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FILE PHOTO: A worker welds a bicycle steel rim at a factory manufacturing sports equipment in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China September 2, 2019. China Daily via REUTERS/File Photo - 

Profits at China's industrial firms grew at a faster pace in October, the statistics bureau said on Saturday, providing a buffer for a faltering economy battered by soaring raw material prices.

Profits in October rose 24.6per cent from a year earlier to 818.7 billion yuan (US$128.1 billion), the official data showed, quickening from a 16.3per cent gain reported in September.

For the January-October period, industrial firms' profits rose 42.2per cent year-on-year to 7.2 trillion yuan, slower than a 44.7per cent rise in the first nine months of 2021.

The industrial profit data covers large firms with annual revenues of over 20 million yuan from their main operations.

Government efforts to ensure supply and stabilize prices helped companies mitigate difficulties, which in turned helped improve production conditions and profits, said Zhu Hong a senior statistician at the National Bureau of Statistics.

However, he said profit differentiation between upstream and downstream industries had not significantly improved, with downstream industries still facing pressures on their profitability.

Prices in China have surged amid a power crunch and Beijing has been trying to cool a red-hot market for coal, the country's main fuel for power generation.

However, an official from China's state planner said last Sunday that "energy prices including, coal prices have fallen significantly" and have pushed down prices for steel, aluminium, pulp, PVC and coal chemical products.

The world's second-largest economy staged an impressive rebound from last year's pandemic slump, but has since lost momentum as it grapples with a slowing manufacturing sector, debt problems in the property market and COVID-19 outbreaks.

China's industrial output grew faster than expected in October but remained the second lowest print this year.

On Friday, China's Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT) Technology held a meeting with representatives from industry associations and companies including Aluminium Corp of China and China Minmetals Corp to discuss issues in the raw materials industry, it said in a Saturday statement. 

The development of the upstream and downstream should be better coordinated to ensure the stability of the supply chain, and the industry's risk response capabilities should be strengthened to prevent "grey rhino" and "black swan" incidents, it quoted MIIT vice minister Wang Jiangping as saying.

The industrial profit data covers large firms with annual revenues of over 20 million yuan from their main operations//CNA

FILE PHOTO: A sign of the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) is pictured at the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, November 25, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse - 

The World Trade Organization (WTO) became the first major diplomatic casualty of the new coronavirus variant on Friday (Nov 26) when it postponed its first ministerial meeting in four years due to the deteriorating health situation.

Ministers from WTO members were due to have gathered next week for a meeting widely seen as a test of the WTO's relevance.

The WTO said that its members had agreed late on Friday to postpone the ministerial conference after the new variant outbreak led to travel restrictions that would have prevented many ministers from reaching Geneva.

No new date has been set for a rescheduled meeting.

The World Health Organisation has classified the B11529 variant detected in South Africa as a "variant of concern", saying it may spread more quickly than other forms of the virus. Scientists are also seeking to find out if it is vaccine-resistant.

Switzerland, home to the WTO, on Friday banned direct flights from South Africa and the surrounding region, and imposed test and quarantine requirements on travel from other countries, including Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.

The Geneva-based trade body had planned a meeting in person, but the new restrictions meant delegations of large players such as South Africa and the Brussels-based European Commission would have been limited to a largely virtual presence.

Even before the postponement the prospects were not bright.

The WTO has only managed one update of its global rules in its near 27-year history, the red tape-cutting Trade Facilitation Agreement, and its 164 members looked far from agreement in its most active talks - on curbing fishing subsidies and spreading COVID-19 vaccines more widely.

India, South Africa and other developing countries are calling for a waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights for vaccines and other COVID-19 treatments. US President Joe Biden said on Friday he supported a waiver for vaccines.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the postponement did not mean negotiations should stop.

"On the contrary, delegations in Geneva should be fully empowered to close as many gaps as possible. This new variant reminds us once again of the urgency of the work we are charged with," she said in a statement.

Santiago Wills, the Colombian WTO ambassador who chairs the fishing subsidy talks, said the news was "deflating, to say the least", but pledged to keep working towards an agreement to save global fish stocks//CNA

People pull shopping carts as they walk past an information board, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COV Britain, June 16, 2021. REUTERS/Phil Noble - 

The discovery of a new coronavirus variant named Omicron triggered global alarm on Friday (Nov 26) as countries rushed to suspend travel from southern Africa and stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic suffered their biggest falls in more than a year.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Omicron may spread more quickly than other forms, and preliminary evidence suggested there is an increased risk of reinfection.

Epidemiologists warned travel curbs may be too late to stop Omicron from circulating globally. The new mutations were first discovered in South Africa and have since been detected in Belgium, Botswana, Israel and Hong Kong.

The United States will restrict travel from South Africa and neighbouring countries effective Monday, a senior Biden administration official said.

Going further, Canada said it was closing its borders to those countries, following bans on flights announced by Britain, the European Union and others.

But it could take weeks for scientists to fully understand the variant's mutations and whether existing vaccines and treatments are effective against it. Omicron is the fifth variant of concern designated by the WHO.

The variant has a spike protein that is dramatically different than the one in the original coronavirus that vaccines are based on, the UK Health Security Agency said, raising fears about how current vaccines will fare.

Scientists issued similar warnings.

"This new variant of the COVID-19 virus is very worrying. It is the most heavily mutated version of the virus we have seen to date," said Lawrence Young, a virologist at Britain's University of Warwick.

"Some of the mutations that are similar to changes we've seen in other variants of concern are associated with enhanced transmissibility and with partial resistance to immunity induced by vaccination or natural infection."

Those worries pummelled financial markets, especially stocks of airlines and others in the travel sector, and oil, which tumbled by about US$10 a barrel.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 2.5 per cent, its worst day since late October 2020, and European stocks had their worst day in 17 months.

Several other countries including India, Japan, Israel, Turkey, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates also toughened travel curbs.

In Geneva the WHO - whose experts on Friday discussed the risks that the variant, called B.1.1.529, presents - had earlier warned against travel curbs for now.

"It's really important that there are no knee-jerk responses here," said the WHO's emergencies director Mike Ryan, praising South Africa's public health institutions for picking up the new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Richard Lessells, a South Africa-based infectious disease expert, also expressed frustration at travel bans, saying the focus should be on getting more people vaccinated in places that have struggled to access sufficient shots.

"This is why we talked about the risk of vaccine apartheid. This virus can evolve in the absence of adequate levels of vaccination," he told Reuters.

Less than 7per cent of people in low-income countries have received their first COVID-19 shot, according to medical and human rights groups. Meanwhile, many developed nations are giving third-dose boosters.

The coronavirus has swept the world in the two years since it was first identified in central China, infecting 260 million people and killing 5.4 million.

One epidemiologist in Hong Kong said it may be too late to tighten travel curbs against the latest variant.

"Most likely this virus is already in other places. And so if we shut the door now, it's going to be probably too late," said Ben Cowling of the University of Hong Kong.

Brazilian health regulator Anvisa recommended that travel be restricted from some African countries, but President Jair Bolsonaro appeared to dismiss such measures.

Bolsonaro has been widely criticised by public health experts for his management of the pandemic, railing against lockdowns and choosing not to get vaccinated. Brazil has the world's second-highest death toll from the virus, behind only the United States.

Discovery of the new variant comes as Europe and the United States enter winter, with more people gathering indoors in the run-up to Christmas, providing a breeding ground for infection.

Friday also marked the start of the holiday shopping period in the United States, but stores were less crowded than in years past.

Realtor Kelsey Hupp, 36, was at the Macy's department store in downtown Chicago on Black Friday.

"Chicago is pretty safe and masked and vaccinated. I got my booster so I'm not too concerned about it," she said//CNA

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel Kritenbrink attend a meeting with Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hanoi, Vietnam, Feb 26, 2019. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS) - 

The top US diplomat for East Asia will visit Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand from the weekend after President Joe Biden pledged stepped up engagement with Southeast Asia, a key battleground in his contest for influence with China.

Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, will be in the region from Saturday (Nov 27) until Dec 4, a State Department statement said.

Kritenbrink would "reaffirm the US commitment to work together ... to tackle the most serious global and regional challenges" and stress US support for "a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific," it said, a reference to China's increasingly assertive behavior in the region, which Washington has repeatedly denounced as "coercive."

Kritenbrink will discuss human rights "challenges," seek to bolster cooperation on climate change and discuss ways to pressure Myanmar's military government to cease violence and allow unhindered humanitarian access, the statement said.

He will also discuss how to strengthen economic relationships and "build back better" from the COVID-19 pandemic, it said.

Biden joined leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in a virtual summit last month, the first time in four years Washington had engaged at the top level with the bloc.

He pledged to stand with ASEAN in defending freedom of the seas and democracy, and said Washington would start talks on developing a regional economic framework, something critics say his Asia strategy has lacked since his predecessor Donald Trump quit a regional trade pact.

An Asian diplomat said regional countries were still awaiting details of this plan, recognizing Biden's focus on rebuilding domestic economic strength was a limiting factor.

Daniel Russel, a predecessor of Kritenbrink in the Obama administration, said a key question for ASEAN was "whether the United States truly has a viable economic strategy" for the region.

"The pledge to discuss ways to strengthen US economic engagement with ASEAN countries is music to their ears, even if they may be underwhelmed by the 'economic framework' so far," he said.

Kritenbrink's trip announcement stressed the "centrality" of the 10-member ASEAN to regional affairs, but he will not visit the bloc's new chair, Cambodia, which has shifted ever closer to China.

The Asian diplomat and Russel said Kritenbrink was likely to visit other ASEAN countries before long and Russel noted Indonesia's capital Jakarta is home to the bloc's permanent headquarters.

"While it is important to discuss the ASEAN agenda with the 2022 chair, visiting ASEAN headquarters in Jakarta will afford him the opportunity to begin that conversation," Russel said//CNA