hello — i'm ros atkins, welcome to outside source. tonight — we're going to talk about china — and its relations with the west. what the ccp does to the chinese people is bad enough, but the free world shouldn't tolerate beijing abuses as well. china's being attacked on severalfronts, on huawei, on hong kong and on the south china sea. we'll go through all the issues in play. katty kay will take us through the coronavirus numbers in the us — they continue to alarm. researchers are warning of a jaw—dropping global crash in children being born. and we'll explain why a us furniture company has had to deny it's involved in child sex trafficking.

well, tension between china and the west is becoming acute — for several reasons. first, hong kong. it has had preferential trade terms with the us compared to mainland china. not any more. here's president trump making the announcement. hong kong will now be treated the same as mainland china, no special privileges, no special economic treatment and no export of sensitive technologies. and it was followed up by this from the secretary of state mike pompeo. china treats hong kong as a single country as a sink goal system, so must we. general secretary made a choice to violate their promises to hong kong that were made in the un register treaty. he didn't have to do that, he made that choice. we have to deal with china as it is not as we wish it to be. china says its response will include sanctions on people and entities in the us — and it has now summoned its us ambassador. this is of course all part

of broader us china tensions. we've had american pressure on the chinese tech firm huawei, and now for the the first time the us has said the chinese pursuit of natural resources in the south china sea is "completely unlawful". china's been building military bases on artificial islands in this area for years. but the us has never called them illegal before. china in return says the us "deliberately distorts facts and international law". and then we have mike pompeo saying this. sot on monday, for the first time, we made our policy in the south china sea crystal clear. it's not china's maritime empire. if beijing violates the international law and free nations do nothing, then history shows that the ccp will simply take more territory. that happened in the last of ministration. our statement gives significant support to ossian leaders who declare that the south china sea disputes must be resolved through international lot not might makes right. what the ccp does to

the chinese people is bad enough, but the free world shouldn't tolerate beijing's abuses as well. here's gary o'donoghue in washington on the deteriorating relationship between the us and china. this relationship is spiralling downwards and spiralling out of control in some ways. the kind of yelling that is going on from washington and beijing at one another now has reached a particular pitch in the last few weeks, i think, with these two great powers, really in a standoff with potentially really serious spark points, not least in the south china sea, where the us, of course is conducting what caused freedom of narrow gauge and exercises. it did whenjust narrow gauge and exercises. it did when just yesterday with a destroyer sailing through some of those disputed waters to prove to china that it wouldn't accept its territorial claims in the area. next let's talk about huawei. it's a chinese tech giant, and yesterday the uk exclude it from all parts of its 56 mobile networks

because of security concerns. china says the ban is "groundless". here's the chinese ambassador to the uk. i think the trust is serious damage between the government level and among the businesses. and note the tone of this from the chinese foreign ministry. translation: in the end, this is a big world and the united kingdom is only a small pa rt of the united kingdom is only a small part of it. ultimately, this ban will not stop huawei from prospering. the uk had come under severe pressure from washington — not least because us sanctions will make it harder for huawei to manufacture its own microchips — a fact which exacerbated the uk's security concerns. and there's more. here's mike pompeo again. the united states has a huawei announcement of oui’ own the united states has a huawei announcement of our own today. the state department will impose visa restrictions on certain employees of

the chinese technology companies like huawei to —— that provide material support to routines engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally. hong kong, the south china sea, huawei — these are all stories demonstrating the sharp deterioration in china's relations with the west. back in 2017, president trump welcomed the president xi and his wife to his mar a lago estate. go back to 2015, here's president xi enjoying a pint in an english pub with david cameron. but things have shifted. let's get more from stephen mcdonell in beijing. china is fighting so many western countries at the moment on so many fronts, you do have to wonder when something has to give. i mean, sure, this is a big powerful economic juggernaut of the country and it knows that people have to sit up and listen when beijing speaks to them. however, look at the fights that that china is having with the us, canada, australia, britain, i mean, france, the list goes on and on and

the thing is that the global economy is so integrated these days, that the west needs china and china needs the west needs china and china needs the west. i think everybody knows this ultimately, it'sjust the west. i think everybody knows this ultimately, it's just that somehow or other, there's going to have to be a path forward. at the moment, it's so hard to see what it is, given that, like i say, the fighting over the south of china sea, trade, coronavirus, threats going back and forth, more sanctions. yeah, it's just going back and forth, more sanctions. yeah, it'sjust really ha rd sanctions. yeah, it'sjust really hard to see at the moment what it would take for china to get back on a sort of normal footing, if i can put it to you that way, with the west. zhaoyin feng, bbc chinese in washington dc. based in washington, dc, but of course, with lots of chinese contacts there, do you think there are avenues by which china can navigate to a friendlier relationship? it is certainly getting very difficult for china. we are seeing the situation which is

china versus the rest of the world in many forms. china is getting attacked here, the government has plans to take countermeasures to retaliate sanctions and limitations limited to huawei, hong kong, options coming from the us. one of the options beijing may have right now is to impose sanctions or put us companies on a blacklist. the problem with that is us tech companies like apple and microsoft, they are embedded in chinese people's daily lives, so this move is going to hurt china's interest as well. and all of this retaliation also comes with the risk that china will be seen as a bully. but from beijing's going to view, china is the one being bullied here. talk to me about the south china sea, because this is an issue which comes up because this is an issue which comes up every so often, but the american language has increased. presumably, china is knuckling to change tactic

though in terms of what it's doing. indeed. today, we heard from secretary pompeo that the us will use all available tools to support southeast asian allies with regard to south china sea and china's territorial claims there. in china, this will be seen as yet another attempt from the us to bring china down. among all the china bashing rhetoric and policies coming from washington these days, this one will have the potential to provoke the strongest response because two countries can argue all about trade disputes or hong kong, south china sea is about territory. the two countries navies have had some pretty tense interactions here, so countries really could go to war over all of these seemingly insignificant wrongs. thanks once again, we seem to be talking every day given the current tensions between us and china. perhaps speak to tomorrow as well. let's stay

america, because the net covid—i9 numbers continue to be shocking. a further 67,000 cases and 900 deaths have been recorded in the last 2a hours. the overall number of deaths is 136,000 people — and new projections from the university of washington suggest by november that could reach 224,000. our recent focus has been on texas, california and florida — now we're also seeing numbers escalating in smaller states. alabama has recorded a record 47 deaths in 2a hours. nevada too has record cases and deaths — 20 people died there in one day. north carolina is also a concern — its has over 1,500 deaths. and today we learned that the governor of oklahoma, kevin stitt, has tested positive — he's the first state governor to get the virus. let's turn back to alabama — this is dr don williamson is president of the state's hospital association.

i concerned about where we are, because alabama has seen a sustained rise in hospitalizations, before our memorial day, we had about 500 patients per day and hospital. by hospital. by the week before our 11th ofjuly, we had almost 800 people per day and hospital over the last seven days, we have averaged 1100 people per day and hospital and yesterday, we had 1353 and hospital the day before we had about 1335, so for the last two days, we have had our two highest days, we have had our two highest days of hospitalization, and given the incubation of this virus, i'm not sure that we have seen yet the 11th ofjuly effect on hospitalizations. so i'm very concerned that over the next ten days, or hospitalization numbers are going to continue to rise. then what i'm really worried about is that next generation. people who are infected over the 11th ofjuly spreading disease to people that they come in contact with and then having a massive spike around the

end ofjuly, early august, and children will return to school, colleges will be opening around that time. i'm worried we are creating an opportunity forfor a time. i'm worried we are creating an opportunity for for a massive outbreak as a result. would speak to katty kay, live washington deeply concerning numbers. as we would look across the us, how would you categorise the management of the virus at the moment? well i wasjust listening to that doctor and you will most want to cry, right? it makes you want to bang your head on the table it's so bad. state after state now waking up, i think some of these red states more conservative states that had been relatively untouched in the early waves now waking up to really dire circumstances, alabama has just become the latest american state in fa ct to become the latest american state in fact to mandate wearing masks. now more than half of american states you have to wear a mask in public. i wouldn't think of leaving my house here in washington, dc without my

mask in my hand even if i wasjust going to walk the dog. people are taking precautions of their own and states even those with conservative governors are starting to realise that they have to take some kind of precaution. on a federal level, it's still a mess. the real mess now at the moment is testing. so it takes something like 5—7 days to get a test result. my son how to test for free here in washington, dc over a week ago, last monday, week last monday, he still hasn't had the result. think of all the people that somebody might come into contact with and potentially infected if they are waiting more than seven days to get their test results. it's almost not worth doing the test. so now in states like california they are saying we were trying to test lots of people come and i we can't test lots of people because it's coming up the system and we can't get results back. i don't think anyone here thinks that it's going to get better anytime soon. in fact, california has just cancelled to get better anytime soon. in fact, california hasjust cancelled its rose parade, which is the new year's day parade for 20211 think for all of us, that should be a wake—up call

about how long that is going to last. america's top infectious diseases expert, anthony fauci, has recently been criticised by white house officials, including peter navarro, donald trump's trade adviser, who said in an op ed that dr fauci was wrong about everything they had discussed together. dr fauci, a key figure in the white house coronavirus task force, responded in an interview with the atlantic. init... a journalist from the atlantic asks: you are the government's top health doctor fauci responds... today president trump was asked for his view on doctor fauci. we're all on the same team, including dr fauci. i have a very good relationship with dr fauci. and we're all on the same team. we want to get rid of this mess that china's sent us. so, everybody‘s working on the same

line, we're doing very well. we're doing well in a lot of ways, our country is coming back very strong. when you look at those job numbers — we've never had job numbers like we have right now. so it's coming back very strong. they are not looking like they are a lwa ys they are not looking like they are always on the same team. no. i think that's a fair characterisation. there has been this kind of fiasco over the last 2a hours where we know that there are rifts between certain people in the white house around the president and doctor found she who has been counselling states not to open up very quickly and there has been more and more outspoken over the course of the last weekend or so in criticising those states that do so and then criticising america's performance. while the president is like that, that's not what he wants to hear coming wants to open the country up to him he wants to open schools up and he wants as he just said there to make sure the messages that the white house is doing a good job. out steps his trade adviser

rates this scathing critique of doctor found she in the country's biggest newspaper, biggest circulating newspaper, usa today, and it's hard to believe that this would not have had the tacit approval of the president, because the president really it's what the president wants that goes in this particular white house. at the very minimum, peter navarro circumvented the usual protocols and didn't get this passed by the communications office, you have the president they're distancing office, you have the president they‘ re distancing yourself office, you have the president they're distancing yourself from peter navarro saying he shouldn't have said that and doctor fauci asked about peter navarro's comments, his trade adviser stomach saying, listen to me lives in a different world than me, it's weird what he's doing and distancing himself might as well. doctor fauci trying to concentrate on getting this virus under control. just another day in washington. inc. he very much for guiding us through it. stay with us on outside source, still to come: new research suggest nearly every country in the world could have shrinking populations by the end of the century, because of falling fertility rates.

the biggest easing of lockdown restrictions in scotland is under way — with the reopening of indoor spaces including hotels, places of worship and hairdressers. but when scotland's first minister, nicola sturgeon, announced the changes, she warned people to be cautious. i think i am more nervous about today's changes than i have been about earlier changes in previous phases of coming out of lockdown. that's because, as i covered yesterday, today's steps are by some margin, and i mean that, by some margin, the highest risk changes we have made since we've begun the process out of lockdown. many of these changes, as you just heard, involve indoor activity, and we know that the risk of the virus spreading indoors, in a pub, for example, is significantly higher than it is outdoors. that's why we deliberately waited until infection levels were very low before allowing these services to restart. that gives us the best possible chance of managing risks that reopening indoor services creates.

this is outside source live from the bbc newsroom. china's warned it will take all necessary measures to safeguard its interests, after the uk bans huawei from its 56 network. new research predicts the world's population will reach nine—billion by the end of this century. that sounds a lot, is a lot — but it's around two billion below previous un forecasts. that's driven by falling birth rates. the study is by the university of washington — and it predicts that there will be economic, social and political consequences. fertility rate is the average number of children a woman gives birth to. its decline is driven predominantly by social reasons. more women in education and work and greater access to contraception are all factors. the predictions list 23 nations

including spain, thailand, italy and japan, which are expected to see their populations halve by 2100. and 183 countries will have a fertility rate below the replacement level. sub—saharan africa will not follow this trend. it's predicted to triple it population — that's connected to falling death rates — and the number the rising number of women of child—bearing age. nigeria is already africa's most populous country — it's now on course to become the second most populous country in the world. the study also predicts a major shift in the way age is distributed throughout the global population. over—80s are set to outnumber under—fives by a factor of two—to—one. here's naomi grimley with her analysis of the findings. that has massive implications for all countries which are going to go through this when it comes to economic policies, because, of

course, the percentage of the population of working age will fall, that will then have a knock on effect on their tax burdens, and on top of that as we have heard, the number of octogenarians in society will dramatically rise, so countries again have to think really hard about how they provide long—term ca re about how they provide long—term care for the elderly. lots of countries are going to face this, so much more dramatically than others, so to give you the biggest for japan, the population will go down from 128,000,002 53 million, and in terms of those countries that are powering ahead, you mention nigeria, that will be catapulted up the league table of the world's most populous nations to number two. massive implications for geopolitics there when we are thinking of where there when we are thinking of where the balance of power will live by the balance of power will live by the end of the century. next, a new conspiracy theory — this time involving a furniture company. this is the us company in question — wayfair. as you can see, it sells furniture and home goods.

but its recently had to deny it's part of a child—trafficking ring. this is all originating from the qanon community, which we'll get to in a moment. but first, this is the theory. a lot of these storage cabinets on the wayfair website have girls' names. a well—known qanon activist noticed this and tweeted — ‘my spidey senses are tingling — what's with these storage cabinets? extremely high prices, all listed with girls' names and identical units selling for different amounts. the suggestion of course being that they were actually trafficking young girls. wayfair has said "there is of course no truth to these claims". but that didn't stop the conspiracy spreading across the world. this is data from spredfast, a social media analytics tool — showing the global searches for the term wayfair — mostly in the us, but a huge amount of interest in turkey and the uk as well. the term has generated 4.4 million engagements on instagram, and has spread rapidly on public groups and pages on facebook,

resulting in more than 12,000 posts and nearly a million direct engagements. this is the point at which i'll bring in marianna spring, our specialist disinformation reporter, to help me explain. these things are pretty remarkable for how much traction they get given there is so little underneath them, but how do we explain how this when suddenly exploded across the net? it's absolutely amazing how it burst into the mainstream and spread. so after this activist first treated the claims, we then saw how it was picked up by followers and that's often what happens, and they do their own research. so they investigate the claims. in this case, they then pointed to the facts of the girls names, the names of these cabinets actually matched the names of missing children usually in the us and one of the missing children that was named actually have to come out on facebook live and she said, look, this is ridiculous. i didn't even go missing

in the first place. from that point, we just cite in the first place. from that point, wejust cite spiral, in the first place. from that point, we just cite spiral, it was shared on reddit on a conspiracy theory thread, and it was all over twitter, all over facebook and tick—tock, and the claims became increasingly outlandish. it wasn't just the cabinets any more, it was personalised pillows, which if you try to put certain messages on them seem to cost $10,000, and the suggestion was that that high price was because a child would come with the pillow, again, it was part of this human trafficking ring. we also saw people suggesting that if you search the stock ids, the numbers of the products on a russian search engine, actually, images of women appeared, and that that was again pa rt appeared, and that that was again part of this human trafficking ring that was related, all of these claims are totally untrue and wayfarer has come out to deny them. they were issues with price glitching which explains some of the high prices, also some of the cabinets being advertised where industrial size, really big, which explains why they were so expensive.

the names are generated by random name generators that were no specific logic as to why those female names were chosen. with the russian search engine thing, if you search any string of numbers, the pictures of these women come up, and that glitch has now also been fixed. all totally untrue, but increasingly strange. increasingly strange, no specific logic to useful phrases in this story was mentioning the i mentioned this started in the qanon community. this article goes into more detail — but essentially, it's made up of people who believe an anonymous internet user calling themself ‘q' is a government official leaving online clues about a plot by the supposed ‘deep state' to topple donald trump. that ‘deep state' is made up of washington elites who are also engaged in paedophilia, child trafficking — the list goes on. needless to say, this is an entirely baseless theory. this started as a fairly niche thing in a small area of the internet. but it's gone mainstream. this new york times

article sums it up. "the qanon candidates are here. trump has paved their way." it describes several people running for office who openly espouse the qanon theory. and here's another article describing the way the president has encouraged the spread of these theories, from politico. "trump isn't secretly winking at qanon. he's retweeting its followers." here's marianna again. it does seem that the references become more and more frequent and mainstream us politics. definitely. we have seen them popping up far more than we ever have before, especially during the course of this pandemic. we have seen the president endorsing those tweets whether accidentally or on purpose more and more and we saw him retweet particularly on the 4th ofjuly that that article references that he retweeted images holding a us flag or of one of his rallies, but these we re or of one of his rallies, but these were being treated by followers he desperately wanted the president to acknowledge them, and we have seen during the course of the pandemic, that the number of times that donald trump has retweeted conspiracy

theorists and their tweets has increased massively. he's done that's almost a hundred times over the past few months. it's notjust donald trump either, as there are members running for congress who support and endorse them. his son, eric trump, has been sharing captions on some of his social media posts including their catchphrase, and so it's definitely not something limited to the fringes of the internet any more. it's found its way into mainstream politics, and the worrying thing is it's from the community that a lot of these increasingly bizarre conspiracies arrive, whether it's pizza gate, which we all heard about the 2016 election, or this about wayfarer now. as we head towards the us presidential election, we can expect this place to be where conspiracy theories are born and spread into theories are born and spread into the mainstream. they might reach the feeds of your friends or relatives, not just limited to feeds of your friends or relatives, notjust limited to these people who are obsessed with this conspiracy theory. thank you. updated subject.

thank you for taking us through. i will be back with you in a few minutes. hello. grey has definitely been the order of the day for wednesday. the uk stuck under a coherent blanket of cloud. a lot of moisture in the atmosphere in general, making things misty and murky too, particularly across our higher ground and around some of our coasts. this is anglesey a little earlier in the day. and it's those western hills and coasts i think that will continue to struggle with lingering cloud on into thursday — all because we're pulling a lot of moisture across the uk from the atlantic. the actual warm weather front that brought rain to some through the course of the day will continue to pull away eastwards. overnight, still a lot of cloud lingering around, however. that cloud will make for a very mild night. in some spots, temperatures will drop down no lower than 14—15 celsius.

a little more in the way of wetter weather for the northern isles after some decent sunshine here, actually, for the day wednesday. thursday doesn't look too promising first thing, but look at the change in contrast to wednesday. we do start to see the cloud opening up across eastern wales,