Selections from Godfree Roberts’ extensive weekly newsletter: Here Comes China. You can get it here: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe
Further selections and editorial commentary by Amarynth:
- I am looking for a little help for the Saker Blog and this regular sitrep specifically: an analyst that can analyze or even just educate on the Chinese military weaponry complex. What do they have, why and what are they working on? If you have the required background and knowledge, my email is at the bottom of this page and each page of The Saker Blog.
A great and modern China history from the Epic China series by Nathan Rich: How China Fell into the Opium Wars (1793-1838)
If you want to get the first few of this series, look for the Epic China videos on Nathan’s Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/NathanRichHotpot/videos
Data Points
Ed: China will not have anything resembling a monopoly structure in business and ever-popular Jack Ma is having his knuckles rapped through a series of actions, starting with not allowing Ant Group its biggest IPO in the world ever, in Hong Kong and now Alibaba has been fined: China’s market regulators imposed an 18.2 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) fine on Alibaba, which amounts to 4% of the company’s revenues in 2019.
- Regulators lift standards for finance execs to bring once freewheeling fintech giants like Ant Group into line. They require high social credit scores for directors, supervisors, and senior executives who “have a big impact” on the operational management. Read full article →
Ed: Many Saker blog readers know a lot about CHIPS (semi-conductors) and we’ve speculated in the past on what China’s actions are going to be regarding CHIP sanctions. Now, we’re beginning to see the actions:
- Chinese semiconductor equipment company AMEC said its etching equipment has been used in a tier-one customer’s 65 nm, 14 nm, 7 nm, and 5 nm lines. Plasma etchers perform microscopic engraving on chips with a precision of tens of thousandths of a hair’s diameter. AMEC’ etching equipment revenue was $197 million in 2020, up 60% YoY. Read full article →
- Shanghai Tianshu Zhixin launched Big Island, China’s first homegrown 7nm GPGPU (General-Purpose Graphics Processing Unit) chip, which can complete the artificial intelligence processing of hundreds of camera video channels per second. Its performance is twice that of mainstream products in the market. Read full article $→
Ed: Higher Education: Since Chinese students are generally being made unwelcome to study in the west, China did not miss a beat and most of the IVY’s and notable universities now have campuses in China. The education to my understanding is more free-wheeling as in a western style, but students still have to take the required courses in Marxism and ideology. It is mind-blowing how China takes everything thrown and simply turns it around into another opportunity. “You don’t like us there, well, we’ll just get together over here!” (No, China did not steal the US jobs – they walked off all by themselves as a result of insane policies and a bloated industrial cost structure – now, US, you’re losing your students and your source of educated workers and no doubt, we will hear the cries: ‘China stole our students!’.)
- International schools in China are booming as Covid-19 travel restrictions limit the number of students seeking education overseas. Demand is particularly high in the mainland portion of the Greater Bay Area, which has had fewer international schools than Beijing and Shanghai. Read full article $→
Ed: Money makes the world go round:
- The World Bank is still the largest creditor in poor countries at $106 billion but China is close at $104 billion. In sub-Saharan Africa, China (US$62 billion) has outspent the World Bank (US$60 billion) as the biggest official lender to Africa’s poor countries. Read full article $→
Ed: China’s influence mostly in the creation of infrastructure in terms of Belt and Road methodology is becoming very visible and seemingly no area of the world is too far away:
- Guinea: With the fourth and final generator successfully connected to the grid at the end of March, Guinea’s Souapiti 450MW hydropower station, above, became fully operational, doubling Guinea’s power generation capacity and turning it from a blackout stricken country into an electricity exporter. Read full article →
- Logistics: China has the world’s largest and fastest-growing logistics market. It grew from $300 billion in 2001 to $2 trillion in 2018. A select few traditional logistics players have begun transforming their businesses to respond to these drastic changes in China’s logistics industry. As they adapt, three trends have developed. Read full article →
- Brazil: Petrobras has signed a $10 billion loan from China Development Bank to cover its massive debt burden for 2022, and says the loan comes with supply commitments to Chinese buyers. Read full article →
- In 2019, the PRC surpassed the US as the leading trade partner with Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay and is now the region’s second-largest trading partner behind the US. Trade with Latin America soared from $17 billion to $315 billion between 2002 to 2019, with plans to reach $500 billion by 2025,” SOUTHCOM’s Admiral Craig Feller told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Read full article →
Ed: We have gotten accustomed to the superb level of diplomatic skill by Russian diplomats under the leadership of Foreign Minister Lavrov. Up to now, the generally accepted idea was that China is in a sense leaving the global diplomatic task (as well as the military task) up to Russia in their partnership. The new news is that China is joining the ranks of the superb diplomats and slowly picking up its own diplomatic function.
- Russia and China agree to develop infrastructure via the Belt and Road Initiative; promote dialogue among civilizations; a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine; promote policies of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons; and collective security with a focus on new and enhanced Middle East Trust mechanisms. Read full article $→
- Post-Iran-China, it’s not far-fetched anymore to even consider the possible emergence in a not too distant future of a Himalaya Silk Road uniting BRICS members China and India (think, for instance, of the power of Himalayan ice converging into a shared Hydropower Tunnel).
Ed: Explosive news of the week was the speech by Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. What is notable here is that he states not only the Russian position but combines it with the Chinese position. We should understand from that, that both countries are of one mind – the US-controlled Biolabs in far-off places must be investigated. This is an outflow of the ‘China virus’ accusations from the US. Watch this space – we will no doubt see more developments here.
- “Let me draw your attention to the US-controlled, permanent biological laboratories that appear mainly near Russian and Chinese borders, where outbreaks of non-typical diseases were recorded in the areas where those laboratories are located, said Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. [The US is the only country blocking a verification mechanism under the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction]. Read full article →
Ed: And of course, we cannot help but end this data point section on a low note from a losing old SourPuss and its few lame ‘allies and partners.
- The US considers boycotting 2022 Beijing Olympics, says US State Department: “‘It [a joint boycott] is something that we certainly wish to discuss. A coordinated approach will not only be in our interest but also in the interest of our allies and partners.” Read full article →
Ed: May I then be the first one to declare that it is folly to March on Beijing with a Trade War. The next longer read will explain.
Longer Read
Martin Jacques: The Communist Party of China (CPC) is like no other party in the world. It requires us to rethink the very idea of what a political party is. It is a phenomenon intrinsic to China. It is ineluctably Chinese. If the imperial dynasties defined Chinese governance for two millennia, the CPC has assumed similar importance since 1949. There has been an overwhelming failure to grasp the nature of the CPC in the West. This ignorance reached new heights after 2016. Read full article $→
Jeff J Brown, Cynthia Chung and Matt Ehret on China
Cover Image: China’s share of citable articles in the various technology journals is growing by leaps and bounds.
This is but a fraction of what I gleaned from the Here Comes China newsletter. If you want to learn about the Chinese world, get Godfree’s newsletter here: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe
China is legitimately beating the collective West. The insane collective West’s idiocracy ate itself by hollowing itself inside out. No hard feelings from me, just genuine admiration for the hard work, discipline and social nationalist policy.
This question is a sincere attempt to understand the economic prospect of China:
Many Russian experts (Khazin, Schkolnikov, to some degree Vavilov and Delyagin) are prominently voicing their prognosis of the future failure of China’s economy. Their narrative is that when the US/EU fail, their markets will contract 30-50% and the Chinese therefore, because its export economy is much more vulnerable, f.e. by 60%. I know China tries to develop its internal market, but this will take a long time. I don’t know, but it is theoretically possible; albeit I think they work with stereotypes, that are not necessarily true like: China has no traditional school of engineering, development and innovation – simply they have to copy innovations to compete. And Schkolnikov argument is, that because of this lack they will lose out on the 5th industrial revolution. I think this is hs. China will surprise the world with many more fundamental innovations and all of it will be dependent upon a secure international supply chain (with resources) and the transformation to a more self reliant economy. This might only be stopped by imploding export markeys, boycott or war.
What are your thoughs on this?
That’s an ironic comment considering the U.S. and western traditional ‘school of innovation’ consists mainly of importing Chinese (and Russian, Indian, etc) scientists and stealing them via Paperclip-like brain-drains and then ‘inventing’ and ‘innovating’ things in the U.S. so I think it’s a bit of a biased viewpoint. I think China/Russia has the true innovative capacity and when you take away the incentive for braindraining and emigration/exfiltration from those countries to U.S. it will actually be the West that will slowly die and atrophy in the arenas of innovation, not the East.
I have a German POV, I agree, that most of the (important) research since 1945 has been done by foreigners like in the Apollo-space-program by Wernher von Braun.
There is no doubt that the Soviet Union first and then by international engagement, China received the technology and expertise it needed to succeed. This is no secret, I’m familiar with the Siemens railway technology transfer (many inside Germany warned about that deal just for an example). It’s the same story with German made products in the 19th century, which were copy-cated and the British complained about it.
If you noticed, my question is more about the general ability of China to develop such schools. As China has more a tradition of “perfection” and bureaucratic ethics like Confucius. Also it didn’t develop mythology and religion as other Indo-European people did. Khazin was talking about something similar from a historic angle, as he claimed (if I remember correctly), that the “Tang dynasty and empire” was majorly successful, because it f.e. “imported” knowledge and practices from the (Orthodox) outside monastic traditions.
I don’t know how a continuum in Chinese tradition exist today in China, because of Mao’s cultural revolution.
Maybe all of this is plainly wrong and myths like the Siberian land grab stories in the Russian liberal media. That’s why ask the more knowledgeable people on China, lurking in the comment section…
Although it is slightly off topic, i do feel the last point you made needs a response right here. The Siberian land-grab stories may appear to come from the “Russian liberal media” but you have to look at who the latter are. If it is the ‘Moscow Times’ for example, this publisher is full of Russophobe Trojan Horses who take delight in undermining Russia from within, under the guise of “the right to free speech.” Several individuals have appeared on British TV doing travel documentaries. One involved a journalist wanting to ‘get to the bottom; of the Chinese invasion of Russian territory’ – Throughout the programme, the atmosphere that was deliberately generated was one of the journalist fearing what he would be facing, then aiming to get info without proper authorisation, feeling he was being followed and making suitable frantic sounds of fearing for his life, before the Russians shoved him and his film crew onto a train and sent him packing back to Moscow. Which was the proof needed that something sinister was going on…wow…
So what is this all about? Fundamentally there are two overlapping issues, One is that Russia grabbed a chunk of Chinese territory in 1958. China would like to have it back. Russia says, stay calm, we will sort this out in the long run but meanwhile we can solve the issue calmly as neighbours. China is happy with this. Also, the Russian have a very underpopulated region there, whilst the Chinese have a lot of manpower. The Russian territory has a lot of exploitable resources. In general the Chinese workforce is more dynamic and aspirational than their Russian counterparts. So the solution has been straightforward. Chinese workers move into the Russian territory, to help exploit the resources. The Russians are happy with this arrangement. …
Over time, as the Chinese workforce settle in this region of Russia, they de-facto create a Chinese-majority community. The question of who has sovereignty is then gradually made more legally acceptable to both sides and in the long term, these territories may well be ceded in a natural process back to China. But meanwhile the question of sovereignty is absolutely not relevant, when both Russian and Chinese governments get on so well…and the population is enjoying a win-win situation, with Russian commercial operations exploiting local resources using very eager local Chinese labour.
Sounds innocent to me.
But never underestimate the ability of a western oriented spin doctor or CIA operative, to twist the whole story into a sinister land grab by China > “Russia should not trust the Chinese, they will stab you in the back.” British journalists come out with this storyline quite often…Both China and Russia know that this – tiresome – storyline is all western created BS.
It reminds me of the medieval fountains in the city of Berne. There is one which is called the Chindlifresser Brunnen.” A giant who eats babies. A great fable about teaching kids to behave otherwise they will get eaten. I walked past when some American tourist stood there open mouthed in horror, that such practices like cannibalism, were still honoured even today in Switzerland. THERE is the evidence, in plain view. hah point proven, Switzerland is evil …we now have to care what is in the Ravioli… :oP
The idea that China is just a bigger Asian Tiger–i.e. West-style economic modernization in an East Asian context, with growth capped by a ceiling of Western interests–is completely misguided.
Under Xi, China owns the future. China is not looking to the US as a guide on development. The US is actively undeveloping, and China has no reason to follow that lead. China already leads in innovation in key areas: logistics, social media, quantum computing, etc. and other areas they are rapidly catching up.
There are certainly existential challenges facing China–as there are with every other country or corporation. But China has demonstrated their ability to overcome any challenge and adapt to unforseen conditions.
You are absolutely right, China owns the future and If you are interested in making money, you better get a broker who deals in Chinese stocks to buy CHINA’s Apple, China’s Amazon, China’s Intel, China’s you-name-it. Anything like those American companies that had a good run 2001 to 2020. Your kids and grand-kids will thank you…
At the end of the day, it is plain as day that China is trying to improve the lives of humans around the world, the U.S. is trying to destroy the lives of every country in the world and reduce living standards. One is expanding infrastructure globally, the U.S. is sanctioning and destroying infrastructure, stealing vital resources etc. The U.S. will go down in history as the most evil Empire in all human history. I foresee a time maybe by the year 2200-2300 or so where the U.S. will be viewed as how Nazi Germany is viewed today.
Pandelume:
2200-2300? Check your clock sir, it’s running way too slow. 2050-2100 is more like what you are trying to say.
Regards.
Not so long ago when I was young 1950-60s… it was Japan who use to copy and replicate, manufacture and export…”Made in Japan” was what we think of “made in China/PRC” these days.
Where do Japanese stand now-a-days? Notice how the car industry was shaken up by ever improving quality Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans… then Lexus, Acura, Infinity… just to mention one example of engineering field.
It takes 30-40 years but sooner or later it comes to pass. Our children hopefully grow up to do better than we did…
So China, Russia, Corea, etc. no different… if they are intelligent and work hard.
And boy, do they work…
The only thing is for ALL to respect our talents and capabilities and learn to cooperate in our “competitions”.
Sounds like a paradox but the human race/countries/cultures will have to learn how to live together without a “bully” in the courtyard.
Interesting times indeed! Not a time to be week and rule virtually from a basement, is it? And not a time to spend debating if we should call Mom and Dad …Parent One or Parent Two to please a few!!!
For Russia’s sake I really do hope those persons are not the Russia’s mainstream experts and policymakers.
If they are then the Russian intellectual elite is in far worse shape than I ever thought.
In such a case, after Putin, Russia will be in imminent danger of quick rapid decline.
For what it’s worth, the experts named are not China experts (except Vavilov [who just recently wrote a book on ‘Chinese power’], who seemed to agree with the position of Schkolnikov in a video). They are definitely not mainstream. I’m not familiar with academic Russian mainstream regarding China; as far as I know Russia has lost many of them in the 90s and a few of them remain.
The most well-known China expert in the media mainstream is professor Alexey Maslov ( https://ifes-ras.academia.edu/AlexeyMaslov/CurriculumVitae ). He is more about how great the Chinese future will be.
You’ll forgive me, but the scope of a internet forum and my knowledge, necessarily cannot encompass all of this complex topic.
Nachticall, regarding “China has no traditional school of engineering, development and innovation – simply they have to copy innovations to compete. And Schkolnikov argument is, that because of this lack they will lose out on the 5th industrial revolution.”
I have been a professional research mathematician at major US institutions for the last 40 years.
In the last 15 years I have noticed a dramatic increase in not only the number of Chinese authored publications but in the quality and innovativeness of them. I often hear these remarks you mention and I commonly remark that they must not be seeing the community that I see.
See e.g. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspa.1998.0193?casa_token=-OFxaqAwYysAAAAA:gHJUD2UwVpFRxOo-AGvrDX_iL0cd0xqmuePNVAsl9sqykkhjwqcVmblRAckO1YJjcspt10IqczfL48w
with nearly 23K citations and the collaboration of two Chinese with the famous Daubechies
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1063520310001016
developing this so that it has better mathematical structure.
This is fine science about a very useful technology.
Moreover, traditionally, the Chinese came to the US institutions for the high quality grad schools, but this is also changing. Now, Chinese graduate schools are putting out very skilled individuals and they then come to the US to work for some years, make some money and then return home. Soon I suspect they may only send their weak scientists here to do that and keep the good ones for at home.
Mustafa
My American born son is a computer engineer graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York, and works on the West Coast with many H-Ib Chinese and Indian visa holder colleagues, who outnumber him at work. He tells me that the Indians talk all day long amongst themselves achieving little of practical value, and the Chinese work like demons 23 hours a day speaking Mandarin, but don’t really know what they are doing, since they have no clear objectives in mind.
Your comment raised a smile. I recall one project where i was asked by a top University to sort out a fundamental conundrum. The university wanted to tap into the innovative capacity of students. The students get to work on some theoretical exercise and came up with devices. Then they discovered that these devices had no existential value even after 4 years of study. The student could argue correctly that the principles worked – an input was processed in the device, to create a specific output. Fine…wonderful….but they had no idea how to apply it and no one could think of a use for it.
I recommended an alternative way of thinking, Forget the academic approach. I visited industry and asked them, what is missing, what parameters do you seek, to make your instruments more accurate, perform better. This basic market – research gave the fundamentals for the students then, to work to a specific realiseable goal, where the device they created, could be exploited commercially. The academic word had not thought of this before. Today the university has a proper commercial and legal backing for innovations to be commercially viable and patents registered.
I am writing of a British university….
The majority of innovative exploitable ideas are generated there, by Chinese students.
A survey of patent applications today, shows a clear overwhelming majority are developed by Chinese minds.
Yes, I have heard those stories too. However, as I said I have a different experience in the published literature.
I use Chinese results and cite them much more often now. Certainly more than what I would guess are American born contributions. I can also point to full professors in the math department where i now work.
Goodness
Most innovation is based on engineering which in turn is based on mathematics.
haven’t you noticed who take out all the prizes in maths.
Check out the scientific publications where I think now China is in the lead.
The stereotype of ‘China invented the gunpowder (compass, paper, printing press, paper money, etc) but didn’t know what to do with it until the West taught them’ still holds firmly in many minds.
So does the tooth fairy, but that doesn’t stop people from losing them.
@Nachtigall
“China tries to develop its internal market, but this will take a long time”
This exact same sentence had been used back in 2008 and it didn’t happen, instead China used it and developed it’s domestic market, extremly succesful and leaping ahead even faster !! As long your National Bank is that – YOUR National Bank not much can go wrong if you did everything else correctly.
China has a much, much larger potential domestically than Europe and the US combined, although they will have to do it more carefully and thus somewhat slower.
Russia + China is an unbeatable pair, even better would be Europe + Russia + China, but the first will only materialize slowly if at all. Europe must not grow materially but instead spiritually first and find it’s senses in order to again grow qualitatively after a succesful decoupling from the US which will be a murderous and dangerous path which only the best can go.
@Nachtigall: “China will [continue to] surprise the world with many more fundamental innovations…”
[…as it has done in the past]. From Wikipedia re British scientist Joseph Needham FRS:
“Three Chinese scientists came to Cambridge for graduate study in 1937: Lu Gwei-djen, Wang Ying-lai and Shen Shih-Chang (沈詩章, the only one under Needham’s tutelage). Lu, daughter of a Nanjing pharmacist, taught Needham Chinese, igniting his interest in China’s ancient technological and scientific past. He then pursued, and mastered, the study of Classical Chinese privately.
Under the Royal Society’s direction, Needham was the director of the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office in Chongqing from 1942 to 1946. During this time he made several long journeys through war-torn China and many smaller ones, visiting scientific and educational establishments and obtaining for them much needed supplies. His longest trip in late 1943 ended in far west in Gansu at the caves in Dunhuang[8] at the end of the Great Wall where the earliest dated printed book – a copy of the Diamond Sutra – was found.[9] The other long trip reached Fuzhou on the east coast, returning across the Xiang River just two days before the Japanese blew up the bridge at Hengyang and cut off that part of China. Everywhere he went he purchased and was given old historical and scientific books which he shipped back to Britain through diplomatic channels. He got to know Zhou Enlai and met numerous Chinese scholars, including the painter Wu Zuoren,[10] and the meteorologist Zhu Kezhen, who later sent crates of books to him in Cambridge, including 2,000 volumes of the Gujin Tushu Jicheng encyclopaedia, a comprehensive record of China’s past.
In 1948, Needham proposed a project to the Cambridge University Press for a book on Science and Civilisation in China. His initial collaborator was the historian Wang Ling (王玲), whom he had met in Lizhuang and obtained a position for at Trinity. The first years were devoted to compiling a list of every mechanical invention and abstract idea that had been made and conceived in China. These included cast iron, the ploughshare, the stirrup, gunpowder, printing, the magnetic compass and clockwork escapements, most of which were thought at the time to be western inventions. The first volume eventually appeared in 1954.
The publication received widespread acclaim, which intensified to lyricism as the further volumes appeared, and the regular production of further volumes continued after his death in 1995.”
[I apologise for the length of this extract, but the Anglo world needs to be corrected about China’s alleged lack of creativity. Needless to add, Needham got into hot water with the Uncle $cam: “suspicion over scientific co-operation with communists intensified, and Needham resigned from UNESCO in 1948”
Thank you for your replies! My orthography skill is lacking in my phone, I apologize for the digital AIDS.
@Mustafa
Yes, this is a much more convincing point than anything else. Mathematical work needs the highest form of (abstract) creativity, which in turn can be used as a tool in other sciences. You see, some of those Russian experts (in different fields, I mostly follow economists and historians) put out notions like: Chinese culture is collectivist and therefore rule breaking, especially socially (psycho-socially), discouraged. Many break-troughs in the natural sciences are accomplished by questioning and breaking old paradigms – this requires a competitive nonconformist character and approach. Even if I sound pithy, the famous notion in my mind is true, that depending on your model or theory, you will observe this or that phenomenon (not in a nihilist Quine-Kuhnian way). I ascribe to only one reality and one truth whatever it maybe.
@Dr. NG Maroudas
Yes, but how does this all translate to contemporary China? How much has been lost by Mao’s cultural revolution, how much has been rehabilitated and how much is it ideologically driven by the party line?
Look up the “Plaza Hotel accord 1985”. Roughly speaking, the US twisted the arms of Japan (abnd Germany) to lower it’s exports. You can do that with an occupied country.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord
Also, Japan’s population is about half the US; China’s is more than four times the US.
If you want a good guess what tomorrow will look like, take a look at todays’ STEM graduates: US 500,000/year, China 4,500,000/year. If I was an engineerting graduate, I’d prefer to work for an US arms manufacturer, simply because that’s one job that is not going to be outsourced to China.
This is why I love you. You are a scrupped pursuer of truth. Truth only matters to those that care about it. Most don’t have the time to listen to it. The tide has turned and as it rolls out it will reveal what was hidden. Support the saker and keep your eyes open to the truth.
Here’s the Chinese version of George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” and the containment of the American US Dollar Empire. Excellent analysis and a excellent read.
http://chinascope.org/archives/6458
huge thank you, bookmarked, will return to several times. i appreciate seeing the chinese view of the tea leaves. i love that they have been observing the red shield & are not afraid.
Your very welcome.
This one was rather interesting – some commentators here said something about Germany being forced to accept the euro at the time of reunification, followed by university professors protesting against it on the grounds that it’d create a banker’s empire. I was surprised to see the US try to attack something it created, up until re-reading the final paragraph (the one about the euro challenging the dollar’s hegemony). Somehow it reminds me of the USA imposing tariffs on Japanese goods during the 1980s. Am I sensing a recurring theme? (Where an entity controlled/occupied by the USA is able to outperform the USA on a certain field, and the USA responds by trying to kill it.)
If the euro didn’t exist, what currency would the EU use to handle its trades? How could the euro eat away into the US dollar’s international share where e.g. the German mark couldn’t?
The Pravda link to the biolabs ringing Russia would be most interesting. However, the link appears to be broken.
Try this: https://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/20109-patrushev_biological_weapons/