Ten facts JDE workers need to know about the company and Unite

Jean Shaoul

Unite the union is presenting workers at Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) Banbury plant with an ultimatum on behalf of JDE: accept the rotten deal it has worked out with the company to slash wages, terms and conditions or face the sack in September.

The World Socialist Web Site is presenting information derived from the most recent financial reports and accounts of parent company JDE Peet’s and its British subsidiary so that workers can understand both the company and its financial situation.

1. JDE Peet’s and the pandemic

JDE’s Banbury plant is part of the giant Netherlands-based multinational JDE Peet’s, which says it is “the world's largest pure-play coffee and tea group by revenue.” The second largest coffee roaster after Nestle, it sold “approximately 130 billion cups of coffee and tea in the financial year ended 31 December 2019 in more than 100 developed and emerging countries.”

Its brands, which it describes as “our local jewels… iconic in their local market” include Jacobs, Senseo, Peet’s Coffee, Ti Ora, Kenco, Tassimo, Moccona, L'OR and Douwe Egberts, as well as several well-known tea brands, including Horniman's Tea.

JDE Peet’s factory in St. Petersburg in Russia (credit: screenshot, JD Peet’s Annual Report 2020)

JDE Peet’s profits were barely hit during the pandemic, despite lockdowns that led to the closure of offices, hotels, bars, restaurants and many of the company’s coffee stores, as sales of coffee for home consumption soared and workers put in the extra hours to keep the lines running while infections and deaths soared internationally.

As the company declared, “Despite the challenging conditions of the pandemic and lockdowns in 2020, throughout it all, JDE Peet’s made significant progress across many areas in our first year as a publicly traded company. In this context, our employees’ resilience and dedication kept our factories running, our supply chains effective and our customers and consumers served, despite the pandemic’s many challenges.”

2. Massive dividend payout for the shareholders

Announcing revenues of €6.7 billion and an operating profit of €933 million for 2020, the company stated in its report to shareholders, “The strength we experienced in our In-Home segment largely offset the reduction we saw in Away-from-Home consumption” and “Early on, we adapted our Away-from-Home business models, and as a result, we expect these activities to come out even stronger following the crisis.”

Its message for 2021 was that the future looked bright. “Shareholders are set to get a €89 million handout from its profits in 2020, equivalent to nearly €4,500 for each of the company’s 20,000 workers worldwide.”

The profit squeezed out of workers at the Banbury plant was even greater, with each of the 371 workers, including top management, delivering more than £7,600 of profit after tax and debt charges for the parent company in 2019, the last year available. This figure is probably a gross underestimate as JDE trades with its sister companies within JDE Peet’s on terms designed to minimize overall costs, including tax and financing charges, to the parent company.

When new CEO Fabien Simon (former CFO of JDE) was appointed last year, he received a “golden hello” of €10 million. He will reportedly receive a gross annual salary of €1 million and a monthly expense allowance of €3,300, plus “bonus opportunities” equal to 250 percent of his salary. Yet JDE workers have been told the company “cannot afford” to pay £750,000-£800,000 to avoid forcing them onto unsociable and unhealthy night shifts.

3. Who owns JDE Peet’s ?

JDE Peet’s was floated on the Amsterdam stock market in May last year after a merger between JAB Holding Company, JDE, and Peet’s (the San Francisco Bay Area-based coffee roaster and retailer) to form JDE Peet’s.

Two massive corporations own 77 percent of the shares. JAB Holding, a German private investment group headquartered in the tax haven Luxemburg—and with holdings in companies producing well-known brands such as Coty, Pret A Manger, Krispy Kreme and Petcare—is the company’s largest shareholder via its shares in Acorn Holdings. The latter is a holding company that controls JDE Peet’s along with the Keurig Dr Pepper Group, a major producer and distributor of hot and cold beverages.

Around 90 percent of JAB’s shares are owned by the billionaire Reimann family that supported Hitler and the Nazi party well before 1933 and profited from forced labour in their industrial chemicals company in southern Germany.

The second-largest shareholder of JDE Peet’s is Mondelez International. The Chicago-based multinational food, confectionary and beverage company owns well-known brands such as Oreo, Ritz, TUC, Peek Freans, Côte d'Or, Toblerone, Cadbury, Green & Black's, Trident, Dentyne and Chiclets. There is a Mondelez-owned factory in Sheffield—the largest sweets factory in Europe. Mondelez also owns the famous Cadbury factory in Bourneville. Unite has issued no appeal for support from the workers there, keeping the Banbury300 isolated.

Mondelez has been mired in controversy in recent years.

* NGO Mighty Earth reported in 2017 that much of the cocoa used in chocolate produced by Mondelez and other major chocolate companies was grown illegally in national parks and other protected areas in Ivory Coast and Ghana.

* Greenpeace International reported in 2018 that 22 palm oil suppliers to Mondelez International cleared over 70,000 hectares of rainforest from 2015 to 2017.

* In 2015, the US Commodity and Futures Commission alleged that Mondelez International and its former subsidiary was involved in wheat-futures price fixing.

* Earlier this year, eight former child slaves from Mali brought a class-action suit against Mondelez claiming the company, along with Nestle and other well-known chocolate manufacturers, knowingly engaging in forced labour.

4. The purpose of the flotation

JDE Peet’s floatation last year raised €2.25 billion in Europe’s biggest IPO since 2018, generating €1.55 billion for one of its parent companies, Mondelez International, that sold some of its shares.

Within days of the flotation, JDE Peet’s shares jumped 12 percent to give it a market value of €16.8 billion, allowing those who had bought shares to sell off and make a quick profit. The company is now worth around €15 billion.

Apart from enriching its former owners, €700 million would go on reducing its high debt and lay the basis for further acquisitions and capital investment, further increasing the company’s capital base from which the shareholders would expect a rate of return, typically 10-15 percent, courtesy of the workforce. It signals a significant ramping up of the rate of exploitation of JDE Peet’s workers in the form of jobs, speed-ups and the gouging of wages and pensions.

5. JDE Peet’s dividend policy

The company has stated that its dividend policy “intends to preserve the independence of the company” and this in turn “will mainly depend on its financial position,” including its operating results. This is code for saying that its share price, and hence its dividends, must remain high to avoid a takeover.

In fact, the company declares that it “intends to provide a stable and increasing dividend per share, while the pace will be determined by the company’s capital allocation priorities.” [emphasis added] Investment and borrowings would be adjusted to ensure this.

The interests of the owners come first and foremost.

6. The attack on workers

Last year’s flotation was hailed as good news for the firm’s shareholders and its lenders, but that can only be achieved by squeezing the workforce ever-harder—by increasing the working day and reducing overtime payments. At Banbury, management plans to introduce a four-shift pattern, forcing staff to work 12-hour shifts, nights, weekends etc., while cutting traditional Christmas and bank holiday pay rates, and bringing in unpaid breaks and limiting them to 30 minutes. These plans would cost workers thousands in lost pay, with some losing £7,000–£12,000 per year.

In relation to pensions, the company’s financial report and accounts highlighted its defined benefits (DB) pension plan as “the most significant DB plan in the UK,” being more expensive than defined contribution (DC) plans and targeting it for cost reduction. The planned termination of the defined benefit pension scheme and its replacement by the inferior DC scheme will cost workers far more and save JDE millions of pounds a year.

JDE Peet’s intends to wring every penny it can out of workers to pay its shareholders and keep the stock market happy.

7. JDE Peet’s relies on the unions

Key to corporate cost cutting is the company’s reliance and partnership with the unions. The company boasts, “In many locations, we have works councils in place. Approximately 33 percent of our people are covered by collective bargaining agreements.” They include employees in the UK. The Unite union is now trying to push through a filthy deal that imposes the dictates of JDE management and its shareholders.

8. JDE Peet’s depends on its workers

JDE Peet’s main manufacturing plants are in the United States, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Brazil, China and Malaysia. However, because of the specialised technology needed for roasting, processing, and packaging its products, the company has consolidated its production capacity into large manufacturing sites. This, together with the high utilisation of these plants, “does not permit the spare capacity necessary to serve as backup for each other in case of significant interruption.” It cannot easily switch production elsewhere, which would also incur additional transport costs to service its markets.

In the UK, JDE processes and packages instant or freeze-dried coffee into various formats. It also processes and packages Tassimo R & G aluminium capsules for single-serve coffee.

The upshot is that workers are in a powerful position and should not be brow beaten by the union into accepting the rotten deal with a highly profitable company that is raking in billions.

9. JDE Peet’s workers have allies around the world

Most important of all, JDE Peet’s has a presence in more than 140 countries with revenues of €3.2 billion. It operates in nearly 40 countries, employing about 20,000 workers. These workers have the same interests as you. They are all exploited by the same global corporation. They are your allies.

10. Unite sits on massive assets while forcing striking workers back to work on sellout contracts

Unite’s financial assets are enormous. The union’s latest financial accounts (for 2019) show the union has net assets of £439 million, including £108 million in cash, £67 million in investments and £209 million in property. In 2019, Unite’s income from members was £162 million, but it spent just £1.3 million on all “disputes” (broadly defined) across the UK.

Unite officials have more in common with HR executives than with the workers they supposedly represent. General Secretary Len McCluskey earned £99,338 in salary and benefits last year. But McCluskey and other Unite officials have access to additional perks, with the 2019 accounts citing: “Executive Committee (Head Office) expenses” £338,000, “conferences” £1.8 million, “committees/executive councils” £3.1 million, “branch and regional costs” £169,000, “payments to regions and branches” £15 million.

Len McCluskey, 2016 Labour Party Conference (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Unite held 245 ballots for industrial action in 2019, but just 25 of these resulted in strikes or “action short of strikes”. Unite’s role was to suppress industrial action in a pandemic that was killing tens of thousands of workers and with thousands more facing “fire and rehire”, job destruction and the slashing of conditions. Unite has a strike fund of £40 million yet its officials have told JDE workers there is no way to fight the company’s threats. Unite is a strike-breaking organisation that collaborates with the companies and the Johnson government against workers’ most basic rights and interests.

Mass anti-Bolsonaro protests as Brazil faces 550,000 COVID deaths

Gabriel Lemos

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Brazil last Saturday in a new round of protests against fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro’s murderous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The protests took place in hundreds of cities in all 26 Brazilian states and also abroad. In the largest of the demonstrations, 70,000 people gathered on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, according to organizers.

It was the fourth day of mass demonstrations against Bolsonaro since May 29, when street protests began to take place after a deadly second wave of the pandemic in March and April, and amid the Senate Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (PCI) investigation of the federal government’s conduct in combating the pandemic. The PCI has already revealed evidence of both a deliberate policy of herd immunity, i.e., letting the virus spread and infect the largest number of people, and of corruption in the government’s purchase of vaccines.

The demonstrations have been called by the so-called “Bolsonaro Out National Campaign,” consisting of the Workers Party (PT) and other bourgeois parties such as the Socialist Party (PSB) and the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), along with the PT’s pseudo-left satellites, such as the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) and all the Brazilian union federations—including the PT-controlled CUT, the Morenoite Conlutas, linked to the pseudo-left Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU), and Força Sindical, whose origins date back to the Brazilian military dictatorship.

Mass protest on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, July 24. (Credit: Mídia Ninja)

In a statement released on June 21, the Brazilian union federations affirmed that the demonstrations are intended to “pressure the president of the Lower House, Arthur Lira,” who is responsible for deciding whether to open impeachment proceedings, “to put on the agenda one of the more than one hundred impeachment requests.”

This demand reveals much of the character of these organizations and where they are seeking to direct the opposition against Bolsonaro. In 2019, the first year of the Bolsonaro government, Brazil saw the largest demonstrations in years against the federal government’s cuts on education. Since then, the PT, the pseudo-left and the unions have all worked to divert this enormous popular dissatisfaction behind the capitalist state, from the presidential elections to empty appeals to Congress and the Supreme Court against Bolsonaro. And they have used the demonstrations to relieve the enormous social pressure from below and to get this potentially explosive movement under control.

Since 2019, the union federations have also begun to hold joint May Day rallies, in which they have brought the most right-wing figures in Brazilian politics onto their platforms. These are politicians responsible for carrying out broad attacks against the Brazilian working class over the years and who supported Bolsonaro’s election, even as they would later try to distance themselves from him. This mainly includes officials of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), who joined the last two May Day rallies that featured the hated former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. This year, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria, was also expected to attend it, but the CUT, in view of the wide negative repercussions, ended up blocking his participation.

This rotten political alliance culminated in the launching of a “super-request” for Bolsonaro’s impeachment by the PT, the PSOL and the unions along with far-right parties and figures. Among Bolsonaro’s former supporters who signed the impeachment request delivered on June 30 were the reactionary federal deputies Alexandre Frota (PSDB) and Kim Kataguiri, of the liberal Free Brazil Movement (MBL), one of the leaders of the demonstrations for the impeachment of former PT president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 on trumped-up charges.

In the next round of mass demonstrations, which took place just a week after, on July 3, the presidents of the PT and PSOL, Gleisi Hoffmann and Juliano Medeiros, as well as the PSOL’s Morenoite factions Resistência and Socialist Left Movement (MES), openly advocated the participation of right-wing parties, in order to develop a “mass” struggle against Bolsonaro, according to them.

A new reactionary political alliance was formed for last Saturday’s demonstrations, dubbed the “Democratic Bloc.” It includes the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), openly right-wing parties like PSDB and Cidadania, and the “political renewal” movements Renova and Acredito, funded by big business and whose members in Congress supported Bolsonaro’s 2019 pension reform. The rotten and pro-corporate union federations, including Força Sindical, are also part of this bloc, as are student organizations linked to the PCdoB, such as the National Union of Students (UNE). The PCdoB is the main advocate for the protests to take on a nationalist “green and yellow” (the colors of the Brazilian flag) character, banning “red,” identified with the left, in order to form a “broad front” against Bolsonaro.

"Democratic Bloc" waving Brazilian flags in São Paulo (Credit: WSWS Media)

This whole process is happening as the pandemic continues to rage in Brazil. The demand for controlling the spread of the virus by closing schools and businesses has been completely excluded by the political parties and the unions leading the demonstrations. These political forces are acting to give a criminal cover for the continuation of the ruling class’ herd immunity policy.

In São Paulo, this has been happening through regular meetings between the union federations, including the CUT, and Governor Doria. These meetings serve the sole purpose of giving the millionaire governor a “social façade”—by promoting meager policies such as a subsidy for the purchase of cooking gas, at the request of the unions—while he pushes for a full reopening of all economic activities and schools.

Although the numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths have decreased over the past month as vaccinations have increased, as of Saturday Brazil still had an average of 1,168 daily deaths and 37,885 infections. Brazil has already recorded 549,500 COVID-19 deaths, trailing only the US. São Paulo state alone recorded 418 deaths and 12,086 new cases last Friday.

With community transmission of the Delta variant confirmed in seven states and without the implementation of lockdown measures, experts warn that Brazil may see a new rise in the coming weeks, as in the US and Europe.

In the face of mass protests, the uncontrolled pandemic and revelations emerging from the COVID PCI, Bolsonaro and his allies have increased their threats of an electoral coup, adopting the same methods employed by Donald Trump in the last US presidential elections. Bolsonaro continues to advance his false claim that Brazil’s electronic voting system can and will be rigged to favor the election of former PT president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

A July 22 report by the daily Estado de S. Paulo revealed that these coup threats have been backed by Bolsonaro’s defense minister, Gen. Walter Braga Netto. He was appointed to this position as part of Bolsonaro’s unprecedented sacking of the entire military command with the open purpose of aligning the armed forces behind his reactionary agenda. The Estado reported that, in early July, Braga Netto, accompanied by the armed forces commanders, asked an interlocutor to warn House Speaker Arthur Lira that there would be no elections next year if there were no “printed and auditable ballots.”

A bill mandating printed ballots is also scheduled for a vote in August by a congressional special commission. The author of this bill is the right-wing federal deputy Bia Kicis, one of Bolsonaro’s most loyal allies. She met last Friday with Beatrix Von Storch, a leader of the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD), accompanied by the president’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro, who was in Washington on January 6, taking lessons from the coup attempt.

The response of the PT, and Lula in particular, to this development was one of total complacency and political opportunism. Globo ’s columnist wrote last week that “the former president was silent on the Estado report that revealed ... the [Braga Netto] threat ... so as not to place himself at odds with the military.” She further stated that “Lula has not spared efforts to get closer to the military.”

Both the PT’s record and the more recent moves by the party and Lula expose the fraudulence of their supposed opposition to Bolsonaro, as well as to everything the fascistic president stands for, including the threat of dictatorship. This also applies to the pseudo-left organizations and the unions, whose reactionary claim that bringing the right wing to the protests would make them more massive was quickly exposed. In São Paulo, the so-called “Democratic Bloc” managed to gather only a few dozen union and party bureaucrats with Brazilian flags in front of their sound truck on Paulista Avenue.

As in previous protests, the working class was completely absent as an organized social force. This contrasts with the intense opposition that has developed within the Brazilian working class throughout the pandemic, with protests and strikes by teachers as well as industrial, app delivery, health care, oil and transportation workers in defense of their living conditions and their own lives against the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19. This movement has been deliberately isolated and sabotaged by the unions.

East Asian countries hit by global surge of Delta variant

Benjamin Mateus

In the week ending July 18, 2021, the Delta variant was detected in 13 new countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In total, it has been detected in 124 countries as it continues its spread globally, becoming the dominant strain in the present phase if the pandemic. The number of reported COVID-19 cases globally is expected to exceed 200 million in the first half of August. Close to 4.2 million have perished.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general warned, “This is not just a moral outrage, it’s also epidemiologically and economically self-defeating… The pandemic is a test, and the world is failing. Nineteen months into the pandemic, and seven months since the first vaccines were approved, we are now in the early stages of another wave of infections and deaths.”

Additionally, the Alpha variant has now appeared in 180 countries, with eight more countries having detected this variant, first found in the UK. The Beta variant, first reported in South Africa, is present in 130 countries, up from 123 last week. The Gamma variant, which was detected in Brazil, has been found in 78 countries. Three more countries detected this variant last week.

People wear face masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus after the COVID-19 alert rose to level 3 in Taipei, Taiwan, Monday, July 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

Aside from the virus’s greater capacity to infect, what is driving this new global wave of infections is the relaxation of public health measures in support of spurring commerce with the large number of vulnerable people who remain susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection due to the policy of vaccine nationalism that has severely limited access to these critical treatments.

The “two tracks” pandemic, as characterized by Dr. Ghebreyesus, is not only impacting poor nations. The East Asian countries which had implemented more robust public health measures to curb rapid community spread early in the pandemic are facing a calamitous moment. Their populations remain for the most part immunologically naïve and at great threat for infections by these more transmissible and deadly versions. The current surges of new cases are proving a challenge to contain, and these countries lack vaccine supplies.

Taiwan, which has only fully immunized one percent of its population, and 27 percent partially, was confronted with a sudden surge of cases in mid-May that saw cases climb to a peak of 600 COVID-19 cases per day with a cumulative total of 15,600 cases. Before the explosion of cases, the death toll stood at 12. It has now risen to almost 800. Despite the comparatively small magnitude, the crude case fatality rate of 5 percent speaks to the deadliness of the contagion in an island nation where the median age is 42.5 years compared to the global median age of 29.6. The surge was blamed on the Alpha variant.

For more than 12 months preceding their first wave, Taiwan had used tracing and quarantine measures to keep the virus in check, limiting total cases to around a thousand. For the most part, commerce and social activities such as markets, dining venues, and sporting events were operating just below full capacity.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, an Indonesian cargo pilot flew out of Taiwan to Australia where he was confirmed with COVID-19. Two of his close contacts were also confirmed with the coronavirus. Prior to becoming symptomatic, they had visited mosques and various venues in Taipei and Taoyuan City. The Taiwan Centers for Disease Control traced the May outbreak to the Indonesian pilot.

A ten-week partial lockdown—closure of schools, restaurants, bars and gyms, mandatory mask wearing in all placed including outdoors, and the banning of non-residents entering Taiwan—was implemented to bring the outbreak under control. This is being eased as cases have declined to the low double digits. Catch-up efforts are underway to procure COVID-19 vaccines with the aim of inoculating the population by December.

Vietnam, with a population of nearly 100 million people, does not have Taiwan’s advantage of geographic isolation, as it shares long porous borders with China, Laos, and Cambodia. It also has one of the lowest vaccination rates in all Southeast Asia, with less than 0.5 percent of its population fully vaccinated.

However, until recently, Vietnam had some of the lowest rates of infections and deaths throughout the world. It was also the only economy in Southeast Asia, according to The Diplomat, to have managed a positive economic growth in 2020. With the news of the spreading infection in China in early 2020, the country rapidly moved to close off its borders and implement a rigorous public health prevention program.

Years of experience with various zoonotic viruses such as SARS and avian influenza viruses had led to the development of a strong public health leadership and effective programs that involved the implementation of rigorous quarantines and contact tracing.

In conjunction with the explosion of cases with the Delta variant in India, around mid-May, daily cases in Vietnam began to climb slowly at first, then exploding in the beginning of July with an almost vertical rise in new cases. The seven-day moving average has climbed from 339 cases per day on June 26, to 6,377 presently, a near 20-fold increase. Of the almost 100,000 cases of COVID-19, 85 percent were registered in the last 30 days. The rate of deaths is also skyrocketing, though in absolute terms the death toll remains still low at only 500.

Despite its initial success in containing infections, Vietnam is facing a “perilous moment” as the government is attempting to secure COVID-19 vaccines through direct purchases from Pfizer, Moderna, Sputnik (Russia), Taiwan and from the WHO’s COVAX facility. However, Vietnam doesn’t expect to receive shipment until the end of the year at the earliest.

Spurred by an interest in jump-starting its biotech sector during the pandemic, the country relied on developing these treatments using nationally based pharmaceuticals. Many of these vaccines still remain in phase two and three trials due to lack of cases in Vietnam needed to complete the process.

But last week, Hanoi announced a 15-day lockdown as the coronavirus has spread from the southern Mekong Delta region. All outdoor activities have been suspended. There is a ban on more than two people gathering. All non-essential businesses have been ordered closed.

South Korea has faced several waves of infections throughout the pandemic but was always able to stem the surges quickly. However, since the winter peak, it has been battling a steady daily number of new infections. In July new cases began to climb again, reaching a peak of more than 1,500 per day.

South Korea has reported close to 200,000 cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. The death toll has only recently passed the 2,000 mark. Only 13 percent of its population has been fully vaccinated, and 27 percent have received at least one dose. Despite being one of the manufacturing centers for the AstraZeneca vaccine, South Korea has maintained its commitments to export the vaccine and has not had adequate supplies for its own population. The country is currently in the process of inoculating people aged 55 to 59.

Speaking of Indonesia, which now is the epicenter of the coronavirus in East and Southeast Asia, Sean Darby of the US investment house Jefferies Group told CNBC, “The reality is that … you’re likely to not reach full economic potential until you get to some form of herd immunity. Unfortunately, the potential for Indonesia to meet its pre-pandemic [economic] levels are probably quite low at the moment given the poor rollout of the vaccine.”

The cynicism of such comments is striking, and it applies to the entire region. Those countries that had successfully fought off the initial wave of coronavirus because they rejected the policy of herd immunity in favor of serious and sweeping public health measures, are now paying the price for not having allowed their population to be infected, since they can’t get sufficient quantities of vaccine to “catch up” with the rest of the world, where the infection is raging almost without resistance.

Long COVID cases among children and pediatric death toll rise globally

Linda Rios

In the wake of the reopening of economies and public institutions the world over, the COVID- 19 pandemic continues to cross national borders, continually driving the spread of new and more virulent strains of the disease. With more than 194 million people having been infected worldwide, the most vulnerable populations include children and adolescents.

According to the organization Long COVID Kids, over 40 children a day in the UK are being hospitalized with COVID-19, as the Delta variant has come to dominate. There has been a huge surge in the number of children becoming infected. New data shows that a growing number of children who have tested positive for the disease have gone on to develop Long COVID, with symptoms lasting beyond 12 weeks. So far, in the UK alone, 33,000 children ages 2–16 and 71,000 young people ages 17–24 are suffering from Long COVID.

Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist and senior lecturer for Queen Mary University of London, recently wrote an article on the Long COVID Kids site, pointing to two studies: the Office for National Statistics (ONS) data study and the REACT-1 (Real-time Assessment for Community Transmission) data study for the evidence of Long COVID in children and young adults. He states that anywhere between 10 percent and 50 percent of those infected with coronavirus suffer from Long COVID symptoms.

FILE - In this May 13, 2021, file photo, Julian Boyce, 14, gets a hug from his mother, Satrina Boyce, after he received his first Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination dose at NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem, in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

The ONS study found that 13.7 percent of participants continued to experience symptoms past 12 weeks after initial infection. And of 400,000 who reported suffering from Long COVID, 9,000 are children. Gurdasani notes that for many children, their symptoms are not mild, but affect their lives in profound ways. Many of the children have not been able to return to some of their favorite activities.

In the UK, the estimate is between one in seven or eight children have contracted COVID, or over 1 million children, and children’s hospitals are beginning to fill up quickly. In addition to new cases, some children who have been living with Long COVID have been readmitted to hospitals due to relapses in their health.

Three children featured on the Long COVID Kids site had to be admitted after serious relapses in their health, including the daughter of the founder, who contracted Long COVID after having tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2020. In many of these instances, doctors cannot explain the reasons for the relapse and many of the tests ordered by doctors come back negative.

In Indonesia, more than 100 children a week have died from COVID 19, the majority of whom were younger than five years of age, discrediting the myth that COVID-19 is of little consequence to young children. According to the New York Times, this represents a mortality rate for children much higher than any other country, and an infection rate for children of 12.5 percent. In southeast Asia, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Vietnam have also seen a record number of coronavirus cases and deaths among children.

India experienced a similar increase in cases of COVID-19 in children in May and June, as the coronavirus overran the country. One newborn tested positive for COVID-19 only 12 hours after birth, even though the mother had recovered from the disease prior to giving birth.

Additionally, more than 2,000 children so far have developed MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome), a condition characterized by significant levels of inflammation in the major organs, including the heart, lungs, and brain, which can be life-threatening for some children. MIS-C is a complication resulting anywhere between two to six weeks after initial COVID-19 infection or contact with a person who had COVID-19. The vast majority of children who develop MIS-C are asymptomatic, or experience mild symptoms.

In the United States alone, over 4 million children have contracted the virus, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, representing 14.1 percent of all cases nationwide at the time the study was conducted. Not only is this likely an undercount, but states differ wildly in how they choose to report new COVID-19 infections, further obscuring the situation. Meanwhile, several states are recording increases in the number of COVID-19 cases they are seeing in children. Florida has seen an 87 percent rise in cases over the past week in children under 12. Hawaii has seen 188 cases of COVID-19 in kids 18 and younger, and in Alabama there have been 22 hospitalizations.

While countries are busy blurring statistics and throwing open businesses and schools, sending parents back to work in an effort to revive the economy, their children are being rushed back into crowded classrooms, becoming vectors for the continued spread of the disease, either among themselves or transmitting it back into their homes.

Dr. Niraj Patel, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease and Immunology at Levine Children’s Hospital, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and chair of the American College of Allergy Asthma and Immunology COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, told healthline.com on Thursday that in the United States there have been 4,087,916 cases of COVID-19 in children and a total of 10,628 deaths. Patel also noted that the number of cases of pediatric COVID-19 is rising. Given the fact that between 10-15 percent of all children who contract the virus suffer from Long COVID, this also means that anywhere between 408,000 to 613,000 children are likely suffering from Long COVID in the US alone.

Adding further dimension to this global tragedy, a study last week in The Lancet reported that 1.5 million children worldwide have lost a parent, grandparent or caregiver due to COVID-19.

Debtors’ prisons on the rise as COVID-19 ravages the southern United States

Cordell Gascoigne

On July 6, 55-year-old Charles Anderson spent his last day in Marion County Jail. He was arrested 28 days prior for unpaid debts regarding his failure to make monthly payments and fees associated with three court cases dating back to 2003. Upon his arrest, he was jailed with three other men in a 6-by-10-foot cell.

After a long period of unemployment, Anderson found a job working as a carpenter two weeks prior to his arrest. He had intended to resume payments toward the court-ordered debts that have haunted him from a 2003 conviction on methamphetamine trafficking.

On June 9, in the town of Winfield, a police officer pulled Anderson over for running a stop sign on his way to help his new boss fix a flat tire. The officer then issued him a ticket for driving without a seat belt and a warning for failing to adhere to the stop sign. However, he was arrested and taken to jail in Hamilton, which was built in 1979 and meant to house 86 men and women, but it is often overcapacity at more than 120 people. According to Anderson, he was fed nothing but white bread, bologna and peanut butter for the 28 days he was incarcerated.

A handcuffed person in a prison cell (Pxfuel.com)

According to the arrest report, Anderson was arrested on three counts of “failure to pay.” Like so many others before him, he was ultimately charged with failing to appear at a payment review hearing, which in his case was held in November 2018.

Anderson was only able to be free of Marion County’s debtors’ prison because Linda Jacobs, his indigent 72-year-old mother, cashed her monthly $1,400 Social Security check on July 3, arriving at the circuit clerk’s office in the county seat of Hamilton on July 6 and paid $1,000 toward his court-ordered debts totaling more than $2,500. As a result of his arrest, his vehicle was towed, and his mother had to pay more than $200 to retrieve it.

Jacobs, in an attempt to raise the necessary funds, placed the family’s tractor, Bush Hog mower and a small boat up for sale. She even offered to sell her three Yorkshire terriers, but Anderson rejected that.

In an interview with AL.com on July 2, Jacobs noted, “I offered to pay $300, and they called and told the judge, and the judge said he had to pay $1,000 to get out. They take away your freedom, they lock you up, and you pay or they keep you locked up. It’s not right.”

Marion County in northwest Alabama, according to a 2019 United States Census Bureau report, has a population of 29,709, of which 94 percent are white, 3.9 percent black, 2.7 percent Hispanic or Latino, 0.4 percent American Indian and 0.3 percent Asian. The median household income is $35,930, and it has an unemployment rate of 3.1 percent (up from 2.2 percent in May), according to a 2021 Alabama Department of Labor report.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic and declining hourly wages, several people remain incarcerated in Marion County Jail because they dared to commit the crime of being poor and have neither family nor friends with the financial resources to purchase their freedom. Prior to the pandemic, Alabama was rated among the poorest states in the country; in the city of Birmingham, the poverty rate is over 28 percent.

One man arrested in Winfield, Alabama, has been jailed since March on three counts of failure to pay court-ordered debts. According to a court document, he would be released from custody immediately upon payment of $2,819.70. Another man met a similar fate, being held in custody since he was arrested in April for failure to pay “court costs, fines and restitution of: $4,182.56.”

The incarceration of people over unpaid debts, particularly when these “debtors” do not have the wherewithal to pay, violates federal laws and constitutional protections against the operation of debtors’ prisons. From the colonial era to the 1830s, the United States regularly jailed people for failure to pay their debts.

Imprisonment for indebtedness was so commonplace that two signatories of the Declaration of Independence, James Wilson, later an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and Robert Morris, a personal friend of President George Washington, were sentenced for failure to pay loans.

However, debtors’ imprisonment could turn into a life sentence for those without positions which grant certain privileges. In myriad jurisdictions, debtors were not to be freed from bondage until funds were acquired in full, or they had worked off the debt through years of penal labor. As a result of economic turmoil which ravaged Southern and Northern states and colonies alike, many languished in prison, dying even more impoverished than they were prior to their arrest.

After the War of 1812, so many Americans were indebted that prisons held five times as many people on charges of debt than actual crimes. Between 1821 and 1849, 12 states outlawed debtors’ prisons. With the advent of bankruptcy law, citizens were granted a means of escaping insuperable debt, while creditors were made to share some of the risk associated in lending funds. Bankruptcy laws were revised in 1841, 1867 and 1898, eventually requiring payment of as much debt as the debtor could afford while absolving the balance.

Over the course of the 20th century, the US Supreme Court affirmed that it was a violation of constitutional rights to incarcerate those too financially straitened to repay their debts. In 1970, in Williams v. Illinois, the high court decided maximum prison terms could not be extended on account of the defendant failing to pay court costs or fines. In 1971, in Tate v. Short, it was ruled that defendants who are too destitute to pay their fines may not be jailed. Most significantly, the 1983 decision in Bearden v. Georgia compelled judges to distinguish between debtors who are “too poor to pay” and those who have the financial ability but “willfully” refuse to do so.

Federal imprisonment for debt was abolished in 1833, although some, particularly Southern states were allowed to continue imprisoning debtors, even leasing prisoners, who could not buy their freedom, out to plantation owners, effectively continuing slavery after the Civil War.

In places like Marion County, the justice system has a consistent stream of low-income people in and out of jail for failing to pay their debts. “In my opinion, [it is a] debtors’ prison because I owe money and you’re [going to] lock me up for it,” Charles Anderson told the media. Reflecting the impact of the social crisis on the thinking of workers, Anderson continued, “How is this the United States, where we’re supposed to have more freedoms than anywhere else in the world, and we’re incarcerating people for not having money?”

Marion County Sheriff Kevin Williams, in an interview with AL.com on July 7, said he does not draft the laws but is tasked with enforcing them, including issuing arrests for unpaid debts in accordance with judges’ orders. “If you’re sitting here and you can’t pay your fines, but you’re court-ordered to pay them, how do you fix that? How do you make them pay other than to throw them behind bars?”

According to court records, debtors have remained jailed for weeks or months in the Marion County Jail due to indigence. Marion County has incorporated a practice which relies on failure-to-appear charges, issuing arrest warrants to people with unpaid debts before demanding payment for their release. Moreover, court records also reveal many people never receive a letter informing them of their payment review hearings.

Hamilton resident Daniel Ables, another victim of this vendetta against the working class, sat in Marion County Jail for more than four months without an appearance before a judge to have his case heard.

On February 22, a Marion County deputy arrested the 41-year-old Hamilton resident on an outstanding warrant for failing to appear at a March 2020 hearing regarding a plan to pay down his court-ordered debts pertaining to a 2009 drug case. Typical in Marion County, Ables’ arrest warrant had two boxes checked. The first of which stated, “[y]ou may release the accused person without taking the accused person before a judge or magistrate,” and the second, “[i]f the person posts a cash bond in the amount of $1915.60 with the court clerk.” However, the “bond” equaled the exact total of all the defendant’s fines, fees and restitution owed at the time.

When interviewed by AL.com during a jailhouse phone call, Ables said if he were wealthy, this would not have happened. “It’s extortion. That’s pretty much what it is, is it not? They’re [going to] lock me up and hold me here for a year or some crap just because I can’t pay? What would you call it?”

Ables’ family members tried for months to raise the amount of money the county was demanding for his release but found themselves too short. Shortly after his arrest, Ables’ girlfriend offered to pay $700 toward his court-ordered debts but was informed if the amount was not the full $2,000, he would remain jailed.

District Attorney Scott Slatton confirmed via email that Ables was cleared to be released after he had requested “judicial review as to why Inmate Ables had been in jail for 5 months.”

A Zoom hearing was held on the morning of July 8 to review Ables’ case. His required monthly court-ordered debt payment was reduced from more than $100 to $60, or $20 for each of the three cases on which he still owes fines, fees and restitution. According to three court filings, Ables is not required to begin making the payments until October.

After a review of the case, Slatton claimed going forward, his office “will seek judicial review of any inmate being held for [‘failure to appear’] for payments longer than the quarter in which they should have appeared on a docket.” After 137 days, Ables was released from Marion County Jail custody, paying nothing to secure his release following the hearing.

In response to a query on why some people remain in jail for longer than 90 days awaiting a court hearing, Williams directed all inquiries to the judges on their respective cases and the circuit clerk’s office.

When the inquiries were followed up, Marion County Circuit Judge Daryl Burt, who signed the orders stating that Anderson and Ables could be released if they paid off their court-ordered debts, did not respond to myriad requests for comment, including from Circuit Clerk Denise Mixon.

Cody Cutting, an attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights who litigates cases related to the criminalization of poverty in the southern United States, said there is no justification for the imprisonment of impoverished, like Anderson, and is unequivocally unacceptable. “If someone who is arrested can avoid incarceration by paying if they’re able to pay their entire court debt, but someone who is unable to pay that court debt through no fault of their own is forced to languish in jail for months, that violates the Constitution.”

The Southern Center for Human Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have found that judges in Alabama consistently jail people for “failure to pay” without conducting inquiries or investigation into a debtor’s ability to make payments.

“It could not be clearer that it is unconstitutional to jail someone for failing to pay a fine if the ability to pay that fine is beyond that person’s control,” Cutting said. “In spite of how clear that constitutional command is, it’s completely apparent that jailing people for being poor is common practice in courts across the South.”

Modi government’s “terrorism” frame-up vendetta leads to death of 84-year-old tribal-rights activist

Wasantha Rupasinghe & Kranti Kumara

The shocking July 5 death of Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old tribal rights activist and Jesuit priest, after 9 months of cruel imprisonment has sparked widespread condemnation of the Narendra Modi government and India’s police, penal authorities and courts, both in India and internationally.

The Indian state is undeniably responsible for Swamy’s death. He succumbed to complications after contracting COVID-19 while in prison awaiting trial on frame-up terrorism charges. He is yet another victim of the vicious police-state measures now firmly institutionalized by Modi, his chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, and the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.

Stan Swamy in 2010 (Wikimedia Commons)

Swamy was arrested and thrown in jail by India’s notorious National Investigation Agency (NIA) last October under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). His arrest was based on a 10,000-page NIA charge-sheet that accused him of conspiring to bring together Dalit and Muslim forces to create an armed militia to take on what Swamy supposedly referred to as the “fascist government.” Swamy was also alleged to have instigated “violence” on January 1, 2018, at the annual Elgar Parishad event, a Dalit celebration-rally in Koregaon, Maharashtra.

During its six years in office, the Modi government has used the UAPA to victimize thousands of its opponents, including left-wing student activists, lawyers, playwrights, poets, and journalists. Muslims, particularly in disputed Jammu and Kashmir, have been especially targeted.

Persons charged under the UAPA or under the Modi government’s other preferred legal bludgeon, “sedition,” can be made to rot in prison indefinitely without bail awaiting a court trial that due to India’s clogged, bureaucratic judicial procedures might come only a decade or more after their arrest.

The courts cruelly denied Swamy temporary release from prison to seek medical treatment although he was in very poor and rapidly declining health. Ultimately, he died in a private hospital in Mumbai from cardiac arrest, a direct result of his having contracted COVID-19.

The special NIA court which oversees and adjudicates cases filed by the NIA twice denied his request for release for medical treatment. In an act of extreme cruelty, it even refused to order prison authorities to immediately supply Swamy, who could not raise a cup since his hands shook uncontrollably due to Parkinson’s disease, with a straw-equipped cup with which to drink fluids.

The sixteen activists, writers and intellectuals caught up in the India’s Elgar Parishad frame-up case. From left to right, beginning with the top-most row: Surendra Gadling (lawyer and Dalit rights activist), Nagpur University Professor Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut (rural activist), Rona Wilson (anti-UAPA campaigner). Second row: Sudhir Dhawale (Dalit activist), Sudha Bharadwaj (lawyer), Vernon Gonsalves (trade unionist and Dalit activist), Arun Ferreira (human rights lawyer). Third row: Varavara Rao (poet), Dr. Anand Teltumbde (journalist), Gautam Navlakha (journalist), Delhi University Professor Hany Babu. Bottom row: Artists Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor, Jyoti Jagtap of Kabir Kala Manch, deceased Jesuit Priest Stan Swamy. (Photo: Free Them All)

The rejection of Swamy’s two petitions to the NIA court for temporary release played out over five months. Subsequently, his lawyers were able to initiate proceedings before the Bombay High Court. It too was in no hurry to act and dragged its feet for over a month before finally on May 28 granting him a measly two weeks for medical treatment. The High Court also ruled that Swamy bear the full cost of his medical care. This despite the fact that the state imprisoning him in an overcrowded prison was why he contracted COVID-19 in the first place.

As soon as Swamy was shifted to a hospital, he was diagnosed as having COVID-19. As his condition worsened, the Bombay High Court kept extending his bail by two weeks with his third extension granted until July 5, the day Swamy died.

The claim that Swamy was in any way responsible for the violence that ensued on January 1, 2018, during the 200th anniversary of Elgar Parishad was entirely cooked up. This yearly event commemorates the gallantry that several hundred Dalit soldiers enrolled in the British colonial army displayed in a battle against the much larger force fielded by the upper caste Peshwa-ruled kingdom, now a part of the state of Maharashtra. This defeat has come to be celebrated by sections of Maharashtra’s historically oppressed Dalit population as a fitting humiliation of the Brahmin Peshwas who were notorious for their ill treatment of Dalits.

Swamy, however, had absolutely nothing to do with this event, let alone the violence that ensued. Living hundreds of miles away, he neither participated nor had any hand in organizing it. As for the violence, it was incited by two Hindu-communalist leaders who exhorted a mob of their followers to attack the gathering, which had tens of thousands of Dalit participants. The latter fought back. The two masterminds of the Elgar Parishad attack continue to run around scot-free, because they enjoy the protection of the Modi government. One of them, Sambhaji Bhide, a prominent Hindu supremacist leader, has been personally praised by Modi.

Instead of arresting the true culprits, the police and NIA, in what is becoming an all too familiar pattern, have sought to pin the blame on 16 prominent pro-Dalit anti-Hindutva activists, including the now dead Stan Swamy. All 16 have been charged under the UAPA and accused of being what the government and police term “urban Naxals,” that is clandestine urban supporters of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), which for decades has been waging a guerrilla insurgency in some of India’s most remote jungle regions.

The NIA has claimed proof that they are Maoists was found in the form of documents and letters on computers they seized from the activists. The accused have vehemently denied any knowledge of these documents and, from the outset, suspicion among all but government and police partisans has been that they were deliberately planted.

In February of this year, the Washington Post reported that a forensic analysis performed on the computer belonging to one of 16 arrested activists, Rona Wilson, by US-based Arsenal Computing, has shown that the documents were indeed planted. This was done by an unknown, well-financed hacker using malicious software (Malware).

The incriminating documents, which were injected over a span of two years, were never opened by Rona Wilson since he was not even aware of their existence on his computer. They resided in a hidden folder the malware had created to copy the documents into. Arsenal Computing in its report notes that this “is one of the most serious cases involving evidence tampering that Arsenal has ever encountered.”

The NIA, no doubt egged on by Home Minster Shah and his cronies behind the scenes, has persisted in its now years-long vendetta over the Elgar Parishad affair. Last September 30th, it ordered Swamy to show up at its Mumbai offices within five days, although this would require he travel 1800 km from his home in Ranchi, the state capital of Jharkhand. Prior to this, police had grilled Swamy in July 2020 for about 15 hours over 5 days.

The NIA claimed that it was summoning Swamy to Mumbai for interrogation about his role in the violence at the January 1, 2018 event. The tribal rights activist and priest refused, pointing out that to travel such a long distance during a raging pandemic would put his life at risk. The police agency would not relent and sent a team to forcibly arrest Swamy and transport him to Mumbai.

However, having brought him there, instead of interrogating him about the Elgar Parishad event, the agency dragged him before the NIA kangaroo court charging that he had links to the banned Maoists. The NIA court promptly ordered his imprisonment in Taloja Central Jail.

Swamy was targeted for his pro-tribal activism in the state of Jharkhand where tens thousands of tribals have been dispossessed of their lands due to mining activities by state and private corporations, and thousands of tribal youth have been thrown in prison for opposing the mining projects on their traditional lands. Swamy in a video states that he became a thorn in the side of the national and state governments after he formed the Persecuted Prisoners Solidarity Committee (PPSC) along with the labour lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, one of the fifteen others targeted in that Elgar Parishad frame-up. They challenged the imprisonment of around 3,000 tribal youth by filing a case on their behalf in Jharkhand High court.

In response to a question in the Indian parliament, the Modi government revealed in February that as many as 1,948 persons were arrested under the UAPA just in 2019. Between the years 2015 and 2018, over 4,000 were incarcerated.

India’s Supreme Court has played a particularly foul role in giving a free hand to the NIA to carry out its Gestapo-style activities. It has struck down lower court rulings granting bail to those accused under the UAPA. A particularly egregious case involves two Muslim men, Mohammed Ilyas and Mohammed Irfan, who were arrested in 2012 under the UAPA on the basis of the most shoddy evidence. In 2019, the Bombay High Court granted Ifran bail, after observing that there was no prima facie evidence that the grave charges against him were true. But when the NIA appealed to India’s highest court, arguing that his release may “[affect] the security of the nation,” the Supreme Court dutifully stayed Irfan’s bail and he was back in prison just four months after his release. Subsequently, the NIA special court, notorious for conniving with the prosecution, had to exonerate both men. But by that point, because they were arrested under the draconian provisions of the UAPA, they had spent nine years in prison.

In July 2019, the Modi government rammed through parliament an amendment to the UAPA that vastly increases the power of the NIA and permits the government to declare an individual a terrorist and seize his or her properties. While this amendment was making its way through parliament, India’s Supreme Court ruled in its July 2019 Watali judgment, that the NIA’s evidence has to be considered “prima facie true” even if the charges are based upon evidence that would be inadmissible in a trial.

Death toll rises following torrential rains and floods in China

Ben McGrath

The death toll following torrential rains in Henan province, in central China, has risen to at least 69 as authorities continue to clean up following the extensive flooding that took place last week. The floods have caused at least 65.5 billion yuan ($US10 billion) in damages, while raising serious questions about the dangers of climate change.

A woman moves a sandbag along a flooded road in the aftermath of the heaviest recorded rainfall in Zhengzhou in central China's Henan province on Saturday, July 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Dake Kang)

As of Sunday, approximately 1.24 million people in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, have been displaced. Rescue teams continued to drain flooded portions of the city over the weekend as they searched for survivors. The industrial city is home to over 12 million people.

Other cities in the region have also been hard hit. Xinxiang, a city just to the north of Zhengzhou, with a population of six million, experienced similar record-breaking rains, with 260mm of precipitation falling in just two hours. The Wei River, running through the city, overflowed, leading to extensive flooding. In Gongyi, 80 kilometers west of Zhengzhou, floods and landslides killed at least four people.

Scientists are warning about the increasing danger from climate change, as extreme weather events including heat waves and intense wild fires take place around the world. Chris Rapley, a professor of climate science at University College London, told the Financial Times, “I think I would be speaking for many climate scientists to say that we are a bit shocked at what we are seeing. There is a dramatic change in the frequency with which extreme [weather] events occur.”

As Earth’s temperature rises, this is contributing to the increased rainfall. For each 1C of increased temperature, the air is able to hold approximately 7 percent more water moisture. This means regions with monsoon seasons are seeing an even higher amount of rain than usual. Zhengzhou, in fact, experienced more than a year’s worth of rain, 671.1mm in just over three days, with 201.9mm falling in just one hour on July 20.

Chinese authorities are being criticized for failing to adequately plan for the extreme weather event. An emergency was declared in Zhengzhou, but little action taken to protect the population. Cheng Xiaotao, a former director of the Institute of Flood Control and Disaster Mitigation at the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, told Chinese media that, “After the warnings, in what type of situation should we halt work and manufacturing? How should various departments co-ordinate? What are the actual emergency actions to take in response?”

The lack of preparation meant that many people were placed in danger, as waters flooded the city’s subway system and highways. At least 13 people were killed on a subway train. Another victim was discovered on Saturday, raising the previous death toll. At least another four people were killed after being trapped in the Jingguang traffic tunnel in Zhengzhou, where some 200 to 300 cars were blocked by flooding water.

These tragedies were entirely avoidable. The Jingguang tunnel was built in a low-lying area, prone to flooding. It was opened in 2012, the same year that 80 people died in Beijing after being trapped in a flooded underpass, following a large storm. The New York Times reported that an investigation into the new tunnel’s possible dangers was published in 2011, which stated, “If water accumulates in the tunnel it will seriously threaten the safe operation of the tunnel.”

The danger from climate change is all the more acute as 98 percent of China’s 654 major cities are vulnerable to flooding. About two-thirds of China’s 1.4 billion people live in cities. Zhou Jinfeng, of the non-governmental organization, China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, warned that “because of global climate change, the rainfall statistics will continue to break new records in the future.”

The floods have called into question the viability of China’s so-called “sponge cities,” supposedly meant to deal with these types of weather events. Zhengzhou was among the cities included in the first phase of this program, which includes the use of permeable asphalt and the expansion of green spaces to better drain water.

In Zhengzhou, thousands of kilometres of new drainage were built to eliminate some 125 flood-prone areas and create large new green spaces, some of which were quickly inundated as torrential rains hit the city. The so-called “sponges” were never designed to absorb downpours on the scale of those that occurred last week.

As cited by the New York Times, academic Konstantinos Papadikis at the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, explained: “Although the sponge city initiative is an excellent sustainable development approach for stormwater management, it is still debatable whether it can be regarded as the complete solution to flood risk management in a changing climate.”

In recent decades, there has been a massive urban expansion, as China has industrialised and drawn in tens of millions of migrant workers from rural areas. According to one commentator, there are at least 93 cities with more than one million residents and a number, like Zhengzhou, have a population greater than 10 million. A significant proportion of these are built on river flats and thus are vulnerable to flooding—a danger that will only increase with climate change.

Typhoon In-fa, which was a major contributing factor to the heavy rains in Henan province, lashed the coastal city of Shanghai, with its population of more than 26 million last Sunday, before moving north to hit the city of Pinghu. No deaths were reported as of Monday evening, but the wild weather caused the suspension of above ground rail services, with some roads being submerged, along with local blackouts and the cancellation of hundreds of flights.