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At least 47 people have died in southern China’s Guangdong Province after torrential rains set off flooding and landslides, according to the Chinese authorities. The city of Meizhou, home to about 3.8 million people, began experiencing “once-in-a-century” rainfall last week, according to state media. Initially, officials reported that nine people in Meizhou had died. But on Friday afternoon, the death toll leaped dramatically, as officials reported an additional 38 deaths in Pingyuan, a county under Meizhou’s jurisdiction. More than 100,000 people were evacuated, state media said.

Persons: “, Meizhou Locations: China’s Guangdong Province, Meizhou, Pingyuan

Videos posted on the young influencer’s account showing her running and weight-lifting were shared heavily on Chinese social media and also appeared in various state media outlets following her death late last month. State media outlets said that the influencer’s family had received “compensation” from the weight loss camp in Shaanxi, but did not say how much. In China, as in much of Asia and the rest of the world, social media is awash with unhealthy and unrealistic trends promoting extreme weight loss. One notorious recent social media trend in China involved women posing behind vertical sheets of printer paper to prove their waists were so thin they could not be seen either side. Zhou’s death has also increased scrutiny of the social media influencer industry more generally.

Persons: Cuihua, Zhou –, ”, Zhou’s Organizations: Hong Kong CNN, China National Radio, CNN, China News Service, Television Administration, Ministry of Culture, Global, Weibo Locations: Hong Kong, China, Shaanxi, Shaanxi province, Asia, Tourism

☆ Sexual harassment debate breathes new life into China’s #MeToo movement
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Nectar Gan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Shi has strongly denied the accusations of sexual harassment in two separate statements and claimed the encounters were consensual. The falloutThe allegations have since sparked furious debate on Chinese social media, with related hashtags trending for days and racking up hundreds of millions of views on Weibo. China did not specify sexual harassment as a legal offense until 2021, when it enacted a civil code defining sexual harassment for the first time in the country’s law. But still, the failure of sexual harassment lawsuits – like Zhou’s – in recent years has made it “increasingly clear that seeking legal remedies for sexual harassment is not realistic,” said the Chinese feminist in New Jersey. “Even if I reported it, and he was summoned to the police station, how many days can he be detained for sexual harassment?” she wrote.

☆ China may have to bail out one of its poorest provinces
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Laura He | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Hong Kong CNN —One of China’s poorest and most indebted provinces has admitted defeat in trying to sort out its finances and is appealing to Beijing for help to avert default. Guizhou, located in a mountainous region of southwest China, has hired a top state-owned distressed debt fund, China Cinda Asset Management, to resolve its “urgent” problems. China’s local governments are struggling with trillions of dollars of debt, after three years of strict pandemic controls and a real estate crash drained their coffers. The Pingtang Bridge links two cities in southwest China's Guizhou province. In China, most local government liabilities are composed of “hidden debt” issued by their financing arms.

☆ Galois Capital flagship fund to close after FTX losses
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( Nell Mackenzie | Elizabeth Howcroft | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

FILE PHOTO: The logo of FTX is seen at the entrance of the FTX Arena in Miami, Florida, U.S., November 12, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File PhotoLONDON (Reuters) -Galois Capital hedge fund founder Kevin Zhou said on Monday his flagship fund would close after “losing almost half” of the fund’s money when cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed. Zhou’s statement, released on Twitter, confirmed a report in the Financial Times that the hedge fund had decided to close its main fund and return its money to investors. In his tweet, Zhou also said Galois Capital had lost almost half of its assets “to the FTX disaster”. The newspaper report cited an investor letter which said the hedge fund was no longer viable, had stopped trading and exited its positions.

☆ Covid protests escalate in Guangzhou as China lockdown anger boils
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

TwitterSocial media posts said the clashes took place on Tuesday night and were caused by a dispute over lockdown curbs. China Dissent Monitor, run by U.S. government-funded Freedom House, estimated at least 27 demonstrations took place across China from Saturday to Monday. In Zhengzhou, the site of a big Foxconn factory making Apple iPhones that has been the scene of worker unrest over Covid, officials announced the “orderly” resumption of businesses, including supermarkets, gyms and restaurants. Data on Wednesday showed China’s manufacturing and services activity for November posting the lowest readings since Shanghai’s two-month lockdown began in April. Chinese stocks were steady, with markets weighing endemic economic weakness against hopes that the public pressure could push China to eventually reopen.

The factory’s iPhone 14 production has been slowed by a labor shortage that began last month, when a Covid outbreak and an accompanying lockdown sent workers fleeing back to their hometowns. China’s “dynamic zero-Covid” measures make it an outlier among the world’s major economies, causing growing public frustration and economic pain. Though officials announced new “optimized” measures this month, they are struggling to ease the burden without setting off a major exit wave. Despite the purported easing of measures in China, a single case can still bring targeted lockdowns and sudden quarantines. Covid measures were further tightened on Thursday in the capital, Beijing, which is already in near-lockdown with schools, parks and shopping malls closed and a negative Covid test required every 48 hours to enter public places anywhere in the city.

☆ Can China’s Zhou Guanyu do for F1 what Yao Ming did for basketball?
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Marc Stewart | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Today, some people tip him to become F1’s answer to Yao Ming, the Chinese NBA sensation often credited with making basketball popular in his home country. Zhou Guanyu in his Alfa Romeo takes part in Formula One's Mexican Grand Prix in October. There was a lack of Chinese racing role models, so he created a path of his own. He began go-karting – where many top drivers cut their teeth as young F1 hopefuls – not long after that maiden Chinese Grand Prix. Zhou Guanyu lines up for the Mexican Grand Prix in October.

☆ Covid curbs set off rare unrest in Chinese city of Guangzhou
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

BEIJING — Crowds of people in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou crashed through Covid barriers and marched down streets in chaotic scenes on Monday night, according to videos posted online, in a show of public resentment over coronavirus curbs. Neither the Guangzhou city government nor the Guangdong provincial police responded to Reuters’ requests for comment. Monday night’s scenes from Guangzhou were the latest outpouring of frustration over Covid curbs that have brought frequent lockdowns and enforced quarantines under a signature policy of President Xi Jinping that China argues saves lives. Last month, a Covid outbreak at a massive Foxconn plant that makes Apple iPhones in Zhengzhou set off chaos, with many workers fleeing, including by climbing fences, hobbling production. “It would become a testing point regarding the government’s determination to push for the relaxation of Covid control measures,” they said.

☆ China tightens restrictions as rise in Covid cases reported
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-12 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Everyone in a district of 1.8 million people in China’s southern metropolis of Guangzhou was ordered to stay home Saturday to undergo virus testing and a major city in the southwest closed schools as another rise in Covid infections was reported. Guangzhou, 75 miles north of Hong Kong, has shut down schools and bus and subway service across much of the city as case numbers rise. In the southwest, the industrial city of Chongqing closed schools in its Beibei district, which has 840,000 people. Economists and public health experts say “zero Covid” might stay in place for as much as another year. They say millions of elderly people have to be vaccinated before the ruling party can consider lifting controls that keep most foreign visitors out of China.

☆ China eases Covid rules, shortening quarantine for inbound travelers
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

BEIJING — China on Friday eased some of its draconian Covid rules, including shortening quarantines by two days for close contacts of infected people and for inbound travelers, and removing a penalty for airlines for bringing in too many cases. Under the new rules, centralized quarantine times for close contacts and travelers from abroad were shortened from seven days to five days. The requirement for three further days in home isolation after centralized quarantine remains. Inbound passengers are transported by bus to their quarantine hotels after arriving at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai in January. “This meeting further illustrates policymakers have started to focus more on optimizing the Covid control policies,” Goldman Sachs said in a note following Thursday’s Politburo Standing Committee meeting but before Friday’s announcement.

☆ China Covid: Death of boy in lockdown fuels backlash against zero-Covid policy
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Nectar Gan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

The boy’s father said his wife and child both fell ill around noon on Tuesday, showing signs of gas poisoning. The mother’s condition improved after receiving CPR from the father, but the boy fell into a coma, according to the man’s social media post. The father claimed in his social media post that the police did not show up until after he had taken his son to hospital. Demand for answersThe boy’s death also ignited anger from local residents. Videos circulating on social media show residents taking to the streets to demand an answer from authorities.

☆ Chinese cities clamp down on COVID as cases rise before winter season
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-31 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

In Guangdong province, manufacturing centre Guangzhou has seen a spate of cases over the past week that has closed some districts. Over the past week, authorities raced to get a handle on rising cases in Datong, Xining, Nanjing, Xian, Zhengzhou and Wuhan forcing temporary lockdown measures of some neighbourhoods. Datong, which recorded 288 cases from Oct. 27-30, has enforced stricter isolation and management of hotels, key industries and its railway. As winter nears, northern cities, particularly those close to international borders, are seeing higher case numbers and could face new curbs. Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang province, bordering North Korea, extended the temporary lockdown of some areas, according to local media reports.

FILE PHOTO: A health worker wears a protective suit near a testing booth as outbreaks of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue in Beijing, China, Oct. 23, 2022. An index measuring road freight transport turnover tumbled 26.2% on Oct. 21 from a year prior versus a 23.7% drop a week earlier, according to Nomura. New local infections fell 24% to 6,096 during Oct. 18-24 from a week earlier. Zhengzhou’s metro traffic slumped 79% from Oct. 11 to Oct. 15, according to the latest available data. Metro traffic in Guangzhou dropped 8.8% during Oct. 18-24 from the previous week, Reuters calculations based on data released by local metro operators showed.

☆ HSBC extends Chinese private banking network to lure new digital millionaires
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Selena | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

FILE PHOTO: Pedestrians wearing face masks following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, walk past a HSBC bank branch in Hong Kong, China February 22, 2022. HSBC sees robust demand for wealth management in Chengdu, capital of the western province of Sichuan with more than 21 million people. The bank has already launched private bank services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. “As a new class of HNW and ultra HNW individuals emerges from the vigorous development of Hangzhou’s digital economy, demand for international wealth management has also grown significantly,” Jackie Mau, head of global private banking at HSBC China, said in a statement. Beijing launched in late 2020 a crackdown that effectively halted Ant’s initial public offering that could have created more millionaires keen for wealth services.

☆ Zhou Jihong: She apologized for verbally abusing an Olympic judge, but questions over the conduct of China's 'Iron Lady' of diving remain
▼ + stars: | 2022-05-11 | by ( George Ramsay | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +13 min

That was after Zhou, who has been dubbed the “Iron Lady” of Chinese diving, allegedly launched a verbal tirade at Wright at the 10m platform event’s conclusion for underscoring Chinese divers. In a diving event, judges on the panel award each dive a score ranging from zero to 10. Lintao Zhang/Getty ImagesAccording to Latimer, Zhou has “substantial input” when it comes to deciding which judges are chosen to officiate at competitions. From FINAAllegations against Zhou, Latimer says, have been slow to emerge due to her influential status within the sport. The “Iron Lady” of Chinese diving, Zhou became the country’s first ever Olympic gold medalist in the sport in 1984.

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