Author: CensorBiz

Three U.S. retail giants have pulled products made by tech surveillance specialists Lorex and Ezviz, following revelations by the tech press that the companies are linked to human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region, home to Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups.

According to reports from American online news outlet TechCrunch and video surveillance news site IPMV, big-box retailers Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowe’s terminated contracts with Lorex and Ezviz after the two news outlets questioned their partnerships.

In an email statement to VOA Mandarin, Home Depot said it has stopped selling products from both Lorex and Ezviz. “We committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical sourcing and we immediately stopped selling these products when this was brought to our attention,” said the statement, which is also on the company website.

Best Buy told TechCrunch that it was “discontinuing its relationship” with both Lorex and Ezviz. Lowe’s did not respond to a request from VOA Mandarin for comments, but a recent search shows neither Lorex nor Ezviz surveillance products are available on its website.

Lorex is a subsidiary of Dahua Technology. Ezviz is a brand of video surveillance cameras owned by Hikvision. Dahua and Hikvision were added to the U.S. government’s economic blacklist in 2019 for supplying Beijing with technology it uses to surveil ethnic groups.

Yet because the 2019 sanction covered only sales to the U.S. federal government, Lorex and Ezviz remained free to sell to private-sector buyers.

The proliferation of Chinese companies in the surveillance equipment sector reflects Beijing’s growing reliance on advanced technological tools to monitor the lives of its citizens in Xinjiang and to expand an already extensive surveillance infrastructure throughout China.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Xinjiang Bureau of Public Security uses what it calls the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, a system that gathers data on residents through iris scanners, digital cameras with face recognition, DNA samples and cellphone data.

In the China section of its 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. State Department said that Hikvision and other tech companies are related to the development of a “Uyghur alarm” based on a face-scanning camera system.

The report said the Chinese government is conducting significant human rights abuses against Uyghurs, including “mass detention of more than one million Uyghurs and other members of predominantly Muslim minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps and an additional two million subjected to daytime-only ‘re-education’ training.”

China, which contends that Uyghurs hold extremist and separatist ideas, denies the allegations, saying that Xinjiang’s camps are “re-education” facilities aimed at combating terrorism.  

 
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U.S. holiday sales could rise over 10% this year, a trade body said on Wednesday, as major consumer goods makers and retailers work to prevent supply chain disruptions from leaving shelves empty of in-demand toys and games. 

The National Retail Federation (NRF) forecast sales to increase between 8.5% and 10.5%, to between $843.4 billion and $859 billion, during November and December, compared with a previous high of $777.3 billion last year. 

Rising income and household savings have never been stronger and would help people pay more for goods at a time when companies have raised prices to deal with inflation, the NRF said. It added there is exceptional demand for holiday products this year, although a survey last week showed customers were worried about availability. 

“If retailers can keep merchandise on the shelves and merchandise arrives before Christmas, it could be a stellar holiday sales season,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. 

NRF also said the arrival of international travelers to the United States amid relaxed COVID-19 restrictions would further drive sales higher. 

“That’s going to give a jolt to the retail side, because there is a high correlation between international travelers and tourism in the U.S., and retail sales,” NRF President Matthew Shay told reporters. 

Several retailers had also begun their holiday selling as early as September, warning their customers their favorite items could sell out or delivery could take longer than usual. 

“There may be some categories in which there will be some shortages or which consumers will need to do some switching or trading … they won’t go home empty-handed,” Shay said. 

Amazon.com, Inc. has secured more shipping storage, while Levi Strauss & Co and Crocs Inc. have been redirecting their goods to come in through East Coast ports, away from the congested West Coast. 

 
…

New figures from the U.N.’s International Labor Organization indicate the global labor market has been slow to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic, with the economies of lower-income countries faring worse than those of the wealthier countries.

Early this year, ILO economists had anticipated a fragile, but steady recovery in the global job market. However, they acknowledge this relative optimism now has faded due to new waves of the pandemic and slower than expected economic recovery.

Based on its findings, the U.N. agency now projects the number of global hours worked this year will be 4.3% below pre-pandemic levels. This is the equivalent to a loss of 125 million full time jobs.

ILO Director-General Guy Ryder says more worrying still is what he sees as the two-speed recovery between higher and lower-income countries.

“This is reflected in the fact that the higher income countries, with more resources managed to recover in 2021 at least to some extent, whilst lower income countries continue to suffer very severely from the pandemic…The pandemic has exacerbated inequalities between countries, as well as within them,” he expressed.

Ryder blames this growing divergence on differences in the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations and fiscal stimulus packages. He says the pace of each nation’s recovery depends heavily on its ability to vaccinate its population and it will also depend on the ability of countries to provide a financial cushion to protect workers and businesses from the economic impact of the pandemic.

“In low and middle-income countries, fiscal constraints and slow vaccination progress are expected to continue to hinder progress. And without concrete financial and technical support, the great divergence between developed and developing countries will persist,” he insists.

The ILO reports the prospects for labor market recovery for the rest of the year remain weak and uncertain. Ryder says no country or region will get out of this crisis alone. He says the only sustainable path out of this health and socio-economic dilemma is for all nations to work together.
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Global pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions are just a fraction of what’s needed to prevent catastrophic global warming. That’s the warning from the United Nations, ahead of the critical COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow, Britain next week – where world leaders will try to agree on further action to combat global warming. Henry Ridgwell looks at what is at stake ahead of the meeting.
…

Car rental company Hertz says it will buy 100,000 electric cars from Tesla. 

Hertz interim CEO Mark Fields said the Model 3 cars could be ready for renters as early as November, The Associated Press reported. 

Fields said the reason for the move was that electric cars are becoming mainstream, and consumer interest in them is growing.

“More are willing to try and buy,” he told AP. “It’s pretty stunning.” 

All of the cars should be available by the end of 2022, the company said. When all are delivered, they will make up 20% of the company’s fleet.

Hertz, which emerged from bankruptcy in June, did not disclose the cost of the order, but it could be valued at as much as $4 billion, according to some news reports. 

The company said it plans to build its own charging station network, with 3,000 in 65 locations by the end of 2022 and 4,000 by the end of 2023. Renters will also have access to Tesla’s charging network for a fee. 

Tesla stock jumped as much as 12% on the news 

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press. 

 
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The United States will soon reopen its air borders for fully vaccinated foreign visitors who have one of three approved COVID-19 vaccines or who can present a negative COVID-19 test within 24 hours of travel, the White House announced Monday. 

The new rules take effect Nov. 8, and “only limited exceptions” will be allowed, senior Biden administration officials said during a background briefing with reporters. Those include vaccine exemptions for travelers from about 50 countries with exceptionally low vaccination rates, which include some of the world’s poorest nations, many of those in Africa. Children under the age of 18 are also exempt from the vaccine requirement at this time, but will still have to present a negative test.

Accepted vaccines only include the three approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:: Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

Exemptions will include “certain COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial participants, those with medical contraindications to the vaccines, and those who need to travel for emergency or humanitarian reasons,” the White House said. Additionally, those who are granted an exception must agree to be vaccinated in the U.S. if they intend to stay for more than 60 days.

“The new system also includes enhanced testing requirements, strengthening contact tracing, as well as masking,”a senior administration official said. ”These are strict safety protocols that follow the science and public health to enhance the safety of Americans here at home, and the safety of international air travel.” 

In 2019, nearly 80 million international visitors came to the U.S., according to data from the U.S. Travel Association. That figure cratered in early 2020, when the pandemic hit and the administration of former President Donald Trump imposed restrictions that barred tens of thousands of travelers from most of the world.

Unvaccinated air passengers — including unvaccinated U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — will now need to provide a negative test within one day of departure. Children under two years old will not need to test, and accommodations will be allowed for people who have documented their recovery from the virus within the last 90 days.

 
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British finance minister Rishi Sunak’s budget this week will include an extra $8.1 billion of spending for the health service over the next few years to drive down waiting lists, the finance ministry said on Sunday.   

The sum comes on top of an $11 billion package announced in September to tackle backlogs built up over the COVID-19 pandemic, the finance ministry said.   

The spending is aimed at increasing what is termed elective activity in the National Health Service (NHS) — such as scans and non-emergency procedures — by 30% by the 2024/25 financial year. 

The increase comprises $3.2 billion for testing services, $2.9 billion to improve the technology behind the health service, and $2 billion to increase bed capacity.   

“This is a game-changing investment in the NHS to make sure we have the right buildings, equipment and systems to get patients the help they need and make sure the NHS is fit for the future,” Sunak said in a statement. 

Sunak is expected to set fairly tight limits for most areas of day-to-day public spending in his budget on Wednesday, which will seek to lower public debt after a record surge in borrowing during the pandemic. 
…

Depending on whom you ask, Maine’s proposed “right to food” constitutional amendment would simply put people in charge of how and what they eat — or would endanger animals and food supplies, and turn urban neighborhoods into cattle pastures. 

For supporters, the language is short and to the point, ensuring the right to grow vegetables and raise livestock in an era when corporatization threatens local ownership of the food supply, a constitutional experiment that has never been tried in any state. 

For opponents and skeptics, it’s deceptively vague, representing a threat to food safety and animal welfare, and could embolden residents to raise cows in their backyards in cities like Portland and Bangor. 

In the Nov. 2 election, voters will be asked if they favor an amendment to the Maine Constitution “to declare that all individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well-being.” 

The proposal is essentially “the 2nd Amendment of food,” said Republican Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, who proposed the amendment, likening it to the U.S. constitutional amendment that assures the right to bear arms.

He says it’s a common-sense amendment that would make sure the government can’t stop people from doing things like saving and exchanging seeds, as long as they don’t violate public or property rights. 

“There’s a lot of disturbing trends in the food category, with the power and control that corporations are taking over our food,” said Faulkingham, who is also a commercial lobster fisherman. “We want to protect people’s ability to grow gardens, grow and raise their own food.” 

Faulkingham and others said the amendment is a response to growing corporate ownership of the food supply. They see the amendment as a way to wrest control of food from big landowners and giant retailers. 

But Julie Ann Smith, executive director of the Maine Farm Bureau, the largest farmers advocacy organization in the state, argued the language of the amendment is so broad that it could make the food supply less safe.

That’s a problem in a state where potatoes, blueberries, maple syrup and dairy products are all key pieces of the economy, she said. The amendment could empower residents to buy and consume food that isn’t subject to inspections, proper refrigeration and other safety checks, Smith worried.

“We think it’s very dangerous to have the words ‘to consume the food of your own choosing.’ That is so broad and dangerous,” Smith said. “It has the potential to cause serious problems in food safety, animal welfare.” 

Smith said the farm bureau is also concerned that the amendment could override local ordinances that prevent residents from raising livestock anywhere they choose.

Supporters of the proposal, including Faulkingham, said that local rules would still be enforced, and that the amendment would not mean you could do things like raise chickens anywhere you want or fish commercially without a license. 

The amendment proposal is an outgrowth of the right-to-food movement, sometimes called the food sovereignty movement, which has expanded in recent years in Maine and states around the U.S. and Canada. 

The movement comprises a patchwork of small farmers, raw milk enthusiasts, libertarians, back-to-the-land advocates, anti-corporatists and others who want to ensure local control of food systems. 

Maine enacted a food sovereignty law, the nation’s first of its kind, in 2017. The law allows local governments to OK small food producers selling directly to customers on site. The law was especially popular with sellers of raw milk, which can be legally sold in Maine but is more restricted in many other states.

The nationwide food sovereignty movement has yielded similar laws in states including Wyoming, Colorado, Montana and North Dakota, and pushes for the same elsewhere. 

The amendment is likely to find support among Maine’s self-sufficient, practical Yankee set, said Mark Brewer, a political scientist with the University of Maine.

However, Brewer agreed with criticism that the amendment is so vague that it’s unclear what it would actually do. 

“I’d be more interested in how it could play out in the courts,” Brewer said. “If you want to raise cattle within the city limits when city laws say you can’t, but the Constitution says you can. Then what happens?” 

For Heather Retberg, a farmer in the small town of Penobscot, the concerns about cows turning up in cities are a silly distraction from the real goal of the proposal.

Retberg, who has a 100-acre farm with cows, pigs, chicken and goats, said the proposal is “an antidote to corporate control of our food supply” and a chance for rural communities to become self-sufficient when it comes to what food they grow and eat. 

It’s also a chance to tackle the problem of the state’s “food deserts,” where residents don’t have enough access to healthy food, Retberg said. 

 
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U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday new measures to fight discriminatory lending practices. 

The Justice Department’s new Combating Redlining Initiative will redirect federal resources to investigating fair lending concerns, according to the agency. It will draw on existing department authorities under the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to prevent creditors from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, age and sex. 

“Today, we are committing ourselves to addressing modern-day redlining by making far more robust use of our fair lending authorities,” Garland said. 

Redlining is the denial of credit services or mortgage loans to communities and individuals based on race and national origin. Garland characterized the initiative as the furthest-reaching effort to combat redlining in the Justice Department’s history. 

The department will work with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to target illegal practices and file and prosecute fair lending lawsuits, according to Garland. “The initiative represents the department’s most aggressive and coordinated effort to address redlining,” he said.

“Lending discrimination runs counter to fundamental promises of our economic system,” Garland said. “When people are denied credit simply because of their race or national origin, their ability to share in our nation’s prosperity is all but eliminated.” 

 
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The practice of converting office buildings into apartments is at an all-time high in the United States, according to a recent report. Of the nearly 32,000 apartments created through adaptive reuse since the start of the decade, 41% are in converted office buildings, according to the RentCafe analysis.

“Existing buildings already have a lot of embodied energy that has gone into creating them, and as long as we can get them a new lease on life, then that can be a very sustainable thing to do,” says Strachan Forgan, an architect and principal at Solomon Cordwell Buenz. “And so, conversion to residential can really increase the life span of the building.” 

Inflection point

Whether the pandemic, and the increasing numbers of people working from home, will accelerate the office-to-apartment conversion rate remains to be seen. 

While there is a strong recovery in certain property markets, such as multifamily, industrial and retail, the office and hotel property markets have not bounced back as quickly, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

The real estate organization says continuing COVID-19 concerns and the rise of the delta variant have slowed the return of workers to the office, while also grounding travel for business and pleasure. In addition, office rents have declined.

“We’re at an inflection point, potentially,” says Forgan, whose firm has converted a San Francisco high-rise office building into apartments and is working on a similar project in Hawaii. “Generally, employers have not made radical changes in the amount of space that they need … but that could be coming as workers return to the office. We may find that some of them don’t want to return to the office, and that will generally lead to lower demand for office space.” 

‘Exception rather than the rule’ 

Transforming old buildings is a sustainable way to add new housing, especially since most of the infrastructure, including roads and public transportation, is often already in place.

And converting, rather than building from the ground up, can simplify the approval process. 

“It’s maybe faster or easier to get a conversion project approved, particularly in markets, such as California, where it’s very hard to get new projects entitled,” Forgan says. “It’s just not always a slam-dunk, because there are some other things about the building that can be impediments to conversion.” 

Those impediments are the reason why office-to-apartment projects tend to be the exception rather than the rule, Forgan says.

“Zoning and permitting are probably two of the biggest costs,” says Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi-Matrix, which provided some of the data for the RentCafe report. “Zoning and permitting are different for every area in the country; most have been started from local ordinances and things like that and built up. So, how do you get through that? Because some areas will not allow for multifamily (housing) in a given place; they’re single-family only.” 

And then there’s the floor plate — the distance from the elevator to the facade, where the windows are — to consider. When the floor plate’s too large, it’s hard to design apartments that get enough natural light. 

“Typically, the building systems are at the end of their life, as well, so, you have to replace all of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems,” Forgan says, adding that it’s rare to get an entire office building free of tenants. “If there’s multiple tenants in a building, it’s difficult to get a large block of space that you can convert without moving tenants around or moving them out of the building.” 

Historic office buildings are often good candidates for conversion due to their smaller floor plates, he says. 

An NAR survey of its commercial members found that 84% of respondents are using the same amount of office space as before the pandemic, but 11% reported a decrease in office space. 

“People are really reassessing whether the workers are going to return to these office spaces. And potentially, there’s a lot of office space, therefore, that could be available for conversion,” Forgan says. “I don’t think the office market has really reacted to that yet, because it’s really an unknown.” 

Retail conversions 

NAR reports that retail spaces, led by shopping malls, are continuing to recover. But the big box department stores that lost out to online shopping might be getting a new lease on life by facilitating the delivery of internet purchases. 

“Some of that can be reconverted to e-commerce warehousing for industrial purposes,” Ressler says, “or they can be reconverted into fulfillment centers, because the main thrust for fulfillment centers — whether it’s Amazon, Google, fill in the blank — is how close of proximity do I have to the people that use my product?” 

Neighborhood retail centers known as strip malls are also bouncing back, according to NAR. Part of that recovery might be attributable to strip mall owners exploring new options when it comes to tenants. 

“Retail strip centers right now are being very quickly reconfigured, especially for medical offices and urgent care,” Ressler says. “If you have a large (hospital) provider that says, ‘I’m going to reduce my costs … I’m going to create this urgent care center in this strip mall that has offices that are sitting vacant, I can do that. I can repurpose it.’”
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The U.S. government recorded its second largest budget deficit on record in fiscal year 2021, but it was down somewhat from 2020. 

This year’s deficit was $2.77 trillion compared to $3.13 trillion last year, with both years reflecting massive government spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Biden administration said the lower number was due to a recovering economy leading to increased tax revenues. 

“Today’s joint budget statement is further evidence that America’s economy is in the midst of a recovery,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement issued with the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young. 

Before the fiscal 2020 record deficit, the previous record was $1.4 trillion in 2009 as the Obama administration spent heavily to try to lift the country out of the recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis. 

Some information in this report comes from Reuters and The Associated Press. 

 
…

The long sheds at North America’s largest bitcoin mine look endless in the Texas sun, packed with the type of machines that have helped the United States to become the new global hub for the digital currency. 

The operation in the quiet town of Rockdale was part of an already bustling U.S. business — now boosted by Beijing’s intensified crypto crackdown that has pushed the industry west. 

Experts say rule of law and cheap electricity in the United States are a draw for bitcoin miners, whose energy-gulping computers race to unlock units of the currency. 

“There’s a lot of competitors coming into Texas because they are seeing the same thing (as) when we came here,” said Chad Everett Harris, CEO of miner Whinstone, which operates the Rockdale site owned by U.S. company Riot Blockchain.  

China was the undisputed heartland of crypto mining with about two-thirds of global capacity in September 2019, but last month Beijing declared illegal all transactions involving crypto money as it seeks to launch one of its own. 

Figures released Wednesday by the University of Cambridge showed that activity in the United States more than doubled in the four months to the end of August, increasing the market share held by the world’s biggest economy to 35.4%. 

Samir Tabar, chief strategy officer at miner Bit Digital, said the company started to pull out of China in 2020 and accelerated that process as the crackdown intensified. They have operations in the United States and Canada. 

“China’s bitcoin mining ban was basically an unintentional gift to the U.S.,” he said. “Thanks to their ban an entire sector migrated to North America — along with innovation, labor and machines.” 

Some of the key pulls toward the United States are simply a democratic government, a court system and the power to protect property rights. 

“If you’re going to make long-term investments and accumulate wealth in a country, you want to have some confidence that it’s not going to be taken away by the government,” said David Yermack, a crypto expert at New York University.  

‘Poetic’ return to America  

He expected the shift to the United States to be temporary, saying places like Nordic countries have cheap and abundant renewable energy, as well as plenty of cold weather to cool the hot-running mining machines.  

The steady increase in U.S.-based mining operations has fanned the ongoing environmental criticisms of the industry’s massive annual electricity consumption — more than what the Philippines uses in a year, according to Cambridge University data. 

An ongoing backlash has been fueled by concerns the industry relies on carbon-emitting power sources that contribute to climate change. 

“To think that we’re causing harm or pollution or all those things here … the majority of our power comes out of the ERCOT grid and that profile is extremely friendly to the environment,” Harris said, referring to the Texas power network operator. 

According to ERCOT’s data for 2020, about 46% of its power came from natural gas while wind and solar combined for 25% with coal at 18%. 

The price miners pay for electricity is key, and a place like Texas is desirable because the market is de-regulated so companies can have more flexible terms, said Viktoriya Zotova, a business school professor at Georgetown University. 

“In principle, they can buy the electricity when it’s cheaper and not buy it when it’s more expensive,” she said. 

While there are obvious reasons for the crypto world’s migration, some also see a bit of poetry in mining operations coming to the United States from China. 

Tabar, from miner Bit Digital, said his company has a site in Buffalo, New York, which used to be one of the country’s main manufacturing hubs but lost jobs and prosperity as production work shifted to places like China. 

“There is a bit of a poetic thing going on,” he noted. “It dawned on me how this is going full circle.” 
…

China’s economic growth is sinking under pressure from a construction slowdown and power shortages, prompting warnings about a possible shock to its trading partners and global financial markets. 

The world’s second-largest economy grew by a weaker-than-expected 4.9% over a year ago in the three months ending in September, down from the previous quarter’s 7.9%, government data showed Monday. Factory output, retail sales and investment in construction and other fixed assets all weakened. 

Manufacturing has been hampered by official curbs on energy use and shortages of processor chips and other components due to the coronavirus pandemic. Construction, an industry that supports millions of jobs, is slowing as regulators force developers to cut reliance on debt that Chinese leaders worry is dangerously high. 

“Ripple effects to the rest of the world could be significant” due to weaker Chinese demand for raw materials, said Mo Ji of Fidelity International in a report. “Even developed markets, including the U.S., would not be immune to a significant tightening in global financial conditions as a result of a negative China growth shock accompanied by financial stress.” 

Compared with the previous quarter, the way other major economies are measured, output barely grew in the July-September period, expanding by just 0.2%. That was down from 1.2% in the April-June period and one of the past decade’s weakest quarters. 

The slowdown adds to pressure on Beijing to prop up activity by easing borrowing controls and spending more on building public works. But forecasters said even if that happens, activity will weaken before policy changes take effect. 

“Growth will slow further,” Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics said in a report. 

Chinese leaders are trying to steer the economy to more sustainable growth based on domestic consumption instead of exports and investment and to reduce financial risk. 

Construction and housing sales, an important source of demand for steel, copper and other industrial imports, have slowed since regulators ordered developers to reduce their debt levels. 

One of the biggest, Evergrande Group, is struggling to avoid defaulting on $310 billion owed to banks and bondholders. That has fueled fears about other developers, though economists say the threat to global financial markets is small. 

Factories in some provinces were ordered to shut down in mid-September to avoid exceeding official goals for energy use and energy intensity, or the amount used per unit of output. Some warned deliveries of goods might be delayed, raising the possibility of shortages of smartphones and other consumer products ahead of the Christmas shopping season. 

Factory output barely grew in September, expanding by only 0.05% compared with August. That was down from the 7.3% growth for the first nine months of the year. 

Private sector forecasters have cut their growth outlook this year for China, though they still expect about 8%, which would be among the world’s strongest. The ruling Communist Party’s official target is “more than 6%,” which leaves Beijing room to keep its controls in place. 

The near-term outlook “remains difficult,” said Rajiv Biswas of IHS Market in a report. Real estate also is suffering from “fears of contagion to some other property developers.” 

This year’s economic figures have been exaggerated due to comparison with 2020, when factories and stores were closed to fight the coronavirus. 

Output grew by a record 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021, but forecasters said the rebound already was leveling off. 

In September, growth in retail spending weakened to 4.4% over a year earlier, down from 16.4% in the first nine months. 

Investment in real estate, factories, housing and other fixed assets rose 0.17% in September, down from 7.3% for the first nine months. 

The latest figures indicate “the property sector fallout will be a significant drag on growth in the coming quarters,” said Fidelity’s Mo. “Even significant policy easing now, which is still unlikely in our view, will take time to propagate into the real economy.” 

Auto sales in the global industry’s biggest market fell 16.5% in September from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. The group said production was disrupted by shortages of processor chips. 

Imports, an indicator of Chinese domestic demand, rose 17.6% in September over a year earlier, but that was about half the previous month’s 33% growth. 
…

Union leaders have angrily reacted to the Zimbabwean government’s announcement Sunday that workers who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer be allowed at work and will not be paid. This is seen as part of efforts to deal with high vaccination hesitancy in the southern African nation. .

Ndabaningi Nick Mangwana, Zimbabwe’s secretary for information, over the weekend told government-controlled media that all civil servants who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 will not be allowed to work come Monday. 

“There is no extension to the deadline of 15 October, when civil servants are expected to all having been vaccinated, failure of which those who are not vaccinated would not be allowed to work. And further to that is the fact that those who are not vaccinated and those who are not working will not be paid because the thrust is that if you do not work, you don’t get paid,” he said.

Schoolteachers, who constitute the largest proportion of Zimbabwe’s civil servants, say the Friday deadline the government set was unilateral. 

“Fundamentally, there was no agreement over the issue of vaccination,” said Takavafira Zhou, president of Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe. “Our position as workers has always remained that we encourage our members to be vaccinated. But by no means should our encouragement be misconstrued for mandatory vaccination. Our position is very clear: vaccination must be voluntary. Not mandatory. We must invest in the efficacy of vaccination — explaining to members how vaccination would assist them in terms of boosting their immunity but that has not been done.” 

Zimbabwe’s government says it has fully vaccinated 2,472,859 people since the program started in February. 

Zhou said Zimbabweans were shunning vaccinations for several reasons that the government must first understand, from religious reasons to lack of knowledge about COVID-19 vaccines to lack of trust in the imported Chinese SINOVAC and SINOPHARM vaccines. 

He said all civil servants must continue coming to work while unions were considering going to court over purported dismissals. 

“The members will only stop going to work if there is a formal letter from the Public Service Commission dismissing them. But even with that formal letter, it will still be challenged because its legality must also be established. But as of now the teachers still remain at their stations, demotivated of course, shimmering in poverty and misery but they remain employees of the government,” he said.

Zimbabwe currently has 132,333 confirmed coronavirus infections and 4,657 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, which tracks the global outbreak. Civil servants — especially teachers — have long complained about lack of adequate protective equipment in classrooms to curb the spread of COVID-19. Zimbabwe’s government, however, maintains it is providing enough resources in the fight against the pandemic. 

 
…

Like other ranchers across the country, Rusty Kemp for years grumbled about rock-bottom prices paid for the cattle he raised in central Nebraska, even as the cost of beef at grocery stores kept climbing.

He and his neighbors blamed it on consolidation in the beef industry stretching back to the 1970s that resulted in four companies slaughtering more than 80% of the nation’s cattle, giving the processors more power to set prices while ranchers struggled to make a living. Federal data show that for every dollar spent on food, the share that went to ranchers and farmers dropped from 35 cents in the 1970s to 14 cents recently.

It led Kemp to launch an audacious plan: Raise more than $300 million from ranchers to build a plant themselves, putting their future in their own hands.

“We’ve been complaining about it for 30 years,” Kemp said. “It’s probably time somebody does something about it.”

Crews will start work this fall building the Sustainable Beef plant on nearly 400 acres near North Platte, Nebraska, and other groups are making similar surprising moves in Iowa, Idaho and Wisconsin. The enterprises will test whether it’s really possible to compete financially against an industry trend that has swept through American agriculture and that played a role in meat shortages during the coronavirus pandemic.

The move is well timed, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture is now taking a number of steps to encourage a more diverse supply in the beef industry.

Still, it’s hard to overstate the challenge, going up against huge, well-financed competitors that run highly efficient plants and can sell beef at prices that smaller operators will struggle to match.

‘They’re ready to take a risk’

The question is whether smaller plants can pay ranchers more and still make a profit themselves. An average 620-kilogram steer is worth about $1,630, but that value must be divided between the slaughterhouse, feed lot and the rancher, who typically bears the largest expense of raising the animal for more than a year.

David Briggs, the CEO of Sustainable Beef, acknowledged the difficulty but said his company’s investors remain confident.

“Cattle people are risk takers and they’re ready to take a risk,” Briggs said.

Consolidation of meatpacking started in the mid-1970s, with buyouts of smaller companies, mergers and a shift to much larger plants. Census data cited by the USDA shows that the number of livestock slaughter plants declined from 2,590 in 1977 to 1,387 in 1992. And big processors gradually dominated, going from handling only 12% of cattle in 1977 to 65% by 1997.

Currently four companies — Cargill, JBS, Tyson Foods and National Beef Packing — control more than 80% of the U.S. beef market thanks to cattle slaughtered at 24 plants. That concentration became problematic when the coronavirus infected workers, slowing and even closing some of the massive plants, and a cyberattack last summer briefly forced a shutdown of JBS plants until the company paid an $11 million ransom.

The Biden administration has largely blamed declining competition for a 14% increase in beef prices from December 2020 to August. Since 2016, the wholesale value of beef and profits to the largest processors has steadily increased while prices paid to ranchers have barely budged.

Trying to retain workers with higher pay

The backers of the planned new plants have no intention of replacing the giant slaughterhouses, such as a JBS plant in Grand Island, Nebraska, that processes about 6,000 cattle daily — four times what the proposed North Platte plant would handle.

However, they say they will have important advantages, including more modern equipment and, they hope, less employee turnover thanks to slightly higher pay of more than $50,000 annually plus benefits along with more favorable work schedules. The new Midwest plants are also counting on closer relationships with ranchers, encouraging them to invest in the plants, to share in the profits.

The companies would market their beef both domestically and internationally as being of higher quality than meat processed at larger plants.

Chad Tentinger, who is leading efforts to build a Cattlemen’s Heritage plant near Council Bluffs, Iowa, said he thinks smaller plants were profitable even back to the 1970s but that owners shifted to bigger plants in hopes of increasing profits.

Now, he said, “We want to revolutionize the plant and make it an attractive place to work.”

‘They’re extremely efficient’

Besides paying ranchers more and providing dividends to those who own shares, the hope is that their success will spur more plants to open, and the new competitors will add openness to cattle markets.

Derrell Peel, an agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University, said he hopes they’re right, but noted that research shows even a 30% reduction in a plant’s size will make it far less efficient, meaning higher costs to slaughter each animal.

Unless smaller plants can keep expenses down, they will need to find customers who will pay more for their beef, or manage with a lower profit margin than the big companies.

“We have these very large plants because they’re extremely efficient,” Peel said.

According to the North American Meat Institute, a trade group that includes large and mid-size plants, the biggest challenge will be the shortage of workers in the industry.

It’s unfair to blame the big companies and consolidation for the industry’s problems, said Tyson Fresh Meats group President Shane Miller.

“Many processors, including Tyson, are not able to run their facilities at capacity in spite of ample cattle supply,” Miller told a U.S. Senate committee in July. “This is not by choice: Despite our average wage and benefits of $22 per hour, there are simply not enough workers to fill our plants.”

The proposed new plants come as the USDA is trying to increase the supply chain. The agency has dedicated $650 million toward funding mid-size and small meat and poultry plants and $100 million in loan guarantees for such plants. Also planned are new rules to label meat as a U.S. product to differentiate it from meat raised in other countries.

“We’re trying to support new investment and policies that are going to diversify and address that underlying problem of concentration,” said Andy Green, a USDA senior adviser for fair and competitive markets. 
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