more than 300 people are seeking. because no one should have to. make up their own mind. w. . minds. this is the wus a show coming up today china power. links to corruption. is the preferred drink of china's communist party elite but to those high level links that sidestep the role we distill the facts. used to teach it focused pacific we look at why france wants to be a major player in the region. so

i'm very welcome to do. you could join us it's the lick of china's elite and powerful mao tie a famous brand of chinese distilled spirit is the preferred drink for high powered communist party officials and features regularly in private gatherings that closeness to the party elite gives the company advantages when it comes to expanding its business interests but is building follows a chinese journalist investigating mao ties alleged violations of the law. normally expose this crime and corruption cases now the investigative journalist is on his way to china's most famous treaty. do you know you can already smell the alcohol here that in the southern chinese town of multis also the name of the

liquor produced here the multi distillery is china's most valuable company with more than the country's biggest back china's political elite is partial to it and yes some of the bottles cost several $100.00 euros you says they are the perfect gift to greeks that we did your talent b.r.c. corrupt officials prefer multimeters they only drink the most expensive brands and this alcohol is the most expensive and their love for it lets the prices rise even more jaguar to. the liquor factory takes up large swaths of multi-ton and many more are trying to profit from the big name within sight of the state owned giant is the distillery a family business. customers and people in the industry know that there's a limit to the production capacity of matai that's where we come in the government lets us follow the lead of the market company and profit from them and that brings

in some wealth to us people here of what. his company uses the same distilling techniques the grain is for meant it in earth it's the pits give it a pungent aroma minutes and of soy sauce many people outside of china find hard to swallow. the mashes fermented in a dry state during the distillation process steam passes through the mash and releases. says the liquor mostly to individuals as well as companies that produce special editions for weddings and company and inverse readings. intimate relationship between china's communists and the spicy liquor began in the 1930 s. when communist troops hid in the area from their nationalist and bursaries. after they came to power they turned the factory into a state owned enterprise. so you could provide them with liquor. to about 5 gal

expropriated the factory. and the owner who refused to hand over his business was executed. these close links to the ready lead have called whose attention he's been tipped off that model type also produces in a neighboring town a violation of the rules on geographic origin so he goes to take a look. he finds the company is constructing vast production facilities there. near and one who nobody cares what they do here and it's as if the government agencies which should control him don't exist. it's another piece of evidence for the book he is planning to write on china's most valuable company. and for more on this i'm joined now in the studio by clifford coonan from beat up to business he spent many years of the china correspondent.

welcome you spent i think what 15 years in china during all that time did you develop a taste for. what i drank a lot of us. i don't know if that's entirely thing i do if it's very said developed a taste 1st basically matai lubricated the wheels of commerce in china as it was opening up all through the 2 thousands and it was impossible to go anywhere without being facing these bank with these enormous food bank was at the end of which would be or on jury would be vast quantities of drunk so explain to us this lubrication process explain to us the status of this company joys in china's elite well it's huge it's just it was associated with because i mean it's weddings it's a business bank with it's everywhere it's really very very central to how things are done and so it became a really it became a status symbol because each different variety is priced differently and one time i had a interesting experience a chinese new year with an air force colonel who was

a relative of a friend and we were spending chinese new year there and he had a 1500 euro bottle in a squeegee was a squeegee bottle and a plastic bottle it did not look and it's not like petrol but this was a huge status symbol so it's really really central to the outside of the culture and just for reference i mean 1500 euros is way more than the monthly salary in china isn't it absolutely i think it would have been $3010.00 times the monthly salaries of one squeegee bottle and what about the corruption scandals that have dogged this company well all the way towards the late latter part of who jintao has reigned in towards the end of the 200-2012 when she didn't bring into power it was very much in my enmeshed in the whole corruption scandals that were going on we had tales of codgers who were who were drinking themselves literally to death at banquets who were with gold watches up their arms and it was all these sort of stories which. when she came in one of the things one of the reasons he made himself so popular was a crackdown on this but at the same time it's not just residual effect you know

it's how this residual popularity it's been able to stay popular it's still got the association with corruption but it's also still so popular and part of the culture that it's managed to become you know as we see in china as china's biggest company now i want to speak. against corrupt officials and you're quite right this has been around 12152040 when he was cracking down on state banquets which went on for hours on and still continues to be popular is that not a contradiction in terms of well xi jinping was trying to do well i think it's i think a lot of it is cultural just like expensive whisky in in europe or in america is or in india indeed is very you know people like the more expensive stuff but also people it's still very popular you know it's i didn't have to be as expensive there's a bit of a face element so i think that's what's kept it going and also so much of what's going on in sort of the private sector in china now is also sort of they're still

drinking them out. it's been taken out of that maybe to the state sector and brought into the private sector right we'll leave it there for the time being terrific women thank you very much for joining us in the studio for that. bilateral relations between india and france are in focus during french foreign minister. 3 day visit to india on tuesday he met to indian foreign minister. both sides are keen to expand cooperation in what's become known as the pacific region cooperation in the maritime domain is an essential part of the relationship as was evident in the recently concluded naval exercise a ruse which so french an indian naval vessels on maneuvers with those from other nations. and joining me now is former indian ambassador to france rockish seward he's gotten 3 distinguished fellow at the think tank the observer he starts foundation in demi a masters who'd welcome not foreign minister trans visit he's in the wider context

of the so called into pacific region what does france expect from india. france's. i think the 1st of the european countries that has because of its longstanding presence in the bullet's the indian ocean as well as in the pacific because of its overseas territories i'm talking about the french polynesian islands and the new caledonia in this effect and i'm talking of the reunion islands in the western indian ocean therefore france is only is had shared the notion of the in the pacific in the same manner that india is and nol what is happening is that all other european countries have come out with a indo-pacific strategy papers germany and the netherlands citing this concept as

something that has quarter on and you which says it is working on in the pacific strategy. paper but at the moment even as we speak so it is quite natural that the matter of time cooperation reflected in the shared perception of the in the pacific would be a major pillar of bilateral cooperation and discussion during foreign minister libyans visit i'd like to focus a bit on this a matter of time bought a ship that you wrote of into both countries india and france the naval vessels what is a new part of the french naval exercise la perouse and the beginning a bilateral exercise but are not in about 2 weeks time what is the component of this is this essentially a security component in the in defense of it been looking at. well it has been taking place for more than trained no.

it is a bilateral naval exercise between the trench in the indian navies and this is. it is i think we will also have an aircraft carrier group on both sides each participating in the exercise the exercise look at the rules that you just referred to which has taken place earlier this month. is an exercise that in war the 4 coordinations as well as fronts indicating the french willingness and desire to be. relationship with the board as well as you know court is not an alliance because india is not an ally india is not an ally of the united states unlike say japan or australia but that war is a partnership because the full 10 trees shared division often open and independent gender specific which operates according to rule of law now that is

a principle that france also shares with the members of the quarter and hence the exercise look at who's all about that india and france also have a shared vision of a blue economy because of the long coastline that india has and the coastal communities which are particularly vulnerable at times of climate change and the island communities that trans has as i mentioned earlier both in the new notion and in the pacific therefore france is also acutely conscious of the need for sustainable blue economies you know about 30 seconds left if we could just talk a bit about the bilateral ties between india and france and one of the other areas of the. well france and india have been strategic partners since 998 other ties of course the economic ties. in the field of smart cities high technology in the field of biotechnology in the field of

space space cooperation and in the field of counterterrorism and intelligence sharing these form the. actual strategic partnership that has been in existence for trance since 1908 we'll leave it there for the time if i can so much for joining us ambassador rocker so speaking from thank you so much. more of the same time. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing. the latest research. information and contacts the coronavirus update. on t w. 1986.

it's their story their very own personal trauma. the people who survived the catastrophe remember. and they share private footage with us that has never been seen before. chernobyl starts people 20 on t.w. . in one part of the world a race to vaccinate. in another the long white. richer countries have plenty of funding and plentiful vaccine doses poor countries have neither. could be years before some of fully vaccinated recent setbacks with the most accessible vaccines astra zeneca and johnson and johnson found helping global

vaccination at 2 speeds what does it mean for lives and livelihoods and can anything be done to prevent it. well india is now the world's 2nd worst affected country it's the past brazil particularly behind the united states the increase in inventions could affect the world's vaccine supply india is the biggest producer many parts are running short of supplies as in occupations expand due to the surge in cases this comes as hundreds of thousands of hindu pilgrims gathered at the ganges for a ritual bath as part of the comella festival of thirty's made efforts to offer coronavirus testing most participants have been wearing masks or distancing themselves best of all their rallies are being blamed for the spread of the virus in india. denmark is completely drops using the astra zeneca vaccine and more countries delaying the introduction of the johnson and johnson single shot after

the us authorities recommended as suspension the european union and south africa said they won't be administering the job for now they've been reports of red blood clots similar concerns with the astra zeneca vaccine probably countries including germany to restrict its use the delay comes as a blow for developing countries they've been counting on the 2 vaccines. and that's raising questions about when widespread vaccination coverage will be achieved by the end of the year in high income countries middle income nations will have to wait another year and poor places not before 2023 if at all a key factor holding back the vaccination drive is peyton's. nick didn't is director of global justice part of an international movement to challenge the powerful nic how different would things be if these bomb firms didn't have papers on their vaccines well we would be able to ramp up production much more easily

then we currently can i mean at the moment we have an artificially constrained supply precisely because all the manufacturers in the world who want to produce this vaccine conte in less that he specifically licensed by the company that owns the peyton's and when you bury mines an awful lot of these products were made with public money. huge amounts of money coming from governments like the us government european governments and international institutions is just really scandalous that we've handed over be privatized this knowledge through peyton's to a handful of big corporations who are now deciding who in the world gets this vaccine and who does us and timing you know across africa where we're seeing the most awful wave of coronavirus spreading even frontline health workers haven't been vaccinated meanwhile in rich countries like my own people who are of far less at risk of this disease are getting vaccinated ahead of those who need it more i

thought i was living in a great place germany but i'm still playing for my shot we have a vaccine which is fantastic but i keep hearing there are production problems but then as you say we're not even using all the production capacity out there because the peyton's prevent that is that right. that's exactly right so some of the biggest vaccine produces in the world are not producing coronavirus vaccines simply because when they tried to create their own back seen it didn't work and they don't have one and they can't and they have to. give up their production facilities their factories and their manufacturing capacity to produce the vaccines that we've got so it's absolutely great that we've got these vaccines like you say an awful lot of public capacity and public money has gone into creating these vaccines but it's you know we have factories across the world who could produce hundreds of millions more vaccines including in europe who were saying we want to produce this vaccine give us the technical know how and big pharma companies are saying no we're going to

keep this to ourselves and unfortunately rich countries like our own standing behind them a lap and allowing them to do that exactly i'd like to point that out and give our viewers a couple of examples madonna's vaccine is being nearly entirely funded by u.s. taxpayers but it's being sold at basically a fully commercial price on the other hand we have others like astra zeneca who are saying ok we're going to sell it for much less but they still have the paid rights over supply which means people like me still haven't been vaccinated i mean don't politicians get are they they allowing these companies basically to run amok on day . they are they absolutely are. and you're absolutely right about astra zeneca i mean look these companies aren't all the same of course we think it's great that astra zeneca rosette they won't be profiting during the un demick although i should point out that they can decide when the pandemic is over and at that point they will begin profiting i looked with a company like us does any good there was some research done a just

a couple of weeks ago which found that the amount of public money that had gone into research and development public and charitable money of the oxford astra zeneca vaccine was about 97 to 99 percent in other words the company has put virtually no money into research and development they've then been given at least $2000000000.00 to ramp up their manufacturing to do trials and so on this company hasn't created this vaccine had a university created the vaccine and they then been helped to scale up manufacturing sure pay them for the work they've done but don't for goodness sake allow them to keep up for 20 years and decide who gets it and who doesn't get it and when you do that you've seen yourself i mean even here in the rich world the argument now between the british government and the european union over the contract signed with astra zeneca this is just nonsense it's a public health emergency we need international cooperation not a very very small group of people deciding who gets this in what order only politicians in south africa and india have proposed

a temporary suspension of coronavirus peyton's the w t o like the idea there are signs the u.s. does too why isn't that gaining more traction. well this is really interesting and it is exciting that we didn't expect this to happen quickly so you know it's going to take a while to put this pressure on but the pressure is building we've now got holly wood stars and celebrity you've got former world leaders calling for this to happen and i mean absolutely amazing that apparently the bite administration is considering this proposal from south africa and india to waive peyton's that would be an absolute game change it if it happened to date almost all rich countries have so i did with the pharmaceutical industry presumably believing it helps that country's economy in some way if a pharmaceutical industry makes a lot of a lot of money in the country it's based in we completely dispute that and we hope as a result of the problems we're seeing around the world that politicians are going to begin changing their minds on this after all it's really not acceptable that governments like my own can tell south africa or india where there are huge

problems getting vaccines into their own populations there's no problem don't worry about it the market will solve will solve everything in the long run it's not acceptable and we hope that that case is now being allowed and save around the world most countries of the global south demanding a different way of doing this and by the way that different way of doing it isn't just going to help us get out of coronavirus which is really important of course at the foremost of our minds now but it's going to get out to the situation we've got of the moment when most countries in the world are dependent on their medicine supplies coming from a small handful of countries that's no way to run a global research and development medicine there's no way to reduce medicines and if i weigh internationally and we need to start. a different means of collaborating on medical research of factories being based all around the world so that people can have a lot more security on where the vaccines are coming from and that's going to be

a big issue for corona virus because this is unlikely to go away any time soon we've seen that now but for all manner of other diseases we need to have a far more distributed. manufacturers' system around the world and i hope that this could be the moment this could be the wakeup call where we begin to develop that need it in director of global justice thanks for being on the show again that's a pleasure. the what about people who don't want the vaccine hysterical humans. how does the refusal to be vaccinated correlate with an increase in mutated virus. this question is one that anyone refusing a vaccine needs to think about on and hard to try to answer it but 1st go over some basics and that everyone should be able to agree on number one like all viruses sars kovi 2 regularly mutates producing new versions of

itself that we call variants that's not up for debate number 2 more of those variants will of course appear when more people are infected. 3 the chance that random mutations could alter the coronavirus for the worse like making it for instance more contagious or a more deadly the chance rises along with the number of people the virus infects so so for logically to limit the chances of even more possibly dangerous mutations arising we have to limit birol spread to new hosts effectively limiting how often the virus replicates the vaccines that we have appear to do that very well by making recipients a lot less likely to catch the disease which is why the choice to be vaccinated is

not just a personal one but a social one as well even if you say yes to vaccines you could potentially become infected but the chances are much greater if you say no which you might consider to be your choice and you're right but it unfortunately doesn't stop there that she. always not only poses a potential danger to other unvaccinated people around you which is bad enough it also potentially offers the virus more opportunities to mutate into something possibly even worse for all of us like a variant that's resistant to current versions of our most powerful defense against it vaccines. there are billions there and before we go sri lankans have been mocking the start

of the sinhalese and tamil new year after coronavirus restrictions or east people visited hindu and buddhist temples in the evening before their biggest annual holiday last is based in the school band due to the crisis this year they've been allowed to go ahead with small scale celebrations and social distancing case numbers have been falling since february. let's hope it stays that way thanks for watching stay safe to say your guests are.

familiar. feeling decommissioned each year i just think how are simply going to any of our products and plastic and together we can make a little bit better coming. monahan. recycling as an advertising strategy but is that real hot behind this or is it just greenwashing need to take

a closer look made in germany. 90 minutes on w u p is a master of the art of confrontation this is really a veteran of verbal combat doesn't mean you're going to see box life be fun disputed champion of tough political talk trying to frighten people no crucified everybody understands it except you enter the conflict zone and join to sebastian as he holds the powerful to account this is a big failure whichever way you like to spin conflicts on. t.w. . how does a virus spread. why do we panic and when we'll all miss them and just 3 of the tactics from cover and i weekly radio program. if you would like and new information on the coronavirus or any other science topics you should really check

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camera. this is it every news live from berlin the end of an era nears and i've got to stop the u.s. is reportedly planning to withdraw all its troops from the country by september 11th we're garlics of the security situation what will this mean for i'm gonna stop and most importantly it's people also coming up the global vaccination drive suffers another setback u.s. regulators recommend.