<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Eleven staffers linked to the 2022 Beijing Olympics have been hospitalized with Covid-19 since January 23, the games organizers’ disclosed on Wednesday, amid a growing number of infections linked to the event and reported from inside the Olympic bubble that could pose a major challenge to China&#8217;s “zero Covid” strategy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Brian McCloskey, the head of the games’ medical expert panel, said none of the hospitalized individuals were in a serious condition, Reuters reported.



Organizers of the winter games, which officially start on Friday, added 32 new Covid-19 cases to the event’s tally on Wednesday, including 15 cases which were detected among airport arrivals.



Since January 23, organizers have recorded 232 cases linked to the Olympics, 163 of which were detected at the airport and 69 inside the event’s bubble known as the “closed loop.”



Despite the growing number of cases inside the closed loop, Chinese authorities have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/beijing-olympics-says-24-new-covid-cases-detected-among-games-related-personnel-2022-02-01/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;they believe the pandemic situation at the Olympics is within the “expected controllable range.”



Outside of the Olympics closed loop, two new Covid-19 cases were&nbsp;<a href="http://en.nhc.gov.cn/2022-02/02/c_85771.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;in Beijing on Wednesday, a significant drop from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/01/26/beijing-begins-third-round-of-mass-covid-19-testing-ahead-of-winter-olympics/?sh=79f49efe187a">14 cases</a>&nbsp;that were detected in the city last Wednesday.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h2>



Despite a drop in cases across the city, Beijing officials appear to be taking no chances as they ordered several residential communities in the city to be sealed off after two cases were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/31/beijing-seals-off-several-communities-over-two-cases-of-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">detected</a>&nbsp;earlier this week.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Despite the emergence of the highly infectious omicron variant in its capital, China has continued to stick by its “zero tolerance” strategy towards Covid-19. A small outbreak in Beijing appears to have been mostly stomped out after&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/01/26/beijing-begins-third-round-of-mass-covid-19-testing-ahead-of-winter-olympics/?sh=79f49efe187a">several rounds</a>&nbsp;of mass testing in the city. Additionally, those involved in the upcoming winter games have been kept separate from the rest of the city under the&nbsp;<a href="https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/Beijing-2022/Playbooks/The-Playbook-Athletes-and-Team-Offcials-October-2021.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">closed loop</a>&nbsp;which includes dedicated transport, housing and training facilities for visiting athletes and games personnel. Before entering the closed loop, vaccinated arrivals have to undergo a round of testing at the airport, while unvaccinated individuals are forced to undergo a 21-day quarantine. Despite this, 69 cases have been reported inside the loop, raising the possibility of an outbreak during the event. The prevalence of cases linked to the event has forced the games’ organizers to admit a “zero infections” model would be impossible to implement. Instead, the organizers are attempting to ensure “<a href="https://www.scmp.com/sport/china/article/3164470/omicron-zero-spread-not-zero-cases-iocs-target-winter-olympics-72" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">zero spread</a>,” which involves detecting and isolating positive cases quickly. McCloskey believes the case counts will drop once the number of participants arriving into China begins to decrease.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/beijing-games-organiser-says-32-new-covid-cases-feb-1-2022-02-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Eleven Beijing Games personnel in hospital with COVID, none serious</a>&nbsp;(Reuters)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/"></a>By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff



<img decoding="async" src="https://img.connatix.com/546f0bce-b219-41ac-b691-07d0ec3e3fe1/1.png" alt="">

Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics – Previews – Day -2

Covid Cases Linked To Beijing Olympics Continue To Rise As 11 Staffers Are Hospitalized

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Athletes participating in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will have to fly into the city on temporary or chartered flights, the games’ organizers said on Friday, amid host nation China’s stringent pandemic travel restrictions that places a limit on the number of flights entering the country.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Noting that the Covid-19 pandemic situation was still “severe and complicated,” organizing committee official Zhang Liang&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/beijing-games-bring-athletes-chartered-temporary-flights-2021-12-10/+" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;athletes and other attendees will be flown in on chartered flights from cities such as Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo and Singapore.



After arriving in Beijing, attendees and athletes will have to enter a “closed loop”—a bubble which will be strictly separated from the rest of China—and remain there for their entire stay.



At least 15 inbound flights and 13 outbound flights will fly into and out of Beijing every day, Zhang said.



The organizers added they will work with Chinese and foreign airlines to help arrange these temporary flights.



The Winter Games are scheduled to begin on February 4 and like the summer games in Tokyo this year, all events will take place without any crowds in attendance.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



In October, the games’ organizers outlined their plans for a “closed loop” system for Olympic participants in accordance with the Chinese government’s stringent ‘zero-Covid’ pandemic policy. Similar to the Tokyo Games this summer, the Winter Olympics has put out a so-called “<a href="https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/Beijing-2022/Playbooks/The-Playbook-Athletes-and-Team-Offcials-October-2021.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">playbook</a>” that outlines the various pandemic related rules and penalties that participants may face for non-compliance. The closed loop is designed to completely isolate everyone involved in the event from the rest of China, to prevent any possible outbreaks. This system will include dedicated transport, housing and training facilities and fully vaccinated athletes will be required to enter the loop immediately upon arrival in Beijing. Unvaccinated participants will be required to serve a mandatory 21-day quarantine in a specially designated facility. According to the playbook, athletes who fail to comply with the rules will face immediate disqualification from the games and expulsion from the country.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Besides the challenge from Covid-19, the Beijing 2022 games will take place on the backdrop of a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/12/08/canada-joins-diplomatic-boycott-of-beijing-olympics-here-are-all-the-countries-participating/?sh=2a51c632113c">growing diplomatic boycott</a>&nbsp;of the event by several western nations. Earlier this week, the U.S. became the first country in the world to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/teakvetenadze/2021/12/06/heres-what-the-us-olympic-diplomatic-boycott-means/?sh=5a13276b69d4">announce</a>&nbsp;a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in response to China’s human rights record. The boycott—which is largely symbolic—will see Washington not send any “any diplomatic or official representation,” to the event. Several other nations have announced similar diplomatic boycotts since then including the U.K., Canada and Australia.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/beijing-games-bring-athletes-chartered-temporary-flights-2021-12-10/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Beijing Games to bring in athletes on chartered, temporary flights</a>&nbsp;(Reuters)



<a href="https://www.espn.in/olympics/story/_/id/32484469/beijing-creates-closed-loop-winter-olympics-isolating-participants-public" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Beijing creates &#8216;closed loop&#8217; for Winter Olympics, isolating participants from public</a> (ESPN)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/"></a>By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff

Landscape Projects For Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Upgraded

Beijing Winter Olympics Will Use Chartered Flights To Fly Athletes In Amid Covid-19 Travel Curbs

You wouldn’t blink if you saw Anaso Jobodwana on the street. Like many young men, he is well dressed and walks hand-in-hand with his girlfriend, 26-year-old American semi-professional athlete Taylor Monae Evans, and looks slight and hungry.
Make no mistake, this 23-year-old has the world at his fast feet. He smashed the South African 200-meter record, with a time of 19.87 seconds, at the World Championships in Beijing in August. In 2016, he is heading for the Olympics in Rio where he will strain every sinew, yet again, against Usain Bolt.
In Beijing, the great man came to him like a Bolt from the blue as the two limbered up.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4308" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Anaso-168-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“In the final he said ‘Are you ready to run this 19 seconds?’, and I just said ‘yeah’. And he said ‘don’t be nervous, you’ve got this,’” says Jobodwana.
“Afterwards he came to me and said ‘I had to talk to you throughout the whole call-room because you were nervous so I had to calm your nerves down. Out of all the finalists you were the one, throughout the rounds, who looked the most ready and relaxed and I don’t understand why you were nervous in the final.’”
Jobodwana was starstruck because Bolt was the guy on the cover of his training file, inside were pictures of him in his stride.
Bolt’s 19 seconds prediction was spot on because in the final, Jobodwana ran close.
“After the finals he came up to me and screamed ‘National record, I’m proud of you!’, but obviously with a deeper voice,” chuckles the soft spoken Jobodwana.
The glare and glamour of the track was a million miles from where Jobodwana grew up in Phakamisa, a township on the outskirts of King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It was here that Jobodwana developed his passion for running and breaking records. He would only start training professionally, though, in Grade 10 – at the age of 16.
“I hold the under-9 record at Dale Junior so I guess that kicked-started my passion for sprinting,” he says.
In King William’s Town, his mother is a teacher; his father a retired prison officer. Jobodwana says he was fortunate enough to have parents that sent him to schools that nurtured his talent.
“Growing up, the kids in my neighborhood were way faster than me and better sportsmen. I was lucky enough to get sent to schools that had proper sporting facilities and coaches that would enhance my talent,” says Jobodwana.
It was at school that Jobodwana would make his mark, claiming the number one spot in the country in the 200 meters. In the same year, he was 5th in the world in the junior section, after his first full season of training.
Seven years later, the United States-based sprinter shares the track with the likes of Justin Gatlin and Bolt.
Jobodwana says he moved to the States because he wanted to be part of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA).
Jackson State University took a gamble on the sprinter in 2011, offering him a scholarship despite the fact he was recovering from a serious injury. He repaid their faith by qualifying for the 2012 Olympics. Jobodwana says it was thanks to his meticulous coaches.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4309" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Anaso-300-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“South African coaches are good as well. Look at other athletes who are thriving, like Wayde van Niekerk. He gets coached in South Africa, so the coaches here are awesome,” he says.
Jobodwana was not so blessed when it came to financial support. He hasn’t received any recently from Athletics South Africa. Jobodwana recalls receiving financial assistance in 2012 when he needed to qualify for the Olympics, but nothing since then.
“They (Athletics South Africa) are in a bit of shambles at the moment. I’ve been receiving support from endorsements, Nike Africa has been supportive, but I haven’t received anything from Athletics South Africa recently. Maybe they’ll eventually get it right,” says Jobodwana.
Athletics South Africa was not available for comment.
In the run up to Rio, Jobodwana might spring a few surprises – he plans to run the 100 meters more often to increase his speed.
Award-winning Times Media Group sports journalist, David Isaacson, reckons we can expect a medal from Jobodwana in August.
“I’m sure he can bring back a silver medal in Rio,” says Isaacson.
The athlete has his own ideas about what is needed to groom future South African athletes. Jobodwana says the government needs to put more emphasis on scouting and nurturing athletes in rural areas.
Jobodwana says he spoke to Bolt’s coach in Beijing. He suggested the coach come to Africa for three months to mentor young athletes here. Jobodwana says the coach looked keen.
“We all need to figure out how to put proper structures in place that will bring out the best in the future of our athletics,” says Jobodwana.
And the Jobodwanas of tomorrow? The young athlete left them with a stern message.
“Follow your dreams to the fullest. Your dreams have to be crazy enough for people to think they aren’t achievable, that will be the extra drive you need to make them come alive,” he says.
At Rio 2016, Africa will, once again, be looking to its fastest man and his fleet feet.

A Bolt From The Bush

Acentury ago, the Governor of the Hunan province famously began a censorship trend in China, that later reached its nadir under Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution, when he banned Lewis Carrol’s allegedly subversive literary waltz around the garden: Alice In Wonderland.
A few years ago, I found myself on the ragged borders of Hunan on an investigative trail that had taken me from rural Malawi to an obscure corner of China where 100 billion counterfeit cigarettes are mass-produced, literally underground, each year.
As I arrived to dig for tobacco, China’s pre-occupation with censorship continued to focus on the surreal in the present not just the past. Afraid that the so-called Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia would inspire similar insurgence in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party had, as I drove across Hunan, declared an unlikely war on the small white flower, even banning its utterance from social media.
China likes to outlaw symbols of resistance. It regularly bans people too. Richard Gere and Brad Pitt, not exactly the most threatening of civil rights campaigners, will be unlikely to ever walk along the Great Wall of China thanks to their personal association with a humble Buddhist monk who has become the world’s most high profile blacklistee: the Dalai Lama.
The latest storm of controversy swirls around the South African government’s refusal to grant the Dalai Lama a visa to attend the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Cape Town in mid-October.
In 2014, as they have for much of the last 50 years, Beijing views Buddhism’s Yellow Hat as a meddlesome separatist trying to establish an independent Tibet. But he&#8217;s also a very effective tool that China uses to incrementally assert control in international affairs.
As far as Pretoria is concerned, we are in familiar territory. In 2009, Tibet&#8217;s exiled spiritual leader tried unsuccessfully to visit South Africa to attend a peace conference. Before then he had visited the country three times under Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.
Two years later, in 2011, the Dalai Lama hoped to attend the 80th birthday celebration of his friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, but withdrew his request after not receiving a response from Pretoria. An angry archbishop later described his government&#8217;s handling of the visa application as mind-blowing.
A year later, South Africa&#8217;s Supreme Court of Appeal found that the country&#8217;s home minister at the time unreasonably delayed her decision on the Dalai Lama&#8217;s visa application and acted unlawfully in doing so.
Of course it is beyond dispute that the Rainbow Nation’s most recent point-blank refusal to grant entry to one of the world’s holiest figures has more to do with Beijing than Pretoria.
The furore around the rejection promoted the Dalai Lama’s fellow peace laureates, including Poland&#8217;s Lech Walesa, Bangladeshi entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus, Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Northern Irish peacemakers David Trimble and John Hume, to write a letter directly to President Jacob Zuma calling for a reversal of the decision. When the reversal didn’t come, the laureates cancelled their trip to South Africa.
What is most surprising to me is the low-key reaction to the latest rebuke in Asia. It speaks of a wider truth. Since China’s emergence as an economic superpower, the Dalai Lama is increasingly becoming the last person presidents and prime ministers would ever want to ‘Like’ on Facebook. As a consequence South Africa is far from the only nation in the world to ‘unfriend’ the 14th incarnation of the Buddhist holy seat.
Around the world, governments are increasingly limiting their contact with the Dalai Lama’s office. Most recently, Russia refused him entry. Those who refuse to kow-tow often feel the muscle of China. After the British Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama in 2013, after Beijing warned him not to, China effectively cut off diplomatic relations. Cameron’s administration then spent a year working to get back in Beijing’s good books.
A more startling row over the Dalai Lama’s presence took place in the last place you would expect. Norway. A nation that has shaped a reputation for tolerance. When the Dalai Lama visited Norway in May, government officials allowed him to enter the country but refused to meet him face to face. Norway had previously found itself in the cold and its salmon exports to China decimated after it had chosen the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo as the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. History wasn’t about to repeat itself.
In the midst of the latest scandal, South Africa&#8217;s foreign ministry has, of course, stressed its visa decisions were taken independently of a desire to cultivate closer ties with China, its largest trading partner and co-member of the BRICS club of emerging economies.
Regardless, the country’s economic relationship with China deepens. In late 2007, China made the largest single foreign investment in South Africa since the end of apartheid, a deal for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the biggest lending bank in Asia, to take a 20% stake in South Africa’s Standard Bank, the country’s largest by assets. Last year, China emerged as South Africa’s foremost trading partner.
The deeper truth to the Dalai Lama’s exile and predicament can be found between the lines of academic study. According to a study by two European scholars, Andreas Fuchs and Nils-Hendrik Klann, inviting the Buddhist leader for dinner could ultimately end up costing you the earth.
In their study ‘Paying a Visit: The Dalai Lama Effect on International Trade’, they found that when a top leader meets with the Dalai Lama, that country&#8217;s exports to China will drop by at least 8.1% for roughly two years, and then return to normal – in the interim costing economies linked to China billions of dollars.
Perhaps it&#8217;s not surprising, then, that in 2001, the Dalai Lama met with 11 top leaders yet in 2013 met with only two. This trend of avoiding the Tibetan spiritual leader has been especially pronounced in northern Europe, not just in Africa.
But a greater reality in the modern world is the Dalai Lama’s political influence, like the strength of his tenure, spent entirely in exile, is fading fast. A man of compromise and dignity, he has long said he’d settle for autonomy within the Chinese state, but this has about as much chance of happening as China recognising Korea&#8217;s right to re-unification. Today, as China’s economy grows, Tibet’s state-supporters will continue to diminish.
Tibet has changed dramatically in recent years. On the political front, tension is still very much present but the wave of self-immolations that once dominated world headlines has diminished. Even the soldiers who were blocking most of the streets of old-Lhasa in 2008 are now gone.
Money seems to be having an impact on Tibet for better or worse. After having invested $15 billion on infrastructure in 20 years, and committing further $15 billion in the years to come, China has equipped Tibet with a reliable road network, five airports and a railway line anchoring it firmly to the nation. Greenhouse agriculture is developing, allowing a constant outflow of highly prized fruit and vegetables throughout the year. This year, 12 million, mostly Chinese, tourists made the trip, turning Lhasa into a tourist hotspot.
This, in itself, sadly lends a rather hollow ring to the words of the Dalai Lama himself: “Money and power facilitate, but it is clear that they are not the primary causes of happiness and solving the world’s problems.”

Why A Hello To The Dalai Lama Costs Billions

Bitcoins were worth nothing in 2009, when the digital cryptocurrency was first minted on the computer of its mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, who claimed to live in Japan.
Four years later the value of one Bitcoin surpassed $1,100, thanks in large part to a surge in speculative interest from China. A little-known Shanghai company called BTC China met the demand and quickly became the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, with more than 100,000 of the virtual coins, or $100 million, traded on a single day, nearly double the market share of its closest competitor, Japan’s Mt. Gox.
BTC China attracted headlines and a  <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2491" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/FO012014_086-222x300.jpg" alt="" width="222" height="300" />$5 million investment in the fall from Silicon Valley’s Lightspeed Venture Partners as well as its China arm. But its rapid growth, and that of Bitcoin, also attracted the attention of the Chinese government.
&nbsp;
Unwanted attention, as it turned out. In December the People’s Bank of China decreed that merchants may not accept Bitcoin and forbade banks and payment processors from converting Bitcoin into yuan. The price of Bitcoin fell below $500 in response.
Bitcoin is still widely embraced by technophiles and libertarians (and porn and pot-dealing websites) because the currency is all digital, easily transported across borders and resistant to state controls. A Bitcoin is “mined” on privately owned, specialized computing equipment and passed around by a global, peer-to-peer network of computers. Transactions are trackable, but the parties to each transaction are not. Bitcoin has attracted entrepreneurs and investors excited about its legitimate use: cutting out the middlemen in online payments. In December venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz placed the biggest Bitcoin bet so far with a $25 million investment in San Francisco’s Coinbase, a platform for buying, selling and storing Bitcoins in the U.S. “As the world becomes more digital, paying physically with bills, gold or credit cards will seem archaic. Everyone will have Bitcoins,” says BTC China CEO Bobby Lee.
But China’s actions over the past weeks have put BTC China’s future in doubt. After Chinese regulators held a closed-door meeting to warn financial companies against working with exchanges, BTC China was swiftly abandoned by two payment processors. “There are 300 payment processors in China. We’re going to go down the list and find one that will work with us,” says an optimistic Lee. He doesn’t think the government is trying to put him out of business but rather put the screws on Bitcoin to cut down on the rampant speculation. “They haven’t declared exchanges illegal. That gives us room to maneuver, so there’s still hope.”
Lightspeed’s Jeremy Liew is keeping a distant focus. “Anyone investing in Bitcoin companies and Bitcoin specifically should be doing so with the expectation that there will be a lot of volatility driven by regulatory announcements. We invest over 5- to 10-year horizons, not over two-week horizons,” says Liew. “For Bitcoin to be credible, we need executives who have the gravitas to make its case to regulators. That’s Bobby.”
Lee, 38, was born in the Ivory Coast to parents who had moved there from China to set up a flip-flop factory. He was sent to an elite boarding school in the States, graduated from Stanford and spent eight years as an engineer at Yahoo in California. He moved to China in 2006 to work as an engineer at EMC. In 2011 he became Wal-Mart’s chief technology officer in China, charged with helping to build its commerce site.
Lee first heard about Bitcoin in the spring of 2011 while visiting his family in California. Lee’s brother, Charles, was using some of his computer equipment to mine Bitcoin at home. Lee thought he would do the same back in China and bought a bunch of graphics cards from his brother. He started mining in July, the same month he started at Wal-Mart. Neither lasted long.
“It was a hot summer, and the computers created a lot of heat,” says Lee. “My wife said it was too noisy and hot, and so I turned it off in October.” He mined 25 coins, which struck him as a “waste” because they were worth just $300 total at the time and he had spent $1,000 on mining gear.
When Wal-Mart decided to partner with an existing e-commerce site in 2012 rather than build its own, Lee found himself jobless. His mind returned to those Bitcoins gathering digital dust on his computer. His brother had founded a competing cryptocurrency called Litecoin, but Lee wanted to focus on bringing Bitcoin to China. BTC China had popped up two years earlier as the country’s first site for Bitcoin trading. “It was just two guys working part-time on it,” says Lee. They were charging a 0.3% trading fee, but seeing just a few hundred trades per day. Lee sought out its cofounders to convince them it could be bigger. Lee became CEO in April.
They relaunched the site in June and went out looking for venture capital. When they landed the round from Lightspeed in September, they eliminated their fee. That kicked off a bidding frenzy fueled also by the free Bitcoin p.r. that came when the FBI took down Bitcoin-only drug site Silk Road and Baidu announced it would accept Bitcoin for security services, plus the positive buzz around U.S. Senate hearings on the digital currency.
But then the People’s Bank of China, responding to what it says was a wave of consumer concerns, declared in December that Bitcoin wasn’t a recognized currency and shouldn’t be used in the market, prompting Baidu and other Chinese firms to stop taking it as payment. As the extent of the real-world ban became clear, the price of a Bitcoin dropped to $345 on BTC China.
Lee initially saw the declaration as just a speed bump. Chinese citizens were still free to trade Bitcoin. BTC China stayed on the good side of the government’s concerns about money-laundering by asking customers for official identification. BTC also reinstated trading fees to cut down on the frenzy. But days later the government crushed hopes of a thriving trading business when it unofficially barred payment processors from working with Bitcoin exchanges. Suddenly BTC China and others would no longer be able to move their customers’ funds from yuan to Bitcoin and back—which is what exchanges exist to do. “We’re reading the tea leaves,” says Shanghai Bitcoin entrepreneur Jack Wang. “But it looks like they’re going to squeeze the exchanges until they’re not able to operate.”
China’s move is not without precedent. Eleven years ago Chinese Web service Tencent created a virtual currency called Q Coin for use in games. It became increasingly valuable offline and started trading on exchanges along with renminbi and gold. The government declared such use illegal in 2007, sending its real world value crashing to nothing.
China is still letting people play with Bitcoin in its country, but by cutting off ways to convert it to real money, it is turning it into the digital Monopoly money that skeptics have always dismissed it as being. “If necessary, we’ll go into other Bitcoin services,” says Lee. The company plans to launch a secure online Bitcoin wallet called Picasso at the end of December. “This is not the end. It may be the end of a chapter, but it’s not the end of our company.”

China Bites  Into Bitcoin

China has long-standing links with Africa and has become an important trading partner. Now it wants to play football with us.
Africa’s footballers have been making steady inroads into the Chinese Super League in recent times, where new-found riches have been used to lure some top names to the competition.
It is a policy that has worked in part, though the more high-profile signings have not enjoyed lengthy stays in the country.
Cote d’Ivoire great Didier Drogba is the biggest name to have been lured to the Chinese league when he signed for Shanghai Shenhua in 2012 and earned a reported $1.3 million salary.
He joined former Chelsea teammate Nicolas Anelka at the club in what was viewed as a show of financial muscle by the team’s owners.
Despite these riches, Drogba stayed just six months before taking a pay cut to join Galatasaray in Turkey. The striker found it difficult to settle in a wonderful country that is unlike anywhere else on earth.
I saw it first hand when I traveled to Beijing in my role as president of the Football Association of Zambia for a friendly international against Brazil at the famous Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium. Next year’s World Cup hosts, Brazil, were made to work hard to beat the African nation 2-0.
There is much to enjoy in China, the sights, sounds and smells mesmerize the senses, but it is a culture that is very different to our own, and far, far removed from what you experience in the west. I was very impressed with Beijing. It is a bustling hive of activity and while everything from the west is available, the Chinese have clung on to their culture.
I have a new found respect for this nation since I scaled the Great Wall of China in Badaling. I realized the tenacity and strength of spirit that this great Nation has and I was mesmerized. We were lucky to be guided by my good friend Mr Yang because not much English is spoken. That does make it difficult to adapt. It is one thing to enjoy a few days holiday in an unfamiliar environment, but another living there.
That has not stopped a sizeable number of African players from making the move to the Super League though—21 African nations have been represented in the league down the years.
The influx of players started as a small trickle, when the Super League was formed in 2004, becoming a flood in the last three or four years.
It has become an alternative to Europe for some, and is financially more attractive than other options in Asia, such as Indonesia and Vietnam that had been popular destinations for African players in the past.
Zambia has been represented there by national captain Christopher Katongo, who has been with Henan Construction FC since 2011, as well as Isaac Chansa and Billy Mwanza, while James Chamanga has played for Liaoning Whowin for the last five years. All have stories to tell.
The biggest exporter to China from Africa has been Nigeria, who have had 20 of their players in the league since 2004. Brazil has the most players in China, with 122 players in the same period of time.
But teams have also scoured the rest of African continent, signing players from Angola, Cape Verde, DR Congo, Gambia, Mozambique and Sierra Leone, along with the more established football nations that you would expect on the continent.
It shows that their reach is long, and that all styles of African football appeal to them—the technical quality of the north, the power and physicality of players in the west and the skillful trickery of the players in Southern Africa.
There would no doubt be more, but the Chinese authorities have sensibly restricted the number of foreign players in the league, mindful of the need to develop young Chinese talent. Each team may register five foreign players for a season, and can field four of those on the field at any one time.
When you look at the infrastructure of the country, the massive population and the passion that they have for football, it is difficult to understand why China has failed to make the same strides on the pitch as the likes of Japan and South Korea.
In fact, in March this year they reached an all-time low on the FIFA World Rankings of 109th position and by October had improved slightly to 97th.
Within their own Asian Confederation they sit a lowly ninth, behind the likes of Oman, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, countries you would think they could beat easily given their resources.
China’s one and only FIFA World Cup appearance came in 2002 when the tournament was held in South Korea and Japan, but ended in three defeats and not one goal.
Having just completed its 10th season, it will be incredibly interesting to see how the Super League develops and whether the growing strength of the league does translate into greater success for the national side.
The two are not certainties, but you feel that China has great potential as a football nation. All of the ingredients for success are there; they just need to knit them together.

Tag: Beijing

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