The Communist Party of China has been the dominant political entity running the nation since 1949. During that time, the body also known as the Chinese Communist Party has led the country from a poor, insular existence to a role as a global economic powerhouse. But along the way, the party has kept a tight grip on power and quashed any form of dissent. The Post explains how the Communist Party works and how it runs China.
 

China’s ruling Communist Party lays out its road map for developing the country economically and socially through a series of five-year plans. The policies touch every aspect of Chinese life, but even these comprehensive blueprints are often affected by unforeseen factors.
 

In 2020, relations between India and China fell to their lowest point in several decades after a deadly clash in a disputed border region in northwestern India and China’s southwest. The two Asian powers clashed over the Line of Actual Control (LAC). One of the most hotly disputed border zones in the world, the LAC demarcates Indian-controlled territory and Chinese-held areas. There is also bilateral friction in several other border areas, most notably in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. China’s annual defence budget of US$261 billion is more than triple India’s US$71 billion, but is China’s war chest big enough for Beijing to ensure it would inflict a knockout blow in a full-blown conflict?

US sanctions barring American investors from owning or trading in stocks allegedly owned or controlled by the Chinese military could deal a serious financial shock to millions of retail investors and pensioners in Hong Kong. The Tracker Fund, the biggest and most popular exchange-traded index fund in the city, has a dramatic U-turn within three days on its investment in several major Chinese-owned firms to its portfolio, because it is managed by a US-based company that must abide by the sanctions. 
 

The World Health Organization’s much-anticipated mission to uncover the origins of the virus behind Covid-19 is going ahead, with a research plan and 10 international experts selected for the team. In January 2021, the visiting delegation will join Chinese scientists working on the ground in Wuhan, the original epicentre of the outbreak, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Officials from the UN’s international public health agency say that finding the origins of the pathogen may help prevent future outbreaks, but the scientists' path to answers will not be an easy one.
 

Relations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan have steadily grown more tense since 2016 when Tsai Ing-wen from the Taiwanese independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party became the self-ruled island’s president. Cross-strait tensions have only intensified since her re-election in January 2020, and because of a hardened US stance toward Beijing that has seen Washington step up its support for Taipei. News of American proposals to sell more advanced weaponry to Taiwan has been countered with word that Beijing is upgrading missile bases on its southeast coast, reportedly to prepare for a possible invasion. 

As the 2020 US Presidential election unfolded, various US media outlets projected the winner of each state, tallying up the Electoral College votes as they went along. The pathway to securing 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency took many dramatic turns in an election that remains contentious.

After Hong Kong was blindsided by a third wave of Covid-19 infections, the city’s government joined forces with authorities on the Chinese mainland to identify carriers of the coronavirus. Hong Kong’s first Universal Community Testing Programme (UCTP) started on September 1, 2020, and ran for a fortnight. The citywide testing programme cost the Hong Kong government an estimated HK$530 million (US$68 million). It ultimately identified just 42 new Covid-19 infections among the 1.78 million people who registered to be tested. So, did the results justify the time and resources put into the project?

The US presidential election is scheduled to take place on November 3, 2020. Running for a second term, incumbent Republican President Donald Trump faces Democratic challenger and former vice-president, Joe Biden. We take a look at the tumultuous backdrop of the 2020 US election and the candidates’ stances on China, the Covid-19 pandemic and the US economy, as well as on trade, foreign policy and environmental policy.

Once a person is convicted of a crime that requires a custodial sentence in Hong Kong, he or she will be sent to one of the city’s 28 correctional facilities. Hong Kong prisons are divided into three security levels, but what is common among all of them is a  strict set of rules and routines prisoners must follow during their time of incarceration. We talked to people who spent time inside Hong Kong’s prisons to get first-hand accounts of what life is like inside.
 

China shares over 22,000 kilometres (13,670 miles) of border with 14 countries, but Beijing has disputes with many of its neighbours over where some of these international lines are drawn. The various territorial claims, citing history, politics and geography, have resulted in clashes and occasionally, outright military confrontations. Land borders aside, China also says its territory includes nearly all of the South China Sea, despite competing claims to parts of those waters made by many Southeast Asian countries. As tensions rise between China and the United States, Beijing has adopted a more aggressive attitude, pledging to defend China's “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Six months into the Covid-19 pandemic and there is some good news about countries easing lockdown measures meant to fight the coronavirus. But just as a semblance of what was “normal life” seems about to return, there is bad news about a surge in global infection numbers.

During the months it has taken for Covid-19 to emerge as a global pandemic, most people around the world have been waiting in hope for a vaccine or other intervention to stop the spread of the disease for good. But some are confronting the worrying possibility that the coronavirus might become endemic, meaning that with no effective countermeasures it would never go away, forever changing life on Earth.

Tai Kwun on Hong Kong's Hollywood Road is a popular arts and shopping hub that attracts tourists and locals alike. But the complex was once a place no one wanted to visit. It was the first prison in colonial Hong Kong, a complex that started with a few cells before it was expanded into a law and justice centre for the city over the years from 1841 until 2006. Tai Kwun was more recently redeveloped into the cultural hub that still preserves details of its rich history and culture dating back nearly 180 years.

China normally holds its most important annual political meetings in March, when the top political advisory body and national legislature gather. But in 2020, the meetings were postponed to May 22, 2020, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Although the “two sessions” take place only days apart on the political calendar, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC) are two very distinct gatherings.
Here’s a closer look at how the two sessions, known as lianghui in Chinese, shape the nation’s policies.
 

The novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China in late 2019, and took only a few months to spread into a global pandemic. The Hong Kong government was quick to impose strict measures on inbound travellers to contain the spread of the coronavirus after most infections were confirmed to be imported. Since spiking in late March 2020, the number of new infections continues to fall. The measures keep people away from others so they don’t unknowingly infect anyone. But how does Hong Kong’s tough quarantine system exactly work?

China declared the central city of Wuhan, the initial centre of the Covid-19 pandemic, to be free of the disease on April 26, 2020, after the last patients being treated in hospital there were discharged. As the first country to battle the new coronavirus which causes Covid-19, China is hoping to take the lead role in helping the rest of the world overcome the pandemic. But critics are suspicious of the motives behind Beijing’s offers of assistance. 

The first outbreak of the coronavirus could have happened further south of the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where it is widely thought to have originated, and as early as September 2019, according to a team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge.

At least 15 veterans and supporters of the Hong Kong’s political opposition camp were arrested on Saturday April 18, 2020. They were arrested on suspicion of organising and taking part in “illegal assemblies” during protests in the city in 2019. The Chinese central government’s foreign affairs office in Hong Kong hit back at international criticism that has followed the arrests. 

China’s economy shrank by 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on April 17, 2020. The contraction is the first in the world’s second-largest economy since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, as well as since official quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) records were started in 1992. The plunge confirmed the economic damage done by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has paralysed China’s production and spending.

The novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China in late 2019,  and took only a few months to spread into a global pandemic. Health experts say modern advanced transport including air travel has greatly increased the pace of the pandemic. Though governments around the world imposed lockdowns, isolations and quarantines for travellers, such measures also had a devastating impact on the global economy and many industries including aviation. Airline tracking site Flight Radar 24 documented a massive reduction in the number of aircraft flying around the world, and the International Air Transport Association predicts that air traffic in 2020 may fall by at least 38 per cent. What do the numbers tell us about the future for global aviation? 

Scientists have identified more than 200 types of coronaviruses, seven of which are known to affect humans. Four of these coronaviruses are endemic respiratory viruses which cause 15-30 per cent of the common colds people experience each year. Covid-19 is caused by a deadly new type of coronavirus that has spread to the point of becoming a global pandemic, infecting 771,104 people and taking 36,944 lives as of March 31, 2020. Here are some more facts about the coronavirus officially known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which was first detected in December 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

The deadly coronavirus which causes Covid-19 was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on December 31, 2019. As it rapidly spread around the country, the first death from the virus was reported on January 11, 2020. Over the two months since then, it emerged as a global epidemic despite efforts by Chinese authorities to lock down major cities and delay the return of workers from the Lunar New Year holiday. By March 11, the epidemic had spread to at least 100 countries and regions, sickened more than 119,027 people worldwide and was declared a pandemic.

The coronavirus, which continues to steadily spread to many parts of the world, has evolved into at least two major types, according to Chinese researchers. In a study published on March 3, 2020, in the National Science Review, the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the scientists from Peking University and the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai said the mutations have distinct rates of transmission and geographical distributions.

As coronavirus cases surge worldwide, US President Donald Trump said his administration has done an “incredible job” preventing the spread of Covid-19 in the country. A US health official from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has meanwhile warned it is not a question of “if” but rather “when” America will face a community spread of the virus. California has been monitoring 8,400 people for signs of infection after it reported a coronavirus case of “unknown origin”, potentially the first instance of community transmission in the US.

The United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) says the coronavirus disease Covid-19 is not yet a pandemic, but it could turn into one if governments don't take effective measures to contain its spread. Here is a breakdown of what a pandemic is, and how the world has coped with them in the past.

Hong Kong’s flagship airline Cathay Pacific Airways is scrambling to ride out a financial storm caused by the coronavirus outbreak, coming right on the heels of months of anti-government protests in its home city as well as the US-China trade war. As the region tries to prevent the spread of the virus that causes the deadly Covid-19 illness, Cathay Pacific has cancelled more than a half of its scheduled flights in February and March  2020. Aviation experts say that as the outbreak wreaks havoc on air travel, Hong Kong’s international airport is also likely to be struggling to take off again at a pace even slower than was after the 2002-2003 Sars outbreak.

It is the 2020 Lunar New Year holiday, and 11-year-old Xiaoxiao and her little brother are at home with their grandparents in a remote part of central China. They are anxiously waiting for the Spring Festival reunion dinner when their parents return from their jobs in southern Guangdong province. Like hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers in China, Chen and Liu travel home only once a year. The travel rush over the holiday period, which lasts up to 40 days, is considered the largest annual human migration in the world.

“One country, two systems” is the arrangement under which China rules Hong Kong.