By Godfree Roberts from his extensive weekly newsletter with further up to date editorial notes:

We start off with the Three Gorges Dam, a Wild Party in Wuhan and the always logical Nathan Rich with some views on Pompeo’s ‘clean networks’.

We now see filtering through the Chinese media some news on the Three Gorges Dam as a result of a major flooding in China.

News is widely available but let’s look at 2 headlines and this all is happening currently:

Three Gorges Dam to confront largest-ever flood through coordination with upstream dams https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1198199.shtml

The dams will sufficiently exert the flood defense function of a cascade reservoir within the basin, and are expected to ease the flood defense pressure for Southwest China’s Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality, as well as the Three Gorges project, according to the statement.

It is estimated the inflow water peak will be cut down to 68,000 cubic meters per second from 70,000, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.

Three Gorges Dam to face historic flood peak https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1198254.shtml

The Three Gorges Reservoir is set to receive the largest flood peak since it was built in 2003, but experts noted that despite extreme weather conditions, China is better-prepared to minimize the impact of any natural disaster.

The latest hydrometeorological forecasts estimated the inflow flood peak of the Three Gorges project will reach 74,000 cubic meters per second at 8 am on Thursday, the largest volume since it was built in 2003.

So for the engineers in our midst, that is a start of looking at the massive consequences of the floods in China.  What it looks like to my untrained eye, is that if that dam is going to break, China is now right in the middle of the most dangerous period.  Just wait for the scary stories from the western media and western alt. media on this one.

In combination with the massive flooding of farmland, the leftovers of the economic impact of Covid-19, China has started a massive campaign of internal frugality.  More to come in the coming weeks.

The Wuhan goes Wild electronic pool party.

This is heartening news and stands as evidence that the Covid Age Can End.

After 79 days of brutal and strict quarantine, and a slow period of coming out of that first focusing on getting the economic engines restarted, and 3 months of no new cases, Wuhan is partying   There is no sign of social distancing, masks or any other signs of protection against Covid-19  – only music and play in the waterpark.  Wuhan’s lockdown began to ease in March and was officially lifted on April 8.  Neither the city nor Hubei province have reported locally transmitted cases of Covid-19 for three months, and officials declared the city free of the virus after testing 10 million of the city’s residents in June.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1198239.shtml

 

To complete the editorial section, Nathan Rich on Pompeo’s ‘crazy talk’.

 

From Godfree’s newsletter which you can find here:

The indications that China is content to decouple from the United States, are becoming clear, or is it?  What they would dearly love to see, is a normalized trade relationship with the US and none of the special agreements.

U.S.-China Decoupling: Separating Myth From Reality

“Chip design in China advanced much faster than most US observers expected in the past few years, and I think semiconductor fabrication will also advance quickly in the future. Fabs are huge, complex infrastructure investments, which they tend to do well. (According to Goodrich, 60 fabs under construction right now in China.) I also expect them to be good at fine-tuning the production process, pulling in engineering talent from Taiwan and S. Korea as necessary. The most difficult technology hurdle will be the advanced lithography machines that still depend on US and European intellectual property.” [MORE]

 

 

The Plan, The Future

China sees blockchain alongside artificial intelligence, 5G and the Internet of Things, quantum computing, and cloud computing as a strategic technology that will drive growth and productivity in the years to come and hence an area where it would like Chinese companies to set the standards and dominate globally. Chinese policies to promote these frontier technologies:

  1. Leveraging the vast internal market, with significant public investments in both basic R&D and market-enhancing policies (such as public procurement policies).
  2. Dominating export markets through development finance institutions like the China Development Bank and the China Export-Import Bank to drive innovation and growth.
  3. Initiatives like the China Standards 2035 (and earlier Made in China 2025) that aim to help Chinese companies set global technical standards in standard-setting bodies like the 3GPP and ITU. For blockchain, in April, China launched its National Blockchain and Distributed Accounting Technology Standardization Technical Committee.

Part of this future is delisting from the NY stock exchange

China has a longstanding dispute over US regulators’ access to audits of US-listed Chinese companies. The disagreement is between China’s securities watchdog CSRC, and America’s PCAOB. China will not allow PCAOB inspections of the audits of its SOEs. As US finance becomes less important to China, expect more Chinese companies to de-list from Wall Street and float on the Shanghai-Hongkong-Shenzen market. [MORE]