In a joint statement, the ministers said they discussed expanding operations in the northern Australian city of Darwin, where US Marines have been rotating in since 2012 under an initiative of former president Barack Obama.
The United States will establish a military fuel reserve in Darwin and the allies will consider exercises there with like-minded countries — a likely reference to Japan and India.
In one step that had been too far, Australia last year said it would not serve as a base for US intermediate-range missiles — widely seen as a way to target China.
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Australia did not agree on everything with Beijing — or with the United States.
“The relationship that we have with China is important. And we have no intention of injuring it,” she said. “But nor do we intend to do things that are contrary to our interests.”
She said Australia and the United States had a shared interest in an Asia-Pacific region that was free, prosperous and secure and were broadly aligned on issues, including China.
“We don’t agree on everything though. And that’s part of a respectful relationship, is part of a relationship that has endured over 100 years of ‘mateship.’”
“We deal with China in the same way. We have a strong economic engagement, other engagement, and it works in the interests of both countries,” Payne said.
In the first quarter of 2020, the share of the dollar in trade between the countries fell below 50 percent for the first time.
To give an indication of the scale of the adjustment, just four years ago the greenback accounted for over 90 percent of their currency settlements. The share has dropped to 46 percent, tumbling from 75 percent in 2018. The 54 percent of non-dollar trade is made up of Chinese yuan (17 percent), the euro (30 percent), and the Russian ruble (7 percent).
China Post Group Co waybills on packages of unsolicited seeds found in a large number of US states in recent days are a result of forgery, and China is asking the US to reroute these packages so that a probe can take place, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference on Tuesday.
The comments were made after media reports that packages “from China” containing seeds arrived in the mailboxes of US residents in a number of states.
The US agricultural authority has asked people not to plant these seeds over biosafety concerns.
Commenting on the matter, Wang said seeds are contraband articles under the clauses of the Universal Postal Union (UPU). China Post, the designated operator of UPU in China, strictly abides by such rules by declining postal delivery orders containing seeds.
China Post has confirmed that the layout and content of the waybills for these postal packages contain many mistakes and are therefore fake.
China Post has been communicating with its US counterparts to ask for these packages to be rerouted to China so that a probe can begin, Wang said.
US electric vehicle (EV) giant saw its revenues in the Chinese market surge by 102.9 percent in the second quarter of the year, registering $1.4 billion.
The US remains Tesla’s largest market with $3.1 billion revenues in the quarter, down 11 percent from the same quarter last year, according to a filing the company sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.
China has become the US auto giant’s second largest sales market, raking in 23.19 percent of its total revenues in the quarter. Tesla, now the world’s most valuable carmaker, reported revenue of $6 billion in the quarter, beating expectations.
China and the European Union will accelerate negotiations in order to conclude a China-EU investment agreement by the end of this year, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said on Tuesday.
China and the EU will also continue to strengthen macro economic policy adjustments and implement effective fiscal and monetary policies to push forward global economic recovery, Liu said in a statement published by China’s ministry of commerce.
Liu was speaking after an online meeting with European Commission executive vice president Valdis Dombrovskis.
On fighting the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 650,000 people around the globe, China and the EU will work on virus prevention, vaccine development and exchanges of professionals through further bilateral cooperation, the statement said.
China and EU will further expand trade in agricultural products, the statement said.
China and EU lead the way, leaving United States behind. Reform WTO, WHO. Dedollarization.
The video conference on Monday, which focused on coordinating the coronavirus response, took place as border tensions also simmer between India and some of its other neighbours, including Nepal and Pakistan. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who hosted the call, said the four countries should strengthen their connections for regional peace and security, and called for more cooperation to prevent the cross-border spread of the virus, according to a foreign ministry statement. But the talks went beyond the pandemic, veering into areas that are likely to displease India. Representing Pakistan, economy minister Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar praised cooperation on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which India has not joined because it passes through disputed parts of Kashmir that New Delhi views as being occupied by Pakistan. Bakhtyar also called for an end to the “military siege” of “Indian occupied” Jammu and Kashmir to allow international health experts access to the region. Both Pakistan and China lodged stern protests after India withdrew the special status of the disputed region of Kashmir and Ladakh last year, a move that affected contested territories claimed by both China and Pakistan in their border regions with India.
https://bws2020.carrier.huawei.com/en/index.html Global 5G deployment is beginning to wrap up, and with the installation of more than 1.5 million 5G base stations expected by the end of this year, the next focus should be on industry applications, said Huawei Rotating Chairman Guo Ping on Monday during the opening day of the online Better World Summit held by the Chinese tech firm .
“As global 5G deployment begins to wrap up, we need to strengthen our focus on industry applications. This will help us unleash the full potential of 5G,” Guo said.
As of this June, 81 telecom carriers have rolled out commercial 5G networks. The countries and regions covered by these networks account for 72 percent of the world’s GDP, including leading economies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Globally, there are already more than 90 million 5G users. Over 700,000 5G base stations have been deployed, and it is expected to see more than 1.5 million by the end of this year, data unveiled by the firm showed.
The signal from Huawei is clear – telecom carriers who have selected Huawei equipment will be the first to reap the benefits of 5G, a Beijing-based industry insider surnamed Jiang and a close follower of Huawei told the Global Times on Monday.
Guo said the firm has “a broad set of capabilities spanning 5G, computing, cloud, AI, and industry applications. By leveraging these strengths, we can provide scenario-based solutions that unlock the full potential of 5G and help both our customers and partners achieve greater business success.”
“Nevertheless, those who are still weighing whether to use its equipment for 5G will significantly lag behind and will not benefit from the chance to lead the industry,” Jiang said.
The remarks were also viewed by industry insiders as a response to Huawei’s recent dilemma in Europe, where the UK has banned the firm from its 5G network deployment, while other economies in the region have also been weighing the decision, leading to uncertainties about the firm’s fate in Europe.
In the past 30-plus years, the Chinese firm has deployed over 1,500 networks in more than 170 countries and regions, serving over 3 billion people worldwide. It has also provided smart devices to 600 million consumers and delivered services to 228 Fortune Global 500 companies.
Mr Guo Ping also described nine scenarios for emerging technologies as outlined in the coronavirus outbreak across China, starting from the onset of the pandemic and plateau in cases to the nation’s post-peak recovery.
Such scenarios included quickly building hospital 5G networks, offering remote medical consultations, drug R&D, pandemic prevention and control, medical imaging and analysis and restarting governments and businesses, among others.
China’s Huoshenshan Hospital was built in a matter of days and has over 300 beds, but doctor shortages posed ‘headaches’ to medical care, he added. China Telecom had built an operational 5G network in 24 hours, allowing doctors to perform 15-minute ultrasounds for patients in Wuhan and others with a high degree of accuracy.
China’s First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University used such technologies to provide telemedicine services to over 1,400 institutions across China, Zambia, Morocco and others in electro cardiography, pathology and radiology, he said.
According to figures, over 40,000 consultations and 500,000 diagnoses were performed at the world’s largest hospital by capacity.
Balancing short-term and long-term goals: Precise deployment for maximum value
Guo said, “Given the current economic environment, carriers need to focus on both short-term and long-term goals. More precise deployment is how they can maximize the value of their networks.” Huawei has three suggestions for this.
First, carriers should prioritize user experience and spend money where it’s needed most to maximize the value of existing networks.
Second, carriers should make the most of existing 4G and FTTx networks, and integrate them with new 5G networks through holistic coordination and precise planning.
Third, 5G deployment plans should prioritize hotspots and key industry applications.
Wuhan hospitals didn’t admit a single patient suffering from H1N1 from February to June, local media reported, a result doctors said was due to good health habits Wuhan people cultivated during COVID-19 epidemic like wearing masks and washing hands.
Huang Chaolin, director of the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, told Hubei Daily on Sunday that the hospital usually admitted 3,000 to 4,000 patients sickened by H1N1 between February and June in previous years. The report said all H1N1 flu patients in Wuhan are cared for by the Jinyintan hospital.
The incidence of acute infectious diseases among children is also lower this year, according to Huang.
Lü Mengtao, operations director of Beijing Zhimed Medical Science, told the Global Times on Monday that the COVID-19 epidemic forced the public to pay more attention to wearing masks and washing hands, which they now know can curb the transmission of infectious diseases.
Fewer people gathering in groups also helps prevent virus transmission, Lü noted.
Use of drugs for these diseases also declined. Guo Hongrong, director of the pneumology department of the Wuhan No.3 Hospital, told Hubei Daily that the hospital prescribed 40 percent fewer inflammatory and allergy drugs compared to the same period last year.
A Wuhan pharmaceutical wholesale enterprise told the Hubei Daily that the sale of medicines for cough, cold and respiratory infections also showed a 40 percent year-on-year decline.
During the epidemic, hospitals enhanced treatment and many applied an appointment system that limited the number of people going to the hospitals per day, Lü said, noting that many doctors told him that the number of patients they treated in the first half of 2020 was only 50 percent of that in the same period of 2019, and drug prescriptions declined accordingly.
Many netizens across the country also took to social media platforms saying that they are witnessing fewer people catching the flu or cold and fewer children getting hand-foot-and-mouth disease this year.
Some private clinics for children said on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo that they have had to adjust their business model to include dental and surgery services to offset the impact of fewer sickly patients.
A mother of a five-year-old girl in Beijing surnamed Zhang told the Global Times on Monday that her daughter went to the hospital once a month in 2019, but this year neither her daughter nor her parents have been sick.
“I think it is because they wear masks, and I will ask them to keep the habit,” Zhang said.
While in the West, people prefers personal freedom over health and safety, deserves the consequences.
