| We’re covering a surge in anti-Chinese anger in India, a backlash against salmon in Beijing and an email slip-up in Britain that helped us land a story. | | | An anti-China demonstration in Kolkata, India, on Thursday. Dibyangshu Sarkar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | Anger is surging in India over the loss of 20 soldiers in a brutal, hand-to-hand border clash with Chinese troops fought with clubs and rods studded with nails. There have been angry calls to shut down Chinese restaurants and tear up contracts with Chinese companies. Crowds have smashed Chinese-made televisions in the street. | | | Generals from the two countries met again on Thursday to discuss de-escalation in the Himalayan border zone where the brawl erupted, but satellite images indicated that Chinese troops had yet to pull back. | | | Some Indian Army officers want to change the rules of engagement and abandon the border code that does not allow the use of guns during confrontations. | | | Spillover in trade: The Indian Express newspaper reported that the government was preparing to cancel a huge railway contract with a Chinese company. | | | Protests have broken out across India to boycott Chinese goods, a move that would not be easy. The phones in most Indians’ hands are made in China, as are countless other products. India-China trade has grown to more than $95 billion in 2018 from $3 billion in 2000. As of last year, India’s trade deficit with China reached nearly $60 billion. | | | An empty sashimi counter at a supermarket in Beijing on Monday. Tingshu Wang/Reuters | | | When reports from Beijing said traces of the coronavirus had been found on cutting boards used for imported salmon at a vast produce market, the backlash was swift. | | | By the time Chinese officials acknowledged that imported salmon was not responsible for the city’s new outbreak, business at Japanese restaurants in Beijing had dropped sharply, and salmon suppliers in Norway and the Faroe Islands had seen Chinese orders evaporate. A vendor at Jingshen market, which processes much of the city’s seafood, said he had seen sales of all seafood drop by 80 percent since last Friday. | | | Context: With Chinese nationalism on the rise, imported salmon proved an easy target. The Chinese authorities have for months waged a propaganda campaign to highlight their successes in taming the virus and to deflect blame for the pandemic to outsiders. | | | Outbreak details: More than 130 people in Beijing have tested positive. Officials have closed workplaces, restaurants and hotels in parts of the city. The cluster has been traced to the Xinfadi market in the city’s south, but the precise source remains a mystery. | | | ■ Antibodies to the coronavirus may last only two to three months, especially in people who never showed symptoms while they were infected, according to a study published in Nature Medicine. | | | ■ New York City, one of the world’s hardest hit cities, will enter its next phase of reopening on Monday, which will allow outdoor dining and the opening of some hair salons and offices, with limits. | | | A high-security facility on the outskirts of Hotan, in southwestern Xinjiang. Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | China lashed out at the U.S. on Thursday, a day after President Trump signed into law a bill that allows for sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the detention of Uighurs in camps in Xinjiang. | | | But accusations by John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, have muddied the issue. In his new book, Mr. Bolton said Mr. Trump had questioned why the U.S. would impose sanctions on the Chinese officials involved. | | | In a private meeting with President Xi Jinping last year, Mr. Bolton wrote, the president even accepted the Chinese rationale for the creation of a vast system of camps and surveillance in Xinjiang. The report dismayed Uighur activists. | | | China response: After a meeting in Hawaii on Thursday between China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, China’s Foreign Ministry said the U.S. should support what it described as a successful antiterrorism campaign in Xinjiang. | | | LM Otero/Associated Press | | | Football is back in Europe, baseball in Asia and rugby in New Zealand. But in the United States, which has the world’s largest coronavirus outbreak, the return of sports is not going particularly well. | | | Several major leagues have announced comeback plans, but there are no regular-season games on public schedules and no clue as to when teams might play again in home arenas and stadiums. There are no firm plans for bringing back fans. One of our sports reporters look at the disarray. | | | PAID POST: A MESSAGE FROM CAMPAIGN MONITOR | | TEST: Email Marketing 101: Never Sacrifice Beauty for Simplicity | | A drag-and-drop email builder, a gallery of templates and turnkey designs, personalized customer journeys, and engagement segments. It's everything you need to create stunning, results-driven email campaigns in minutes. And with Campaign Monitor, you have access to it all, along with award-winning support around the clock. It's beautiful email marketing done simply. | | | Learn More | | | | Hungary rights: Hungary’s restrictions on the financing of civil-society organizations are unlawful, the European Court of Justice ruled in a resounding rebuke to Prime Minister Viktor Orban. | | | In memoriam: Dr. Tomisaku Kawasaki, 95. In 1967, he first identified a disease in children that remains mysterious and that has recently been in the news in relation to Covid-19. | | | Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times | | | What we’re reading: This article on Xi Jinping in Nikkei Asian Review. The Chinese president turned 67 this week, an age that usually signals the final year in party office. Here’s a look at the battle for influence shaping up in China’s corridors of power. | | | Melissa Clark/The New York Times | | | Cook: This savory loaf packed with cheese and olives can be served with slices of tomato and onions, or eaten plain for a snack. | | | Watch: Our critics revisit “Nine to Five,” a comedy about three secretaries — played by Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton — who stage a revolt against their chauvinistic, handsy boss. It was released in 1980, way before the #MeToo movement. | | | A message from my co-reporter, Ben Mueller, pinged: Had I seen last night’s email from a senior press officer at the Department of Health and Social Care? | | | I darted to the thread, curiosity turning to astonishment. | | | Ben and I had interviewed more than a dozen contact tracers, public health officials and local government leaders to get a picture of how much wasn’t working. We’d looked at screenshots from a private Facebook group on which tracers were complaining that they were still waiting for login details two weeks after the program’s start. And we’d discovered that the secretive contract for the tracing effort with Serco, an outsourcing giant, cost the British government 108 million pounds, or about $136 million. | | | But when we asked officials a basic question — why they had halted contact tracing in March, before reversing course, the official line was that tracing had never stopped and to claim otherwise would be entirely wrong. | | | This email said otherwise. | | | The troubled roll-out of contact tracing bears the hallmarks of Britain’s other disastrous efforts to respond to the coronavirus: haphazard data, an emphasis on political theater and a heavy dependence on the private sector. Pippa Fowles/10 Downing Street, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | It began mundanely: The press officer said she was handing over my questions to colleagues. But a little deeper in, she accidentally included internal discussions about my query about the halt to contact tracing in March. “The answer to this,” wrote an official, “is we basically didn’t have the testing capacity.” | | | It was a rare and candid glimpse behind the curtains of Westminster and its usual political spin that the government, of course, did not want us to publish. The email was a “brief internal discussion” which was inadvertently sent and was not for quoting, their press officer said after I invited comment before publication. | | | But my editors disagreed. When a senior government press officer inadvertently reveals information in the public interest as part of an official response to newsworthy questions, journalists have a duty to report that — especially the parts that usually stay behind closed doors (or email). | | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. | | Thank you
To Melissa Clark for the recipe, and to Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the rest of the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
