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The Chinese military carried out anti-submarine and sea assault drills in waters around Taiwan on Monday, keeping up the pressure after major four-day drills an angry Beijing staged response to the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last week, military sources said. China also announced a series of new military drills in the South China Sea and in the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, waters that lie between the Chinese mainland and the Korean peninsula.  The Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said on its official WeChat account that the Command’s forces “continued to conduct practical joint exercises in the sea and airspace around Taiwan Island, focusing on organizing joint anti-submarine and sea assault operations” on Aug. 8. On Sunday, the last day of the scheduled military exercise announced on Aug. 3, the PLA sent 14 warships and 66 aircraft to areas surrounding Taiwan in attack simulation drills, the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense said, adding that 22 of the airplanes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait. The ministry “monitored the situation and responded to these activities with aircraft in CAP (Combat Air Patrol), naval vessels, and land-based missile systems,” it said in a statement. Taiwan military’s Fourth Combat Zone will also hold two large-scale, live-fire artillery drills in Pingtung in southern Taiwan on Tuesday and Thursday this week to test its combat readiness. The drills will include the artillery command, infantry troops and the coastguard, the military said. Eastern Theatre Command of China’s PLA conducts a long-range live-fire drill into the Taiwan Strait, from an undisclosed location, Aug. 4, 2022. Credit: PLA Eastern Theater Command Handout via REUTERS Numerous new exercises On Saturday, China announced a new series of military drills including a month-long operation in Bohai Sea. China’s Maritime Safety Administration released navigation warnings saying live-fire exercises will be held from Aug. 6 to Aug. 15 in the southern part of the Yellow Sea between China and South Korea, and gunnery drills from Aug. 8 to Aug. 9 and Aug. 9 to Aug.11 in the South China Sea.  A navigation warning is a public advisory notice to mariners about changes to navigational aids and current marine activities or hazards including fishing zones and military exercises. A separate military exercise was conducted in the northern part of the Bohai Sea on Friday and Saturday. Local Taiwanese media reported that a month-long military operation will take place in Bohai Sea starting Aug. 8 until Sept. 8. “I think the military exercises aren’t really going to stop,” said Mark Harrison, a senior lecturer in Chinese studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “Beijing has used Pelosi’s visit as a pretext to create a “new normal” in the Taiwan Strait,” Harrison added. Nancy Pelosi became the most senior U.S. official to visit Taiwan in the last 25 years last week and Beijing repeatedly warned against the visit, threatening “strongest countermeasures.” Chinese media quoted several analysts as saying that military drills near Taiwan will become routine if “external interference” continues. “The military exercises around Taiwan, although having been quite restrained, are meant to show that Beijing is by no means a ‘paper tiger’,” said Sonny Lo, a veteran political commentator in Hong Kong. “Most importantly, Chinese military exercises near Taiwan are becoming a normal phenomenon, raising the specter of a possible military conflict or accident between the two sides,” Lo said. On Saturday and Sunday, Chinese forces staged what could be seen as simulated attacks on Taiwan. “The focus on Sunday was set on testing the capabilities of using joint fire to strike land targets and striking long-range air targets,” reported the PLA Daily. “Supported by naval and air combat systems, the air strike forces, together with long-range multiple launch rocket systems and conventional missile troops, conducted drills of joint precision strikes on targets,” the paper reported. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi attends a meeting with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen at the presidential office in Taipei, Aug. 3, 2022. Credit: Taiwan Presidential Office Handout via REUTERS What’s next? This “largest ever PLA air-missile-maritime exercise ever conducted” has provided some insights into China’s potential courses of action and preferences in a China-Taiwan conflict, said Carl Schuster, a retired U.S. Navy captain turned military analyst. “It suggests Beijing would first isolate Taiwan and resort to air and missile strikes in hopes of breaking Taipei’s political will. A costly invasion probably is a last resort,” said Schuster, who also served as a director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center. “The exercise demonstrated that blockade in a conflict need not require a constant naval presence offshore, but rather, shipping and air traffic can be deterred by air and missile threats in support of a maritime blockade,” the analyst said, adding that it “also reflected the PLA’s improving capacity for joint operations.” During the four days of Chinese military drills, Taiwan saw up to a thousand international flights being affected and the Taiwanese aviation administration had to discuss alternative routes with Japan and the Philippines. A full military blockade would “paralyze Taiwan’s economy and seriously diminish the society’s confidence,” said commentator Sonny Lo in Hong Kong. “However China usually focuses on the “core enemies” such as the leaders of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, rather than the whole Taiwanese population,” Lo said, predicting that the cross-strait relations will stay tense until at least the next Taiwan presidential election in early 2024. “Taiwan needs to quickly strengthen its international relations and its military capacity,” said Mark Harrison from the University of Tasmania, who argued that Beijing “will wipe out a vibrant democracy if it seizes control of Taiwan.” The Taiwanese government needs to focus on expanding defense resources and to enact smart and effective defense strategies, according to Drew Thompson, a former U.S. defense official and senior visiting fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. “Smaller countries that have great disadvantages have had tremendous success in the…

In May 2022, a Japanese-style anime girl started appearing in advertisements shown on Taiwan’s MRT subway network. Green-eyed, pink-haired with buns and bangs, Momosuze Nene, sprints away from the viewer’s gaze, heading towards “millions of subscribers” on her YouTube channel. Fans of Nene can sign on to a special website to learn more about her, while the ads hope to spread the word among her growing fanbase in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and the U.S., as well as her native Japan. And there’s one thing that helps this dirndl-miniskirted YouTuber stand out from her crowd of competitors for the time being: she’s not real. Part of a growing phenomenon of virtual YouTubers (VTubers), Nene is “a girl from another world” who nevertheless plays video games like her contemporaries, commenting and laughing as the game progresses, and chatting in real time with viewers leaving messages at a rate of several a second in the chat window. She also sings and dances, chats with viewers and reads out their messages. While her shows are in Japanese, her anime persona and upbeat attitude have made her a hit far outside of Japan. And her expansion is being funded by fans like tattooed Taipei resident Chiu Wei-chun, 31. “The advertising agency has no faith in us,” Chiu said. “They said the average fan would likely donate between 30,000 and 50,000 Taiwan dollars.” An advertisement of the Taoling Yinyin Million Support Project was drawn by a number of fans. On the day of the fan meeting on May 23, the artist Sipu (Internet nickname) took a photo with the character he drew. Credit: Yang Zilei Pop idol approach When he went to the bank to pay in his donation in person, the bank teller said taking money on behalf of a virtual character was a first. “In my 25 years as a teller, I’ve never heard of such a request,” Chiu quoted her as saying. Many VTubers are the creation of two Japanese companies — Hololive and Rainbow Club — and tend towards a pop idol approach, although virtual hosts are also found in other genres of video, including technology videos. With an energy similar to that of an actor playing a cartoon character at a theme park, and motion-capture technology similar to that used to generate Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, these VTubers are actually played by human actors behind the scenes. Many VTubers draw heavily from anime, and come in all shapes and sizes, from vampire nurses to mafia bosses to demons and pirate captains, as well as the ubiquitous sexy anime girl. They can do pretty much anything a real, live YouTuber can do, including singing, playing games, making art and chatting with their audience in real time. Others talk about their favorite comics or play on variety shows, or go to uninhabited islands as a survival stunt. The idea of a virtual pop idol isn’t a new one in Japan. Miku Hatsune is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media, represented in live performance by the image of a 15-year-old teenage girl with long, turquoise twintails. The act has opened for Lady Gaga and performed at Coachella, will soon be getting her own animated series. The outbreak of COVID-19 has accelerated the development of the industry in Japan, and it has quickly caught on in neighboring Taiwan. Chiu Wei-chun is one of the main planners of the fan board. He saw the influx of fan sponsorships from overseas, and members from Malaysia, Hong Kong, the United States, Taiwan and other places responded to the project, and he felt the huge influence brought by VTuber even more. Credit: Yang Zilei From white-collar dads to high-schoolers It’s the potential for personal interaction with VTubers that makes them so popular, and they make liberal use of fan sponsorship to take their programming to the next level via the graded, color-coded SuperChat donation function on YouTube. The highest donations buy fans stickier messages, increasing the likelihood that the host will see the message and interact with the viewer in some way. The fan base includes white-collar dads to high-schoolers, with some people willing to pay out half their monthly salary on their favorite virtual idol. Chiu’s first encounter with Nene was in September 2020, since then he has been a dedicated fan. The biotech production line manager estimates that he spends a good chunk of his monthly disposable income on sponsoring Nene, and wonders aloud if he needs to rein it in somewhat. “I’m going to be marrying my girlfriend next year, so I need to save a bit more,” he says. “But I will still need to invest some money in Nene, naturally.” He said he’s drawn to the character for her childish innocence and relaxed attitude. “Kind of like a daughter; maybe I’m practicing how to spoil my own daughter,” Chiu said. According to YouTube’s Super Chat sponsorship rankings for the whole of 2021, only one of the top 10 is a real person. VTubers are mostly female, and mostly broadcast in Japanese, English, Chinese, Indian languages or Korean from a number of countries. In April, the singer bought a theme light box for Vox’s birthday at Taipei MRT Zhongshan Station, and she showed us the light box picture. In addition to expressing their feelings in the live broadcast appeal, Vox also used this picture as a live broadcast schedule. It is a common way of interaction for VTuber to refer to the secondary creation of fans. Credit: Yang Zilei ‘Different voices, different genders’ The most popular VTuber in the world today is the English-language VTuber Gawr Gura from Hololive, with more than four million subscribers. Otaku culture expert Liang Shih-you, says VTubers are popular because they’re so much fun. “VTubers let you play a completely different self from the get-go, different voices, different genders, anything, so it creates a multitude of possibilities,” Liang said, citing the example of VTuber Uncle Fox, who looks like…

Global heating is leading dozens of bat species to migrate to southern China and southeast Asian countries, amid growing concerns that the climate crisis could fuel more zoonotic disease and further deadly pandemics, experts told RFA. A 2021 University of Cambridge study found that climate change may already have played a role in the emergence of the current pandemic, after researchers tracked large-scale changes in vegetation patterns across southwestern Yunnan province and neighboring Myanmar and Laos. “Increases in temperature, sunlight, and atmospheric carbon dioxide – which affect the growth of plants and trees – have changed natural habitats from tropical shrubland to tropical savannah and deciduous woodland,” the study said. “This created a suitable environment for many bat species that predominantly live in forests.” It said the number of coronaviruses in a given area is closely linked to the number of different bat species present, with an additional 40 bat species moving into Yunnan during the past 100 years, bringing with them around 100 new coronaviruses. Genetic data suggests SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may also have come from this region, according to study first author Robert Beyer, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology. “Climate change over the last century has made the habitat in the southern Chinese Yunnan province suitable for more bat species,” Beyer said. “As climate change altered habitats, species left some areas and moved into others – taking their viruses with them,” he said. “This … most likely allowed for new interactions between animals and viruses, causing more harmful viruses to be transmitted or evolve,” said Beyer. The world’s bats carry around 3,000 different types of coronavirus, with each bat species harboring an average of 2.7 coronaviruses – most without showing symptoms. While most coronaviruses carried by bats can’t jump into humans, several coronaviruses known to infect humans are very likely to have originated in bats, the study said. The area of Yunnan covered by the study is also home to pangolins, which are a likely intermediary host for SARS-CoV-2, experts said. “The virus is likely to have jumped from bats to these animals, which were then sold at a wildlife market in Wuhan – where the initial human outbreak occurred,” a press release accompanying the study said. Another study published by researchers at Georgetown University in the journal Nature also warned that the climate crisis may increase the risk of cross-species transmission of viruses — and could even trigger the next pandemic, citing bats as a likely source species. Dobson’s horseshoe bat. Credit: India Biodiversity Portal Increased risk of disease Chen Chen-chih, associate professor of wildlife conservation at Taiwan’s Pingtung University of Science and Technology, said both studies showed similar findings, warning that migratory shifts could bring bats into closer contact with humans. He cited an outbreak of Hendra virus in Australia in 1994, which caused deaths in humans and horses, and originated in fruit bats. “When their habitats are destroyed or reduced, fruit bats will of course find another way to live,” Chen told RFA. “There are parks in the city, so the likelihood of finding food is very high, added to the fact that people in Australia don’t actively kill bats.” “So they find an urban environment that they can adapt to.” Li Lingling, professor of ecology and evolutionary Biology at National Taiwan University, said humans have already interfered with natural habitats. “Bats are nocturnal and do not [normally] come into contact with humans,” Li said. “When we increase opportunities for bats to come into contact with other animals, the risk of humans being exposed [viruses] also increases.” Chen agreed. “Many studies have found that when habitat of wild animals is stable and undisturbed, the pathogens they carry are less likely to spread,” he said. “When protected animal habitats are well managed and biodiversity taken care of, a single highly lethal pathogen is less likely to emerge,” he said. According to the Georgetown study, there are at least 10,000 viruses currently existent in wild mammals that could be transmitted to humans. Prediction models show that under different carbon emission scenarios, more than 300,000 first contacts between species will occur, some of them in the next 50 years, potentially resulting in more than 15,000 new cross-species virus transmissions. “The vast majority of prediction models believe that the virus will spread across species, particular cross-species transmission from wild animals will become more and more serious under climate change,” Chen said. “These pathogens may jump the species barrier, infect livestock animals, and then infect humans from there, or even directly from wild animals to humans,” he said. “All of these routes are possible [but] whether transmission happens or not depends on the frequency of contact, or the immune status of the potential host,” Chen said. Li said the overall risk had definitely increased, however. “There are some key factors in between, but the risk of disease is indeed increased,” Li said. A greater horseshoe bat. Credit: Marie Jullion/Wikimedia Commons Managing biodiversity Chen said the key lies in the management of biodiversity, particularly in tropical and subtropics regions of east and southeast Asia. “The more species there are, the more potential virus species there are, but when wild animals live in a natural habitat, there are few opportunities for contact, and therefore everyone can coexist peacefully,” he said. Li said areas of high population density and ongoing development are most at risk. “Humans invade nature, transform their environment, or make use of wild animals … and then the risk of coming into contact with viruses carried by wild animals is relatively high,” she said. “Once an epidemic occurs in a densely populated place, then of course there’s a much higher chance of it spreading,” Li said. Chen cited the hunting of wild animals for food, and the trading of different species in the same markets as high-risk behavior. Wild animals that are trapped alive and held in cages in close proximity have weakened immune systems, making transmission more likely among them…