Here Comes China

For America to be displaced by an Asian people long despised and dismissed with contempt as decadent, feeble, corrupt and inept, is emotionally very difficult to accept. The sense of cultural supremacy of the Americans will make this adjustment most difficult. – Lee Kwan Yew

Editorial from Godfree Roberts

Biden’s Legacy of Ashes?

Lee Kwan Yew’s prescient observation, “The sense of cultural supremacy of the Americans will make this adjustment most difficult,” is vindicated almost daily now. President Biden highlighted America’s difficult adjustment by disavowing the promises Secretary Blinken had made, face to face with Xi, in Beijing.

Biden calling Xi a ‘dictator’ was no accident: he then doubled down on his bellicose anti-China rhetoric while the US Air Force landed B-52s in Indonesia and the US Navy sailed defiantly through China’s territorial waters. (Under their battle cry, ‘Slava Australia!’ most Australians want their navy to fight China, too).

As subscribers to HCC know, America’s chances of winning a war with China are close to zero, but then, the same could be said of Ukraine’s chances against Russia. (The mighty Ukraine Army lost every battle it fought  with the Donbas Militia from 2015 until today).

On the other hand, Western politicians, arms makers and media all love war whenever Western economies are tanking, which they are.

Throughout history, politicians have voted for wars that were avoidable, predictable, and which left their countries crippled. (Churchill, needing war to stay in power, manipulated Hitler, got his war, lost the Empire and lamented, “My legacy is ashes”).

Will Biden’s legacy be ashes?

—o0o—

Rural Revitalization:  China’s youth is being streamed to the rural areas for a massive revitalization program.

Finance

HK begins Dual Currency Trading, another step to increase the city’s appeal amid a downbeat market. $22.7 million of shares changed hands after Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) opened the dual counter. Read article →

Trade

1.76 million vehicles exported YTD, up 82% YoY. The 457,000 EVs in that total represents a 160% rise. Domestic automobile sales also reached 11.6 million units, indicating thriving domestic and export markets. It took 55 years to export 1 million vehicles, 10 more years to 2 reach million, and one year from 2 million to 3 million. Although China ranks first in total automobile exports globally, it is NOT an automotive export powerhouse. In major automobile-producing countries, exports account for 35% to 50% of their domestic production, while in China, just 11%. And the sales volume calculation does not include the production and sales of Japanese and Korean factories located abroad. Read article →

Micron invests $600 million in China factory three weeks after Beijing bans its chips from critical infrastructure projects. Read article →

China passes its first foreign relations law in key step to enrich legal toolbox against Western hegemony https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202306/1293344.shtml

(You may remember that Russia updated its foreign policy as well).

Technology

Physicist Steve Hsu, son of a rocket scientist, explains why China pulled ahead of the US in hypersonic flight.

Harvard professor of biophysical chemistry, Xie Xiaoliang, is returning to China. Known for a DNA research breakthrough used to sequence human cells individually, he joins hundreds of returning scientists helping China in the globally competitive race for talent. Read more →

The Farm

Xinjiang to become a national granary. Taking advantage of its abundant land, water, and good climate to create a minimum 79 million mu of agricultural land will upgrade irrigation, build “high standard fields,” develop grain and oilseed industry clusters, reduce grain waste and build a grain storage capacity of 1.5 mmt. and a 31,000 ton reserve of edible oils. A grain processing, storage and logistics industry will be built up at a northwestern border crossing to draw in grains from Kazakhstan Central Asia to augment China’s grain supply.  Read article →

Environment

115,000 tons of EV batteries recycled YTD, surpassing the 102,000 tons in the entire of 2022, as the world’s largest EV market ramps up recycling efforts of spent cells. Read article →

Ford told investors early last year that it would plow $50 billion into its EV-making efforts by 2026, an enormous sum even for a company its size. Morgan Stanley said that taking on Tesla and the Chinese carmakers, who dominate the early electric age, is “a pretty easy way to destroy billions and billions of capital.” Read article →

Power project investment up 63% YoY to $35 billion. Solar power investment, $1.3 billion, rose 140%; wind power was $8 billion, up 42%; nuclear power was $3.8 billion, up 67%; power grid construction was $20 billion, up 11%. Read article →

The story about African debt

Lin Songtian details the four propositions under Xi’s Global Civilisation Initiative:

• jointly respecting the diversity of world civilizations: no civilization should use its own yardstick to measure other civilizations, and any attempt to solve the differences between civilizations by coercive means will bring disastrous consequences to world civilization.  Recognizing and respecting the diversity of civilizations is the basis for exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations. GCI advocates equality, mutual learning, dialogue and tolerance among civilizations, respecting the uniqueness and rationality of different civilizations, seeking common ground while reserving differences, seeking the convergence of ideas and interests, promoting mutual learning and understanding among different civilizations, breaking barriers and prejudices, and eliminating fears and conflicts.
• jointly advocating for the promotion of the common values of all mankind: Under this, Lin writes that “the common values of mankind transcend differences in ideology, social system and level of development. They reflect the greatest common denominator of the values held by people in countries around the world. They respond to the universal expectations and demands of people in all countries, and provide a value bond for the world to achieve lasting peace and common prosperity.
• jointly follow the path of peaceful development, understand different civilizations’ understanding of the meaning of values, and refrain from imposing their own values and models on others. Practice true multilateralism, oppose hegemonism, unilateralism and power politics, abandon the theory of ‘superiority of civilizations’ and ‘clash of civilizations’, and oppose interference in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of democracy, freedom and human rights.”
• jointly advocating the importance of civilization inheritance and innovation: Under this, he writes that Any civilization must keep pace with the times and constantly absorb the essence of the era. If it keeps itself isolated and confined to age-old conservative attitudes for a long time, it will inevitably decline. GCI advocates attaching importance to the inheritance and innovation of civilization and points out the direction for the sustainable development of human civilization. It is necessary to use innovation to increase the driving force for the development of civilization, activate the source of progress in civilization, carry out creative transformation and innovative development of excellent traditional cultures, be adept at letting go of the old and absorbing the new while maintaining the continuity of national cultural heritage, be good at drawing inspiration from the strengths of other civilizations to enrich one’s own thinking, and constantly create civilisational achievements that span time and space and are full of eternal charm.” Read more →

One of my favorite jokes: socialism looks good on paper, but in reality… you just get invaded by the United States. This, of course, addresses the fact that we’ve never had a free socialist country emerge in the history of the world. We have only had what Michael Parenti calls “socialism under siege”: every single socialist experiment has been the target of imperialist destruction. This means that socialism as it emerges in the very real world has to deal with these concrete material factors that it does not control, because it is coming from the bottom up, within a world-system dominated by capitalism. Moreover, socialist countries need to develop by starting out from a position within the geopolitical world of structural under-development. They have to do this without relying on many of the principal mechanisms of development under capitalism, such as colonialism and extreme forms of racist super-exploitation. Finally, socialists inherit all of the political and moral injustices of the capitalist system—baked in racism and homophobia, misogyny and gender oppression, all of the ideologies of the capitalist world—as well as ecological degradation.