The Times - UK (2020-12-02)

34 2GM Wednesday December 2 2020 | the times

Wo r l d

Once a global dumping ground, China

is to halt all solid waste imports next

month in a move that will increase the

pressure on other, often poorer, Asian

nations that have become alternative

destinations for the world’s rubbish.

Beijing said that from January it

would no longer grant any exemptions

to a ban introduced in 2017 on accept-

ing waste plastic, scrap paper, textiles

and some other products. China is try-

ing to reduce pollution and encourage

recyclers to treat the country’s own

huge volumes of domestic rubbish

instead.

The new rules will pose a serious en-

vironmental challenge to countries

exporting waste to China but will also

pile pressure on other Asian nations,

Facebook and YouTube are “complicit”

in suppressing criticism of the commu-

nist dictatorship in Vietnam, a country

in which they make hundreds of mil-

lions of pounds every year, according to

Amnesty International.

A report by the human rights organi-

sation speaks of abuse, intimidation

and prosecution of Vietnamese who

challenge the unelected Communist

Party government, and the apparent

willingness of American technology

companies to censor dissident opinion.

“In the past decade, the right to free-

dom of expression flourished on Face-

book and YouTube in Vietnam,” Ming

Yu Hah, of Amnesty International,

chips. “Its total nonsense,” wrote one

user on the web portal Naver, one of a

storm of outraged comments. “What a

thief, stealing our culture!”

The food ministry insisted that, de-

spite similarities, the two dishes were

not the same, saying: “It is inappropriate

to report without differentiating kimchi

from pao cai of China’s Sichuan.”

Kimchi is prepared according to

family recipes and is eaten with almost

everything. Koreans say that its taste is

the taste of a mother’s love. The pun-

gent dish consists of vegetables, and

sometimes fish, mixed with salt, ancho-

vies, chillies, garlic and other spices and

fermented in stone jars. There is radish

kimchi, cucumber kimchi and spinach

kimchi, but the most typical is made

from the leaves of the Napa cabbage.

China slams door on world’s rubbish

several of which struggled to cope with

the volumes that arrived after previous

rounds of rule tightening in China, and

often ended up burning waste plastic in

open pits.

India, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam and

Turkey are major destinations for plas-

tic waste, along with Thailand, Indon-

esia and the Philippines. Japan, Ger-

many, the USA, France and Italy are the

world’s five largest net exporters.

Countries began sending waste in-

cluding plastics, electronics and scrap

metal to China for recycling in the

1980s. China gladly accepted it as a

source of raw material for its booming

manufacturing sector but it has become

one of the country’s biggest environ-

mental challenges.

Substandard treatment by backyard

workshops has led to rampant air and

water pollution. The country failed to

keep up with the billions of tonnes of

rubbish, as more has been produced by

its own economic development, and it

now faces a treatment backlog.

Under Beijing’s new edict the dump-

ing, storage and disposal of waste prod-

ucts from overseas on Chinese territory

will be banned. However, so that manu-

facturers still have access to resources,

the importing of recycled materials

processed outside China is permitted.

China’s solid waste imports have fall-

en dramatically since it began tighten-

ing its rules on rubbish from abroad.

Last year it imported 13.48 million ton-

nes, down 40 per cent from 2018. More

waste is now going to countries in

southeast Asia, where many of the

recycling facilities are owned by Chi-

nese companies.

China is trying to raise its low re-

cycling rate and building large-scale

recycling centres, some to deal with

bulk solid waste and others for waste

from industries such as coal mining,

construction and metal production.

Last year, Shanghai, a city of 24 mil-

lion people, instituted a waste sorting

system and became the first in China to

impose fines on householders who fail

to separate their rubbish and recycling.

Plastic pollution is one of China’s big-

gest challenges. Last year, it produced

63 million tonnes of plastic and a surge

in people using mobile apps to order

food deliveries to their homes and offi-

ces will increase that, while only about

30 per cent is recycled.

In response, China’s commerce min-

istry has proposed that restaurants,

online companies and delivery firms be

forced to report their use of single-use

plastics and submit formal recycling

plans to the authorities.

China

Louise Watt Ta i w a n

US tech giants ‘complicit in

jailing of Vietnam’s critics’

Vietnam

Richard Lloyd Parry Asia Editor

said. “Today these platforms have be-

come hunting grounds for censors,

military cybertroops and state-spon-

sored trolls. The platforms themselves

are... increasingly complicit.”

The dictatorship locks up peaceful

political opponents under vaguely

worded laws and insists that foreign

companies co-operate in their enforce-

ment. Vietnam has 170 prisoners of

conscience, 69 of whom were jailed for

peaceful online activity.

The authorities have praised Face-

book and YouTube for removing or

blocking posts at their request; some-

thing they are doing with increasing

frequency. Facebook imposed “content

restrictions” based on local law 834

times from January to July, compared

with 198 times in all of last year.

Seoul and Beijing in food

fight over cabbage dish

South Korea

Richard Lloyd Parry

Kimchi, the pickled vegetable creation

regarded by South Korea as its national

dish, is at the centre of a row after China

laid claim to the defining recipe.

The International Organisation for

Standardisation (ISO), in Geneva, re-

cently gave “certification” to pao cai, a

pickled cabbage dish from the Chinese

province of Sichuan. The Beijing tab-

loid Global Times responded by boast-

ing that this amounted to recognition

of the “international standard for the

kimchi industry led by China”.

For proud Koreans, this is the equiva-

lent of the French claiming boudin noir

as the king of black pudding or Japan

using tempura to lay claim to fish and

AFP/GETTY; REUTERS

E

arthlings are

wondering:

where in the

world will a

shiny metal

monolith appear next?

(Ben Hoyle writes)

First there was the

mystery of a gleaming,

12ft pillar discovered

in a remote part of the

Utah desert on

November 18, far

right. It vanished ten

days later but by then

a similar object had

been found on a

hillside in Romania,

right. Like the first

pillar, this slightly

smaller one recalled, if

you squinted, the alien

monoliths that play a

vital role in Stanley

Kubrick’s film 2001: A

Space Odyssey.

The new pillar was

in a protected

archaeological area

near an ancient

Dacian fortress in

Neamt county. It too

disappeared yesterday.

Excitable science

fiction enthusiasts are

hoping for a third

close encounter of the

same kind soon. In the

meantime theories

that do not require the

intervention of

extraterrestrial life to

explain the monoliths’

brief intersection with

our existence have

gained momentum.

The prevailing view is

that both are the work

of anonymous artists.

In Utah, the local

sheriff ’s office and the

Bureau of Land

Management have

begun an investigation

into the installation

and removal of the

first structure, which

was on public land.

They insist they have

no explanation yet.

However, a

photographer who

drove six hours to take

pictures of it by

moonlight last Friday

said that at about

8.40pm four men

arrived to dismantle it.

Ross Bernards told

The New York Times

that the men broke it

apart methodically

and removed it in a

wheelbarrow, with one

of them saying

cryptically as they left:

“Leave no trace.”

Grainy photos taken

by Mr Bernards’s

companion show the

insides of the object,

which appear to be

made from plywood.

Monolith

watchers

are seeing

double

Thai court warns PM’s

critics on eve of ruling

Thailand The constitutional

court warned against “vulgar,

sarcastic or threatening words” in

reaction to a ruling today that

could force Prayut Chan-O-Cha,

the prime minister, from office.

The court will consider whether

he broke rules by living in an

army house while no longer in

the military. The judgment

follows months of street protests

calling for him to quit. (AFP)

Ethiopia war may turn

into guerrilla conflict

Ethiopia A month-long war

between government soldiers and

rebellious northern forces known

as the Tigray People’s Liberation

Front may be turning into a

guerrilla conflict, experts have

said. The rebels were defeated in

the Tigrayan capital at the

weekend but said they were

resisting in the hills. Abiy Ahmed,

the prime minister, has accused

them of treason. (Reuters)

Chinese lander begins

collecting moon rock

China A lander has arrived on the

moon to bring back rock and soil.

The vehicle, part of the orbiting

Chang’e-5 spacecraft, will collect

2kg of material, to be returned

via an ascender. If the mission is

successful, China will become the

third country to retrieve lunar

samples after the US and USSR

in the 1960s and 1970s. (AFP)

US can’t afford to let China win

space race, Roger Boyes, page 28

Soldiers mark return of

territory from Armenia

Azerbaijan Soldiers hoisted the

Azerbaijani flag in Lachin, the last

of three districts given up by

Armenia under a deal brokered

by Russia that ended weeks of

fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh.

An Azerbaijani offensive had

reclaimed swathes of territory

lost to Armenian separatists in

the 1990s. In a televised address,

President Aliyev of Azerbaijan

celebrated “a new reality”. (AFP)

Bond’s Goldeneye

telescope collapses

Puerto Rico A big radio telescope

that played a key role in

astronomical discoveries for

more than 50 years collapsed

yesterday. Its 900-tonne receiver

platform fell on to the reflector

dish 400ft below. The US

National Science Foundation had

said the Arecibo Observatory

would close after a cable snapped

in August, causing a 100ft gash on

the 1,000ft wide dish. The

observatory featured in the 1995

James Bond film Goldeneye as a

satellite-controlling antenna

hidden in Cuba. It has also been

deployed in the search for

extraterrestrial life. “It’s a huge

loss,” said Carmen Pantoja, of the

University of Puerto Rico. (AP)

Locksmith held over

murder of 26 women

Russia Police arrested a man

suspected of robbing and killing

26 elderly women in a year after

carrying out more than 10,000

genetic tests. Radik Tagirov, 38, a

locksmith from the city of Kazan,

is thought to have posed as a

council worker between 2011 and

2012, persuading women living

alone across central Russia to let

him into their homes and

suffocating them. (AFP)