We Don't Have to Trade With China, Part Deux

And yet:

The foreign minister of Tuvalu pulled out of the United Nations Ocean Conference opening in Portugal on Monday after China blocked the participation of three Taiwanese included in the tiny Pacific island nation's delegation list, according to Radio New Zealand.

Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, is not a member of the United Nations and its citizens are unable to attend U.N. events as representatives of Taiwan.

Tuvalu Foreign Minister Simon Kofe withdrew from the conference after China challenged the accreditation of three Taiwanese delegates included in Tuvalu's delegation, Radio New Zealand reported on Monday.

The nation of 12,000 people has had diplomatic ties with Taiwan since 1979, and is one of 14 countries that continues to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan rather than China.

Taiwan is largely excluded from international organisations that have China as a member.

Taiwan's Foreign Ministry thanked Tuvalu for its support, and expressed condemnation of China.

"China's arbitrary pressure on (U.N.) member states has only once again revealed its nasty nature," the ministry said.

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Hong Kong is preparing to introduce new middle school textbooks that will deny the Chinese territory was ever a British colony. China’s Communist rulers say the semi-autonomous city and the nearby former Portuguese colony of Macao were merely occupied by foreign powers and that China never relinquished sovereignty over them.

It’s not a new position for China, but the move is a further example of Beijing’s determination to enforce its interpretation of history and events and inculcate patriotism as it tightens its grip over Hong Kong following massive protests demanding democracy in 2019.

“Hong Kong has been Chinese territory since ancient times,” says one new textbook seen by the AP. “While Hong Kong was occupied by the British following the Opium War, it remained Chinese territory.”

It is one of four sets of textbooks being offered to schools to replace those currently in use, all stating the same position, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper reported earlier this week.

Hong Kong was a British colony from 1841 until its handover to Chinese rule in 1997, with the exception of Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945. Its colonial status was the result of a pair of 19th century treaties signed at the end of the first and second Opium Wars, along with the granting of a 99-year lease in 1898 to the New Territories, which greatly expanded the size of the colony.

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A small Chinese study detailed in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal showed neutralising antibodies against some Omicron sub-variants were largely undetectable after two doses of a Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine, with a booster shot only partly restoring them.

The study comes as China, which has approved only locally developed COVID shots including the Sinopharm vaccine, strives to improve vaccination rates, maintaining a "dynamic zero COVID" policy aimed at eradicate all outbreaks while many countries have adopted an approach of learning to live with the virus.

The vaccine, BBIBP-CorV, is one of the two Sinopharm COVID shots approved for use in China, and is also the main shot that the state-owned firm has exported.

Among 25 individuals who received two doses of BBIBP-CorV vaccine, the neutralising activity against sub-variants such as BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5 "was not or only minimally detectable", researchers said in correspondence published on Monday.

Neutralising activity against those sub-variants was observed in just 24-48% of subjects who received a BBIBP-CorV booster shot after the two-dose product, researchers said, citing results from a group of 25 participants.

The rate improved slightly, to 30-53%, for those who received a third shot made by a unit of Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products, another vaccine approved for use in China, according to data from another group of 30 subjects.

The study did not discuss the boosters' efficacy, a rate that reflects how well they could lower the risk of COVID disease or death, which is usually observed in large clinical trials.