The EconomistJuly 25th 2020 Asia 191W
hen turkmenistan’spresident did
a spot of fishing recently, he brought
a snazzy accessory with him: a camouflage
face mask. The isolationist Central Asian
state is one of the last countries still claim-
ing to be coronavirus-free, along with
North Korea and some remote Pacific is-
lands. But something has changed in Turk-
menistan, which is suddenly adopting a
plethora of precautions. Out are the patri-
otic festivals, football matches and horse
races that stood out as the rest of the world
shut down earlier this year. Suddenly, the
government wants citizens to wear face
masks—to protect against dust, rather than
germs, it insists. (No, it has not been an es-
pecially dusty summer.) The authorities
even admitted a team from the World
Health Organisation, which tactfully ad-
vised them to behave “as if covid-19 were al-
ready circulating”, neatly sidestepping the
government’s dismissal of reports that a
covid-like ailment was indeed circulating
in Turkmenistan as “fake news”.
Elsewhere in Central Asia, the disease is
well into a second wave and restrictions are
being reimposed. In Kazakhstan officially
diagnosed cases have rocketed by around
1,400% since the easing of a stringent lock-
down in May. Rules requiring people to
keep their distance and wear masks have
been flouted. The authorities are now try-
ing to enforce them, painting carefully
spaced circles in parks popular with pic-
nickers and plastering cities with posters
promoting masks. In early July shopping
malls and gyms were closed, though bars
and restaurants may still serve customers
outdoors. Groups of more than three peo-
ple are banned, but Kazakhstan, like other
countries in Central Asia, has struggled to
discourage toi ̧ gatherings of the extended
family that are an ingrained custom but
that have helped spread the pandemic.
The government has admitted that a
spike in pneumonia probably reflects un-
diagnosed cases of covid-19. Given that
163,000 more pneumonia cases were regis-
tered in recent months than in the same
period last year, the official tally of around
80,000 covid-19 infections is clearly a wild
understatement. The health-care system is
creaking under the strain, with hospitals in
big cities running short of beds. Public an-
ger at the government’s handling of the
pandemic is running high, exacerbated by
a thunderous but tone-deaf fireworks dis-
play in Nur-Sultan, the capital, to celebratea public holiday that fell on the 80th birth-
day of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the ex-presi-
dent in whose honour the city is named. Mr
Nazarbayev, who stepped down last year
but is still feted as the father of the nation,
has recently recovered from the corona-
virus himself.
Kyrgyzstan recently adjusted its statis-
tics to include probable covid-19 cases pre-
viously classified as pneumonia, causing
the number of infections to double over-
night and fatalities to jump almost five-
fold. Uzbekistan has reimposed a lock-
down it began easing in May, although its
government is still attempting to lure tour-
ists with a promise to pay them $3,should they catch the coronavirus during
their visit. Many in the region are anxious
enough to resort to spurious folk remedies,
from ginger and horseradish to horse milk
and dog fat. A cartoon circulating in Uzbek-
istan captures the grim mood: angry viral
blobs have a doctor on the ropes in a boxing
ring, while an official looks away.
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turk-
menistan’s president, could not be accused
of being uncaring, however. After his fish-
ing trip, he magnanimously donated his
catch to an orphanage. The children duly
trooped out on state television to express
their awe and gratitude, all safely protected
from dust by spotless face masks. 7ALMATY
Most of the region’s governments at
least admit they have a problemCovid-19 in Central AsiaDust-busters
C
aptain kuwahara satoru’stanker is
manoeuvring through Yokohama har-
bour. Dolphins leap in the distance; a
cruise ship slides under a glittering bridge.
He issues an instruction via the radio, and
suddenly the ship is navigating congested
waters off Singapore. Offered a turn at the
helm, your correspondent accidentally
sets the tanker on a collision course. Mr
Kuwahara quickly steers away from dan-
ger. Then he flips a switch and all the win-
dows go dark. He walks out of the simulator
into the 24th-floor offices of Japan Marine
Science (jms), a shipping consultancy.
jmsis using the simulator to develop al-
gorithms to help ships steer themselves. It
is one of the many Japanese firms that is ex-
perimenting with the maritime equivalent
of self-driving cars. The Nippon Founda-tion, a philanthropic group, has put ¥3.4bn
($31m) into a consortium trying to develop
the necessary technology. Giant Japanese
shipping firms like Mitsui oskLines (mol)
and Nippon Yusen Kaisha (nyk) have been
working on autonomous ships since 2016.
(Similar efforts are under way in China,
South Korea and Europe.)
For Japan, demography and geography
make automation essential. The country
has more than 400 inhabited islands,
many inaccessible by road, and “fewer and
fewer transport options to reach them”,
says Unno Mitsuyuki of the Nippon Foun-
dation. More than half of the 21,000 mari-
ners in the coastal shipping industry are
over 50; more than a quarter are over 60.
Their work is physically demanding and
often requires spending long stretches
away from home. “Plus there’s no internet
at sea,” notes Nishimura Haruka, a 33-year-
old captain and researcher at jms. For many
of her peers, that makes seafaring a non-
starter, although Ms Nishimura herself
makes do with “the beauty of the horizon”.
The technology is still in its infancy.
Some firms have set their sites on partial
automation to reduce the crew needed for
long-haul voyages; others want to do away
with crew altogether, or to have them steer
ships from offices thousands of miles away
from the vessel in question. The Nippon
Foundation reckons half the coastal fleet
could be autonomous by 2040.
Rolls-Royce, a British engineering firm,
demonstrated an autonomous ferry off the
coast of Finland in 2018. Last year nyk,
which is the parent company of jms, suc-
cessfully tested an autonomous navigation
system on a container ship with 71,TOKYO
As crews grow older, shipping firms try to find a way to do without themShipping in JapanSailing without sailors
No gantry for old men