How China's Military Views the United States

From the article:

It's going to be a tough competition between Putin and Xi to see who will get to be Dr. Evil. Putin has a "head start" with the bald head.

 

China damages undersea internet cable from Taiwan to Matsu Island, causing Taiwanese citizens to flee the island. The cables are occasionally damaged by fishing vessels, but it has been happening so often that Taiwan is wondering if China is damaging the cables intentionally.

Taiwan residents flee remote islands as China severs internet sea cables

 

China works on reducing "high bride prices". In some places, the groom's family is expected to pay $20,000 or more. Apparently, the high prices are reducing marriage rates.

In China, Marriage Rates Are Down and ‘Bride Prices’ Are Up

The reason for the payments goes back to the fact that in traditional China, the woman who gets married now "belongs to" the husband's family. She gets to visit her own family for one day every year. She is also responsible for taking care of the husband's parents in retirement (preparing food, getting medicines, etc.). There is no Social Security in rural China--the son's bride is the Social Security. A payment is supposed to make the bride's parents less unhappy about losing their daughter.

 

From what I've seen of China (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Lanzhou, and a few smaller cities), if he were living in a major city, he would be paying as much or more than the U.S., especially for rent. If he's not living in a major city, the quality of housing, medical care, and other things are MUCH worse than the U.S. Apartments are designed to last 70 years, but often are condemned and demolished long before then (the buildings cannot be properly maintained). Hospitals are poorly funded outside of the major cities--even the lighting in the hospitals is poor, and the floors are often dirty. Everything is crowded, and the air pollution can be severe (much worse than the U.S.). Regulations on factories are poorly enforced. Products on store shelves are rarely inspected for hazards--for a while, Chinese companies were putting melamine (an industrial chemical) into baby milk formula because it was a cheap way to get it to pass the quality tests. Taxes are cheap because the government provides few actual services (besides spying on you).

Corruption is so bad in China that their infrastructure will fall apart as fast as their apartment buildings. When building their high-speed rail system that superficially appears so impressive, they used substandard fly ash to make the concrete that holds up the elevated rail lines. That means their rail lines can be expected to crack and fall apart decades before they should. (The way that Chinese fly ash companies got away with the low quality was to send the driver in with a load of bad fly ash and a sample of good fly ash for testing, which they presented to the government tester with a small amount of cash. We know that this was widespread because their HSR system required seven times as much high quality fly ash as the entire country produced, and they didn't import any.)

China is not a bad place to work if you have a good hotel and a company driver. The people are generally nice to Americans. But most Americans wouldn't want to live there. And the poor living standards and lack of political freedom is a big part of why younger Chinese people do not want to have children, which is why their population is shrinking.

 

China is producing a huge amount of lithium carbonate, but can't find any customers for it. Demand for EV's in China has plummeted--I'm not sure if there is some specific reason, or if their economy is going south. Members of a conference are talking about price fixing attempts to prevent the price from dropping any lower.

I do know that not all lithium carbonate is the same. The chemical manufacturers in the U.S. that make the carbonate have very strict purity requirements that affect battery performance, and it is apparently very difficult to meet the specs. Hence, the price of $36k/tonne, even in China (most commodity chemicals are priced at less than $1000/tonne, for comparison).

Exclusive-Chinese lithium producers set price floor as demand evaporates -sources

 

Looks like China's disagreements with Taiwan are about to heat up. China has announced that it will start boarding and inspecting Taiwanese vessels in the Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan is telling shipping companies to not allow China to board their vessels and call the Taiwanese Coast Guard instead.

China to inspect ships in Taiwan Strait, Taiwan says won't cooperate