A slowing economy, crackdowns on shadow financing, and plummeting earnings from land sales are crimping China’s local governments’ spending power that could likely force them to slash their infrastructure spending, experts fear. But worse, after the property sector, investments in China’s infrastructure are seen as a potential second domino to fall, they say. “[China’s] local governments are running increasingly higher deficits that will limit their ability to spend their way into growth,” Andrew Colliers, a China analyst and managing director at the Hong Kong-based Orient Capital Research, told The Epoch Times. The central government, he added, has been cracking down on off-balance sheet or “shadow” financing due to concerns about financial risk, and the fact that that the property market is unlikely to rebound strongly (in near future), their revenue from land sales will be limited....Read more https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/chinas-infrastructure-investment-could-tumble-next-experts-5508192
An airborne Chinese military aircraft recently ‘hid’ itself under a civilian airliner flying west of the center line of the Taiwan Strait. On Sept. 24, Taiwan ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone), a military enthusiast group, posted on Facebook that at 8:30 a.m., it detected a Chinese Y-9 military communications command aircraft flying from south to north on the M503 route, west of the center line of the Taiwan Strait, for a short period. What alarmed the group was that the Chinese aircraft’s flight path overlapped with the position of Cathay Pacific Airways CX366, which was flying from Hong Kong to Shanghai Pudong Airport....
Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei has come back to Australia after spending the last three years behind bars in China. It comes after multiple efforts by the Australian federal government to discuss the issue with Chinese authorities. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed Ms. Lei had arrived safely home in Melbourne and was reunited with her family. “Her return will be warmly welcomed not just by her family and friends but by all Australians,” Mr. Albanese said in a media statement. “Her release follows the completion of legal processes in China,” he added. “The Australian government will continue to provide whatever consular support Ms. Cheng and her family require.”...
Liver cancer is the third leading cancer killer in Hong Kong, with 1,447 deaths in 2021, accounting for 9.6 percent of all cancer-related deaths. Unfortunately, only one out of five patients is suitable for surgical resection treatment, and terminal patients are usually deemed unsuitable. However, there are advanced liver cancer patients in Hong Kong who successfully shrink their tumors after undergoing one year of immune combination therapy. They can then undergo resection surgery to ‘zero out’ the tumor. According to the Hong Kong Liver and Gastrointestinal Cancer Foundation, tumor removal surgery is the first choice treatment for early to mid-stage liver cancer. Surgery is not suitable if the tumor is too large, if it has invaded major blood vessels, or if cancer cells have spread. Immunotherapy activates autoimmunity against cancer cells....