China has named former SARS firefighter Yin Li (尹力) the new Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader of Beijing, as President Xi Jinping (習近平) begins recalibrating the “zero COVID” policy that has slowed the world’s second largest economy.
Yin, 60, replaces Cai Qi (蔡奇) as party secretary of the capital city of about 21 million people, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.
Cai, 66, became first Secretary of the CCP Secretariat overseeing ideology and day-to-day party affairs, after a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle last month that the Chinese president used to consolidate power.
Photo: Bloomberg
Since 2020, Yin has been party chief of Fujian Province, China’s closest province to Taiwan. Fujian is also regarded as a power base of Xi, who worked there from 1985 to 2002.
However, Yin is better known for his career in public health. He studied health management at the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow from 1988 to 1993, and subsequently became a visiting fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health from 2002 to 2003, giving him experience in two nations now central to Xi’s foreign policy priorities.
Yin returned to China in 2003 as the SARS epidemic gripped the nation, helping shape the nation’s response as deputy director of the general office at the Chinese Ministry of Health, and attending meetings with then-Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) on the crisis.
He has also held leading roles at the WHO and China’s Food and Drug Administration (now the National Medical Products Administration).
Yin’s expertise could be a boon for Beijing, which logged 404 new COVID-19 cases for Sunday, the highest in more than a year. That surge could test China’s order last week to ease some of its strictest disease prevention controls, which have isolated the world’s second-largest economy, stoked public angst and weighed on growth.
The appointment of a public health technocrat into one of the party’s most prominent regional roles could also signal that Xi sees COVID-19 as a longer-term struggle.
While China loosened some rules on Friday, it remains unclear how the nation will emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic without experiencing an exit wave of infections that could threaten its hospital system and relatively low death toll.
The CCP has touted China’s 5,226 recorded COVID-19 deaths as a measure of its superior political system to the US, where more than 1 million have died from the virus.
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
Counting was under way in Nepal yesterday, after a high-stakes parliamentary election to reshape the country’s leadership following protests last year that toppled the government. Key figures vying for power include former Nepalese prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, rapper-turned-mayor Balendra Shah, who is bidding for the youth vote, and newly elected Nepali Congress party leader Gagan Thapa. In Kathmandu’s tea shops and city squares, people were glued to their phones, checking results as early trends flashed up — suggesting Shah’s centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) was ahead. Nepalese Election Commission spokesman Prakash Nyupane said the counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner”
RSS