KNOWLEDGE TREK

As the news grows steadily more grim along the Indian and Chinese border in Eastern Ladakh near the Line of Actual Control, where 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a skirmish with Chinese forces, triggering nationwide grieving, netizens from Taiwan and Hong Kong have come out in India’s support. An illustration went viral on Hong Kong social media platform lihkg, which showed Rama aiming an arrow at a Chinese dragon beside the words, “We conquer, we kill”. The image was picked up by Taiwan News, which made it their ‘Photo of the day’. Following this, it went viral on Indian Twitter, making #Taiwan one of the top-trending hashtags briefly. “Thank you, Taiwan” read a tweet by one Twitter user, which was then retweeted thousands of times. A post with the image was one of the top threads , with many users sharing pro-India images, and several posts on the platform in support of India. Some pointed out India’s historic role as part of the military police in Hong Kong during the Bri...

The ongoing military standoffs with China at multiple points along the India-China border has turned the spotlight to the single most important element that has helped keep the peace across the Himalayas: the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Yet, what exactly the LAC is remains a source of much confusion. One possible reason for the confusion is that in the public imagination, it is sometimes spoken of in the same breath with that other contested three-letter abbreviation that is often in the news: the Line of Control (LoC) that separates India and Pakistan. They are different in one crucial way. With Pakistan, India has an international boundary, which has been agreed upon, and the LoC, which has been delineated on a map by both sides. In contrast, the alignment of the LAC has never been agreed upon, and it is has neither been delineated nor demarcated. There is no official map in the public domain that depicts the LAC. It can best be thought of as an idea, reflecting the territories tha...

The question now is whether the world can learn lessons from China's apparent success and whether the authoritarian government's massive lockouts and electronic surveillance would work in other countries. If you're in business for 20 or 30 years, you can't try to change tactics, "said Dr. Michael O'Brien, a Canadian epidemiologist who led the international team and briefed reporters in Beijing and Geneva last week on its findings. Pic Credit: The Wall Street Journal The report comes at a time when many epidemiologists now consider the coronavirus to be a pandemic, and there are also questions about what the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 will do once the country inevitably lifts its strict control measures and relaunches its economy. While Europe and the United States are locked in a fight against COVID-19, caused by another coronavirus, some of the countries that were affected early on by this virus have done a better job of fighting it back than China. ...

The world's financial markets had their worst week since it became clear that a six-month pandemic could slash expected global GDP growth by $1.1 trillion. As the virus has spread to every continent except Antarctica, and the number of new cases in China continues to grow faster, five trillion dollars could be wiped out in just a few months. Consumers will spend less, people will not be able to work, travel and tourism will fall sharply, and investment will fall, according to the firm, which bases its analysis on previous outbreaks, including SARS and swine flu, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While global financial markets largely ignored COVID-19 before it spread to China, they reacted sharply as the virus spread around the world, fueling fears of a global pandemic.  While a recession in the global economy may be a foregone conclusion, the COVID 19 risk has priced in what some fear - the worst-case scenario for the US economy in t...

China now seems to have survived the worst coronavirus epidemic, as the number of new cases has fallen sharply and life has returned to normal. But China has also used propaganda to gloss over its role in the pandemic. The State Department last week confirmed a conspiracy theory that the virus was brought to China by U.S. soldiers visiting Wuhan in October. The Chinese government has also claimed to have worked hard to contain the disease as soon as it learned of its existence, although there is evidence that Beijing knew of the disease as early as December and did nothing to warn citizens or prevent its spread. Journalists and diplomats have conscientiously reported that China's propaganda agencies have become exuberant in an effort to shift responsibility for the viruses to the US, with China's systems touted as more effective in containing the epidemic than the West's, and China portrayed as the world's savior.   The coronavirus may have inadvertently emer...