How China's Military Views the United States

China makes a move away from capitalism and towards socialism.

China culture crackdown a sign of 'profound' political change - commentary

Um, why does Chinese culture have to be "masculine"?

The basis of their problem is too much corruption. It is likely that the rich do not pay taxes on all their income. They bribe officials to look the other way and cook the books to pretend they are making much less income. They are so new to dealing with wealth that they do not understand the importance of verifying accounting, and confirming that people are paying the correct amount of taxes. They have hundreds of Donald Trumps roaming around, paying taxes on millions in income while pocketing billions. Chinese money is often sent to Swiss bank accounts both to hide it from the Chinese government, and as a hedge against the government coming after them (if they can escape China, they can start a new life with their Swiss bank account).

And fixing this problem can easily create another problem--if there is not much money to be made in business, China's most clever and capable businessmen will simply retire early (or migrate to another country where they can make more money), and the businesses will fall apart.

 

Some clarification on why Chinese culture "has to be masculine". They have decided to ban "sissy-men" from television and other media outlets. Apparently, you can't go to war with a bunch of soldiers preening themselves in front of a mirror.

Chinese Communist Party bans 'sissy men' to save 'revolutionary culture'

They lost the support of women by trying to force them to have children they don't want. Now they are losing the support of the next generation by taking away their junior pop-star culture. They may be running out of classes of people to offend.

 

The latest in China: they believe they will be short on coal and natural gas this winter, and are asking factories to scale back production to conserve fuel. Apparently, aluminum products will be hit the hardest, because aluminum processing requires a massive amount of energy (I believe the Icelanders will do well because they use geothermal energy to make aluminum).

This does seem a bit odd combined with the news that China is selling off part of its strategic petroleum reserve, unless that is in recognition that their factories and economies will have to slow down and require less diesel and gasoline to deliver and manufacture products.

Global Energy Crunch Leaves China Facing More Power Shortages

Their economy does seem to be in a bit of trouble at the moment, between this news and their recent problems with Covid. I cannot imagine our economy going through similar measures.

 

More on China's energy problems. Things are getting worse, and will continue to get worse through the winter. They have a coal shortage just as freezing weather has started moving into northeastern cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Harbin, etc.). Some factories supplying Tesla and Apple have shut down due to lack of power. Shops in the northeast are lit by candles. China has also been trying to make progress on environmental commitments. Power cuts have been expanded from industrial sectors to residential areas.

China power crunch spreads, shutting factories and dimming growth outlook

Makes you wonder if China would be in this mess if they spent more on infrastructure and less on military hardware in the last decade.

 

China is having a busy day. After getting Huawei executive Meng Wangzhou back from Canada, it immediately released its two Canadian hostages.

It was a major internal propaganda victory for the Chinese government, who portrayed the U.S. as persecuting innocent Chinese business executives. The Chinese gov't then "stood up" to the Americans and forced the bully Americans to "back down". It played very well to Chinese nationalists, while offending the rest of the world. The Canadians were charged with espionage for having business ties to North Korea, or for being Canadian in China.

China celebrates Meng Wanzhou's return as a victory — even at the cost of its global image - CNN

Should have prosecuted her.

 

I was not aware of this when it happened. Apparently, China hacked into the power grid for Mumbai when they had their little border dispute and shut down the power to the entire city of 20 million people.

China Appears to Warn India: Push Too Hard and the Lights Could Go Out

A new article believes it may have been a warning to the U.S.

We're not in competition with China; we're at war, argues a provocative new book

The article indicates that the hacking by China is much more pervasive than most Americans are aware of. U.S. companies do not like to admit that they've been hacked, because it opens them up to legal liability for not having done more to prevent the hacking.

 

The latest in China news: Round Heads. Apparently, Chinese people do not like the back of their heads being flat in any way because they feel it makes them less attractive. How to solve the problem? Put a helmet on new-born babies to reshape their heads, of course!

Round heads are all the rage in China, so some Chinese parents are putting their babies in pricey headgear to make their skulls rounder

What could go wrong?

Sounds reasonable. Although a giant ring clamp would be cheaper.

 

I'm sure its within the forthcoming 89-Dashes Line. They will also lay claim to Central and South America.

 

China set off a panic by recommending that people stockpile supplies for winter. Apparently, for many Chinese, "winter" is a euphemism for war.

China's advice to stockpile sparks speculation of Taiwan war

With everything going on (Covid, energy shortage, Taiwan, Australia, etc.), the Chinese have to be worn to a frazzle.

 

China is working on relations with neighbors to the north and west--Russia and Khazakstan. They are damming a river and taking water that would ordinarily flow through those countries on the way to the Arctic Sea.

Chinese engineers digging world's longest tunnel in Xinjiang desert hit a wall - of gushing water

 

More from China: the major reason for the chip shortage (and the resulting car shortage in the U.S.) is not Covid, manufacturing problems, or some strange Chinese policy, its hoarding. Distributors are hoarding the chips and waiting for the price to go up. Some chip distributors were fined by China for increasing prices by 40x (!). China imported $32 billion worth of chip manufacturing equipment from Taiwan in 2020 (a 20% increase from the previous year), so capacity should not be the problem.

Japanese Automakers: Chinese Probe Into Chip Hoarding Has Shown Results

 

England has decided to invest in a rare earths metal processing plant in Yorkshire that will produce 5% of the world's demand. It will get raw materials from Australia. They also have plans to "sweep the Pacific floor" for lithium, which sounds unlikely to be feasible. What is happening is that the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that China will be using much of its supply of rare earths for its own needs. Also, China combined its three major companies that produce rare earths into one single company, which will make it easier to use its near-monopoly situation to its advantage.

The £125m Yorkshire project aiming to break China's rare earths stranglehold

There is an operation planned to extract a few rare earths in Round Top, Texas, including half of the critical rare earth metals for the U.S.

USA Rare Earth to produce nearly half of critical minerals in USGS’ updated list

Hopefully, the U.S. government will learn from its mistakes with the California mine (not sure if it was Obama's mistake or the state of California) that allowed Molycorp to go under and close the mine there. We were spending a fortune on battery companies that never commercialized, but not so much on the mine that was feeding these companies.