Volume 20 Issue 7

Images: Still images from video of the March 27 incident on the Jiujiang Yangzi River Bridge on the Hubei-Zhejiang provincial border: angry citizens climb onto and stomp a police car (left), overturn a police van (center), and clash with police (right). (Source: HK Free Press, March 27)

Image: PLA Army medics arrive at Tianhe International Airport in Wuhan (Hubei Province) on February 13 to assist with COVID-19 medical relief efforts in the city. Per state media coverage, the flights that brought these and other PLA medical personnel to Wuhan represented “the first time for China's domestically developed large transport aircraft Y-20 to take part in [a] non-military action… [and] the first time for the Air Force to send large and medium transport aircraft on active service to carry out urgent air transport tasks on a large scale.” (Source: China Daily, March 3)

Image: PRC President Xi Jinping (left), accompanied by Myanmar President U Win Myint (center-left) and State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi (center-right), attends a state dinner during an official visit to Myanmar, January 17, 2020. (Source: CGTN/Youtube)

Images: Two different heads of state, and two very different relationships with China. Image left: Xi Jinping accompanies Djiboutian President Omar Ismail Guellah for a welcoming reception during the latter’s visit to Beijing in November 2017. PRC state media used the occasion to announce a “strategic relationship” between the two countries (Source: Xinhua, November 23, 2017). Image right: Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in a November 2019 interview, during which he declared intent to renegotiate the terms of the agreement that gave the PRC a 99-year lease (and de facto control) of the Hambantota Port (Source: Sri Lanka Guardian, November 25, 2019).