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Seven decades after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and China, the COVID-19 pandemic presents new prospects and challenges for bilateral cooperation. We seek to analyse various traits in China–Indonesia relations since 2020 by examining how Indonesia attempts balancing between such cooperation and maintaining peaceful ethnic relations domestically. By tracking the domestic discourse surrounding COVID-19 and China through Indonesia's domestic news media, the paper analyses the development of the pandemic in Indonesia, its procurement of vaccines, and, most significantly, domestic sentiments concerning Indonesia's ethnic Chinese Tionghoa citizens, as well as Indonesia's bilateral relations with China in general. The article argues that while the COVID-19 pandemic has created new avenues of cooperation between Indonesia and China, it has also adversely affected the domestic relations between ethnic Chinese citizens and the rest of the population. However, this has not translated into a widespread backlash toward China that might hinder bilateral cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a three-step framework to quantify COVID-19's impacts on China's domestic and international air travel demand and to evaluate how the impacts evolve from January 2020 to January 2022. Time series techniques and combination forecasting are tested to identify the best-performing model to generate baseline forecasts, with which actual demands are compared to assess the impact of COVID-19. The results demonstrate that during the period under study, China's domestic aviation sector experienced two V-shape recoveries, while its international counterpart was devastated and showed no sign of revival. It suggests that to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, containing virus spread and removing mobility controls are essential; and when travel restrictions are lifted or loosened, governments play important roles in accelerating the rate of demand recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have brought dramatic urbanization to China. Between 1978 and 2018, the urban population rose from 17.9 per cent to 59.6 per cent of the total. Urbanization has many implications, including for education. China's government has long been concerned about imbalances in access to and quality of schooling, and new imbalances have been introduced through market forces in the so-called shadow education sector of private supplementary tutoring, arising from both demand and supply. Urban families in particular seek private supplementary tutoring, and tutorial companies favour densely populated areas for higher enrolments. China has the world's largest school system and most extensive shadow provision. This paper conceptualizes the space of shadow provision in educational, social and geographical terms. It highlights the changing scale and nature of private tutoring, observes the roles of new technologies and government regulations, notes the impact of COVID-19, and argues that shadow education both shapes and is shaped by urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Australian media's coverage of China's efforts to contain COVID-19. The article is a critical discourse analysis of the major news stories, documentaries, opinions, and analyses published in the entire array of Australian media, including both television and radio programs from the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster the ABC, commercial media outlets such as Murdoch's The Australian newspaper and Nine Entertainment's The Sydney Morning Herald, and several tabloid papers. By identifying the key themes, perspectives, and angles used in these reports and narratives, this article finds that the more credible media outlets have mostly framed China's efforts in political and ideological terms, rather than as an issue of public health. In comparison, the tabloid media—including commercial television, shock jock radio, and newspapers—have resorted to conspiratorial, racist, and Sino-phobic positions. In both instances, the coverage of China's experience is a continuation and embodiment of the "China threat" and "Chinese influence" discourses that have now dominated the Australian media for a number of years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the consequences of the emergence of COVID-19 has been the glaring racial and ethnic disparities that have defined the course of the spread of the virus. As a recent migrant-minority community in China, the Black community's experience has been defined by vulgar racism, exploitation, and stigmatization. In the context of COVID-19, the Black community in China was again a target of multiple racial projects which sought to label their bodies as diseased and physical presence as a threat to the viability and safety of the Han majority. The global response was to mobilize online to expose how the Chinese government is systematically facilitating discriminatory policies against Black migrants in China. In the present paper, we explore how Twitter was utilized to mobilize awareness about anti-Black racism in China. We first present a brief history of African migration to China and then discuss the Han racial ideologies that are inspiring the anti-Black racism. We then use latent Dirichlet allocation as a topic modeling algorithm to extract underlying themes to discuss how anti-Black racism in the COVID-19 context was framed and subsequently challenged by the global community. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion on COVID-19 and the future of the Black community in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, China provided medical assistance on an unprecedented scale. While some observers have underscored the strategic purposes of China's COVID-19 aid, referred to as "mask diplomacy," they have yet to assess this argument against empirical evidence. We seek to examine whether China's medical aid was used as a strategic tool, or it remained reactionary and fragmented, by combining a new dataset on the global distribution of Chinese in-kind medical aid with a qualitative analysis of government and news reports during the first wave of the pandemic. Our findings show that although COVID-19 aid did have the potential to strengthen China's influence over recipients and promote Chinese knowledge of health governance, Chinese policymakers were underprepared to use aid strategically during the pandemic. The reactionary and fragmented nature of China's COVID-19 aid was reflected in its allocation, its policy-making processes, and its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, China has been the leading exporter and donor of COVID-19 vaccines in the world. Based on a survey of 460 Chinese participants conducted in mainland China in March 2021, the results showed that the participants' value-expressive attitudes (i.e. their responsibility to help) and esteem attitudes (i.e. China's image and status) were strong predictors of their support for vaccine exports and donations, whereas attitudes related to prevention and a possible vaccine shortage in China were weak predictors. Fairness and ingroup loyalty were the major moral foundations of their support for such international efforts; the influence of fairness and ingroup loyalty was both direct and mediated by value-expressive and esteem attitudes. Collectively, the present results show that support for international efforts can be analysed from a moral, altruistic perspective and thus extend the previous theorising that focused on the transactional nature of international outreach efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cynomolgus macaques, the most commonly utilized nonhuman primate in nonclinical toxicology studies, are acquired from purpose-bred colonies across various geographic locations, including China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Importation challenges and limited availability have restricted animals suitable for inclusion in nonclinical studies. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak further stressed supply chains, reducing the ability to source animals from a singular location to complete a drug development program. These challenges raised concerns of increased variability in study endpoints due to heterogeneity of animals and that this could subsequently impact historical control data and toxicology study interpretation. To investigate the impact of Chinese, Vietnamese, or Cambodian geographic origin on standard nonclinical toxicology study endpoints, historical control data from studies conducted at a single facility from 2005 to 2020 were compiled and evaluated for the following: clinical observations, body weight, ophthalmoscopic examinations, and clinical and anatomic pathology data. Study populations consisted of 2- to 5-year-old cynomolgus macaques sourced from China (n = 750 males/741 females), Cambodia (n = 282 males/271 females), and Vietnam (n = 122 males/120 females). Interpretation of the various data demonstrated no notable differences in standard toxicology study endpoints or background findings among cynomolgus macaques originating from China, Cambodia, or Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis discusses domestic sources of China's diplomatic offensive in Europe following the outbreak of Covid-19, with a focus on the central and eastern parts of the continent. By examining selected case studies of countries competing for Chinese medical supplies in the time of the global crisis, it demonstrates how the party-state leadership with "Xi Jinping at the core" has been promoting the narrative of its transparent and timely response to the outbreak of the pandemic, while at the same time nurturing its image as a (benevolent) global leader in the struggle against the coronavirus. The article argues that mask diplomacy has served two overlapping domestic and foreign policy goals: aiming to cover up China's leadership's failure to contain the pandemic in its initial stage, while also turning acts of foreign gratitude to its advantage in seeking domestic public approval and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines China's media image in Hong Kong's health crises of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 and the coronavirus disease-19 in 2020. Both diseases were allegedly transmitted from mainland China to Hong Kong, which triggered extensive media coverage and intensive debates over China's role in epidemic control, reaction, and its trust in Hong Kong and the world. In 2003, China established a relatively positive and constructive media image in Hong Kong during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome crisis, particularly when Chinese state leaders made themselves visible to the people. However, in the wake of coronavirus disease-19, media and public discourses have speculated about China's failure to contain the pandemic, questioning China's informational credibility. Theoretically, we argue that the comparison of China's media image in Hong Kong during the health crises of severe acute respiratory syndrome and coronavirus disease-19 indicates that China's international image has shifted from a soft power to a sharp power. While Hong Kong is under Chinese sovereignty as a Special Administrative Region of China and a global financial and business hub, its media discourses continue to indicate how overseas opinion perceives the rise of China and its performance as a global citizen. Our findings show that the scholarly dialogues on soft power and sharp power were manifested in the news frames of severe acute respiratory syndrome and coronavirus disease-19 in Hong Kong. We will conceptualize the shifting media image by revisiting the concepts of soft power, sharp power, and the international debate on the rise of China in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses one question: how is the coronavirus outbreak and its management in China reported in the UK media in general, and on the Internet in particular? It does so by examining how the online versions of the BBC, the Guardian and the Daily Mail reported on the coronavirus outbreak in China, but more importantly, on how China handled it, over a 20-week timeframe. The sentiment analysis and thematic analysis show that although the selected media are of different types in the United Kingdom, the themes and topics are not substantially different from each other. This implies that the general media-consuming public in the United Kingdom would regard China's handling of the virus as largely negative or neutral. However, the ways of discussing and presenting those topics were subject to variation between the publications, which in turn is reflected in the attitudes and perceptions of their readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]