
TikTok could not rule out future collection of American user GPS data.

Republican lawmakers have warned Apple that it will face intense scrutiny from Congress if the California company procures memory chips from a controversial Chinese semiconductor manufacturer for the new iPhone 14.
 
Marco Rubio, Republican vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, and Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House foreign affairs committee, said they were alarmed following a media report that Apple would add Yangtze Memory Technologies Co to its list of suppliers for Nand flash memory chips that are used to store data on smartphones.
 
“Apple is playing with fire,” Rubio told the Financial Times. “It knows the security risks posed by YMTC. If it moves forward, it will be subject to scrutiny like it has never seen from the federal government. We cannot allow Chinese companies beholden to the Communist party into our telecommunications networks and millions of Americans’ iPhones.”
 
Asked about the congressional concerns, Apple told the FT it did not use YMTC chips in any products but said it was “evaluating sourcing from YMTC for Nand chips to be used in some iPhones sold in China”.
 
Apple said it was not considering using YMTC chips in phones for sale outside China. It added that all user data stored on Nand chips used by the company were “fully encrypted”.

@globaltimesnews

#Beijing detected 14 new #COVID19 cases among quarantined individuals between 12am and 3pm on Sunday. The recent clusters found in multiple universities in Beijing originated with people returning to the capital from other provinces.