By Godfree Roberts – selected from his extensive weekly newsletter : Here Comes China
You can get it here: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe
In the previous sitrep, there was good discussion on the High-Temperature Superconducting maglev train which is as fast as jetliner.
We continue the theme of transportation but this time on the water. China’s largest domestically made all-electric passenger ship, Junlyu, in the Wuhan section of the Yangtze River in central China’s Hubei Province. The Wuhan Yangtze River ferries have a history of 120 years. They have transformed from simply being a form of cross-river transportation to more of a cultural attraction. As a cruise ship on the main axis of the Yangtze River in Wuhan, Junlyu allows visitors to enjoy local scenery during a one-hour trip.
Continuing this week with notes on governance:
Xi Jinping at the recent WEF gathering.
“There is only one Earth. Let’s build a shared future for mankind: attempts to isolate, intimidate, decouple and sanction others will only push the world into division, even confrontation. History and reality have made it clear, time and again, that the misguided approach of antagonism and confrontation, be it in the form of a cold war, hot war, trade war or tech war, will eventually hurt all countries’ interests and undermine everyone’s well-being.” Xi’s complete Davos address→.
Japan sees no genocide in Xinjiang. The Japanese government, which for some time has been echoing the US on China’s human rights issues, said on Tuesday that Tokyo does not believe China has committed “genocide” in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Read full article $→
China executed SOE ex-chairman Lai Xiaomin for taking $276.8 million of bribes in exchange for his help in financing and promotions. He was also convicted of bigamy and colluding with others to embezzle 25 million yuan of public funds. Read full article →
Investment in water conservancy hit $119 billion in 2020, up 6% YoY. China will accelerate work on 150 major water conservancy projects in 2021, including the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, flood prevention in the lower Yellow River and water for Xiong’an New Area. Read full article $→
Wang Xuming said Who are the dearest? an essay about Chinese soldiers in the Korean War that once won praise from Mao – was deleted from textbooks in 2001. When he tried to include it in the 2013 textbook revision, his boss said the text “is not appropriate with the current Northeast Asia situation.” Finally, the text has reappeared in the 2021 national textbook. Read full article →
What is a Dyson Sphere? Truly Back to the Future, it’s a new game. You are a space engineer and must construct new Dyson Spheres to keep the new world computer running. Created by five Chongqing game developers, “Dyson Sphere Program” sold over 200,000 downloads at $15 in its first hour on sale and its rating on Steam is “overwhelmingly positive” based on 6,000 reviews. Read full article →
(Posted with no comment, as I myself tend to disappear into computer games and decided many years ago that there are better things to do and it is better for me to abstain – but, this one is tempting).
We end this week with Trade and IP
Volkswagen got 40% of its sales in China last year, and HSBC made most of its profits there, too. Read full article $→
China has agreed with 20 countries–including Argentina, Britain and Pakistan–to build 30 nuclear reactors. Dr. David Gattie says, “Construction, maintenance, nuclear waste handling and decommissioning plants with a 60- or 80-year life cycle makes these decades-long relationships.” Read full article →
A China-New Zealand free trade agreement eliminates remaining tariffs on $23 billion trade and opens new areas of investment: wood and paper, dairy exports, investments in aviation, education, finance, elderly care, and passenger transport. Both committed to maintaining environmental standards. Read full article $→
China bought 44.8 million tons of iron ore from India in 2020, up 88%, and the highest in nine years. Australia and Brazil remained China’s top suppliers in 2020. Australian shipments rose 7% to 713 million tons, while Brazilian supplies were up 3.5% at 235.7 million tons. Read full article →
China will build and operate a 203-km power line connecting southern Laos to Cambodia on a $150 million BOT contract. Laos plans to quadruple its hydropower capacity with the support of China and Western companies like GE are trying to capitalize on the “battery of Asia,” too. Read full article →
China Railway built Vietnam’s first metro line and trained its personnel. The 13km line is a key BRI collaboration. Read full article →
As a rising fashion brand in China, Tommy Hilfiger has been pestered by copycats. Recently, Tommy Hilfiger successfully invalidated a Chinese company’s disputed mark on the grounds of prior use and the similarities between the designated goods of the disputed trademark and its cited trademark. Read full article →
215 universities and colleges have set up AI undergraduate programs filed 389,571 AI patent applications in the past ten years, ranking first in the world, accounting for 74.7% of the global total. Top ten for top-quality research papers: US, China, Germany, Britain, Japan, Canada, France, South Korea, Italy, and Australia. Read full article →
Wind, solar and hydropower made up 57% ($11bn) of China’s total investment in energy infrastructure in 2020, up from 38% in 2019. Coal investments took up 27%, up from 15 percent in 2018. Read full article $→
The State Council published plans to become one of the world’s leading countries in international aid and development: China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era, updates two previous strategy documents and outlines Beijing’s ambitious plans to overhaul its current aid and development initiatives around the world. Read full article →
The next video discusses the African / China relationship and is not from Godfree’s newsletter. It is pre-Covid and truly interesting. The lecturer, Gyude Moore is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development and he discusses the three most important reasons that China is welcome in Africa and how they got there. Some stories are quite classic, in that for example Nancy Pelosi refuses to see African delegations, saying that she only speaks to Heads of Governments. In contrast a visiting African delegation to China is treated with the same respect as anyone else. Enjoy this truly interesting speech. I’ve heard similar testimony from Central and South America.
This represents but a fraction of what is included in the Here Comes China newsletter. If you want to learn about the Chinese world, get Godfree’s newsletter here: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe
Mr Putin at WEF : Obviously, era linked with attempts to build a centralised and unipolar world order has ended. To be honest, this era did not even begin. A mere attempt was made in this direction, but this, too, is now history.
In essence and in terms of human values, Mr Xi Jinping’s speech at the WEF did not differ much from Mr Putin’s speech. Each of them spoke about their own objectives in their own countries, but they were as one in terms of what is called a multi-polar world, relationships based on friendships and spheres of common interest and not violence, and both of them expressed an end to a single polarity and any one party ruling the world with dollars and bullets.
————-
I select these items in our regular sitrep as discussion points from a very extensive newsletter. Although our main focus at the blog is to stop Empire’s war on Russia, we have gathered other and more countries that are standing against our current and now declared defunct single polar empire. China is an important pole in our changing world and in addition, we’re watching a different method of construction, policy and management of a very large portion of our world.
This small sitrep in the past has attracted all those that want to either attack China, or say their own say, without having even read the content. Let’s stick somewhat to topic – the topic is China.
What if this unipolar planned NWO was simply unacceptable to the other leaders of the most powerful countries but instead a deal has been struck to have a multipolar world NWO where the same policies are adopted but implemented within each regions sphere of influence? The Agenda 2030 has been agreed to and will be implemented in full after all.
China is a friend of Russia. In my eyes, that’s a good thing. Russia needs friends as does China.
China has always wanted to be friends with Russia. Remember the treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689? That was the first time China signed a treaty as equals with any country. In that treaty, China also ceded all the lands north of the Altai and Stanovoy mountains (also known as the Outer Khingan Mountains in Chinese).
It all depends on whether Russia wants to continue the friendship and get away from the Brit’s dictum that there are no permanent friends or enemies, only interests. This dictum is contrary to Chinese civilisational thinking that national interest can be pursued without sacrificing friendship. And if interests are conflicting, compromises are possible to avoid conflict.
Sooner rather than later the U.S. will realize that they cannot continue on their merry way demonizing the countries that they think stand in heir way of world domination, they will be forced to embrace other countries or cease to exist in the world community, for its already beginning to show as other countries are starting to go their own way regardless of what the U.S. wants.!1
The Yangtse River had seen much larger ships long before the Brit’s man-of-war sailed up to Wuhan during the Opium War if I remember correctly. Admiral Zheng He’s flagships – the Treasure ships which was built further downstream in Nanjing.
But there are now more momentous inventions coming out of China:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9asRlrQ5-g&feature=emb_rel_end
1) A system that can control the weather over an area the size of India and 2) clean fusion power.
As I have posted before, the world should celebrate China’s advances which would surely be shared with the rest of the world.
‘executed,’ for taking bribes, people still do that? Pay heed, Hunter Biden.
Gyude Moore shared a dire vision of the future of Africa by 2050 – population explosion, extreme infrastructure deficits, debts, and lack of finance.
The only country which has the scale, experience and resources to mitigate and resolve Africa’s needs, is China.
China is not perfect and mistakes will be made. But so far, it is the one country that has made a decisive difference to Africa i.e. it had lifted Africa out from being a war-torn, impoverished and disease-ridden continent to one that has peace and a growing economy.
The ‘West’ gave ‘aid’ to Africa, plundered its resources, and also indebted it. China came to do business with Africa – which to Africans, is more dignifying. China’s model worked.
There is another momentous event coming up, this time on China’s economy. China is likely, as a result of its dual-circulation economic strategy, to revaluate its currency over the medium term, say over 2 years, against the US dollar.
If China does this, its economy will overtake the US economy as early as the middle of 2022 in exchange rate terms, and thereafter continue to outgrow the US economy.
The exchange rate is, after all, no more than a fig leave to conceal the real size of China’s economy, which in primary purchasing power (PPP) terms. is already about 30% larger than the US economy.
Extreemely interesting. Coninue keeping us informed.