Here comes China

Recently we looked at how China is ensuring food security for 1.4 billion people.   https://sovereignista.com/2023/11/24/how-is-china-ensuring-food-security-for-1-4-billion-people/

A quote of one of the wonderful comments that I’ve seen around the China articles:  “mao changed our world; a thousand flowers seeding hillsides or empire’s dam along a river’s edge netting every passing fish. the simplicity is breathtaking, accustomed to smoke & subterfuge, we have difficulty transmogrifying our microscopes to telescopes to search instead of petri plates the sky, its galaxies of possibilities.  yet before our very eyes, a galaxy is being subsumbed, a dark hole, relevant only in the gravity of its death.”

Because I love the way China goes about looking after their food and food security, seeds, seed banks and the complete agricultural human food venue and supply chains, I’ve chosen for this Here Comes China Newsletter from Godfree Roberts a few pieces on agriculture and environment.

• The autumn grain harvest beat the 650 billion kg. target for the ninth consecutive year. Soybean acreage exceeded 10 million hectares the past two years, one-third of the total US annual acreage for the crop. Read article →
• Few countries can make AESA radars for fighter jets, but China puts them on farm implements. DJI’s new T60 Farm Drone, for $8,000 (55,000 RMB) can carry 150 lb (60kg) of fertilizers and disperse it at 190 kg/min at a sowing width of 8m. Fruit industry can add 4 pressure nozzles & 60L liquid tank to spray 28L/min Comes w/ front/rear AESA radar & trinocular fisheye vision system, 10x more computing power in avionics w/ visual radar mapping algo, can avoid trees and power lines Low-light full-color FPV, so 75W lighting to see obstacle while working at night. Amazing tech in a non-glamorous industry. Read article →
• Xi was green before it was fashionable. He wrote a weekly column twenty years ago as Zhejiang party chief warning that China’s “energy-intensive and high-polluting” economic model was unsustainable. He defied the orthodoxy of break-neck industrialisation and GDP worship, launching a radical ‘Green GDP’ programme in Zhejiang in 2004. It called on local governments to subtract ecological damage from the raw GDP figures. He was defeated by vested interests, one reason why he has been careful not to force a showdown too soon with China’s powerful coal lobby. He is circumventing them instead by giving renewable companies priority access to cheap credit from the state-controlled banks.
• China built 199 renewable BRI projects since 2022. Wind, solar and hydro accounted for 68% of 300 completed power projects. Asia and Africa will remain the top BRI power markets.

⭕Catching Canadian Spies:

Canada’s Michael Spavor (above, in 2017) blames fellow prisoner Michael Kovrig for China arrest. Spavor, imprisoned in China for nearly three years, said his fellow inmate shared intelligence on North Korea with Canada and allied spy services, which was a factor in their arrests, according to a report by the Globe and Mail. Read article →

A Canadian jailed by China for three years is seeking a multimillion-dollar settlement from Ottawa, alleging he was detained because he unwittingly provided intelligence on North Korea to Canada and allied spy services. Michael Spavor alleges that the deception was conducted by fellow Canadian prisoner Michael Kovrig, and it was intelligence work by the latter that led to both men’s incarceration by Chinese authorities.  Read article →

⭕There is much media on China reaching its CO2 targets years before the rest of the world.  Live with it, China is Green!

⭕”Through painstaking efforts, the Party has found a second answer to the question of how to escape the historical cycle of rise and fall. The answer is self-reform,” President Xi Jinping told the CPC’s 20th National Congress. The first answer to the “historical cycle of rise and fall”, by the way, is democracy, proposed by Chairman Mao in 1945: “Only when the people supervise the government, will the government dare not relax. Only when everyone takes responsibility, will there be no downfall of the government.” The notion of the “historical cycle of rise and fall” echoes philosophical debates dating back to Hegel and presents an intriguing departure from the more linear progression typically associated with Marxist materialism. This cyclical interpretation posits that each successive stage of Chinese history mirrors its predecessor, seemingly void of novel creation. Read article →

⭕⭕⭕

The 2023 edition is out and, with it, the new Audible version. Listen and wonder!

It’s the only book that explains all three elements of China’s success:

1. Talent at the Top: Only the brightest, most idealistic people are are admitted to politics–a policy unchanged in 2200 years.
2. Data in the Middle: policies are implemented, tracked, and optimized based on terabytes of data. The PRC is the world’s largest consumer of public surveys.
3. Democracy at the Bottom: ordinary people, all unpaid amateurs, assemble twice a year to check the stats and sign off on new legislation. Policies need a minimum of 66% support to become law. That’s why 95% of Chinese say the country is on the right track.

The proof? There are more hungry children, more poor, homeless, drug addicted, and imprisoned people in America than in China.

Why China Leads the World investigates why the epidemic accelerated the change of global leadership from America to China and examines China’s bigger, steadier economy, its science leadership, stronger military, more powerful allies, and wider international support.

Crammed with charts, footnotes, and lengthy quotes, Why China Leads the World is a profoundly disturbing book that helps readers understand the tectonic shift and adapt to this new era–and even thrive in it.

***

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 Kuan Yew: The Future of US-China Relations. The Atlantic.

***

The Coronavirus accelerated the pace of change of global leadership from America to China. There are now more hungry children, more poor, homeless, drug addicted, and imprisoned people in America than in China.

Suddenly, China’s larger, steadier economy, its leadership in science, its stronger military, more powerful allies, and wider international support have handed it a lead that widens every day.  Crammed with direct quotes from its movers and shakers, charts, and footnotes, Why China Leads the World tells a remarkable tale, explains a tectonic shift, and helps you adapt to this new era, and even thrive in it.

***

If we could just be China for one day we could actually authorize the right decisions. Thomas L. Friedman. The New York Times

300 pages, 27 charts and graphs. $9.99 on Amazon and in bookstores worldwide.