Here Comes China!

From the packed full of data Here Comes China newsletter by Godfree Roberts with commenting by myself. 

The Chinese proposed peace plan for Russia and Ukraine was received by many commentators saying that China’s interest is to let commerce continue.  That is true, but it is not complete.  China wants to be the country that keeps the world’s economic engine ticking.  But China is also proud and wants to be a country that stands for morals and ethics.

From Godfree’s editorial:

“The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world”.  Lee Kwan Yew.

Weekly items in Here Comes China are usually just interesting developments until we see them as a sequence – like a stop-motion movie – which reveals significant patterns and trends. Three from this week:

A State Department study found China is likely to emerge with a monopoly in 10 fields and dominance in 37 of 44 scientific fields. Regular readers have seen items like this often, but this one officially concedes victory to China in the most important struggle of the century.

Yuan popularity grows 15% annually for five years for international settlements. A familiar tale. Compared to the stable yuan, the US dollar is both financially vulnerable and politically toxic. 15% growth compounded for five years? If Saudi sells oil for yuan, the adoption rate will double.

The US denied GM supplier Microvest a $200 million factory grant for owning a China business that makes polyaramid separators that improve range and safety. Congress, citing IP risk, embargoed another 50 Chinese companies this week. Embargoes are steadily degrading American infrastructure (Huawei) and costing Americans more for almost everything.

What have we learned today? Whatever demons drive Washington policy-makers, they will not relent until they have put USA so far behind that competing with China is futile.  We’ll know that’s happened when politicians stop promising it. What then?

One of my most pleasant China watcher topics, is environmental because of the massive scale of the environment programs.  The Big Panda population is now rescued and China did it.  From being highly endangered, the rescue of these animals as well as the animals themselves is truly stupendous.  On average, there is one baby every two years, so it is not a fast process.  And a panda baby is no bigger than a stick of pink butter.   Most panda conservation work has involved protecting their habitat, making laws to punish hunters and smugglers, and captive breeding.  We now have an estimated 1,800 Giant Pandas in the world, up from just over 1,000 after the turn of the century.

On September 5th, 2016, the IUCN announced that giant pandas had been removed from the endangered list. Now their new designation is “vulnerable”.

They did the same for endangered Yangtze finless porpoises, and this population is up 23% in 5 years to about 1,249, thanks to a 10-year fishing ban. These finless porpoises are known as the “giant panda of the water,” and are a barometer of the ecological environment in the Yangtze River basin.  There are 193 varieties of fish, up from 168 in 2020. China spent $3.8 billion supporting ex-fishermen.  Read a little more …

They are doing it again with a massive program to protect bird migration passages.  The National Forestry and Grassland Administration issued an action plan for the year 2021-2035 during the campaign, designating 1,140 places, including Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, as major destinations for the resting, breeding and wintering of migratory birds.  It also set the main tasks for the country, such as building a compensation mechanism for damage caused by migratory birds, and stepping up the protection and restoration of migration passages.  Over the past 10 years, China has made efforts to save endangered species, and has established national parks, as well as the botanical gardens system, to protect wild animals and plants, according to Li Chunliang, deputy director of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.

What impresses me about these programs is that they are not only wildlife protection programs, but the people that made a living from the wildlife are also taken care of.  This usually starts with a compensatory process and soon ends up creating a new industry for people who lost their living.  It is thus complete, full circle, and the Chinese community is usually enthusiastic, as it is done by taking all stakeholders into account.

More about people:

Tibet gives 12 months paid maternity leave, while Tibetan fathers get 30 days. Hainan and Henan increased leave to 190 days, and women in Heilongjiang and Gansu provinces are expected to enjoy 180 days. Female workers in Beijing, Shanghai and some other provincial regions are entitled to 128 days off when giving birth. Read full article →

Beijing digitizing national health system, along with cashless transactions, utilities and government services. The goal is a nationwide platform providing ‘unified, authentic’ health information to the public. Linking health service platforms with users’ personal information was successfully trialled during the pandemic. Read full article →

“From February 2020 – May 2022, one million Americans died of COVID-19. We estimate that US life expectancy at birth fell 3.08 years and lost national income growth was $3.57 trillion. The scale of losses underscores the pressing need to invest in health in the US to prevent further economic shocks from future pandemic threats”. Read full article →

WHO officials on Friday said that the US has not shared reports or data from federal agencies that have assessed how the COVID-19 pandemic began. That includes the latest report by the Department of Energy, which determined with “low confidence” that the pandemic likely began due to a laboratory accident. Read full article →

The old ‘China Virus’ propaganda is being resurrected.

DID YOU KNOW? The nearly 3,000 deputies of the 14th National People’s Congress come from China’s 35 electoral units, including 13 representatives from Taiwan province. pic.twitter.com/Q7lW9gTSoK

— Andy Boreham 安柏然 (@AndyBxxx) March 5, 2023

DID YOU KNOW? All of China’s 55 ethnic minorities are represented with deputies at the 14th National People’s Congress.

In fact, China’s ethnic minorities are actually OVER represented by nearly 1/2, with 14.85% of the total, as opposed to just 8.89% of the general population. pic.twitter.com/I3wnmz2yVb

— Andy Boreham 安柏然 (@AndyBxxx) March 5, 2023

We can never complete these without looking at the level of hatred and out-of-control racist propaganda based on nothing excepting a race to some kind of war.  The average Chinese person is angry.

USA👉 “China conducts secretive space walk ignoring international norms: ‘contempt for transparency'”

… …
I wanna say to Americans, “Fu*k you! It’s none of your business! It is our own space station, and our taikonauts can do whatever they like!”🖕https://t.co/NBpIDSqQkX

— ShanghaiPanda (@thinking_panda) March 5, 2023

This anger is sharpening and comes shortly after US Ambassador Nicholas Burns blatantly criticized China’s trade, SOEs, subsidies, cybersecurity and regulation, Covid and human rights policies, and even mentioned the recent ballon incident, in his address to AmCham China in Beijing, causing Council to reconsider re-inviting Burns. “The atmosphere was extremely embarrassing,” said one, “he mentioned almost all the topics that the chamber wanted to avoid”.  Read more →

The war against China is getting its bones and its structure is being constructed.

Bloomberg: “Xi faces skepticism within China as global problems mount. As Xí Jìnpíng prepares to begin his second decade as China’s president, he’s facing a much more skeptical public…his credibility deficit is evident in Shanghai. Interviews with more than a dozen people there in recent weeks showed a deep lack of trust about the path forward under Xi.” Read more →

I cannot tell you how many articles the msm churns out, warning of China Global Problems, Real Estate Bubble Popping, and a range of China Trouble Stories.  The reality is different:

China bashing has intensified due to the fear that its alliance with Russia will make a US defeat in Ukraine inevitable. The recent accusations of China considering weapon deliveries to Russia, a thought crime, and Lukashenko’s Beijing visit may include such talks, but the FM’s Mao Ning said, “The US is in no position to point fingers at China-Russia relations. We do not accept coercion or pressure from the US”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also chose not to reply to a similar question. Read more →

And then of course, one’s mind just simply has to go to China’s war fighting capabilities:

“Chinese navy’s significant advantages over America’s include a bigger fleet and greater shipbuilding capacity,” says US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, “They have 13 shipyards and one shipyard has more capacity than all of ours combined. That presents a real threat”. Read full report →

“For deliveries of Chinese weapons to be productive Russia and China, each with 150 satellites in orbit must pool their satellite capabilities. The war between China and the United States will begin soon, so China should test all its weapons in combat now. Read full report →

China beat the US in 37 of 44 new technologies. “In some, China is publishing 65% of the world’s top research. It’s striking. It’s really profound,” says ASPI’s Jamie Gaida. China produces five times more high-impact research in defense, security and space than the US. China, and half the top papers in advanced aircraft engines and hypersonics, and last year, surprised the world by testing a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that circled the globe. China dominates research into drones, autonomous systems, advanced optical systems, artificial technology and machine learning.  Read full report →

(ASPI, is a US military-funded think tank that led the propaganda on supposed Uyghur suppression in Xinjian.  Similar to a ‘white helmet’ story, just much bigger).

To conclude, it is said that when the Three Gorges Dam was eventually filled, the earth shifted.  I have no idea whether this is only a legend, or true.  What is true, is that with the level of development in China, the earth will and is shifting economically.  Without China, the objective of a multipolar world will be much harder to reach, and the movement toward anti-imperialism is almost impossible to gain traction.   So, I write about China, because I do not want a war with China.