The Wall Street Journal - 04.03.2020

A8| Wednesday, March 4, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

WORLD WATCH

AFGHANISTAN

Trump Speaks With

Senior Taliban Leader

President Trump said he

spoke to the Taliban’s co-founder

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar

about the implementation of the

deal signed over the weekend to

withdraw U.S. troops from Af-

ghanistan, according to state-

ments released afterward.

Mr. Trump is believed to be

the first U.S. president to speak

to a senior Taliban figure since

the U.S. ousted the group from

power in 2001 for refusing to

hand over al Qaeda leader

Osama bin Laden after the Sept.

11 attacks. Mr. Trump described

their relationship as “very good”

and said the two had a “long

conversation.”

“They’re looking to get this

ended and we’re looking to get

it ended,” Mr. Trump said at the

National Institutes of Health in

Bethesda, Md. “I think we all

have a very common interest.”

He added: “They want to cease

the violence.”

A Taliban readout of the call

said the two spoke for 35 min-

utes and discussed the imple-

mentation of the deal, including

efforts to launch talks among

Afghans. Mullah Baradar is the

Taliban’s political chief, based in

Doha, Qatar..

—Jessica Donati

CHINA

Beijing Decries U.S.

Curbs on Its Media

Chinese officials accused the

U.S. of hypocrisy and hinted at

countermeasures after Washing-

ton capped the number of Chi-

nese nationals that can work for

Chinese news outlets in the U.S.

The State Department said

Monday a group of state-run Chi-

nese media companies must trim

their Chinese employees in the

U.S. to 100, from 160, by March 13.

Last month, China expelled three

Wall Street Journal reporters.

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman at

the Chinese Foreign Ministry, ac-

cused the U.S. on Tuesday of

employing a “Cold War mind-set

and ideological bias” in limiting

the number of journalists.

The State Department last

month identified the U.S. opera-

tions of the outlets—which in-

clude the Xinhua News Agency,

China Global Television Network,

China Daily and China Radio In-

ternational—as foreign missions,

akin to embassies, subjecting

their employees to similar rules

as foreign diplomats.

Asked whether China would

expel additional U.S. journalists

or implement a similar cap on

U.S. journalists in China, Mr.

Zhao said: “We reserve the right

to make further responses.”

—Shan Li

CANADA

Railway Seeks to Get

Freight Moving Again

Canadian National Railway

Co.’s chief executive said the

company would strive over the

coming days to meaningfully re-

duce the backlog of freight

caused by blockades that choked

off key economic corridors last

month.

Jean-Jacques Ruest said he

anticipates a reduction in parked

railcars loaded with freight in

eastern Canada to around 1,500,

from roughly 8,000, by the end

of the week. “There will be a big

progression,” Mr. Ruest said in

an interview with The Wall

Street Journal. For some com-

modity groups, he said the re-

turn to normal “might take a

month or two.”

The railroad operator on

Tuesday called back most of the

450 employees temporarily laid

off last month because of train

cancellations prompted by the

blockade about 120 miles east in

Toronto. Protesters were trying

to block construction of a British

Columbia natural-gas pipeline.

The blockade near Belleville

lasted 18 days. The throttling of

freight-rail traffic threatens to

shave 0.1% to 0.3% from Cana-

dian output in February, econo-

mists say.

—Paul Vieira

RALLY: Thousands turned out across France to protest proposed changes to the state’s pension plans.

YOAN VALAT/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Now, the capital faces a

flood of residents returning

from other regions. Out of its

22 million residents, some eight

million are registered elsewhere

and many of them likely trav-

eled home in January for the

Lunar New Year holiday.

On Sunday, the Ministry of

Transport banned taxis and

ride-hailing services in Beijing

from exiting the capital, and

those from elsewhere from en-

tering the city—after intercity

buses had already been banned

from the city in late January.

On Friday, Beijing issued its lat-

est epidemic-control guideline

in which it emphasized that

anyone coming into the city

from elsewhere in China must

be quarantined at home for 14

days and called on residential

districts to strengthen supervi-

WORLD NEWS

About 700 miles from the

epidemic center of Wuhan, Bei-

jing has comparatively few cor-

onavirus cases, though there

have been clusters of infections

at two hospitals and one work-

place. As of Monday, the capital

accounted for 414 of the 80,

confirmed nationwide infec-

tions and eight of the 2,

deaths.

Beijing is more than China’s

political capital. It is also home

to massive government-owned

enterprises and privately run

technology giants such as

search-engine provider Baidu

Inc. and ByteDance Inc., maker

of the TikTok app.

The low infection rate al-

lowed Beijing to impose rela-

tively few restrictions on peo-

ple’s movements within the city

until recently, while other re-

gions locked down residents.

Then, the capital city started

clamping down, just as other

Chinese regions began going

the other way and loosening re-

strictions.

sion. Those returning from

countries where the coronavi-

rus outbreak is severe must

also be quarantined for 14 days.

It also said university students

shouldn’t return to school.

In the past two weeks, au-

thorities have gone door to

door in many neighborhoods to

give entry-exit passes to resi-

dents for new checkpoints. In

some neighborhoods, local offi-

cials have slapped large stickers

across both the door and frame

of entrances. If authorities later

find a sticker broken, they can

tell that people have been en-

tering or leaving a residence.

Local authorities last week

also ordered supermarkets to

ensure customers each main-

tain a cushion of about 20

square feet around each other,

while telling offices to cap

how many people can be pres-

ent per day.

China last week also post-

poned the National People’s

Congress, an annual political

meeting in March of thou-

sands of delegates from across

the nation.

Quarantine rules have partic-

ularly hurt rural-born migrant

workers who had left the city

for Lunar New Year and couldn’t

immediately return to work in

Beijing. They often work as car

drivers, factory workers or in

other jobs requiring them to be

physically present.

Many Beijingers remain

scarred by the severe acute re-

spiratory syndrome, or SARS, in

the early 2000s, and said epi-

demic-control restrictions were

reasonable.

Huguosi, a state-owned

greasy spoon near government

headquarters, recently pushed

tables against the wall and

posted a notice: “For your

health and safety, please do not

sit face-to-face while eating.”

“It’s pretty reasonable be-

cause the virus can spread

through the air,” said Li Mei, a

retiree slurping noodle soup

with her husband in side-by-

side seats last week. “The dis-

ease is caused by people’s bad

habits.”

—Bingyan Wang

and Raffaele Huang

contributed to this article.

BEIJING—While telling most
of the world’s second-biggest
economy to resume work, Chi-
nese President Xi Jinping has
singled out two regions that he
says should prioritize coronavi-
rus containment. One is the
province at the center of the
epidemic. The other is Beijing.
Make all-out efforts to pre-
vent the virus from spreading in
the capital, the Chinese leader
said in a speech last week. “The
security and stability of the
capital city is directly related to
the overall work of the party
and the country,” he said.
Authorities have kept shut
many of Beijing’s tourist spots
for more than a month, while
recently beefing up epidemic-
control measures.
Near the government’s main
compound in central Beijing,
sites including the Forbidden
City, Tiananmen Square, the
National Museum and the Na-
tional Library all remain closed.
Authorities have also shut
down parts of the Great Wall of
China. Chang’an Avenue, the
usually crowded boulevard run-
ning in front of the Forbidden
City, was nearly empty over the
weekend. Several policemen
checked the identification of
visitors, allowing only Beijing
residents and those who could
prove they hadn’t left the capi-
tal in the past two weeks to ap-
proach the site.
Sealing off political and fi-
nancial centers from an epi-
demic is rare, medical histori-
ans say. In 1892, President
Benjamin Harrison quarantined
New York City’s port during a
cholera scare. In 1900, authori-
ties cordoned off Honolulu’s
Chinatown to try to contain the
bubonic plague. In 2014, Libe-
ria locked down an impover-
ished neighborhood in its capi-
tal, Monrovia, in an effort to
stop the spread of the deadly
Ebola virus.

BYSTUWOO

In Beijing, a Wall Rises to Fight Outbreak

China authorities heed

Xi’s call to lock down

capital in bid to stop

spread of coronavirus

Beijing office workers registered their body temperatures and personal information. The city has comparatively few coronavirus cases.

THOMAS PETER/REUTERS

Companies Rush to

Develop Treatments

Japanese drugmakerTakeda

PharmaceuticalCo. said it is try-

ing to develop a drug to treat

people infected with the novel

coronavirus or at high risk of

contracting it.

The company’s experimental

drug would be derived from the

blood of coronavirus patients

who have recovered from the re-

spiratory disease, officials said.

Researchers hope the antibodies

developed by the recovered pa-

tients can bolster the immune

systems of new patients and de-

feat the infections.

Such therapies have been

shown effective in treatment of

severe acute viral respiratory in-

fections, Takeda officials said.

Takeda, which has about 40

employees working on the proj-

ect, moved from a concept to a

tangible program in the last few

weeks, officials said. If testing is

successful, the company aims to

make the therapy available to

patients between nine months

and 18 months from now.

The drugmaker joins Gilead

Sciences Inc. and AbbVie Inc. as

companies with therapies being

evaluated. A handful of other

companies have said they are

working toward developing a

vaccine. There aren’t any drugs

approved to treat coronavirus in-

fections, or vaccines to prevent

them, prompting pharmaceutical

companies to ramp up discovery

efforts.

Pfizer Inc. said Monday that

antiviral compounds it had devel-

oped are under review to see if

they could treat the coronavirus

infections. Pfizer said it hopes to

get results back this month, and

if positive, the company could

begin testing an experimental

drug in patients by the end of

the year.

—Jared S. Hopkins

Nili Gilbert

Co-Founderand

PortfolioManager,

MatarinCapital

Management

Jane Fraser

PresidentandCEO

GlobalConsumer

Banking,

Citigroup

Catherine P.

Bessant

ChiefOperationsand

TechnologyOficer,

BankofAmerica

A.J. Murphy

ManagingDirector,

SilverLake

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