China has suspended or closed the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the COVID-19 outbreak, as the country moves to further open up. The popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts. The ruling Communist Party had largely relied on the medical community to justify its harsh lockdowns, quarantine measures and mass testing, almost all of which it abruptly abandoned last month, leading to a surge in new cases that have stretched medical resources to their limits. The party allows no direct criticism and imposes strict limits on free speech. The company “will continue to increase the investigation and cleanup of all kinds of illegal content, and create a harmonious and friendly community environment for the majority of users," Sina Weibo said in a statement dated Thursday. Criticism has largely focused on open-ended travel restrictions that saw people confined to their homes for weeks, sometimes without adequate food or medical care. Anger was also vented over the requirement that anyone who potentially tested positive or had been in contact with such a person be confined for observation in a field hospital, where overcrowding, poor food and hygiene were commonly cited. The social and economic costs eventually prompted rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, possibly influencing the party's decision to swiftly ease the strictest measures. Read more: China reduces COVID-19 case number reporting as virus surges China is now facing a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities and is bracing for a further spread into less developed areas with the start of the Lunar New Year travel rush, set to get underway in coming days. While international flights are still reduced, authorities say they expect domestic rail and air journeys will double over the same period last year, bringing overall numbers close to those of the 2019 holiday period before the pandemic hit. The Transportation Ministry on Friday called on travelers to reduce trips and gatherings, particularly if they involve elderly people, pregnant women, small children and those with underlying conditions. People using public transport are also urged to wear masks and pay special attention to their health and personal hygiene, Vice Minister Xu Chengguang told reporters at a briefing. Nonetheless, China is forging ahead with a plan to end mandatory quarantines for people arriving from abroad beginning on Sunday. Beijing also plans to drop a requirement for students at city schools to have a negative COVID-19 test to enter campus when classes resume Feb. 13 after the holiday break. While schools will be allowed to move classes online in the event of new outbreaks, they must return to in-person instruction as soon as possible, the city education bureau said in a statement Friday. However, the end to mass testing, a lack of basic data such as the number of deaths, infections and severe cases, and the potential emergence of new variants have prompted governments elsewhere to institute virus testing requirements for travelers from China. The World Health Organization has also expressed concern about the lack of data from China, while the U.S. is requiring a negative test result for travelers from China within 48 hours of departure. Chinese health authorities publish a daily count of new cases, severe cases and deaths, but those numbers include only officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of COVID-related deaths. China has said the testing requirements aren’t science-based and has threatened unspecified countermeasures. Its spokespeople have said the situation is under control, and reject accusations of a lack of preparation for reopening. If a variant emerges in an outbreak, it is found through genetic sequencing of the virus. Since the pandemic started, China has shared 4,144 sequences with GISAID, a global platform for coronavirus data. That’s only 0.04% of its reported number of cases — a rate more than 100 times less than the United States and nearly four times less than neighboring Mongolia. Read more: Is China sharing enough COVID-19 information? Meanwhile, Hong Kong also plans to reopen some of its border crossings with mainland China on Sunday and allow tens of thousands of people to cross every day without being quarantined. The semi-autonomous southern Chinese city has been hard-hit by the virus and its land and sea border checkpoints with the mainland have been largely closed for almost three years. Despite the risk, the reopening is expected to provide a much-needed boost to Hong Kong’s tourism and retail sectors.

President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades, increased his dominance when he was named Sunday to another term as head of the ruling Communist Party in a break with tradition and promoted allies who support his vision of tighter control over society and the struggling economy. Xi, who took power in 2012, was awarded a third five-year term as general secretary, discarding a party custom under which his predecessor left after 10 years. The 69-year-old leader is expected by some to try to stay in power for life. On Saturday, Xi’s predecessor, 79-year-old Hu Jintao, abruptly left a meeting of the party Central Committee with an aide holding his arm. That prompted questions about whether Xi was flexing his powers by expelling other leaders. The official Xinhua News Agency later reported Hu was in poor health and needed to rest. The party also named a seven-member Standing Committee, its inner circle of power, dominated by Xi allies after Premier Li Keqiang, the No. 2 leader and an advocate of market-style reform and private enterprise, was dropped from the leadership Saturday. That was despite Li being a year younger than the party’s informal retirement age of 68. Xi and other Standing Committee members appeared for the first time as a group before reporters Sunday in the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China’s ceremonial legislature in central Beijing. The No. 2 leader was Li Qiang, a former Shanghai party secretary who is no relation to Li Keqiang. The holder of that post has since the 1990s served as premier, the top economic official. Zhao Leji, a member of the previous committee, was promoted to No. 3, which puts him in line to head the legislature. Those government posts are to be assigned when the legislature meets next year. Leadership changes were announced as the party wrapped up a twice-a-decade congress that was closely watched for signs of initiatives to reverse an economic slump or changes in a severe “zero-COVID” strategy that has shut down cities and disrupted business. Officials disappointed investors and the Chinese public by announcing no changes. The lineup appeared to reflect what some commentators called “Maximum Xi,” valuing loyalty over ability. Some new leaders lack national-level experience as vice premier or Cabinet minister that typically is seen as a requirement for the post. Li Qiang’s promotion appeared to support that analysis because it puts him in line to be premier with no background in national government. Li Qiang is seen as close to Xi after the two worked together in Zhejiang province in the southeast in the early 2000s. Li Keqiang was sidelined over the past decade by Xi, who put himself in charge of policymaking bodies. Li Keqiang was excluded Saturday from the list of the party’s new 205-member Central Committee, from which the Standing Committee is picked. Read: China’s Communist Party capable of new, greater miracles: Xi Jinping Another leader who left the Standing Committee was Wang Yang, a reform advocate suggested by some as a possible premier. Wang, 67, is below retirement age. Other new Standing Committee members include Cai Qi, the Beijing party secretary, and Ding Xuexiang, a career party manager who is regarded as Xi’s “alter ego” or chief of staff. Wang Huning, the party’s chief of ideology, stayed on the committee. The No. 7 member is Li Xi, the party secretary since 2017 of Guangdong province in the southeast, the center of China’s export-oriented manufacturing industry. None of the members is a woman or ethnic minority. The Central Committee includes 11 women, or about 5% of the total. Party plans call for creating a prosperous society by mid-century and restoring China to its historic role as a political, economic and cultural leader. Those ambitions face challenges from security-related curbs on access to Western technology, an aging workforce and tension with Washington, Europe and Asian neighbors over trade, security, human rights and territorial disputes. Xi has called for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and a revival of the party’s “original mission” as social, economic and culture leader in a throwback to what he sees as a golden age after it took power in 1949. During the congress, Xi called for faster military development, more technology self-reliance and defense of China’s interests abroad, which raises the likelihood of further conflict. The party has tightened control over entrepreneurs who generate jobs and wealth, prompting warnings that rolling back market-oriented reforms will weigh on economic growth that sank to 2.2% in the first half of this year, less than half the official 5.5% target. Under a revived 1950s propaganda slogan, “common prosperity,” Xi is pressing entrepreneurs to help narrow China’s wealth gap by raising wages and paying for rural job creation and other initiatives. Xi, in a report to the congress, called last week for “regulating the mechanism of wealth accumulation,” suggesting entrepreneurs might face still more political pressure, but gave no details. “I would worry if I were a very wealthy individual in China,” said economist Alicia Garcia Herrero of Natixis. In his report, Xi stressed the importance of national security and control over China’s supplies of food, energy and industrial goods. Xi said the party would build “self-reliance and strength” in technology. He gave no indication of possible changes in policies that prompted then-President Donald Trump to launch a tariff war with Beijing in 2018 over its technology ambitions. An “important guideline” from the congress is the “doubling down on the state’s role and the greater focus on national security,” said Garcia Herrero and Gary Ng of Natixis in a report. The party has poured money into nurturing Chinese creators of renewable energy, electric car, computer chip, aerospace and other technologies. Other governments complain Beijing improperly subsidizes and shields its suppliers from competition. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, has kept punitive tariff hikes on Chinese goods and this month increased restrictions on China’s access to U.S. chip technology. The party has tightened control over private sector leaders including e-commerce giant Alibaba Group by launching anti-monopoly and data security crackdowns. Under political pressure, they are diverting billions of dollars into chip development and other party initiatives. Their share prices on foreign exchanges have plunged due to uncertainty about their future. Read: China moves to solidify Xi's dominance in leadership shuffle The party will “step up its industrial policy” to close the “wide gap” between what Chinese tech suppliers can make and what is needed by smartphone, computer and other manufacturers, said Garcia Herrero and Ng. Xi gave no indication Beijing will change its “zero-COVID” strategy despite public frustration with repeated city closures that has boiled over into protests in Shanghai and other areas. Xi’s priorities of security and self-sufficiency will “drag on China’s productivity growth,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, Sheana Yue and Mark Williams of Capital Economics in a report. “His determination to stay in power makes a course correction unlikely.” The central bank governor, Yi Gang, and bank regulator, Guo Shuqing, also were missing from Saturday’s Central Committee list, indicating they will retire next year, as expected. Xi suspended retirement rules to keep Gen. Zhang Youxia, 72, on the Central Committee. That allows Zhang, a veteran of China’s 1979 war with Vietnam, to stay as Xi’s deputy chairman on the commission that controls the party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army. The party elite agreed in the 1990s to limit the general secretary to two five-year terms in hopes of avoiding a repeat of power struggles in previous decades. That leader also becomes chairman of the military commission and takes the ceremonial title of president. Xi has directed an anti-corruption crackdown that snared thousands of officials including a retired Standing Committee member and deputy Cabinet ministers. That broke up party factions and weakened potential challengers. Xi is on track to become the first leader in a generation to pick his own successor but has yet to indicate possible candidates or when he might step down. Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, both were picked in the 1980s by then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping. Xi had the ruling party remove the two-term limit for president from China’s constitution in 2018. Chinese officials said the change would allow Xi to stay if needed to complete reforms. Ahead of the congress, banners criticizing Xi and “zero COVID” were hung from an elevated roadway over a major Beijing thoroughfare in a rare protest. Photos of the event were deleted from social media. The popular WeChat messaging app shut down accounts that forwarded them. Xi’s government also faces criticism over mass detentions and other abuses against mostly Muslim ethnic groups and the jailing of government critics.

China is promoting coal-fired power as the ruling Communist Party tries to revive a sluggish economy, prompting warnings Beijing is setting back efforts to cut climate-changing carbon emissions from the biggest global source. Official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year, according to news reports. That is equal to 7% of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7% over 2020. China is one of the biggest investors in wind and solar, but jittery leaders called for more coal-fired power after economic growth plunged last year and shortages caused blackouts and factory shutdowns. Russia’s attack on Ukraine added to anxiety that foreign oil and coal supplies might be disrupted. “This mentality of ensuring energy security has become dominant, trumping carbon neutrality,” said Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace. “We are moving into a relatively unfavorable time period for climate action in China.” Also read: China looks to learn from Russian failures in Ukraine Officials face political pressure to ensure stability as President Xi Jinping prepares to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as ruling party leader in the autumn. Coal is important for “energy security,” Cabinet officials said at an April 20 meeting that approved plans to expand production capacity, according to Caixin, a business news magazine. The ruling party also is building power plants to inject money into the economy and revive growth that sank to 4% over a year earlier in the final quarter of 2021, down from the full year’s 8.1% expansion. Governments have pledged to try to limit warming of the atmosphere to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the level of pre-industrial times. Leaders say what they really want is a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Scientists say even if the world hits the 2-degree goal in the 2015 Paris climate pact and the 2021 Glasgow follow-up agreement, that still will lead to higher seas, stronger storms, extinctions of plants and animals and more people dying from heat, smog and infectious diseases. China is the top producer and consumer of coal. Global trends hinge on what Beijing does. The Communist Party has rejected binding emissions commitments, citing its economic development needs. Beijing has avoided joining governments that promised to phase out use of coal-fired power. In a 2020 speech to the United Nations, Xi said carbon emissions will peak by 2030, but he announced no target for the amount. Xi said China aims for carbon neutrality, or removing as much from the atmosphere by planting trees and other tactics as is emitted by industry and households, by 2060. China accounts for 26.1% of global emissions, more than double the U.S. share of 12.8%, according to the World Resources Institute. Rhodium Group, a research firm, says China emits more than all developed economies combined. Per person, China’s 1.4 billion people on average emit the equivalent of 8.4 tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to WRI. That is less than half the U.S. average of 17.7 tons but more than the European Union’s 7.5 tons. China has abundant supplies of coal and produced more than 90% of the 4.4 billion tons it burned last year. More than half of its oil and gas is imported and leaders see that as a strategic risk. Also read: Anti-virus shutdowns in China spread as infections rise China’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2060 appears to be on track, but using more coal “could jeopardize this, or at least slow it down and make it more costly,” Clare Perry of the Environmental Investigations Agency said in an email. Promoting coal will make emissions “much higher than they need to be” by the 2030 peak year, said Perry. “This move runs entirely counter to the science,” she said. Beijing has spent tens of billions of dollars on building solar and wind farms to reduce reliance on imported oil and gas and clean up its smog-choked cities. China accounted for about half of global investment in wind and solar in 2020. Still, coal is expected to supply 60% of its power in the near future. Beijing is cutting millions of jobs to shrink its bloated, state-owned coal mining industry, but output and consumption still are rising. Authorities say they are shrinking carbon emissions per unit of economic output. The government reported a reduction of 3.8% last year, better than 2020′s 1% but down from a 5.1% cut in 2017. Last year’s total energy use increased 5.2% over 2020 after a revival of global demand for Chinese exports propelled a manufacturing boom, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Stimulus spending also might raise carbon output if it pays for building more bridges, train stations and other public works. That would encourage carbon-intensive steel and cement production. China’s coal-fired power plants operate at about half their capacity on average, but building more creates jobs and economic activity, said Greenpeace’s Li. He said even if the power isn’t needed now, local leaders face pressure to make them pay for themselves. “That locks China into a more high-carbon path,” Li said. “It’s very difficult to fix.”

I. Abed bhai, as I called Fazle Hasan Abed, told me once that as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain he campaigned for them in an election. The candidate lost but he remembered  that they talked a lot but did little work. He had become an admirer of Paolo Friere and his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” theme but in the end, all ideas dissolved into an understanding of power derived from his own experience of work that marked his transition from an ideologue to a visionary. II. To Abed bhai, people were poor because they had no power and they had no power because they were excluded from financial access and transactions. They could not participate in economic activities so micro credit to him was not really an extreme poverty exit programme but a banking access mechanism. READ: Three conversations with Abed bhai - 1 He didn’t think that it was going to change society and its economics.  It was simply a tool for the middle poor people to take advantage of and press forward. In the 80s and even 90s, he had little idea of how to help the extreme poor. So microcredit was not for the very poor, as he told me in an interview on the topic. “You can’t give credit to a person who is not already in an income mode. How else can they repay from the next month? It was to prevent them from sliding back to poverty and to become better off.“ It was therefore a tool for inclusion and the platform to become powerful. And this is where the key to his understanding of power began. Economic inclusion was power.   III. He was really not into the kind of ideological liberalism that is popular among social workers and NGOs, as well as shushils  and academics. “Conscientization” was another buzzword, very chalu with the same world but he was almost dismissive of them.  “How will they deal with economic demand with words? There are wants and needs and unless one has access to economics, nothing works. Have any of these outfits been successful?”  Since they were not and now many are dead and gone, he knew what he was talking about. One day, he saw me on his office floor and walked towards me smiling.  “What do you think about digital payment and financial transactions without going to a bank?“  I had no idea then but he was talking about  bKash. He was more excited about it than I had seen him in a long time.  “Why should people have to go to the banks and seek services? The poor are afraid of the banks as these banks are so rude. This will mean they won’t need banks.“  READ: Savage Truth Behind Mumbai Carnage  Today bKash has changed Bangladesh.    Essentially it was an inclusion tool and he was a person who saw in financial inclusion the route to freedom. And that meant power to seek and to preserve the achievement. He had very little confidence in slogan mongering empowerment type of work. He wanted the concrete power that economic resources gave to the denied and that’s how he saw BRAC.  

China’s government banned effeminate men on TV and told broadcasters Thursday to promote “revolutionary culture,” broadening a campaign to tighten control over business and society and enforce official morality. President Xi Jinping has called for a “national rejuvenation,” with tighter Communist Party control of business, education, culture and religion. Companies and the public are under increasing pressure to align with its vision for a more powerful China and healthier society. The party has reduced children’s access to online games and is trying to discourage what it sees as unhealthy attention to celebrities. Also read: China fines tech giants for content exploiting children Broadcasters must “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics,” the National Radio and TV Administration said, using an insulting slang term for effeminate men — “niang pao,” or literally, “girlie guns.” That reflects official concern that Chinese pop stars, influenced by the sleek, fashionable look of some South Korean and Japanese singers and actors, are failing to encourage China’s young men to be masculine enough. Broadcasters should avoid promoting “vulgar internet celebrities” and admiration of wealth and celebrity, the regulator said. Instead, programs should “vigorously promote excellent Chinese traditional culture, revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture.” Xi’s government also is tightening control over Chinese internet industries. Also read: China punishes 30 officials for pandemic failing It has launched anti-monopoly, data security and other enforcement actions at companies including games and social media provider Tencent Holding and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group that the ruling party worries are too big and independent. Rules that took effect Wednesday limit anyone under 18 to three hours per week of online games and prohibit play on school days. Game developers already were required to submit new titles for government approval before they could be released. Officials have called on them to add nationalistic themes. The party also is tightening control over celebrities. Broadcasters should avoid performers who “violate public order” or have “lost morality,” the regulator said. Programs about the children of celebrities also are banned. On Saturday, microblog platform Weibo Corp. suspended thousands of accounts for fan clubs and entertainment news. A popular actress, Zhao Wei, has disappeared from streaming platforms without explanation. Her name has been removed from credits of movies and TV programs. Thursday’s order told broadcasters to limit pay for performers and to avoid contract terms that might help them evade taxes. Another actress, Zheng Shuang, was fined 299 million yuan ($46 million) last week on tax evasion charges in a warning to celebrities to be positive role models.

The Uyghur inmates sat in uniform rows with their legs crossed in lotus position and their backs ramrod straight, numbered and tagged, gazing at a television playing grainy black-and-white images of Chinese Communist Party history. This is one of an estimated 240 cells in just one section of Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng, seen by Associated Press journalists granted extraordinary access during a state-led tour to China’s far west Xinjiang region. The detention center is the largest in the country and possibly the world, with a complex that sprawls over 220 acres — making it twice as large as Vatican City. A sign at the front identified it as a “kanshousuo,” a pre-trial detention facility. Chinese officials declined to say how many inmates were there, saying the number varied. But the AP estimated the center could hold roughly 10,000 people and many more if crowded, based on satellite imagery and the cells and benches seen during the tour. While the BBC and Reuters have in the past reported from the outside, the AP was the first Western media organization allowed in. This site suggests that China still holds and plans to hold vast numbers of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in detention. Satellite imagery shows that new buildings stretching almost a mile long were added to the Dabancheng detention facility in 2019. Also read: China tightens info control after leaks on detention camps China has described its sweeping lockup of a million or more minorities over the past four years as a “war against terror,” after a series of knifings and bombings by a small number of extremist Uyghurs native to Xinjiang. Among its most controversial aspects were the so-called vocational “training centers” – described by former detainees as brutal internment camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. China at first denied their existence, and then, under heavy international criticism, said in 2019 that all the occupants had “graduated.” But the AP’s visit to Dabancheng, satellite imagery and interviews with experts and former detainees suggest that while many “training centers” were indeed closed, some like this one were simply converted into prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. Many new facilities have also been built, including a new 85-acre detention center down the road from No. 3 in Dabancheng that went up over 2019, satellite imagery shows. The changes seem to be an attempt to move from the makeshift and extrajudicial “training centers” into a more permanent system of prisons and pre-trial detention facilities justified under the law. While some Uyghurs have been released, others have simply been moved into this prison network. However, researchers say many innocent people were often thrown in detention for things like going abroad or attending religious gatherings. Darren Byler, an anthropologist studying the Uyghurs at the University of Colorado, noted that many prisoners have not committed “real crimes by any standards,” and that they go through a “show” trial without due process. “We’re moving from a police state to a mass incarceration state. Hundreds of thousands of people have disappeared from the population,” Byler said. “It’s the criminalization of normal behavior.” The detention Center in Dabancheng sprawls over 220 acres — making it twice as large as Vatican City. During the April tour of No. 3 in Dabancheng, officials repeatedly distanced it from the “training centers” that Beijing claims to have closed. Also read: US raps China's Uyghur abuse as ‘genocide’ in human rights report “There was no connection between our detention center and the training centers,” insisted Urumqi Public Security Bureau director Zhao Zhongwei. “There’s never been one around here.” They also said the No. 3 center was proof of China’s commitment to rehabilitation and the rule of law, with inmates provided hot meals, exercise, access to legal counsel and televised classes lecturing them on their crimes. Rights are protected, officials say, and only lawbreakers need worry about detention. “See, the BBC report said this was a re-education camp. It’s not - it’s a detention center,” said Liu Chang, an official with the foreign ministry. However, despite the claims of officials, the evidence shows No. 3 was indeed an internment camp. A Reuters picture of the entrance in September 2018 shows that the facility used to be called the “Urumqi Vocational Skills Education and Training Center”. Publicly available documents collected by Shawn Zhang, a law student in Canada, confirm that a center by the same name was commissioned to be built at the same location in 2017. Records also show that Chinese conglomerate Hengfeng Information Technology won an $11 million contract for outfitting the Urumqi “training center”. A man who answered a number for Hengfeng confirmed the company had taken part in the construction of the “training center,” but Hengfeng did not respond to further requests for comment. A former construction contractor who visited the Dabancheng facility in 2018 told the AP that it was the same as the “Urumqi Vocational Skills Education and Training Center,” and had been converted to a detention facility in 2019, with the nameplate switched. He declined to be named for fear of retaliation against his family. “All the former students inside became prisoners,” he said. The vast complex is ringed by 25-feet-tall concrete walls painted blue, watchtowers, and humming electric wire. Officials led AP journalists through the main entrance, past face-scanning turnstiles and rifle-toting guards in military camouflage. In one corner of the compound, masked inmates sat in rigid formation. Most appeared to be Uyghur. Zhu Hongbin, the center’s director, rapped on one of the cell’s windows. “They’re totally unbreakable,” he said, his voice muffled beneath head-to-toe medical gear. At the control room, staff gazed at a wall-to-wall, God’s-eye display of some two dozen screens streaming footage from each cell. Another panel played programming from state broadcaster CCTV, which Zhu said was being shown to the inmates. “We control what they watch,” Zhu said. “We can see if they’re breaking regulations, or if they might hurt or kill themselves.” The center also screens video classes, Zhu said, to teach them about their crimes. “They need to be taught why it’s bad to kill people, why it’s bad to steal,” Zhu said. Twenty-two rooms with chairs and computers allow inmates to chat with lawyers, relatives, and police via video, as they are strapped to their seats. Down the corridor, an office houses a branch of the Urumqi prosecutor’s office, in another sign of the switch to a formal prison system. A nearby medical room contains a gurney, a tank of oxygen and a cabinet stocked with medicine. Guidelines hanging on the wall instruct staff on the proper protocol to deal with sick inmates – and also to force-feed inmates on hunger strikes by inserting tubes up their noses. Zhao, the other official, said inmates are held for 15 days to a year before trial depending on their suspected crime, and the legal process is the same as in the rest of China. He said the center was built to house inmates away from the city because of safety concerns. Also read: China rebuffs WHO’s terms for further COVID-19 origins study Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is comparable in size to Rikers Island in New York City, but the region serves less than four million people compared to nearly 20 million for Rikers. At least three other detention centers are sprinkled across Urumqi, along with ten or more prisons. The No. 3 center did not appear to be at full capacity; one section was closed, officials said, and six to ten inmates sat in each cell, taking up only half the benches. But the latest official government statistics available, for 2019, show that there were about twice as many arrests in Xinjiang that year than before the crackdown started in 2017. Hundreds of thousands have been sentenced to prison, many to terms of five years or more. Xu Guixiang, a Xinjiang spokesperson, called the higher incarceration rates “severe measures” in the “war against terror.” “Of course, during this process, the number of people sentenced in accordance with the law will increase. This is a concrete indication of our work efficiency,” Xu said. “By taking these measures, terrorists are more likely to be brought to justice.” But many relatives of those imprisoned say they were sentenced on spurious charges, and experts caution that the opacity of the Xinjiang legal system is a red flag. Although China makes legal records easily accessible otherwise, almost 90 percent of criminal records in Xinjiang are not public. The handful which have leaked show that some are charged with “terrorism” or “separatism” for acts few would consider criminal, such as warning colleagues against watching porn and swearing, or praying in prison. Researcher Gene Bunin found that Uyghurs were made to sign confessions for what the authorities called “terrorist activities.” Some were subsequently released, including one detained in the Dabancheng facility, a relative told The Associated Press, declining to be named to avoid retribution against the former detainee. Others were not. Police reports obtained by the Intercept detail the case of eight Uyghurs in one Urumqi neighborhood detained in the “Dabancheng” facility in 2017 for reading religious texts, installing filesharing applications, or simply being an “untrustworthy person”. In late 2018, the reports show, prosecutors summoned them to makeshift meetings and sentenced them to two to five years of “study.” AP journalists did not witness any signs of torture or beating at the facility, and were unable to speak directly to any former or current detainees. But a Uyghur who had fled Xinjiang, Zumret Dawut, said a now-deceased friend who worked at Dabancheng had witnessed treatment so brutal that she fainted. The friend, Paride Amati, said she had seen a pair of teens forced to sign confessions claiming they were involved in terrorism while studying in Egypt, and their skin had been beaten bloody and raw. A teacher at the Dabancheng facility also called it “worse than hell,” according to a colleague at a different camp, Qelbinur Sedik. The teacher said that during classes she could hear the sounds of people being tortured with electric batons and iron chairs, according to Sedik. Accounts of conditions in detention centers elsewhere in Xinjiang vary widely: some describe restrictive conditions but no physical abuse, while others say they were tortured. Such accounts are difficult to verify independently, and the Xinjiang authorities deny all allegations of abuse. Chinese officials also continue to deny that they are holding Uyghurs on false charges. Down the road from the No. 3 center, high walls and guard towers were visible in the same location as the new detention facility shown in satellite imagery. When asked what it was, officials pleaded ignorance. “We don’t know what it is,” they said.

China’s ruling Communist Party said Monday it will ease birth limits to allow all couples to have three children instead of two in hopes of slowing the rapid aging of its population, which is adding to strains on the economy and society. The ruling party has enforced birth limits since 1980 to restrain population growth but worries the number of working-age people is falling too fast while the share over age 65 is rising. That threatens to disrupt its ambitions to transform China into a prosperous consumer society and global technology leader. A ruling party meeting led by President Xi Jinping decided to introduce “measures to actively deal with the aging population,” the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said they agreed that ”implementing the policy of one couple can have three children and supporting measures are conducive to improving China’s population structure.” Read: China, Philippines swap protests over Manila-occupied island Leaders also agreed China needs to raise its retirement age to keep more people in the workforce and improve pension and health services, Xinhua said. Restrictions that limited most couples to one child were eased in 2015 to allow two, but the total number of births fell further, suggesting rule changes on their own have had little impact on the trend. Couples say they are put off by high costs of raising a child, disruption to their jobs and the need to look after elderly parents. China, along with Thailand and some other Asian economies, face what economists call the challenge of whether they can get rich before they get old. The Chinese population of 1.4 billion already was expected to peak later this decade and start to decline. Census data released May 11 suggest that is happening faster than expected, adding to burdens on underfunded pension and health systems and cutting the number of future workers available to support a growing retiree group. The share of working-age people 15 to 59 in the population fell to 63.3% last year from 70.1% a decade earlier. The group aged 65 and older grew to 13.5% from 8.9%. The 12 million births reported last year was down nearly one-fifth from 2019. Read: China may buckle down to reunify Taiwan after crackdown on Hong Kong About 40% were second children, down from 50% in 2017, according to Ning Jizhe, a statistics official who announced the data on May 11. Chinese researchers and the labor ministry say the share of working-age people might fall to half the population by 2050. That increases the “dependency ratio,” or the number of retirees who rely on each worker to generate income for pension funds and to pay taxes for health and other public services. Leaders at Monday’s meeting agreed it is “necessary to steadily implement the gradual postponement of the legal retirement age,” Xinhua said. It gave no details, but the government has been debating raising the official retirement ages of 60 for men, 55 for white-collar female workers and 50 for blue-collar female workers. The potential change is politically fraught. Female professionals welcome a chance to stay in satisfying careers, but others whose bodies are worn out from decades of manual labor resent being required to work longer. The fertility rate, or the average number of births per mother, stood at 1.3 in 2020, well below the 2.1 that would maintain the size of the population. Read:Biden’s solar ambitions collide with China labor complaints China’s birth rate, paralleling trends in other Asian economies, already was falling before the one-child rule. The average number of children per Chinese mother tumbled from above six in the 1960s to below three by 1980, according to the World Bank. Demographers say official birth limits concealed what would have been a further fall in the number of children per family without the restrictions. The ruling party says it prevented as many as 400 million potential births, averting shortages of food and water. But demographers say if China followed trends in Thailand, parts of India and other countries, the number of additional babies might have been as low as a few million.

A group of youth is reaching out to the people in need in Faridpur town at night, feeding as many people as they can amid the coronavirus lockdown. Also read: Lockdown unproductive due to mismanagement: BNPActivists of the Communist Party and the Chhatra Union are distributing packets of hotchpotch (khichuri) among the helpless people throughout the town.The government enforced a weeklong lockdown to contain the transmission of coronavirus. It has been strict at some places and lax at others.

China eked out 2.3% economic growth in 2020, likely becoming the only major economy to expand as shops and factories reopened relatively early from a shutdown to fight the coronavirus while the United States, Japan and Europe struggled with disease flare-ups.

China’s shaky economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is gaining strength as consumers return to shopping malls and auto dealerships while the United States and Europe endure painful contractions.