China's Covid-19 vaccination drive is about to exceed the 2 billion mark
  China is on course to administer more than 2 billion coronavirus vaccine doses by Friday, after authorities ramped up the country's inoculation drive — at times triggering backlash through the use of heavy-handed tactics.
As of Wednesday, China had administered more than 1.98 billion doses of its domestically-produced Covid-19 vaccines, according to the National Health Commission (NHC), accounting for 40% of the 5 billion shots given globally.
That's a billion shots given in just 10 weeks, after the country passed its first billion mark in June — putting China ahead of the United States and the United Kingdom in doses administered per 100 people.
China's push to boost vaccination rates has accelerated since July, when the highly contagious Delta variant sent infections rising across the country.
While the outbreak now appears to be waning — with the daily caseload lingering in the single digits, the inoculation drive has continued to gather pace.
Speaking at a health conference last Friday, China's top respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan said the country is aiming to fully vaccinate 80% of its 1.4 billion population by the end of the year.
China's latest inoculation campaign has targeted the elderly, minors and residents in the country's vast rural areas — groups that had not been covered in earlier vaccination rounds.
In the southern province of Guangdong, a 111-year-old villager rolled up his sleeve last week to receive a coronavirus vaccine shot. In some remote areas, officials arranged home pickups and bussed in residents to vaccination sites.
The NHC has repeatedly stressed that vaccinations should be voluntary. But under pressure to get more shots into arms, local authorities are increasingly turning to coercive measures to ensure compliance.
Across the country, a growing number of localities have banned unvaccinated residents from accessing public services, including hospitals, schools and public transport.
In the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, district governments announced that residents who refused to be vaccinated without a legitimate reason would impact their social credit — a controversial nationwide system that uses big data to incentivize certain behaviors.
And in Qinghai province, a residential community issued a notice this week, warning residents their pensions, medical insurance and social allowances would be suspended if a member of their immediate family failed to get vaccinated. An official said the notice was meant to "scare" people into getting inoculated, because the community had not met its vaccination target, state-run news reported.
These measures have drawn wide criticism and anger on Chinese social media, with many users accusing local authorities of violating the central government's policy and making the voluntary vaccination drive de facto mandatory.
Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the discrepancy between central government policy and its local implementation is a typical occurrence in China's top down political system, where provincial officials are placed under tremendous pressure to meet policy targets set by Beijing.
"Failure to fulfill these targets will lead to penalization, creating this incentive for local government officials to undertake heavy-handed measures to get things done," he said.
In a sign of the seething pressure, multiple municipal governments have warned local officials they would be "seriously held accountable" if infections broke out among the unvaccinated. Some local authorities have complained that residents have been lured across borders to inoculation sites in neighboring towns by cash rewards — as officials compete to meet vaccination targets.
Despite the growing vaccination rates, there are no signs that China is preparing to relax its strict zero-Covid approach, or open up its borders anytime soon.
Zhong, the top respiratory expert, said China could establish "effective herd immunity" when the vaccination rate hits 80%.
But Huang with the Council on Foreign Relations said he remained skeptical, given the lower efficacy rates of Chinese vaccines and the surge of Delta variant breakthrough infections across the world.
In Israel, where 78% of those 12 and older have been fully vaccinated (mostly with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine), daily cases have surged in recent weeks, and authorities have started to offer booster shots to older citizens.
Chinese health officials earlier also floated the idea of a booster shot, but so far have not revealed any concrete steps toward the plan.
 Nectar Gan is China Reporter for CNN International based in Hong Kong. She covers the changes taking place in China, and their impact on the world.  Steve George is Senior Editor for CNN International in Hong Kong. He oversees coverage from across the Asia-Pacific region, with a special focus on China. A boy band that lasted three days  They sing, they dance, they're impeccably dressed — and they're all children, mostly under 10.
Panda Boys, China's newest boy band, debuted on August 21 with their first song and music video. But just three days later, the group disbanded, following public outcry over their age and concerns of exploitation.
The seven members, dubbed the "cubs" in promotional materials, range from 7 to 11 years old. Photos on their social media account showed the baby-faced boys with makeup and carefully mussed hair, decked out in miniature blazers and street-style joggers.
But their debut quickly drew criticism from social media users, who saw the band as a sign of China's "idol" industry going too far.
The idol industry, also seen in Japan and South Korea, recruits pop star hopefuls often at a young age, putting them through months of intense training. The trainees typically enter talent show-style competitions before making a grand debut, with multiple rounds of voting and performances.
Trainees are expected to adhere to strictly controlled lifestyles and diets, and make regular media appearances.
It's a grueling process that has already come under scrutiny in recent years for the strain placed on teenage and adult trainees — let alone children below 10.
"If the kids are school aged, they should go to school. Let them make their own decisions when they have the right to choose," one Weibo user commented.
"Does this suggest that the next boy group that debuts has to include children in a nursery?" another user wrote, according to state-run tabloid the Global Times.
Many other comments accused the adults involved of exploiting children for financial gain.
The band's management agency responded on Tuesday by announcing a rebrand of the group's Chinese name. "We are doing something meaningful with a group of children who love singing and dancing," it insisted.
But pressure only built as state-run media chimed in.
"More and more young idols are attracting the attention of capital and are expected to share the booming idol economy," wrote state-run broadcaster CCTV in an online commentary. But being pushed into the entertainment market too early "will also pass on the wrong value of 'early fame' to the society, misleading young people," it added, calling to "stop the unhealthy tendencies and evil influences of using the idol economy to collect money without a bottom line."
The emphasis on capital reflects the government's ongoing crackdown on private enterprise, which has taken aim at tech companies, corporate giants, and the entertainment industry.
A day later, Asia Starry Sky Group announced that it would dissolve the Panda Boys.
"We will seriously and properly handle the follow-up work. Thanks for the supervision and criticism from society and online," it said in a brief statement — marking the end to what may be China's shortest-lived boy band.
 Jessie Yeung is a Digital Producer for CNN International in Hong Kong, she writes breaking news and features about the Asia-Pacific region.  Somewhere, over the ... ring road Beijing residents were stunned by a double rainbow that hung over the city's skyline on Thursday, lit by the golden rays of the setting sun after a heavy rainstorm.  China's top court is putting companies that overwork their employees on notice.
The Supreme People's Court on Thursday issued a lengthy condemnation of what's commonly known in China as "996," a work culture that refers to working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week and is said to be common among the country's big technology companies and startups.
"Recently, extreme overtime work in some industries has received widespread attention," the court wrote in its statement, which it issued with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. Authorities wrote that workers deserve rights for "rest and vacation," adding that "adhering to the national working hour system is the legal obligation of employers."
The court cited several examples of companies it said violated labor rules, including an unnamed courier company that it said told employees to work 996 hours. Telling employees to work that much "has seriously violated the law on extending the upper limit of working hours and should be deemed invalid," the court said.
Public backlash against the practice isn't new. Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, for example, was heavily criticized in China two years ago after he called 996 culture a "huge blessing." And Chinese labor law already prohibits employees from working that long.
But the latest edict from the country's top court comes as Beijing embarks on a massive crackdown on private business in China, rolling out new regulations and fines to curtail the influence of powerful corporations.
"There is nothing wrong with advocating working hard, but it cannot be a shield for employers to evade legal responsibilities," the court wrote Thursday.
--Additional reporting by CNN's Beijing Bureau.  Jill Disis is the Asia Editor of CNN Business. She oversees coverage of markets, companies, technology and major economies throughout the region. Around Asia
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