Crematory busy in China
SYDNEY – Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has been appointed Australia’s next ambassador to the United States at a time when both countries are deepening security cooperation in response to a rising China.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Mr Rudd one of the world’s most sought-after experts on China and said he would bring significant experience to the role at a time when the region was being reshaped by strategic competition.
“Kevin Rudd is an outstanding appointment,” said Mr Albanese at a news conference yesterday ahead of Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s state visit to China.
“He brings a great deal of credit to Australia by agreeing to take up this position as a former prime minister, as a former foreign minister.”
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BEIJING/SHANGHAI — Hearses bearing the dead lined the driveway to a designated COVID-19 crematorium in the Chinese capital on Saturday while workers at the city’s dozen funeral homes were busier than normal, days after China reversed tight pandemic restrictions.
In recent days in Beijing the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has hit services from catering to parcel deliveries.
Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand as more workers and drivers testing positive for coronavirus call in sick.
China is yet to officially report any COVID deaths since December 7 when the country abruptly ended many key tenets of its zeroCOVID policy that had been championed by President Xi Jinping, following unprecedented public protests against the protocol.
A US-based research institute said this week that the country could see an explosion of cases and over a million people in China could die of COVID in 2023. A sharp surge in deaths would test authorities’ efforts to move China away from endless testing, lockdowns and heavy travel restrictions, and realign with a world that has largely reopened to live with the disease.
On Saturday afternoon, a Reuters journalist saw about 30 stationary hearses stopped in the driveway leading to the Dongjiao funeral home, a COVID-designated crematoriusm in Beijing.
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