The agency that oversees the nation’s student and exchange visitor program, announced that international students must take at least one in-person class in the fall to maintain their visa status, or they will have to leave the U.S. 

 In a hotel room in Shenyang, a city 2,800 miles away from her hometown Shenzhen, Fang, a student of New York University, said she was being thrown a curveball again. After NYU announced in June their plan to operate in a hybrid model in the fall, with an in-person and Zoom option, she decided to go back to China and attend classes remotely. But the new rule now requires her to show up in the  classroom so she won’t lose her student visa. 

“I have no idea what I should do in the next step,” Fang said. “ I have to make a new plan to complete my degree.”  

Chinese students like Fang, may become the biggest casualties of the latest ICE regulation on international students. For the tenth consecutive year, China remained the largest source of international students in the US, making up 33.7% of all foreign students in 2019, according to a report by the Institute of International Education. These students, whether they have returned home or stayed in the U.S., are scrambling to maintain their visa status which has faced more scrutiny under the Trump administration since the pandemic began.  

Former Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both voiced their opposition to the policy on Twitter. Elizabeth Warren urged the ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to “drop this policy immediately” and called the move “senseless, cruel and xenophobic.” 

Kicking international students out of the US during a global pandemic because their colleges are moving classes online for physical distancing hurts students. It’s senseless, cruel, and xenophobic. @ICEgov and @DHSgov must drop this policy immediately. https://t.co/MHYduGA1Pk

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 7, 2020

 Sanders also used the word “cruelty” to describe the disturbing policy. “Foreign students are being threatened with a choice: risk your life going to class in-person or get deported,” he said.  

The cruelty of this White House knows no bounds. Foreign students are being threatened with a choice: risk your life going to class in-person or get deported.

We must stand up to Trump’s bigotry. We must keep all our students safe. https://t.co/Q2MvmgJPqV

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 6, 2020

If a university adopts the hybrid model, foreign students have to take “the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program,” and have to be back in the states to participate in the in-person classes. 

 For many schools that offered the in-person option for smaller scale seminar classes, like NYU and Columbia University, classroom presence is optional. Local students can opt to stay at home and participate via Zoom. Yet international students, per this policy, will not have the same privilege. 

 “Is it worth risking my health to travel back and attend the classes?” Fang asked. 

 After many states reopened, the confirmed cases across the U.S  soared. On July 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 54,357 new cases, a record single day jump.

University campuses are particularly vulnerable to such a highly contagious disease. Washington University reported that at least 112 fraternity residents have tested positive for Covid-19 on June 30.

Even if they are willing to risk their health to attend in-person classes, the students that are already home face travel restrictions. On January 31, President Trump banned foreigners that had stayed in China in the past 14 days to enter the U.S. Five months  later with Covid-19 decreasing in most regions of China, the travel restriction is still active. 

 This travel ban is essentially in conflict with the ICE regulation that mandates international students to return to the U.S. to attend in person classes. 

 Another NYU graduate student from China, Taylor Xu, who studies biostatistics, chose to stay because her “visa is going to expire.”

Given the indefinite suspension of U.S. consulates in China and the sensitive nature of her major, she said “it wouldn’t be easy to get a new visa.” 

 On May 29, President Trump signed an executive order to ban certain groups of Chinese graduate students from entering the country, accusing them of “acquir[ing] sensitive United States technologies and intellectual property, in part to bolster the modernization and capability of its military, the People’s Liberation Army.”

 Now, Xu faced the chance of being deported as her program will operate remotely.

“It’s mentally stressful and disheartening that the country I’ve lived in for six years may kick me out,” Xu said. “The fact that I can’t find a reasonably priced ticket home also makes the situation more challenging.”

 To stop coronavirus cases from entering China, Beijing has drastically cut the number of international flights to “one route to any specific country with no more than one flight per week” since March. Although it eased airline access after President Trump threatened to ban inbound flights from China, allowing Delta Air Lines and United Airlines to operate four weekly flights in total, the seats available still fell short of demand. 

While international students are rattled, universities across the country have been advocating strongly against the policy. Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued the Trump administration.  In an email to the students, Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, which has the fourth-largest international student population in the U.S., wrote “the destructive and indefensible purpose driving these policies is by now all too familiar.” 

 Universities are also in the process of transitioning to hybrid models to save international students’ visas. But the growing number of new cases  and the chance of a second wave hitting in the fall could easily force universities to close again. 

 “If a second wave hits this fall and my school moves to online classes again, what would  I do?” Fang asked.  

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The campaign, called “Wild Your Weekends,” offers passengers unlimited weekend trips throughout China by the end of 2020 for 3,322 yuan (approximately $473). Much like the unlimited “All You Can Jet” pass popularized by JetBlue in the U.S. in 2009, the promotion has created a lot of buzz, with the tag #WildYourWeekend trendy on Chinese social media.

China Eastern Airlines launched the campaign at a strategic time. The “618 Shopping Festival,” which falls on June 18 every year, is a key shopping day, promoted heavily by e-commerce platforms trying to boost their revenue. As the economic brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic still looms, this year’s 618 became an important gauge of Chinese consumer spending. 

After travel plummeted earlier in the year, China Eastern Airline, as one of China’s three biggest carriers, had struggled to cover an astonishing amount of refunds. It reported a 3.93 billion yuan ($556 million) loss in the first quarter of 2020. The airline joined the e-commerce companies to drum up more excitement for air travel as most regions in China have reopened. The campaign, debuted on June 18, is limited to 100,000 passengers. As of June 29, the airline has sold out the passes and is expected to collect 332.2 million yuan ($47 million) in revenue. 

“This is the best deal of the year,” said Zhong, who had plans of using the pass to visit home and travel.

 Yet the lucrative deal did not persuade all travelers. Unlike Zhong, Yutong Zhao, a graduate student in Chengdu, passed on the deal, saying “it might not be worth the money.” “Flight tickets are already at ‘bok choy price’,” she said, referring to the cabbage that is prevalent and cheap in China. “I have to fly at least six times with China Eastern to earn back the face value.” 

 After the pandemic slashed the global air industry, prices on China’s domestic flight tickets crashed. A one-way ticket from Shenzhen, Hong Kong’s neighbor in mainland China, to Chengdu, a Southwest travel hub, was 20 yuan ($2.80) on March 2 with government subsidies, even cheaper than a pound of bok choy. The Civil Aviation Administration of China has provided subsidies to Chinese airlines that still operated during the pandemic and reduced the airport parking and air control fees. From January 23 to June 30, another funding scheme would reward each sole operator with 0.0528 yuan ($0.008) per seat kilometer.

 There has been an uptick in airfare after the pandemic settled in most provinces, but it is still 30% down from last year as of June, China’s state media Xinhua reported. 

 The 618 deal stimulated China’s sagging airline market. As of June 24, the first batch of passengers have redeemed over 65,000 tickets through the campaign and embarked on their first trips during the three-day weekend celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival. Lhasa, in western China’s Tibet, became a popular travel destination. Passengers with the unlimited travel pass made up 90% of the travelers on a Chengdu-to-Lhasa flight on the first day of the three-day weekend, according to the airline. 

 “I have planned weekend trips to Chengdu to eat hotpot, to Canton to have dim sum, and to Sanya to have a seaside getaway,” Zhong said, after “being stranded in Shanghai for months.” 

 Zhong joined a discussion group on Wechat, which gathered more than 400 people, from travel enthusiasts and long-distance couples to college students, who have all bought the package. This voluntary gathering soon turned into a platform for finding travel buddies, planning out routes and seeking food recommendations. 

 Another regional airline, China Express, launched a copycat promotion days after offering its own unlimited travel package at 2,999 yuan ($429). 

The idea of a prepaid fix-price all-you-can-fly pass is not new. Back in 2009, JetBlue launched the “All You Can Jet” pass, which cost $599 for unlimited international and domestic trips for a month to combat the headwind of the global recession. JetBlue called it “the most successful promotion in the company’s history” and reintroduced the scheme multiple times. China Eastern’s promotion, during an even worse economic freefall in 2020, is much bolder in terms of the price and scale. 

Although the airline will rack up numerous costs actually flying all these customers, Yan Kong, an airline analyst, said China Eastern can still make a profit from the promotion because “Chinese travelers, realistically, cannot redeem that many flights.” 

Kong said China Eastern aimed at boosting its cash flow and increasing its occupancy rate through the campaign. According to the data in May, China Eastern’s domestic average occupancy rate was 65%, about 18 percentage points down from last year. 

Despite the buzz of the campaign and a modest increase in flights and capacity, China’s airline industry–now solely relies on the domestic market– has a long road to recovery.

 “The reopening of Beijing and Wuhan airports in April were two key signals in the stabilization and recovery of China’s airline industry,” said a report released by Ctrip, China’s largest online travel agency in June. 

 But Beijing has restricted outbound travel again after a dozen confirmed coronavirus cases were traced to a meat and vegetable wholesale market on June 11. Flightstats’s data has shown that 1,073 departing flights from Beijing’s two major airports were canceled over the last week.

 “[There] is still great uncertainty in the time span and severity of the epidemic around the world, which may magnify the impact on or result in a delay in the recovery of travel demand,” China Eastern said.

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 Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said at a post-meeting news conference that he projected a slow economic recovery from the pandemic could start in the second half of 2020 and last years. 

 “We’re not even thinking about raising rates,” Powell said to reporters. “So what we’re thinking about is providing support for this economy. We do think this is going to take some time.”

The Trump administration has pushed for more extreme stimulus measures, from monetary to fiscal policies and predicted a rapid recovery from the coronavirus. He lashed out against Powell on Twitter in March, saying the Fed had “raised rates too fast and lowered too late,” and urged the Fed to “stimulate!” 

During a news briefing at the White House in April, Trump said investors “have a lot of confidence that we are doing the right thing and that our country is going to be open soon and our country is going to be booming.”

Yet, even after the Fed slashed interest rates and launched the unprecedented asset-buying program, the latest forecast still disappointed the president’s optimistic look. 

 The Fed has two explicit goals: to keep the long-term inflation rate stable and maximize employment. As the pandemic slashed Americans’ spending power, the inflation rate has remained well under the central bank’s 2% target. The Fed acknowledged that the “unemployment remains historically high,” despite the surprising May jobs report. 

 In May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the US economy added 2.5 million jobs, with the unemployment rate declining to 13.3% from April’s 14.7%. But the report included a note saying that there had been a “misclassification error,” and the overall unemployment rate could “have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported.” 

American workers haven’t experienced unemployment that high since the Great Depression.

 “The May employment report, of course, was a welcome surprise. Very pleased. We hope we get many more like it. But I think we have to be honest that it’s a long road,” Powell said in the press conference. 

 The Fed will continue to buy bonds as it continues one of its stimulus programs known as “quantitative easing.” That program increases the country’s money supply and further reduces interest rates, which in turn, can boost the economy by making it more attractive for households and businesses to borrow money. Since starting the program in March, the Fed has tapered it significantly, purchasing just $4 billion per day in Treasuries this week versus $75 billion at the peak in March.

Powell said, in the next few months, that the Fed will “gradually reduce the pace” since the ongoing purchases “have helped to restore orderly market conditions and fostered more accommodative financial conditions.” 

 After not giving an economic outlook during its March meeting, citing tremendous uncertainties ahead, the Fed gave its first forecasts for the economy since December. Fed officials expected the real GDP to contract 6.5% in 2020, with the unemployment rate at 9.3%. The US economy shrank by 4.8%, marking the first contraction since 2014. 

 This cautious tone is in line with analysts’ predictions. “There are potholes in the road ahead,” James Knightley, chief international economist of Ing, said in a statement. Knightley expected the economy to contract at around a 40% annualized rate in the second quarter of 2020.

 The Atlanta Fed’s latest model projected a 48.5% annualized drop in GDP in the second quarter, while the St. Louis Fed and New York Fed, which were more optimistic, estimated  25% and 35% declines respectively. A slowdown of that magnitude would mark the deepest quarterly drop in economic activity on record, since the government started tracking the data in 1947. 

 In response to a question about the Fed’s forecasts, Powell noted that the future is highly contingent on the pandemic. The World Health Organization on Monday warned that the pandemic is “far from over” after a record number of new daily cases in Central America and Latin America. 

 In the US, after the Memorial Day weekend and nationwide protests in support of black lives, at least nine states reported significant upticks in coronavirus hospitalizations, according to the data of John Hopkins University. If a second wave arrives in the fall, as the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention Chief Robert Redfield warned, states could be forced to shut down again. 

Powell said that the Fed would do “whatever we can, and for as long as it takes to provide some relief and stability” and to “limit lasting damage to the economy.” 

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Called the two-sessions, it is the most important political gathering for China officials each year. This year’s sessions prioritized recovery plans from the brunt of the economic impact of Covid-19. Beijing also sought the chance to pass a Hong Kong security bill bypassing Hong Kong’s legislation, in order to end the anti-government protests that have rocked the semi-autonomous city for months. 

 Economy  

China has abandoned the annual growth target for the first time as the world still grapples with the pandemic and a global economic fallout begins. The coronavirus lockdown has slashed China with a historic 6.8% GDP drop in the first quarter in 2020, marking the first contraction since 1992. 

 “The global epidemic situation and economic and trade situation are very uncertain, and China’s development is facing some unpredictable factors,” Chinese premier Li Keqiang said at the start of the NPC.

 As central banks in the US and Europe went all in with buying government debts and cutting interest rates to save the market, China did not follow. Yi Gang, China’s Central Bank (PBOC) governor has warned against excessive stimulus measures.

 “The normal monetary policy should be kept as long as possible,” he said. 

 Yet the PBOC has already eased its monetary stance, including injecting liquidity into the market through its daily reverse repo purchase program and cutting its benchmark lending rate. 

 By de-emphasizing the growth target, the premier prioritized more flexible measures on local level to spur up employment. Premier Li announced a target to create 9 million urban jobs in the coming year, down from last year’s target of 11 million. 

 Li Xunlei, the chief economist of Zhongtai Securities, estimated a 20.5% unemployment rate, much higher than the official data of 6% released by the National Bureau of Statistics in April. Li and his team said in a report that the large number of self-employers in China, especially in the service industry, were frontline victims of the pandemic lockdown. 

  China’s Economic Policies in Comparison

 The New Infrastructure 

In 2009, China announced a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) fiscal stimulus package, with the largest portion in infrastructure to lift its economy from the global financial crisis. Ten years after, facing another global recession, the central authorities saw the pandemic  as “great timing” to develop “the new infrastructure,” which encompasses 5G, ultra-high-voltage power facilities, inter-city transport, new energy vehicle charging stations, big data centers, artificial intelligence and industrial internet.

 The idea, first mentioned at a central economic conference in late 2018, gained more attention from both the public and the private sector amid the coronavirus lockdown. Beijing suggested that it would leverage the pandemic to catalyze the development of data infrastructure and upgrade industrial production.

 Li Zuojun, a senior official at the Development Research Center of the State Council told National Business Daily that traditional infrastructure investment sparked a short-term stimulus, but lacked long-term return on investment. China’s economy, bearing downturn pressure, needs a new engine and more effective stimulus measures.

 China’s leading tech firms have embraced Beijing’s calls for digital infrastructure. Li Yanhong, CEO of Baidu, the largest search engine in China, also a CPPCC member, proposed a plan about smart urban transportation with live big data during the two sessions. Tech giant, Tencent, pledged to invest 500 billion yuan ($69.9 billion) in areas from cloud computing to artificial intelligence. 

 Two days after the end of China’s two sessions and the reinforcement on the new infrastructure plan, President Trump issued an executive order suspending some Chinese graduate students’ entry into the country, especially ones working in the sciences. Although not directly tied to China’s ambitious 5G and AI plans, the ban cited the threats of illegal acquisition of intellectual property and potential national security posed by Chinese students. 

 Hong Kong 

The national parliament passed the highly controversial Hong Kong Security bill, a sweeping security legislation that broadens Beijing’s power over Hong Kong. The law prohibits any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion, and foreign entities from conducting political activities. 

 The bill came after Hong Kongers’ months-long protests against a plan to allow extradition to mainland China. Beijing feared that the former British Colony, under the “one country, two systems,” had spoiled freedom and exposed itself and the central government to external forces. 

 Hong Kong, as an semi-autonomous region from China, is a commercial and trade hub in East Asia. Although the Hong Kong government spokesperson said “the vast majority of law-abiding Hong Kong residents, including overseas investors, have nothing to fear,” Hong Kong residents did not share the confidence. They rushed for the emigration gates and investing in overseas properties, soon after the controversial plan unveiled, South China Morning Post reported. 

 The anti-government protest roiled Hong Kong again after the security law was passed, despite the risk of the pandemic has not settled. Trump announced that Hong Kong would no longer receive its special status as it lost autonomy. Meanwhile, American officials are discussing ways to punish China for the drastic move. 

 Yet, the outbreak of George Floyd protests across the US handed Beijing a new weapon to compare the unrest in the US and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrations and accuse the US of hypocrisy. 

 Hua Chunying, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, tweeted “I can’t breathe,” the last words of George Floyd, with a screenshot of a post of her American counterpart that called for the Communist Party’s accountability on Hong Kong, implying the US government’s double standards.

The post China’s two session political gathering sets priority for COVID-19 recovery appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Six months later, Fulton found himself 60 miles away from the posh neighborhood he used to work for before, as the general manager of the more modest Country Chef restaurant in Wilton, New Hampshire, a town with a population of less than 4,000 and a sketchy mobile signal.

The reasons for the downturn in his fortunes was the time Fulton took off to enter treatment for his alcohol and drug addiction. After seeking treatment, the Boston job was not there anymore.

New Hampshire is in the midst of an addiction crisis that is now a front-and-center issue in the Democratic primary here. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the rate of overdose deaths in New Hampshire has climbed steadily since 1999 and peaked in 2017 with 490 deaths, which ranked the third in the country.

Even though the number is expected to drop to 364 in 2019, when the final tally is made, the drug crisis remains to be the Granite staters’ biggest concern, according to a 2019 poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire.

“Everyone living in New Hampshire knows someone who has been struggling with opioid overdose,” said Theo Groh, 29, a resident of Manchester.

Many Democratic candidates treated the opioid epidemic a healthcare problem, but for former addicts like Fulton, it was an economic problem. Fulton said it was “fateful” to run into Holly Cekala, the owner of The Country House, who opened the restaurant in December 2019 with a mission to hire former drug addicts and provide them with a normal working environment.

Fulton had a wonderful resume in the hospitality industry and had run five restaurants and bars. Before the Pour House, he owned Cowboys Bar and Grill, a $3-a-drink bar in Woonsocket, Rhode Island until July 2019. But his successful career in the food business paused after booze and cocaine became a serious issue for him.

“You work weekends and nights, often time because of the hours, people are using drugs as crutches to get through the shift or up for a shift,” said Fulton.

Cekala herself suffered from the alcohol and drug culture of the hospitality industry. As a teenager, she rewarded herself with a drink at the end of a shift, which is common in a lot of places. “Then you started to look forward to these drinks,” she said.

People who work in this industry “are susceptible to addiction,” Cekala said. Her alcoholic issue then caused a car accident in which she was injured, and which put her on morphine to relieve the pain. “It’s just a spiral of events once you are addicted,” she said.

The workers in the accommodation and food service industry have the highest rates of illicit drug use ­—19.1% of all workers— of any profession in the U.S., according to a report by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

There are 15.3 million Americans employed in the restaurant industry in 2019 and nearly 6 in 10 adults have worked in the restaurant industry at some point during their lives. “There are millions of us working at the bars and restaurants, we are the ones working the weekends, we are the ones working holidays for you,” Fulton said. “We should not be forgotten.”

When seven Democratic candidates took the debate stage in Manchester on February 7, many talked about their plans to tackle the substance abuse crisis. Each had a different proposal.

As she has before, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar mentioned her dad’s alcoholic history and said “this is personal to me.” She proposed a $100 billion policy to tax opioid manufacturers and use the money to expand treatment. Vice President Joe Biden stressed his early work on curbing drug overdose. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang supported supervised withdrawal sites and mandatory three-day treatment. Mayor Pete Buttigieg called for “decriminalizing all drugs and treating it as a medical issue but not a moral failure.”

Cekala watched the debate from her restaurant on Friday night but none of the candidates’ words appealed to her. “It’s not a healthcare problem, it’s an economic problem. People can’t find a decent job, they can’t support their families and pay for their rents, that’s depressing,” Cekala said.

For Fulton and Cekala, the question is “what is next after treatment?” In rehab, “you disappear from the normal world for 3 months, you get healthy and clean, and you get out of there. But you don’t have a job,” said Fulton.

After leaving the hospitality industry, Cekala studied psychology at Rhode Island College and since then managed several recovery community centers, including one at the Rhode Island Women’s Prison. In Fulton’s words, “Holly was a recovery celebrity in Rhode Island.”

After 20 years of working in charity organizations and as a certified recovery counselor, she made the move to open a restaurant in December 2019. “There are too many restrictions. Don’t share the numbers, don’t become a friend,” Cekala said, referring to the restrictions placed on counselors. “Why would I charge someone to be his friend? But that’s essentially what he needs. A friend.”

Instead, she decided to reenter the industry that once failed her. She opened The Country Chef and hired ten employees, with eight of them were former addicts.

Cekala was not the first employer hiring former addicts. Republican Governor Chris Sununu launched The Recovery Friendly Workplaces in New Hampshire in 2018, to push employers to hire people who are in recovery and provide their employees with education and training related to substance misuse and behavioral health. Cekala applauded the effort, but she thought it was “a little bit behavioral health heavy.”

“I am not a behavioral health provider, just a small business owner to create a normal work environment,” said Cekala.

At 3pm on Saturday, the last group of late brunch eaters left. Fulton started to wipe the table and brought dirty dishes back to the kitchen while making small jokes with Cekala, who worked at the cashier. “They are all kids to me, I just want to cuddle them,” Cekala said.

“When we put the restaurant back together, Holly and I often went on and on, it almost felt like a counseling session, which is really helpful,” said Fulton.

Fulton has been sober for 80 days now. He now works 50 hours a week. Although the hours are still long, but “coffee is free” and he has “people, who have also gone through this to talk to all the time.”

Behind the cashier, there stands a wall of liquor bottles. Cekala has two designated people to make drinks and Fulton is one of them. The 33-year-old restaurant manager has been in this industry “since he could remember” and pouring drinks is a day-to-day job. “I was just made for this, what was I supposed to do?” said Fulton.

But the motivation is different for Fulton now. Besides being a successful manager, he wants to “fill this place with once lost adults and kids” and build a stepping stone for them to get their lives back. People with drug records are often seen as troublesome and incapable of holding on jobs. “But one good reference can fix that resume forever,” said Fulton. “If we can give them experience and solid training here, they at least have us to call.”

Although Fulton has never foreseen his future in a family-style restaurant in New Hampshire, he called it “an interesting twist in his life.” And if the model of Cekala’s recovery-friendly workplace works, it would be a new start of Fulton’s career.

“If I can blend my talent with my recovery, God bless it,” Fulton said.

 Zishu Sherry Qin is a graduate student in the Business and Economic Reporting Program

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