How China's Military Views the United States

chemgator · Nov 12, 2022

China's frustrated masses have taken to using an unofficial Chinese language to criticize government policies, including zero-Covid. That language is Cantonese, a southern language that apparently very few government censors understand. The official language of the Chinese government is Mandarin.

Chinese are criticizing zero-Covid — in language censors don't seem to understand | CNN

In September this year, US-based independent media monitoring organization China Digital Times noted numerous dissatisfied Cantonese posts slipping past censors in response to mass Covid testing requirements in Guangdong.

“Perhaps because Weibo’s content censorship system has difficulty recognizing the spelling of Cantonese characters, many posts in spicy, bold and straightforward language still survive. But if the same content is written in Mandarin, it is likely to be blocked or deleted,” said the organization, which is affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley.

In nearby Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, anti-government demonstrators in 2019 often used Cantonese wordplay both for protest slogans and to guard against potential surveillance by mainland Chinese authorities.

Now, Cantonese appears to be offering those fed-up with China’s continuous zero-Covid lockdowns an avenue for more subtle displays of dissent.
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chemgator · Nov 14, 2022

China hits record number of Covid cases in major cities, including Beijing. The numbers are fairly trivial compared to the population size, but China may be under-reporting.

Chinese cities including Beijing report record COVID cases

HANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Beijing and several other major cities in China reported record COVID-19 infections on Monday, putting authorities under more pressure to quell outbreaks quickly while also trying to reduce the impact on people's lives and on economic activity.

Nationwide, 16,072 new locally transmitted cases were reported by the National Health Commission, up from 14,761 on Sunday and the highest in China since April 25, when Shanghai was battling with its most serious outbreak.

Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Zhengzhou all recorded their worst day so far, though in the case of the capital the tally was few hundred cases, while the other cities were counting in thousands.

The case load is very small compared with infection levels encountered in other countries, but China's insistence on clearing outbreaks as soon as they emerge under its zero-COVID policy has increased the impact on communities and on the economy.
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chemgator · Nov 14, 2022

China continues to expand coal burning capacity as other developed countries shrink theirs. China is building two thirds of the global coal burning capacity of 300 GW that is going on-line in the next few years, while European countries are on track to reduce their coal burning footprint by 75% by 2030.

Rich nations stick to coal phase-out plans as China builds new projects

LONDON (Reuters) - Rich nations have stuck to pledges to phase-out coal power despite the war in Ukraine to help reach their climate targets but expansion of China’s coal fleet risks counteracting the impact of the closures, a report said on Tuesday.

Countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy forum and the European Union are on track to close more than 75% of their coal power capacity from 2010 to 2030, the report by the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) said.

Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal are the single biggest contributor to climate change and weaning the world off coal is considered vital to achieving global climate targets.

While some countries such as Britain and Germany have delayed the closure of coal plants this winter due to the war in Ukraine and concerns over Russian energy supply, overall phase-out dates remained intact, according to the report released to coincide with the COP27 climate summit of world leaders in Egypt.
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G8trGr8t · Nov 15, 2022

chemgator said: ↑

But U.S. Coast Guard cutter inspects a few hundred Chinese fishing vessels off of Ecuador, and three vessels run away while one tries to ram the cutter (unsuccessfully).

The Chinese gov't immediately responded by demanding that the U.S. stop inspection their fishing vessels.

China fishing fleet defied U.S. in standoff on the high seas
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wish someone would sink the whole damn chinese fleet. they are looting the resources of other countries and killing the ocean

G8trGr8t · Nov 15, 2022

tampagtr said: ↑

Adam Tooze on the degree of German economic entanglement with China, leading to paragraphs like this

Ola Kallenius, CEO of Mercedes Benz, meanwhile, has suggested the west’s hands will be tied if Beijing were to try to seize Taiwan. “If one thinks that the Chinese economy could be unbundled from the European or the American, it is a total illusion,” he said in an interview with Die Welt in September. “It would have dramatic consequences for the world economy that would in no way be comparable to those of the Ukraine war.” BMW CEO Oliver Zipse October 19 even went so far as to defend China’s market policies and compare them favorably to how President Joe Biden is changing the playing field in the U.S. The 50-50 joint ventures that Beijing required foreign carmakers to set up in China were “fair for everyone,” Zipse said in an interview near BMW's plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He warned that the Biden administration’s climate law designed to wean the US off battery materials sourced from China could provoke retaliatory steps and set off a “dangerous” game of trade barriers.

Chartbook #168: Germany's economic entanglement with China
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Many Germans have turned into bootlickers of both Putin and Xi in exchange for a $$. Hopefully we have all learned that becoming too entangled with dictators is never a good idea

G8trGr8t · Nov 15, 2022

More people rioting over covid controls. Xi is rapidly losing the trust of the people and that has traditionally been the CCP biggest fear

Chaotic scenes in southern Chinese city as Covid curbs fuel unrest | China | The Guardian

Crowds in the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou have crashed through lockdown barriers and marched on to streets in a rare outburst of public anger about Covid restrictions days after the Chinese government announced that it was easing them.

According to videos widely shared on Twitter, hundreds cheered as they charged through the streets in Haizhu district in chaotic scenes in southwestern Guangzhou on Monday night. In one piece of footage, protesters overturned a police car.

Local police declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian. “I cannot answer your question,” a staff member at the Datang police station in Haizhu district said on Tuesday.

Guangzhou, home to nearly 19 million people, has been the centre of Covid outbreaks in China, with the number of cases surging in recent days. Daily infections of Covid-19 in the city have topped 5,000 for the first time, leading to speculation that localised lockdowns could widen.

Protesters clash with Chinese authorities enforcing COVID restrictions | PBS NewsHour
BEIJING (AP) — Police in northeastern China said that seven people have been arrested following a clash between residents and authorities enforcing COVID-19 quarantine restrictions.

The violence comes as China reports new cases nationwide, with 2,230 cases reported Tuesday in the southern manufacturing and technology hub of Guangzhou.

tampagtr · Nov 15, 2022

G8trGr8t said: ↑

Many Germans have turned into bootlickers of both Putin and Xi in exchange for a $$. Hopefully we have all learned that becoming too entangled with dictators is never a good idea
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That's a bit cruder than the way I would put it. I would put it is just the fact the degree of economic entanglement will make it hard to disengage. In one way, disarming Germany has made them more vulnerable to these type of appeals, because they project foreign-policy economically.

tampagtr · Nov 15, 2022

Victor Shih and Mike McFaul both see positive signs in the CCP readout from the Biden -Xi meeting

chemgator · Nov 18, 2022

An interesting article on winning the tech war with China. One key is keeping semi-conductor chip technology out of China's hands, and the key to making that happen is keeping our allies that have computer chip technology from sharing it with China.

The Only Way the U.S. Can Win the Tech War with China

In announcing the end of the post-Cold War era, Secretary Blinken did not quite say that a new Cold War with China has begun, but he came close. Restricting commercial trade in military-relevant technologies is straight out of the Cold War playbook, and the United States and China agree that leadership in AI technology is critical to the future of military power. Chinese military AI systems, including ones that advertise lethal autonomous weapon functionality—are known to be full of U.S. chips.

However, preventing a military AI revolution in China requires not only blocking the sale of U.S. chips, but also preventing China from making such chips themselves or buying them elsewhere. To block China’s alternate paths, the Biden Administration is exploiting U.S. technological dominance of key chokepoints in the global semiconductor supply chain. Specifically, the U.S. is choking off China’s access to U.S. chip design software, manufacturing equipment, and equipment components—all of which are areas where U.S. technology is a critical and nearly irreplaceable input.
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An interesting side-note on allies who share technology with our enemies: Britain's Rolls Royce was so bankrupt (financially and morally) after WWII, that it decided to sell its most powerful engine technology to the Russians as long as Russia "promised not to use it on military aircraft". Stalin asked "What fools would sell us their secrets?" U.S. pilots were shot down in the Korean War by the dozens by MIG-15 aircraft with Rolls Royce engine technology. For some reason, I thought that Russia developed their jet engine technology through their extensive knowledge of physics and possibly a few captured German jet aircraft.

In 1946, the British jet engine industry—in dire financial straits after the end of World War II—cut a deal to sell 25 Rolls Royce Nene Jet engines to the Soviet Union along with a license for the Soviets to domestically produce the engine. At the time, the Soviet jet engine industry was significantly behind the British. The British government secured a promise from the Soviets that the engine would exclusively be used for commercial passenger and transport aircraft. However, the Soviets promptly reverse engineered the Nene and designed the MIG-15 military fighter jet around it. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin himself reportedly said of the British, “what fools would sell us their secrets?” For the U.S. and our allies fighting in the Korean War, the MIG-15 was the scourge of the skies. U.S. aircraft losses to the superior MIG-15s were so devastating that the U.S. was forced to ground its bomber fleet at a critical point in the war.
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And it isn't the first time that England's greed and short-sightedness killed large numbers of Americans. Guess which country taught Japan how to make aircraft carriers before WWII? Hopefully, England doesn't know anything about computer chip manufacturing.

duggers_dad · Nov 19, 2022

China’s dogged dedication to Zero-Covid is madness. That said, it wasn’t China’s fault that the rest of the world became China.

tampagtr · Nov 19, 2022

Very important read for those interested in this thread

chemgator · Nov 20, 2022

One business executive believes that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would result in a "Great Depression" occurring in the U.S., once China seizes the semiconductor manufacturing there.

Ken Griffin warns U.S. faces ‘immediate Great Depression’ if China seizes Taiwan’s semiconductor industry

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin worries about America’s dependence on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry and that U.S. restrictions on selling advanced computer chips to China could make invading Taiwan more tempting to Beijing.

America is “utterly and totally dependent on the Taiwanese for modern semiconductors,” the billionaire hedge fund chief said at this week’s Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore. “The United States has no ability to produce anywhere near the number of semiconductors it needs to run its economy.”

If China invades Taiwan and seizes its semiconductor industry, it would cause major problems in the U.S. economy, he said. China considers Taiwan its own, but the latter operates as an independent democracy and has never been controlled by Beijing.

“If we lose access to Taiwanese semiconductors, the hit to U.S. GDP is probably in the order of magnitude of 5% to 10%,” he said. “It's an immediate Great Depression.”
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This window is probably only available for a few years until the U.S. starts making its own computer chips.

It seems like it would be smart for the U.S. to encourage Taiwan to move some of its manufacturing to another country that would be safe from China's military.

toon66 · Nov 20, 2022

chemgator said: ↑

We are enforcing international standards, not our own self-serving "standards". We do it because we're the only nation that can. I'm sure the U.S. would be happy to have the European Union and maybe Japan and South Korea share in this responsibility. And it benefits all nations to have access to international waters. We don't clear the area around another country so we can bring in our own fishing vessels, like China did with the Philippines. We don't make claims to international waters and islands in international waters in case we decide we need to explore for oil. We don't build islands and then convert them to military bases to help with illegal claims over international waters. Look at all the disputes that China has with its neighbors. Without U.S. involvement, the entire Pacific would be utter chaos, with wars breaking out on a regular basis. Hegemony is using one's leadership position to take advantage of other nations. While we benefit from free trade, I doubt we otherwise break even with all the money we spend on world security. If we didn't provide security for Pacific Rim countries (and the oceans), China would provide it by default, and then we would see what hegemony really is.

India is a perfect example. China is very bold with its move on the border with India, because the U.S. military is unlikely to get involved in a dispute over 24 sq. mi. at the edge of the Himalayas between two nuclear powers.

I just don't think that China is very appreciative of its largest customer (and its largest supplier of five-fingered technology).
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Chinese fishing vessels routinely rape the Galapagos Islands. They illegally plunder the fishing grounds of third world countries to such an extent that local fisherman cannot provide for their families. A few years ago, China attempted to buy the fishing rights for the Bahamas.

Eff China.

chemgator · Nov 20, 2022

The Australian economy is suffering from a lack of exports to China and a lack of tourism from China. These issues are a result of the diplomatic problems the two countries have been having, plus Covid restrictions.

Australia Learns There’s No Replacement for the Chinese Consumer

Still, outside iron ore and other key commodities, there's been substantial pain for exporters. For a small and open economy like Australia's, branching away from the emerging global superpower is easier to imagine than realize.

China’s inability to source its massive iron ore requirements outside Western Australia’s Pilbara region means that it's still Australia’s biggest trade partner by a long way, despite the diplomatic freeze.

But for other key industries, there's been no simple substitute for Chinese consumers of quality lobster and wine or its big-spending tourists and students, who’ve also been kept away by Covid-19 restrictions. While there are some signs tensions are thawing — new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met President Xi Jinping last week, the first tete-a-tete between the countries’ leaders since 2019 — Australian businesses aren’t banking on restrictions easing anytime soon. Here is how six key sectors — tourism, seafood, wine, education, barley and coal — at the heart of China’s trade reprisals have fared.
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chemgator · Nov 20, 2022

A good article on younger Chinese rejecting factory work. Of course, factory jobs are one of the main things driving China's economy. About 18% of Chinese 16-24 years of age are unemployed, even though there are large numbers of factory jobs available.

Younger Chinese are spurning factory jobs that power the economy

The rejection of grinding factory work by Zhu and other Chinese in their 20s and 30s is contributing to a deepening labour shortage that is frustrating manufacturers in China, which produces a third of the goods consumed globally.

Factory bosses say they would produce more, and faster, with younger blood replacing their ageing workforce. But offering the higher wages and better working conditions that younger Chinese want would risk eroding their competitive advantage.

And smaller manufacturers say large investments in automation technology are either unaffordable or imprudent when rising inflation and borrowing costs are curbing demand in China's key export markets.

More than 80% of Chinese manufacturers faced labour shortages ranging from hundreds to thousands of workers this year, equivalent to 10% to 30% of their workforce, a survey by CIIC Consulting showed. China's Ministry of Education forecasts a shortage of nearly 30 million manufacturing workers by 2025, larger than Australia's population.
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tampagtr · Nov 22, 2022

Good analysis of potential PRC invasion. Of how difficult the Chinese test would be and I’m very high economic price they would pay, which again seems to make invasion and unwise decision. Of course, many countries have made it on wise decision. We have a perfect example now in the Ukraine.

One thing this piece does not do is analyze the effect of a blockade. Dexter Filkins current piece in the New Yorker also agrees that invasion would be extremely difficult. He mentions the topography and the lack of beaches that would permit invasion. However, he does talk about the fact that a blockade of Taiwan might force capitulation

War for Taiwan: What Happens After

chemgator · Nov 23, 2022

A Taiwanese colonel is being investigated for taking payments from China for three years with a promise to lead his men to surrender in the event of a Chinese invasion.

China Reportedly Paid Taiwan Officer to Surrender if War Started

The colonel received NT$40,000 ($1,280) each month from China after he was recruited to spy by a retired Taiwanese military officer in 2019, the Central News Agency reported Tuesday, without saying where it got the information.
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The officer was suspected of taking a photo holding a signed letter promising to surrender to China if fighting started, CNA said. Other large media outlets in the self-ruled island, such as the Liberty Times and United Daily News, reported similar details on the case, without saying where they got the information.

The episode underscores the challenges Taiwan faces stopping its larger, resource-rich neighbor from snooping, especially on its armed forces. The US has long been worried about Taiwan’s ability to keep technology and other secrets out of Beijing’s hands.

Former Vice Defense Minister Chang Che-ping -- once Taiwan’s third most important military official -- was investigated in 2021 due to concern about contact with a Chinese spy ring. Chang was cleared and served as witness in a case that eventually led to the indictments on spy charges in June of a retired general and lieutenant colonel. It was unclear how their situations were resolved.
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chemgator · Nov 26, 2022

It appears that China is starting to unravel. Protests are erupting across China, in particular at universities. The protests are mainly against Covid restrictions, but also against Chairman Xi, demanding that he step down. Some are demanding that the Communist Party in China must go. Apparently, Covid restrictions prevented firefighters from reaching a fire in an apartment building in western China in time to save lives.

Protests erupt across China in unprecedented challenge to Xi Jinping's zero-Covid policy | CNN

Beijing CNN — Protests are erupting across China, including at universities and in Shanghai where hundreds chanted “Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!”, in an unprecedented show of defiance against the country’s stringent and increasingly costly zero-Covid policy.

A deadly fire at an apartment block in the country’s far western region of Xinjiang that killed 10 people and injured nine on Thursday appears to have fueled the anger, as video emerged that seemed to suggest lockdown measures delayed firefighters from reaching the victims.

Protests broke out in cities and at universities across China on Saturday and early Sunday morning, according to social media videos and witness accounts.
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Protests have also broken out in the capital city Beijing. One student at the prestigious Peking University told CNN that when he arrived at the protest scene at around 1 a.m. Sunday local time, there were around 100 students, and security guards were using jackets to cover a protest slogan painted on the wall.
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duggers_dad · Nov 27, 2022

Elections in Taiwan have dealt a nasty blow to the Taiwan independence movement. KMT says “Thanks, Nancy!”

duggers_dad · Nov 27, 2022

If we’re going to fight China we’d better do it sooner than later. PE class in their primary schools ...

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