China has promised millions of coronavirus vaccines to countries globally. And it is ready to deliver them

By David Culver and Nectar Gan, CNN

Updated  Wed December 2, 2020

(CNN)Inside a gray warehouse at the Shenzhen International Airport in southern China, a row of white chambers sits in a cordoned-off corner, each fitted with a display screen showing the customized temperature inside.

A security worker in face mask, surgical gown and rubber gloves stands guard. Anyone entering this part of the warehouse has to either complete two weeks of quarantine or wear a head-to-toe hazmat suit.

These climate-controlled rooms, totaling an area of 350 square meters (3,767 square feet), are soon to be filled by rows and rows of Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccines -- after they receive approval from the country's drug regulators. From there, they'll be loaded onto temperature-controlled compartments of cargo jets and flown to continents around the world.

The climate-controlled chambers at Shenzhen's international airport will soon be filled with Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines.

In the coming months, China will be sending hundreds of millions of doses of coronavirus vaccines to countries that have conducted last-stage trials for its leading candidates. Chinese leaders have also promised a growing list of developing countries priority access to its successful vaccines.



The Wuhan files: Leaked documents reveal China's mishandling of the early stages of Covid-19.

This global campaign presents China an opportunity to repair its image, which was damaged for its initial mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak -- rather than being blamed for the primary spread of the virus it can potentially be esteemed for helping to bring an end to the pandemic.

The vaccines can also be used by Beijing as "an instrument for foreign policy to promote soft power and project international influence," said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Earlier in the pandemic, China's efforts to curry favor by donating masks and other supplies to countries hit hard by the virus were tarnished by reports of poor quality supplies, and accusations that Beijing was launching a disinformation campaign to change the coronavirus narrative.

Beijing's vaccine diplomacy, Huang said, could give it another chance.

"Vaccine Diplomacy"

China currently has five coronavirus candidates from four companies which have reached phase 3 clinical trials, the last and most important step of testing before regulatory approval is sought.

Having largely eliminated the coronavirus inside its borders, Chinese drugmakers had to look abroad for places to test the efficacy of their vaccines. Together, they have rolled out phase 3 trials in at least 16 countries.

In exchange, many of the host countries have been promised early access to the successful vaccines -- and in some cases, the technology know-how to manufacture them locally.

Sinovac Biotech, a Nasdaq-listed drugmaker based in Beijing, has signed deals to provide 46 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to Brazil and 50 million doses to Turkey. It'll also supply 40 million doses of vaccine bulk -- the vaccine concentrate before it is divided into little vials -- to Indonesia for local production.

CanSino Biologics, which developed a coronavirus vaccine with a research unit of the Chinese military, will deliver 35 million doses of its vaccine to Mexico, one of the five host countries of its trials.

China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a unit of state-owned pharmaceutical giant China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), has been less open about its deals. The company's two vaccine candidates are undergoing phase 3 trials in 10 countries, mostly in the Middle East and South America. In the United Arab Emirates, Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum volunteered to be vaccinated in trials and the vaccine was approved for emergency use. The Emirati company in partnership with Sinopharm hopes to produce between 75 and 100 million doses next year.

Sinopharm chairman Liu Jingzhen said last month that dozens of countries have requested to buy the company's vaccines. He did not name the countries or elaborate on the amount of doses they proposed, but he said CNBG was capable of producing more than one billion doses in 2021.

"China not only has the political will (for its vaccine diplomacy), it also has the robust capacity to make that happen," Huang said.

Because China has largely contained the virus, there's no urgent need to vaccinate every one of its 1.4 billion population. "That gives it this leverage ... to make deals with countries in need of the vaccines," he said.

"Health Silk Road"

China's global vaccine campaign is in stark contrast to the Trump administration's "America first" approach, which focuses on vaccinating its own citizens before those elsewhere.
"So far we haven't heard the US saying or suggesting they're gonna earmark a percentage of their vaccine to support poor countries. So that puts China in an even better situation to use the vaccine to serve its foreign policy objective," Huang said.

In October, China joined a World Health Organization-backed global initiative to ensure the rapid and equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines to rich and poor countries alike.

The project, known as COVAX, is designed to discourage governments from hoarding coronavirus vaccines and instead focus on vaccinating high-risk groups in every country. But it was shunned by the United States, partly because President Donald Trump did not want to work with the WHO, leaving a global public health leadership vacuum for China to fill.

From early on, Chinese leaders have repeatedly stressed that China's vaccines are for sharing, especially with the developing world.

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaking via video link to the World Health Assembly on a giant screen beside a street in Beijing on May 18.

In May, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the WHO's annual assembly that China would make its coronavirus vaccine a "global public good," calling it the country's "contribution to ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries."

In a video summit with African leaders in June, Xi pledged that "once the development and deployment of a Covid-19 vaccine is completed in China, African countries will be among the first to benefit."

In August, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Beijing would also give priority access to Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Other countries that have been promised priority access by Chinese officials include Afghanistan and Malaysia.

Many of these countries are also in Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, a multibillion dollar infrastructure and trade program that has lost some of its steam during the pandemic. Recently, Chinese officials have ramped up talks of a "Health Silk Road." 

At the WHO meeting in May, Xi pledged to donate $2 billion over two years to help countries cope with the pandemic. Beijing has also offered a $1 billion loan to Latin America and the Caribbean for access to its coronavirus vaccines.

China is doubling down in the global push for a coronavirus vaccine

But there are signs that China's vaccine diplomacy won't always be a smooth ride. In Brazil, Sinovac's vaccine, CoronaVac, has been embroiled in a political feud between President Jair Bolsonaro -- known for his stauch anti-China stance -- and the governor of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria, who is expected to run against Bolsonaro in the country's next presidential elections in 2022. In Bangladesh, Sinovac's trial has been stalled due to a funding dispute.

International public health experts have also questioned China's emergency use program, which inoculated nearly one million Chinese people with experimental vaccines before their safety had been fully proven by clinical trials.

Then there's the question of efficacy. Last month, Pfizer and Moderna announced that early results showed their vaccines to be over 90% effective, while another candidate produced jointly by Oxford University and AstraZeneca had an average efficacy of 70%. So far, none of the Chinese vaccine candidates have announced any preliminary efficacy results, though company executives have repeatedly stressed their safety, insisting no serious adverse effect has been observed in vaccinated volunteers.

Cold storage

Compared with Pfizer and Moderna, Chinese vaccines have a crucial advantage -- most of them do not require freezing temperatures for storage, making transport and distribution much easier, especially in developing countries that lack cold storage capacities.

Kate O'Brien, director of the WHO's immunization and vaccines department, likens the development of vaccines to building a base camp at Everest. "But the climb to the peak is really about delivering the vaccines," she said at a news conference last month.

Both Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines use pieces of genetic material called messenger RNA (mRNA) to prompt the body to make synthetic pieces of the coronavirus and stimulate an immune response -- a new technology that has not been used in existing vaccines.

But mRNA is vulnerable to degradation at room temperature. Moderna's vaccine has to be stored at -20 degree Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), or at refrigerator temperatures for up to 30 days, while the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at an ultra-cold temperature of -75˚C (-103˚F), and used within five days once refrigerated at higher temperatures.

Here's a look at how the different coronavirus vaccines work

Sinopharm and Sinovac, meanwhile, use an old-fashioned approach that has long been proven effective in other vaccines, such as polio and flu shots. Their coronavirus vaccines employ an inactivated whole virus to prompt the body to develop immunity, and only need to be stored at standard refrigerator temperatures of 2˚C to 8˚C (36˚F to 46˚F). CanSino's vaccine, which uses a common cold virus called adenovirus 5 to carry genetic fragments of coronavirus into the body, can also be kept at 2˚C to 8˚C.

Still, the required temperatures must be maintained throughout transport, from leaving the production facility to airport storage and finally to global distribution.

Cainiao, the logistics arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, will help with the distribution of the Chinese vaccines as soon as they're given the go ahead. It says its end-to-end climate controlled infrastructure is in place and ready.

The company has partnered with Shenzhen Baoan International Airport, which recently received the certification for pharmaceutical logistics from the International Air Transport Association. A cold-chain warehouse was built in 2019 for frozen foods and goods. Earlier this year, it was converted to store coronavirus testing kits -- and now vaccines. The airport said on its website that it wants to make Shenzhen a "Covid-19 vaccine global delivery base."

Cainiao has partnered with Ethiopian Airlines to distribute Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines abroad.

Cainiao is also in partnership with Ethiopian Airlines, which will be sending the Chinese vaccines to the Middle East and then Africa. Since the pandemic, the airline has flown more than 3,000 tons of medical supplies from Shenzhen to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South America.

But Cainiao is also looking to add more routes for greater global reach, according to its CEO Wan Lin.

"Of course, we are not still quite sure about the exact demand on that but we are definitely building our capability to be prepared for that," Wan said.

CNN's Emma Reynolds contributed to this story.

How UK protesters are taking the spark of Black Lives Matter back to their hometowns

By Aaliyah Harris and Shama Nasinde, CNN

CNN Illustrations by Ken Fowler and Gabrielle Smith

CNN Video by Sofia Couceiro and Agne Jurkenaite

© CNN/Photo Illustration/Getty Images/Jess Sterry/Gabrielle Smith

 "A lot of people in the UK don't acknowledge racial violence. They think this is a US problem. Actually, racism is rife in the UK."

George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in May sparked a mass global movement against structural racism and police brutality.

The outcry began in Minnesota, but campaigners spread the spark of the movement to towns around the world. In the UK, even as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the country, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the streets of its major cities.

In June, large crowds protested outside Parliament Square and the US Embassy in London, in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens and in central Birmingham.

Yet the movement also spread outside Britain's big urban centers, as anti-racist campaigners challenged institutional racism in smaller towns and cities which have less ethnic diversity and are less known for their activism. The tragedy of Floyd's death inspired ordinary people, thousands of miles away in the UK, to fight for institutional change in their communities under the banner of "Black Lives Matter" (BLM).

© CNN/Photo Illustration/Getty Images/Jason Bryant/Maia Thomas/Ken Fowler

 "I've been assaulted, required security protection and had threats against my life for speaking up."

Six months later, here are some of the voices of those continuing to fight for racial equality outside of the global spotlight.

Maia Thomas, 21, is an activist who campaigns for Black history and anti-racism to be taught in English schools.

In June, Thomas used social media to organize a peaceful protest and vigil for Floyd in Exeter, a small, historic city in the English county of Devon, around 170 miles southwest of London.

© CNN/Photo Illustration/Getty Images/Nadia Thomas/Ken Fowler 

"I had to block a relative because he would constantly send me negative memes, articles and videos of Black people."

"People were shouting at me in the street 'you're pretty for a Black girl, you should use your looks instead of your voice,' and 'White supremacy will always win.' I was threatened online by people saying they were going to attack, kill me and come after my family," she told CNN.

Thomas said she was physically assaulted by a man in Exeter. After the protest she said she required security patrols in the city's shopping center where she worked.

"I was given a key card to go through the back-exit doors just in case I was being followed," she said. "At times my manager escorted me. It was serious."

Despite the violence Thomas says she experienced, she regards the march as a success.

"There were more Black people at the protest than I've ever seen in the whole time that I've lived in Devon," Thomas said.

Many parts of Britain are predominately White. In Exeter alone, out of an estimated 128,900 residents, around 93% are White according to the UK's most recent census, in 2011.

Thomas' views on education had an immediate impact. Scores of schools and other educational institutions have asked for the 21-year-old's help to run equality workshops.

© CNN/Photo Illustration/Getty Images/Euan Robertson/Ken Fowler 

"You can get rid of every statue, and every street name, and still have institutionalized racism."

Activists are also pushing to diversify England's national school curriculum, though this has caused a backlash.

Kemi Badenoch, a Black government minister, for example, criticized the influence of BLM on education in an October 2020 speech in parliament.

Thomas is also a part of "Black Lives Matter Somerset," helping to produce Black History packs for schools and working to increase diversity within her local council. Next year she will attend a conference in Berlin as a UK delegate to speak about Britain's BLM movement.

She has no intention of stopping anytime soon, but says campaigning can feel overwhelming: "Every organization, business, school and individual does not realize how draining it is to constantly relive trauma because no one has actually wanted to listen until now.

"I realized in Zoom calls, assemblies and talks if it was any other subject, the school or council would pay for a speaker," she added. "So why should we as activists and educators be doing this for free?"

Liza Bilal is a 21-year-old student and one of the most prominent faces in Britain's BLM movement. In June, Bilal and five young activists arranged a protest in Bristol, a port city in southwest England that has strong historic links to the UK slave trade. Britain enslaved 3.1 million Africans between 1640 and 1807, transporting them to colonies around the globe, according to Historic England, a public body. Many of them left on ships from Bristol.

© CNN/Photo Illustration/Getty Images/Khali Ackford/Euan Robertson/Jason Bryant/Nadia Thomas/SADACCA/C...

Bristol is now 78% White British with a growing Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic population at 16%.

An estimated 10,000 people marched in support of the BLM movement in Bristol on June 7. The peaceful protest culminated with demonstrators toppling the statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston and hurling it into the River Avon.

Their act of resistance became a focal point for protests in the UK. It ignited a national conversation on slave trader memorials, and Colston's empty plinth was secretly occupied with the statue of a BLM protester. That was removed 24 hours later by the local authority.

© CNN/Photo Illustration/Getty Images/SADACCA/Corporate LiveWire/Ken Fowler 

"Black Lives Matter needs to matter to us as Black people. A lot of it seems to be trying to convince White people -- if they don't know by now, they never will." -- Robert Walcott

The protests were a call to be heard, said Bilal. "People have been petitioning for the statue to come down for decades and were routinely ignored by the council."

Bilal believes Floyd's death forced people outside the US to reflect on their own issues with racism. She said the brutality of his death awakened "a lot of people that hadn't really thought about systemic racism before."

The backdrop to 2020 has also been a deadly pandemic, where Britain's ethnic minorities are up to 50% more likely to die than White Brits, according to a recent government review. Bilal believes it's time for the UK to address institutional racism.

© CNN/Photo Illustration/Getty Images/Khali Ackford/Ken Fowler

 "Black people shouldn't have to be brutalized for White people to care."

"Black and Brown people have been disproportionately affected. We know that's nothing to do with biology and everything to do with systemic racism," she said.

In November, the UK Human Rights Committee said the coronavirus death rate disparity in the UK is in part due to "deep-seated inequalities." The inquiry found that major factors include minority groups being more likely to work in frontline jobs and less likely to be protected with adequate PPE.

Yet the surge of protests has also had unintended consequences. Bilal fears the summer's demonstrations have emboldened Britain's far-right groups.

"In the summer I saw a group of White supremacists. I think there were maybe around 200-300 guarding the Cenotaph [war memorial] which is next to the plinth from which Edward Colston was torn down," she told CNN.

UK security experts warn that far-right extremism in the UK is increasing. In June more than 100 people were arrested after violence broke out at a far-right counter-protest in London targeting BLM demonstrations. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the disruption as "racist thuggery."

The backlash hasn't halted the All Black Lives campaign's mission. They continue to hold monthly protests and weekly panels.

"We have to have a resilience that is unbreakable in the face of something as pervasive as White supremacy," said Bilal.

Since Scottish National Party (SNP) councilor Graham Campbell moved from London to Glasgow 20 years ago, Scotland's largest city has become increasingly ethnically diverse. Around 12% of Glasgow's population is from an ethnic minority, according to the 2011 census, and more than one in five students in the city's primary schools are from non-White backgrounds.

In 2017 Campbell became Glasgow's first African Caribbean councilor. He's determined to see the city's growing diversity reflected in its workforce, citing the underemployment of qualified Black professionals.

A 2016 analysis of government data by the UK's Trades Union Congress found that Black and ethnic minority graduates with a first degree were more than twice as likely to be unemployed as their White counterparts.

"They're not getting interviewed. They're not getting the breaks. There's been a lack of awareness that something structural [has] to adjust," Campbell told CNN.

In June, hundreds of people staged anti-racism rallies in the center of Glasgow. Campbell said the protests were the Black community's demand for change.

"This generation has decided that the racism, daily microaggressions, and experiences of exclusion from a job market -- they're no longer prepared to tolerate it. They felt the George Floyd moment. They said no more," Campbell said.

Since joining the local authority, Campbell has seen its ethnic minority workforce double. He wants to reach a proportionate level of employment by 2030. "Had we relied on the rate that we were going, I calculated it would take 107 years before we got a proportionate level of Black employment," he said.

Campbell helped create an employment working group that monitors diversity in council departments. He worries that without enforcing inclusive hiring initiatives, equality would remain a pipe dream.

According to Campbell, changing place names and removing statues isn't enough to fight racism in Britain. Instead, he believes consciously challenging racism is necessary.

"People in Scotland too often presumed that you are anti-racist by default. In a racist society, especially one with a colonial history like Britain, you have to be actively anti-racist," said Campbell.

"It's the unconscious biases, that translate into institutional practices, that discriminate against non-White people."

Sheffield is one of Britain's biggest cities, with a population of 575,400 in 2016 and around 20,000 Black residents, according to the 2011 census.

The Sheffield and District African Caribbean Community Association (SADACCA) provides a space for the local African and Caribbean communities to socialize in the northern English city.

Robert Walcott, a director of SADACCA, believes BLM should primarily help Black people in their day-to-day lives, rather than educating White audiences.

"I want to focus on what we are doing after the protests. I'd like to see more of what we're doing to support ourselves as opposed to trying to raise the issue to a White audience," he told CNN.

Walcott's mother is a part of the Windrush generation, the Caribbean immigrants who moved to the UK from the late 1940s at the invitation of the government.

The Windrush generation was invited to Britain to rebuild the country after World War II. They comprised the UK's first large wave of Caribbean migration and were named after the Empire Windrush passenger liner that carried some of them across the Atlantic.

The cruel consequences of tougher immigration policies implemented from 2012 were revealed five years later, in what came to be known as the Windrush scandal.

Those who had arrived decades earlier, without papers to prove their legal status as citizens as such documentation wasn't needed before, had been denied government services, wrongly detained or even deported.

"I think there is a slight disconnect between the Windrush elders because they don't fully understand why there is such hostility from young people towards the situation," he said.

Walcott said that "racism was a fact of life" for the Windrush generation, who see younger Black people as currently having more opportunities than they did. "There have been more opportunities for Black people [created] in their lifetime," he added.

"There is a fragility of people who are still refusing to accept that racism is the world's number one pandemic. Still people don't even know what racism is or about England's major role in the slave trade," said Robert Cotterell, SADACCA chairman.

BLM grabbed headlines in 2020 but the movement has been active since 2012, when Trayvon Martin's death sparked the hashtag. The deaths of several African Americans at the hands of police have kept protesters marching since.

Before the protests "there were no conversations at all from institutions and key players in the city," said Cotterell.

SADACCA has continued discussions with authorities and institutions in Sheffield that "traditionally have had, and still have, issues around institutional structural racism."

Despite the growing interest in hearing Black voices, Cotterell says anti-racism activists aren't fairly compensated for their time and work.

"They can't keep using us as the experts because if we were White, we'd be getting paid for our knowledge," Cotterell told CNN. "If we were White, we would become consultants, we'd be getting paid... £1,500 a day."

A CNN/Savanta ComRes poll this year found that Black Britons' experiences with racism differ from other ethnic groups. "Black people are considerably more dissatisfied with race relations in Britain than other ethnic minorities," said Chris Hopkins, associate director of Savanta ComRes.

Nadia Thomas, 25, says she was forced to cut ties with a close family member after receiving relentless offensive messages due to her supporting BLM.

While 95.6% of the population of Wales is White, in Chepstow, a small town near the border with England, that figure is 98.1%.

"My relative sent me a meme from the film 'Zulu' where all the British soldiers took over South Africa and knelt, about to go into battle. It said, 'me and the boys, hashtag taking the knee,'" Thomas told CNN.

With a mixed-race background and having both White and Black parents, Thomas was shocked by her White relative's insensitivity. The relative had worked for her Antiguan father for many years.

"It's an awakening and it goes beyond ignorance," she said.

In June this year Thomas and a group of friends organized a BLM protest. "At first, I couldn't take part, I didn't even want to turn on the TV," she said.

As Thomas watched the cause spread globally she became less skeptical.

She felt responsible for confronting the racism within her own town -- no matter how small or rural. "Since Brexit, [Donald] Trump and Boris [Johnson]... people aren't afraid to be racist. I always thought it was a passive ignorance in this country and now I see blatant racism. It's clearly always been here and it's now allowed by people in power," Thomas told CNN.

In post-Brexit Britain, overt racism appears to be growing. Last year a report found that 71% of people from ethnic minorities in the UK had reported experiencing racial discrimination, an increase of 13 percentage points since the 2016 Brexit vote.

Thomas is working on ways to tackle racism in Chepstow. "I've got a meeting with the Labour Party and my constituency to do with Black history and diversity workshops in school curriculums," she told CNN.

"Nationally, this needs to be addressed. I don't want to just protest. I want to shake up the world."

When Khady Gueye co-organized a BLM protest in Lydney, Gloucestershire, a small town in southwest England, she didn't know it would come with controversy. Members of the local council wrote an open letter demanding the demonstration be canceled, two local councilors resigned in protest due to the letter, and Gueye began to feel unwelcome in her hometown, though the event eventually went ahead.

"We were followed home. We were threatened. We were told people were coming to find us. I moved out of my house for a few weeks just because someone followed me home," said Gueye who is mixed-race Senegalese-British.

In response to the backlash, she co-founded the Local Equality Commission, a racial equality group that runs workshops to challenge racism in rural areas.

"The main aim of that was to try and suture some of the divides that occurred because of the protests that we organized," Gueye told CNN. "We wanted to reaffirm to people that this isn't a problem that's going away."

According to Gueye, education on racism is needed most in rural areas: "The UK doesn't seem to understand how the BLM movement in the US resonates with the UK. In rural areas we don't have the exposure to diversity. There is no exposure to this knowledge."

The voices of Gueye and others in small towns demonstrate the power of protest, education and allyship. As the national focus on BLM dies down, Gueye aims to keep the conversation alive in Gloucestershire.

"George Floyd's murder is the perfect example of the police brutality that happens frequently throughout the world, throughout the US, throughout the UK. We are in a system that is failing Black people," said Gueye.

"Everything that has happened over the past six months has been a trajectory towards change," she added. "It's about trying to engage with people who don't necessarily understand or empathize with what we're trying to fight for."

Climate Point: Climate change disrupts life from the Hopi Reservation to Louisiana

Mark Olalde, USA TODAY 

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and environment news from around the Golden State and the country. In Palm Springs, Calif., I’m Mark Olalde.

© David Wallace/The Republic 

Recca Lomawaima, 15, pauses while working in the field at her family's home below Second Mesa on the Hopi Reservation on July 30. The family uses traditional Hopi dry farming methods to grow corn. Hot, dry conditions reduced the amount of corn they were able to harvest this year.

Let's talk wildfires, as the West's fire season is technically winding down, even if the lines between this, rainy season and everything else are blurring due to climate change.

Arizona Republic reporter Debra Utacia Krol takes us to Northern California in a fascinating piece looking back on the lessons learned, or perhaps ignored, in this record-breaking year of blazes.

In September, an inferno ripped through Happy Camp, the capital of the Karuk Tribe, killing two people. Could this have happened specifically because land managers ignored Indigenous firefighting knowledge?

Krol tells us about an emerging research field called pyrogeography, which is "the study of historic, present-day and future wildfire distribution and effects of ecologies and societies." It suggests that returning to historical styles of forest management, including burns like those the Karuk Tribe once oversaw, could save other Western towns in the future.

Protecting climate denial. E&E reports that social media site Parler — which has gained popularity recently as a safe space for unchecked, right-wing conspiracy theories — is growing quickly and providing another channel for climate denialism. More than just a fringe website, Parler was bankrolled by the Mercer family, who are ardent supporters of President Donald Trump, have given vast sums of money to conservative causes and partly funded the far-right Project Veritas, which tries to secretly record and smear journalists, nonprofits and other targets.

Salmon salvation. In a compelling read about humans' impact on the natural world, the Adirondack Explorer dives into the fight to save salmon populations in the Boquet River. A somewhat successful first step, perhaps unsurprisingly, involved removing a dam. But that alone hasn't been enough to see sustainable levels of salmon reproduction, and biologists are now "tinkering" to find a solution. "What it took to kill off the native salmon is a simple story compared to the convoluted journey required to bring them back," journalist Ry Rivard writes.

Cover your tracks. Utility company Georgia Power is in the market for land deals that appear, at first, to be head-scratchers. In a new investigation, Georgia Health News, in partnership with ProPublica, uncovered how the utility has spent more than $15 million buying land that's downstream of its unlined coal ash ponds that "frequently leak contaminants into groundwater." Coal ash, which is the gunk left over after running a coal-fired power plant, is much safer in lined landfills, public health experts say, but moving the waste into such impoundments can cost companies many millions of dollars. It's easier to have a buffer zone and forestall cleanup. The company said its sites had no impact on drinking water but didn't respond directly to the findings.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

© Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun 

Oil derricks and other infrastructure pump oil and gases as well as dominate the landscape in Kern County, California, February 20, 2020.

Oil well shortcuts. Golden State oil regulators ignored their own regulations and issued improper permits for hundreds of new wells last year, according to an audit by the state Department of Finance that dropped just before Thanksgiving, The Desert Sun's Janet Wilson reports. Meanwhile, The Ventura County Star writes that California oil drillers are fighting to tank attempts by county-level officials to impose regulations that would update decades-old permits that were approved before modern environmental laws were written.

No cleanup insurance? At the federal level, Courthouse News Service reports the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule that will not call for insurance policies "for multiple industries that include gas, coal, oil and chemical manufacturing." Environmental groups have argued for years that a section under the law that created the Superfund program also mandated certain heavy industries put aside money to clean up their messes. The EPA disagreed, raising worries that costly environmental reclamation costs could fall to taxpayers.

Just a drop. The AP reports that, due to an exceptionally dry start to the rainy season, water agencies around California received a mere 10% of the water allocation they requested from the state. The agencies in question supply 27 million people and 750,000 acres of agriculture, and this is the second year in a row that the first allocation was only one-tenth the initial ask.

THE IMMEDIACY OF CLIMATE CHANGE

© David Wallace/The Republic

Beatrice Norton prays at sunrise while taking ground white corn in her hand in front of her home in Oraibi on the Hopi Reservation on Sept. 12, 2020. Corn is an integral part of Hopi culture and religion. Norton prays this way each morning.

Harvesting disappointment. The Arizona Republic is out with new, required reading on the very real impacts of climate change. Reporter Ian James and photographer David Wallace traveled to the Hopi Reservation to chronicle how all-important corn is becoming increasingly "stunted and meager" as hot, dry weather withers crops. For the Hopi, corn is more than food — it holds cultural significance. Now, they're fighting to keep the harvest alive.

Disaster in the Arctic. Earlier this year, melting permafrost caused oil infrastructure to fail in Russia within the Arctic Circle, spilling 21,000 tons of diesel oil into a river. The Moscow Times reports that a consultant hired to investigate what happened at the site, owned by metals company Nornickel, was barred from entering the area for months after the disaster. When they finally got in, they found warming temperatures mixed with company failings made the disaster "inevitable." (If you want to brush up on what happened back in late May, USA Today has the details here.)

Climate refugees. The Advocate reports that more than three months since Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana, more than 2,000 people are still displaced, costing the government hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster relief money. As climate change fuels larger storms, these numbers will almost certainly increase. In related news, USA Today reports on a new United Nations report that found "the world is still far from meeting its climate goals." At the current trajectory, we're set to release more than twice the greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 than what is allowed for within the Paris Agreement's goals. Climate change's impacts fall on a continuum — it's not all or nothing — but the report indicates we need to move much faster to limit the fallout.

AND ANOTHER THING

© Dave Harp/Bay Journal News Service

 Steve Levitsky, Perdue Farms Inc.’s vice president for sustainability, walks through the pollinator garden that surrounds the company’s solar array at its Salisbury headquarters. Some solar developers are planting these habitats with projects to address complaints about farmland being lost.

Sunny bee. I know I read and share a lot of doom-and-gloom, so let's kick this one with some solutions. InsideClimate News is out with a look at some new Yale Center for Business and the Environment research that encourages planting native grasses and wildflowers around solar installations. The practice appears to be a big win-win. "Pollinator-friendly solar can boost crop yields, increase the recharging of groundwater, reduce soil erosion and provide long-term cost savings in operations and maintenance," they wrote. "The research also found that by creating a cooler microclimate, perennial vegetation can increase the efficiency of solar panels, upping their energy output."

Scientists agree that to maintain a livable planet, we need to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration back to 350 ppm. We’re above that and rising dangerously. Here are the latest numbers

© Janet Loehrke The Earth's greenhouse gas levels continue to rise.

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to follow along on Twitter at @MarkOlalde. You can also reach me at molalde@gannett.com. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here. And, if you’d like to receive a daily round-up of California news (also for free!), you can sign up for USA Today’s In California newsletter here. Do your part; wear a mask, please! Cheers.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Climate Point: Climate change disrupts life from the Hopi Reservation to Louisiana

Trump Election Fraud Witness Says We Need Voter ID Because ‘All Chinese Look Alike’ (Video)

This Republican poll watcher did not provide any evidence of fraud

Phil Owen | December 2, 2020


SHE CAN'T BE RACIST SHE IS A SOUT ASIAN INDIAN IMMIGRANT....

EXCEPT HINDUISM IS THE BASIS OF ARYANISM

The Michigan state legislature held a wild hearing on Wednesday evening as Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis continued their crusade to defy the will of the American people by overturning Joe Biden’s election victory over Trump. And some of the witnesses Giuliani trotted out did indeed make headlines, but not necessarily for the reasons that Trump and friends would have liked.

One of the witnesses, a naturalized American citizen from India, served as a Republican poll watcher at the TCF Center in Detroit on election day, and she spoke at length about various interactions she had with others that she thought indicated widespread voter fraud — though it needs to be made clear that she and the other witnesses didn’t provide evidence. One specific complaint she had, which had little to do with what she was there to testify about, was that people can vote without a photo ID.

This is a problem, she said, because “all Chinese look alike.”

The woman made the comment in response to a question from the Michigan House Oversight Committee chair, who asked what she would do in the future to avoid election fraud.

“I come from a country where a lot of things go wrong. Our countries are known for corruption. But when it comes to elections, from what I’ve seen here to what we used to do back in India, it is a lot more organized now because we have an identification system,” the woman said.

“And the fact that now, as the other representatives said, you can actually show up and vote without an ID. It’s shocking. How can you allow that to happen?

“Like, a lot of people think all Indians look alike. I think all Chinese look alike. So how would you tell? If some Chow shows up, you can be anybody and you can vote. And if somebody with my name — you can’t even tell my name — anybody can vote on my behalf. So ID should be the basic requirement.”

The subject of voter ID in the United States is a tricky one, with every state having its own rules — and prices — for obtaining a valid ID. For more on how problematic it would be to require voter ID, here’s a solid rundown of the facts.

It’s not clear how, if poll workers are unable to distinguish between various individuals of Chinese heritage, voter ID would help with that. If they couldn’t tell the difference between them in person, then they likely would not be able to tell if the person in the ID photo is the same as the person who presented the ID.

Watch Crazy Drone Footage of the Arecibo Observatory Collapse (Video)
Ross A. Lincoln 

© TheWrap Arecibo Observatory Telescope 

BEFORE DAMAGE CAUSED COLLAPSE

The end of an era came unexpectedly this week when the iconic Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed Dec. 1 exactly one month after its 57th birthday. And as it happens, the whole thing was captured in spectacular drone footage that you can watch here right now.

Drone footage of the Arecibo collapse. I can't believe the timing that they had a drone in the air when this happened. What strange luck. Source: @NSF pic.twitter.com/Kpfw47moAC
- TJ Cooney December 3, 2020

The telescope, which became operational in 1963 and until 2016 was the world's largest spherical reflector dish, was for decades a crucial tool in the advancement of astronomy. While used primarily for research in atmospheric science and both radio and radar astronomy, it was perhaps best known as a key NASA tool for monitoring near earth asteroids, and as part of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Among the discoveries made using the telescope: Mercury's 59-day rotation period; the first solid evidence supporting the existence of neutron stars; the Nobel prize winning discovery of the first binary pulsar; the first observation of a comet using radar; and the first identified extrasolar planets.

It was also well known for appearances in several pop culture milestones, most famously the James Bond film "GoldenEye" (1995), where it was used in the film's climax as the villain's secret base. It also appeared in the films "Species" (1996) and "Contact" (1997), and an episode of "The X Files," as well as multiple video games and novels.

Alas, over the 2010s it was battered by a series of severe, climate change-linked tropical storms and hurricanes, culminating in terrible damage inflicted by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Unfortunately the 2016 election led to a government unwilling to fund repairs. Though new sources of funding were cobbled together late in 2018, in late Nov. 2020 it was determined there was no way to safely repair the telescope and the National Science Foundation announced it would be decommissioned.

The decommissioning was supposed to proceed after NSF determined the safest possible method, but physics had other plans. So it is that on Dec. 4, the whole thing up and collapsed with almost no warning.

But, even though the end of 60 years of scientific progress is sad, we're glad a historically significant event like that was at least captured on video. You can see more from the collapse here, and watch how the telescope was used in "GoldenEye" below.

India's winter of discontent: 

Farmers rise up against Modi

THE BASE OF THE 

COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA

NEW DELHI — A chilly breeze whirls through New Delhi in the mornings and the sun is partly obscured by toxic haze, a marker of another winter in the Indian capital. But along the city's borders, this year is visibly and viscerally different.

The perpetually busy arterial highways that connect most northern Indian towns to this city of 29 million people now pulse to the cries of “Inquilab Zindabad” — “Long live the revolution.” 

Tens and thousands of farmers with distinctive, colorful turbans and long, flowing beards have descended upon the city's borders, choking highways in giant demonstrations against new farming laws that they say will open them to corporate exploitation.

For more than a week, they’ve marched toward the capital on their tractors and trucks like an army, pushing aside concrete police barricades while braving tear gas, batons and water cannons. Now, on the outskirts of New Delhi, they are hunkered down with food and fuel supplies that can last weeks and threatening to besiege the capital if Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government doesn't meet their demands to abolish the laws.

“Modi wants to sell our lands to corporates,” said one of them, Kaljeet Singh, 31, who travelled from Ludhiana city in Punjab, some 310 kilometres (190 miles) north of New Delhi. “He can’t decide for millions of those who for generations have given their blood and sweat to the land they regard as more precious than their lives.”

At night, the farmers sleep in trailers and under trucks, curling themselves in blankets to brave the winter chill. During the day, they sit huddled in groups in their vehicles, surrounded by mounds of rice, lentils and vegetables that are prepared into meals at hundreds of makeshift soup kitchens, in enormous pots stirred with wooden spoons the size of canoe paddles.

Anmol Singh, 33, who supports his family of six by farming, said the new laws were part of a larger plan to hand over the farmers' land to big corporations and make them landless.

“Modi wants the poor farmer to die of hunger so that he can fill the stomachs of his rich friends,” he said. “We are here to fight his brutal decrees peacefully.”

He paused, then reconsidered: “Actually, let him and his ministers take us on. We will give them a bloody nose.”

Many of the protesting farmers hail from northern Punjab and Haryana, two of the largest agricultural states in India. An overwhelming majority of them are Sikhs. They fear the laws passed in September will lead the government to stop buying grain at minimum guaranteed prices and result in exploitation by corporations who will push down prices. Many activists and farming experts support their demand for a minimum guaranteed price for their crops.

The new rules will also eliminate agents who act as middlemen between the farmers and the government-regulated wholesale markets. Farmers say agents are a vital cog of the farm economy and their main line of credit, providing quick funds for fuel, fertilizers and even loans in case of family emergencies.

The laws have compounded existing resentment from farmers, who often complain of being ignored by the government in their push for better crop prices, additional loan waivers and irrigation systems to guarantee water during dry spells.

The government has argued the laws bring about necessary reform that will allow farmers to market their produce and boost production through private investment. But farmers say they were never consulted.

With nearly 60% of the Indian population depending on agriculture for their livelihoods, the growing farmer rebellion has rattled Modi’s administration and allies. His leaders have scrambled to contain the protests, which are fast resembling last year’s scenes when a contentious new citizenship law that discriminated against Muslims led to demonstrations that culminated in violence.

Those demonstrations were much bigger in scale, but the farmers' rumblings are growing fast and gaining widespread support of ordinary citizens who have started joining them in large numbers.

Modi and his allies have tried to allay farmers’ fears about the new laws while dismissing their concerns. Some of his party leaders have called the farmers “misguided” and “anti-national,” a label often given to those who criticize Modi or his policies.

The government is holding talks with the farmers to persuade them to end their protests, but they have dug in their heels.

Farmer Kulwant Singh, 72, said that when he left his home in Haryana for the protests, he gave his wife a garland of flowers for two possible scenarios.

“Either I return victorious and she places it around my neck in celebration, or I die here revolting and the same garland is put on my body when it reaches home,” Singh said.

Such passions run deep among the protesters who have found social, economic and generational barriers tumbling during the demonstrations.

Singh isn't the only one from his family who travelled to New Delhi for what he called “Qilah Fatehi," an Urdu term that translates to “laying a siege.” His son and grandson also accompanied him.

“It's a fight for my generation too,” said Amrinder Singh, 16.

As demonstrations grow, the protesters have also started to drive a political message home.

Not satisfied with Modi's federal policies, many of which have attracted widescale resentment from his critics and minorities, protesting farmers say it's time he stops what they call his “dictatorial behaviour.”

“India is in a recession. There are hardly any jobs and our country's secular fabric is in tatters,” said Gurpreet Singh, 26, a biotechnology student who comes from a farming family. “At a time when India needs a healing touch, Modi is coming up with divisive, controversial laws. This is unacceptable and defies our constitutional values.”

Modi's second term in power since May 2019 has been marked by several convulsions. The economy has tanked, social strife widened, protests have erupted against discriminatory laws and his government has been questioned over its response to the pandemic.

The farmer protests present a new challenge for the government.

The protesters' desire to stand up to Modi and his policies extends to a sexagenarian farmer couple who drove 250 kilometres (155 miles) from Chandigarh city in a hatchback Sunday to participate in the demonstrations.

Dharam Singh Sandhu, 67, and Vimaljeet Kaur, 66, are spending nights in their car parked near the protest site. In the morning, they share breakfast at a makeshift soup kitchen. The latter part of the day is spent taking part in the demonstrations.

“Our land is our mother. If we can’t protect it then we have no right to live," Sandhu said about the protests.

His wife spoke passionately of a larger purpose as she made her way to the protest site through a stream of vehicles honking incessantly to get past congested traffic.

“Our country is like a bunch of flowers, but Modi wants it to be of the same colour. He has no right to do that. I am here to protest against that mindset," Kaur said.

As Kaur walked hand in hand with her husband, a great cry emerged from one of the vehicles: “Inquilab Zindabad.”

The crowd turned and followed their gaze toward a young man with a black beard who held up his fist through the car's window.

The protesters, including Kaur, roared back: “Inquilab Zindabad!"

Sheikh Saaliq, The Associated Press

Liberals table bill to implement UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

OTTAWA — The Liberal government introduced long-awaited legislation Thursday to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Justice Minister David Lametti described as a significant step forward on the path to reconciliation

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

"It has the potential to be transformational," Lametti told a news conference after tabling Bill C-15 in the House of Commons.

"We're at a starting line putting 150 plus years, longer than that, of colonialism and the impact of (it) behind us," he said. "Let's move to a different model."

The proposed legislation, if passed, would require the federal government to work with First Nations, Métis and Inuit to do everything needed to ensure Canadian law is in harmony with the rights and principles contained in the UN declaration.

It would also have the federal government create an action plan for those goals as soon as possible and no later than three years after the bill comes into force.

National chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations said the bill is not perfect and that he is concerned the deadline for completing the action plan is too far away.

"We've waited too long already," he said at the news conference. "We don't want wait for another three years."

Lametti said the deadline is reasonable because consultation with Indigenous Peoples will take time.

"It is complex, working with indigenous leadership. You have national organizations. You also have each individual nation. Each individual nation has a chief or a leader of some sort who would expect to be consulted," he said.

"We picked a date that was realistic but, that being said, the parliamentary process is the place where we can look at that."

Bellegarde said the bill doesn't provide clarity on which federal department will lead the effort to implement the UN declaration in Canadian law. "We would like to see a commitment to a periodic review, which is something any good legislation should have."

The legislation doesn't give First Nations anything new, Bellegarde said. "It acknowledges and affirms our rights under international law."

He said the bill condemns the racist and colonial doctrines and beliefs that have led to grave human rights abuses including the residential school system.

Lametti predicted the bill will have wide support in the House of Commons and the Senate.

"It's a human rights issue. Who's going to vote against human rights?" he said in a separate interview Thursday afternoon.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said in a statement the implementation of the UN declaration is essential.

"We are still reviewing the details of the government's bill," he said. "We will be looking forward to working in partnership with Indigenous Peoples to improve the bill."

Conservative Indigenous services critic Gary Vidal's office said the party is still reviewing the legislation and does not have immediate comment.

Ontario Conservative MPP Greg Rickford said in a statement the federal Liberals tabled bill C-15 before completing adequate consultation, adding that Indigenous communities need concrete action from Ottawa.

In a technical briefing provided to media, Justice Department officials said the bill includes a framework to create ways to align federal law with the declaration over time. It does not transform the declaration itself into law.

The proposed legislation builds upon a private member's bill from former New Democrat MP Romeo Saganash, which the House of Commons passed two years ago.

That bill stalled in the Senate, where Conservative senators argued it could have unintended legal and economic consequences, and then died when Parliament dissolved.

The UN declaration, which Canada endorsed in 2010, affirms the rights of Indigenous Peoples to self-determination and to their language, culture and traditional lands.

It also spells out the need for free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous Peoples on anything that infringes on their lands or rights, but Bill C-15 doesn't include a definition of such consent.

Lametti said it would be impossible to define a free, prior and informed consent because every consent requires a unique process that includes a dialogue with Indigenous Peoples.

"This is something that is so contextual that will be different with each individual nation, with each project, with each with each level of government," he said.

He said the need for consent doesn't represent a veto.

"Free, prior and informed consent is about respecting the human rights of Indigenous Peoples," Lametti said. "The document itself is about human rights generally, your right to education, language and culture, self determination, (and these) are things that Canadians believe in."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 3, 2020.

---

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press

#SPACERACE2.0

Special delivery: Japan space probe to bring asteroid dust to Earth

Call it a special delivery: after six years in space, Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe is heading home, but only to drop off its rare asteroid samples before starting a new mission.

© Behrouz MEHRI Hayabusa-2 will near Earth to drop off rare asteroid samples before heading back into deep space on a new extended mission

The fridge-sized probe, launched in December 2014, has already thrilled scientists by landing on and gathering material from an asteroid some 300 million kilometres (185 million miles) from Earth.

But its work isn't over yet, with scientists from Japan's space agency JAXA now planning to extend its mission for more than a decade and targeting two new asteroids.

© Janis LATVELS Graphic explaining how Japan's Hayabusa-2 space probe will drop off asteroid samples to Earth before starting a new mission

Before that mission can begin, Hayabusa-2 needs to drop off its precious samples from the asteroid Ryugu -- "dragon palace" in Japanese.

Scientists are hoping the capsule will contain around 0.1 grams of material that will offer clues about what the solar system was like at its birth some 4.6 billion years ago.

© Handout Hayabusa-2 needs to drop off its precious samples from the asteroid Ryugu - 'dragon palace' in Japanese

The samples could shed light on "how matter is scattered around the solar system, why it exists on the asteroid and how it is related to Earth," project manager Yuichi Tsuda told reporters ahead of Sunday's drop-off.

The material is in a capsule that will separate from Hayabusa-2 while it is some 220,000 kilometres above Earth and then plummet into the southern Australian desert.

They were collected during two crucial phases of the mission last year.

In the first, Hayabusa-2 touched down on Ryugu to collect dust before firing an "impactor" to stir up pristine material from below the surface. Months later, it touched down to collect additional samples.

© HO Half the material from Ryugu will be kept for future study as advances are made in analytic technology

"We may be able to get substances that will give us clues to the birth of a planet and the origin of life... I'm very interested to see the substances," mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa told reporters

.

© David Lory Videographic presenting the Hayabusa2 mission. Nearly six years after its launch from the Tanegashima space centre in Japan, the Japanese space probe Hayabusa2 is on the verge of completing its mission.

Protected from sunlight and radiation inside the capsule, the samples will be collected, processed, then flown to Japan.

Half the material will be shared between JAXA, US space agency NASA and other international organisations, and the rest kept for future study as advances are made in analytic technology.

VIDEO HAYABUSA2'S MISSION TO ASTEROID RYUGU

- Two new asteroid targets -


After dropping off its samples, Hayabusa-2 will complete a series of orbits around the sun for around six years -- recording data on dust in interplanetary space and observing exoplanets.

It will then approach the first of its target asteroids in July 2026.

The probe won't get that close to the asteroid named 2001 CC21, but scientists hope it will be able to photograph it as it completes a "high speed swing-by".

Getting so close could also help develop knowledge about how to protect Earth against asteroid impact.

Hayabusa-2 will then head towards its main target, 1998 KY26, a ball-shaped asteroid with a diameter of just 30 metres. When the probe arrives at the asteroid in July 2031, it will be approximately 300 million kilometres from Earth

And the target poses significant new challenges, not least because it is spinning rapidly, rotating on its axis about every 10 minutes.

Hayabusa-2 will observe and photograph the asteroid, but it is unlikely to land and collect samples, as it probably won't have enough fuel to return them to Earth.

Still, just making it to the asteroid will be a feat, said Seiichiro Watanabe, a Hayabusa-2 probe project scientist and professor of planetary science at Nagoya University.

"It's like an athlete who scored two tries at a Rugby World Cup game attempting to compete in the Olympics, 10 years after switching over to figure skating," he told reporters.

"We had never expected that the Hayabusa-2 would carry out another mission... but it's a scientifically meaningful and fascinating plan."

The mission extension comes with risks, including that Hayabusa-2's equipment will degrade in deep space, but it also offers a rare, comparatively cost-effective way to continue research.

The probe is the successor to JAXA's first asteroid explorer "Hayabusa", which means falcon in Japanese.

That probe brought back dust samples from a smaller, potato-shaped asteroid in 2010 after a seven-year odyssey, and was hailed as a scientific triumph

kh/sah/kaf/rma

#SPACERACE2.0

Chinese spacecraft carrying lunar rocks lifts off from moon

BEIJING — A Chinese spacecraft lifted off from the moon Thursday night with a load of lunar rocks, the first stage of its return to Earth, the government space agency reported.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Chang’e 5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon and the first to take off from it again, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions for Beijing’s space program, which also has a orbiter and rover headed to Mars.

The Chang’e 5 touched down Tuesday on the Sea of Storms on the moon’s near side. Its mission: collect about 2 kilograms (4 pounds) of lunar rocks and bring them back to Earth, the first return of samples since Soviet spacecraft did so in the 1970s. Earlier, the U.S. Apollo astronauts brought back hundreds of pounds of moon rocks.

The landing site is near a formation called the Mons Rumker and may contain rocks billions of years younger than those retrieved earlier.

The ascent vehicle lifted off from the moon shortly after 11 p.m. Beijing time Thursday (1500 GMT) and was due to rendezvous with a return vehicle in lunar orbit, then transfer the samples to a capsule, according to the China National Space Administration. The moon rocks and debris were sealed inside a special canister to avoid contamination.

It wasn't clear when the linkup would occur. After the transfer, the ascent module would be ejected and the capsule would remain in lunar orbit for about a week, awaiting the optimal time to make the trip back to Earth.

Video: China's historic lunar mission moves into key phase (cbc.ca)

Chinese officials have said the capsule with the samples is due to land on Earth around the middle of the month. Touchdown is planned for the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, where China’s astronauts have made their return in Shenzhou spacecraft.

Chang’e 5's lander, which remained on the moon, was capable of scooping samples from the surface and drilling 2 metres (about 6 feet).

While retrieving samples was its main task, the lander also was equipped to extensively photograph the area, map conditions below the surface with ground penetrating radar and analyze the lunar soil for minerals and water content.

Right before the ascent vehicle lifted off, the lander unfurled what the space administration called the first free-standing Chinese flag on the moon. The agency posted an image — apparently taken from the lander — of the ascend vehicle firing its engines as it took off.

Chang’e 5 has revived talk of China one day sending astronauts to the moon and possibly building a scientific base there, although no timeline has been proposed for such projects.

China launched its first temporary orbiting laboratory in 2011 and a second in 2016. Plans call for a permanent space station after 2022, possibly to be serviced by a reusable space plane.

While China is boosting co-operation with the European Space Agency and others, interactions with NASA are severely limited by U.S. concerns over the secretive nature and close military links of the Chinese program.