Year: 2023

BEIJING (TIP): Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s agenda for the annual meeting of the ceremonial legislature: Revive the economy by encouraging consumers to spend more now that severe anti-virus controls have ended, and install a government of loyalists to intensify Communist Party control over the economy and society.
Xi, China’s most powerful figure in decades, has no formal role in the National People’s Congress, which will convene a meeting of its full membership on March 1. But he looms over every event: the 69-year-old awarded himself a third five-year term as party general secretary in October, possibly making himself leader for life.
The two-week gathering of 2,977 NPC members is the year’s highest-profile political event, but its lawmaking work is limited to endorsing ruling party decisions. Its more important function is to provide a platform to publicize government plans and give members instructions to take home to cities and provinces.
Xi and other leaders say their priority is to reassure consumers and entrepreneurs it’s time to spend and invest after restrictions that kept millions of people at home, temporarily shut down Shanghai and other industrial centers and wiped out jobs were lifted in December.
The economy faces challenges ranging from weak global demand for exports and lingering U.S. tariff hikes in a feud over technology and security to curbs on access to Western processor chips due to security fears. At home, the workforce has been shrinking for more than a decade, putting pressure on an economy that still relies on labour-intensive industries.
Economic growth fell to 3% in 2022, the second-weakest level since at least the 1970s. The ruling party needs to “fully release consumption potential,” Xi said at the party’s annual planning meeting, according to a text published on February 16.
Xi gave no details but said Beijing should encourage spending on electric cars and medical and elderly care, home improvement, culture and sports. He warned at the December meeting that work “will be complicated.”
A consumer-led rebound might take longer than stimulus spending or igniting a boom in real estate investment. But Chinese leaders are trying to avoid options that would push up debt they worry already is dangerously high.
Forecasters expect Premier Li Keqiang, the top economic official, to announce a growth target of 5% to 5.5% in a speech Sunday on plans for the year. Li, an advocate of free enterprise, is due to be replaced as premier at the congress after being sidelined as the No. 2 party leader in October.
The International Monetary Fund and some private sector forecasters expect much weaker annual growth, as low as 4.4%.
“It takes time to say whether the economy will turn around,” said Song Huimin, a supermarket owner in the northeastern city of Jinzhou. He said sales are better than six months ago but not back to pre-COVID levels.
“People want to consume, but they still don’t have enough income,” Song said. “Some people still are out of work.”
The former owner of a clothing factory in the eastern city of Changzhou said it shut down last year, throwing 20 people out of work. He got a job at another clothing company. Any spare cash goes to pay for his 14-year-old daughter’s education.
“I have no house or car and no plans to travel,” said the man, who would give only his surname, Wu.
Since taking power in 2012, Xi has called for the ruling party to return to its “original mission” as China’s economic, social and cultural leader and carry out the “rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation.”
Entrepreneurs who generate China’s new jobs and wealth have been rattled by tighter political controls and anti-virus curbs. Business groups say global companies were shifting investment to India, Vietnam and other countries last year because China’s travel curbs blocked executives from visiting the country.
The party has indicated it is winding down anti-monopoly and data security crackdowns on tech companies that wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off the stock market value of Alibaba, Tencent and other industry leaders. But it shows no sign of backing off a campaign to tighten political control over them.
The industry was shaken anew in mid-February when Bao Fan, a star banker involved in some of the biggest tech deals, disappeared. His company announced Bao was “cooperating in an investigation” but gave no details.
Companies still are “expected to prioritize party instructions,” Neil Thomas of Eurasia Group said in a report. He said measures announced during the NPC might give the ruling party “more direct oversight over policymaking” in technology and innovation. (AFP)

Giza (TIP): Egypt unveiled the discovery of long corridor inside the Great Pyramid of Giza on March 2, the first to be found on the structure’s north side.
The corridor, which measures 9 meters (nearly 30 feet) by 2 meters (more than 6 feet), is perched above the famous structure’s main entrance and was detected using a scan, authorities said. The function of the chamber is currently unknown, although such corridors often lead to further archaeological discoveries.
Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass and the country’s Minister for Tourism Ahmed Eissa, announced the discovery at the pyramid’s base.
The chamber was discovered by the Scan Pyramids project, an international programm that uses scans to look at unexplored sections of the ancient structure.
The pyramid about 11 miles from Cairo’s center is also known as Khufu’s Pyramid for its builder, a 4th Dynasty pharaoh who reigned from 2509 to 2483 B.C.
The ancient structure is the last surviving wonder of the ancient world. It has captivated visitors since it was built as a royal burial chamber some 4,500 years ago. Experts are divided over how it and other pyramids were constructed, so even relatively minor discoveries generate great interest.
Egypt often publicly touts ancient discoveries to attract more tourists, a major source of foreign currency for the cash-strapped North African country. The sector suffered a long downturn after the political turmoil and violence that followed a 2011 uprising. (AP)

Larissa (TIP): The Greek government on March 2 acknowledged failures in state management of its rail system, following a train collision that killed 48 and has triggered angry protests.
As crews continued to work in the charred wreckage at the crash site, the local station master admitted negligence in Greece’s worst-ever rail disaster and the government has apologised.
An investigation would examine the “chronic delays in implementing railway works, delays caused by chronic public sector malaise and decades of failure,” said government spokesman Yiannis Economou.
The crash happened late March 1 when a freight and passenger train were allowed to speed towards each other for several kilometres before colliding near a tunnel outside Larissa in central Greece.
The 59-year-old station manager was arrested after officials determined “human error” was involved in the collision in which two carriages were demolished and a restaurant car caught fire, trapping many victims inside.
“I believe the responsibility, the negligence, the error has been confessed by the station master,” Economou told reporters in Athens.
Five years after the state-owned Greek rail operator Trainose was privatised and sold to Italy’s Ferrovie Dello Stato Italiane and became Hellenic Train, safety systems on the Athens-Thessaloniki line are still not fully automated.
Train unionists have said safety shortcomings for the Athens-Thessaloniki railway line had been known for years.
The country’s transport minister resigned Wednesday amid claims that safety warnings on the line had been neglected for years, and his replacement on Thursday offered his “apologies” to families of the victims and vowed a “complete evaluation of the political system and the state”.
“I want to say, while looking these people straight in the eye, that there will be an inquiry and everything will be presented to Greek citizens,” Giorgos Gerapetritis said.
A fire department spokeswoman told AFP that rescue crews had worked all night in search for survivors, but chances of finding more were dwindling.
“Time is not on our side,” she said.
‘Crumpled like paper’
After visiting the site on March 1,
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that “Everything shows that the drama was, sadly, mainly due to a tragic human error”.
Passengers described scenes of horror and chaos from the crash, many dodging smashed glass and debris as the train keeled over, and breaking windows to climb out.
The train’s restaurant car erupted in flames after the collision, with temperatures inside reaching 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,370 Fahrenheit), the fire department said.
For hours after the crash it was not immediately clear how many people were on board, complicating efforts to determine how many are missing.
Roubini Leontari, the chief coroner at Larissa’s general hospital, told state broadcaster ERT on Thursday that over 10 people were still unaccounted for, including two Cyprus nationals.
TV footage from the wreck site showed a crane lifting the mangled remains of a carriage, under which a body was believed to be trapped.
“It was a student train, full of kids… in their 20s,” Costas Bargiotas, a senior orthopaedic doctor at Larissa General Hospital, told Skai TV.
“It was truly shocking… the carriages crumpled like paper,” he said.
Many bodies were charred beyond recognition and some victims were being identified only from their remains.
Seventeen biological samples have been collected from remains, and from 23 relatives seeking a match, the police said.
Angry protests
Angry demonstrators rallied outside the Athens office of Hellenic Train on Wednesday evening, as police used tear gas to disperse protesters who threw rocks at the building. Earlier in Larissa, demonstrators held a silent vigil and brought white roses to form the word Tempe, the name of the valley where the accident took place.(AFP)

LONDON (TIP) : A transgender woman in Scotland convicted of raping two women before beginning to transition was on March 1 given eight years’ jail, in a case that has stoked political controversy in the United Kingdom.
According to The Straits Times, Isla Bryson was handed the prison sentence at the High Court in Edinburgh, and will also spend a further three years on license.
The 31-year-old was convicted in January of raping two women in 2016 and in 2019 when she was a man known as Adam Graham, the report said.
The case garnered widespread attention and a public outcry after Bryson was initially held in a women’s prison before the Scottish government reversed course and removed the rapist from the facility, The Straits Times noted.
After details of the contentious case emerged last month, the Scottish Prison Service decided transgender women with a history of violence against women would no longer be sent to all-female prisons, the report added. (AP)