Thread: The View, from China

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Could you have included anymore cliches?

Posted on July 11, 2022 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
India’s takeaways from Bali ministerial

"The G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting at Bali, Indonesia, last week was threatened by the hot lava flowing from Eurasia. Western diplomats tried hard to “isolate” Russia but the indefatigable Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov refused to oblige. As the dust settles down, China emerges out of the Bali summitry as the adult in the room.Foreign Minister Wang Yi took an astounding number of “bilaterals” in less than 48 hours — with G20 counterparts from Indonesia, India, Russia, Argentina, European Union, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, France, Canada, Spain, Netherlands, Singapore, United States, Germany and Australia. In addition, China also held high the banner of multilateralism and put forward a Cooperation Initiative on Global Food Security. Welcome to the Post-American Century!

From the Indian perspective, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s meeting with FM Wang Yi on June 7 was the highlight at Bali. The readouts from New Delhi and Beijing convey a positive impression. (here and here)"

Continues at:

India’s takeaways from Bali ministerial - Indian Punchline

Chinky government propaganda and a jingly brown noser.

I wonder if hoohoo will ever have an original thought of his own?
































(Rhetorical question).

From The Economist

So is your point they are more dependent on trade with the west or that they have such great markets in the third world?

Several points to be made. One is the astonishing growth in Chinese foreign trade this century. Another is that China is already the World's dominant trading power- this a few years before it's GDP will exceed that of the US.

Originally Posted by sabang

Several points to be made. One is the astonishing growth in Chinese foreign trade this century. Another is that China is already the World's dominant trading power- this a few years before it's GDP will exceed that of the US.

So they made gazillions making cheap crap for the world with slave labour and now they're using currency manipulation, bribery and predatory loan sharking to infest global trade.

This of course has sabang and hoohoo in a frantic circle jerk.

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

trade with the west or that they have such great markets in the third world?

The 16% are declining for one reason or another.

The 84% are growing.

Growth means profits.

You Capitalist Roader.

Africa’s Donkeys Are Being Stolen and Slaughtered for Chinese Medicine

JOHANNESBURG — How did a popular period drama on Chinese TV help lead to the theft and brutal slaughter of millions of donkeys in Africa?

It all started when fans of the show “Empresses in the Palace” saw the aristocratic characters using a traditional Chinese medicine called ejiao, which is made from donkey skin, Simon Pope, who works for U.K.-based charity the Donkey Sanctuary, told VOA.

“It was all set in the (Chinese) imperial court and at a certain time of the day the ladies of the court would all say, ‘Let’s have some ejiao,’” said Pope. Ejiao, also called donkey glue, is used as medicine or as a tonic for health and beauty in China.

“As a result of this program the demand for ejiao just literally went through the roof,” he said of the show first broadcast in 2011. “The problem was China simply does not have enough donkeys to be able to meet demand.”

The Chinese started looking for donkeys abroad, particularly in Africa where they’re used as a beast of burden by rural communities from Mali to Zimbabwe to Tanzania. When locals didn't want to sell, thefts started, with distressed farmers finding their precious donkeys skinned and left to rot on the veld.

China needs about 5 million donkeys a year to produce and meet the demand for ejiao, and about 2 million of these come from China’s own population of the animals. Of the remaining 3 million or more sourced abroad, the Donkey Sanctuary estimates that between 25% and 35% are stolen.

Now, years into the trade, populations are down, and some African countries are fighting back. Tanzania last month banned donkey slaughter for the skin trade, saying the country's donkey population was at risk of becoming extinct. Other African countries including Nigeria have also introduced bans on donkey slaughter or exports of the animal.

“I think the message that’s going to China, from Africa in particular, is that our donkeys are too valuable an asset to have them skinned and shipped off to China to have them made into medicine. Our donkeys are not for sale,” said Pope. However, he noted that because of China's economic clout on the continent and massive investment in infrastructure, other nations are loath to push back against the trade.

South Africa allows the butchering of donkeys but only at two licensed slaughterhouses and with a quota of 12,000 a year. Authorities here have been cracking down on the illegal trade in recent years, so criminal syndicates have gone underground, especially since COVID, said Grace de Lange, an inspector with the National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA) in South Africa.

Now South African donkeys are being smuggled into Lesotho, a tiny mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa.

“We are not sure exactly what the link is and how they’re getting it out – maybe easier from Lesotho,” she told VOA.

“We’ve had meetings with (the) government in Lesotho and they’re also investigating. … It’s going to the Chinese market,” she said, adding that authorities have also intercepted skins in warehouses and at the airport.

While small-time local criminals have been prosecuted after being arrested transporting the animals, the Chinese running the large syndicates are usually harder to get to, de Lange says.

Marosi Molomo, director of livestock services at Lesotho's Ministry of Agriculture, responded to VOA's questions about the donkey trade moving to Lesotho via text message saying: "It's not possible to give an answer without evidence."

Requests for comment from the Chinese embassies and consulates in both Lesotho and South Africa went unanswered.

De Lange said the animals are often slaughtered in a particularly cruel way. They are stunned with hammers or have their throats slit but are sometimes still alive when skinned.

“They’d actually been slaughtered in the most horrific manner,” she said.

Francis Nkosi, who works on a farm outside Johannesburg caring for some of the donkeys rescued from the skin trade, explained why the animal is so vital in Africa’s rural areas.

“Donkeys in our culture, they’re like transport. They help us,” he said as he fed fresh hay to Oscar and Presley, two of his charges who were rescued – in terrible condition – by the NSPCA last year on their way to slaughter across the border in Lesotho.

“If people get sick sometimes, we don’t have a car. We don’t have a transport. You can use the donkeys to transport some people to the hospital,” he added.

De Lange said she’s seen that donkey “numbers are dwindling” in the rural communities where she works and, for Pope, one major concern is how losing their donkeys has socioeconomic effects for many.

In some countries, “children had been pulled out of school and they were having to do the work previously the donkey was having to do,” Pope said.

While some argue Africa should set up donkey farms and benefit financially that way, Pope points out that China has tried mass farming the animals and been largely unsuccessful. Unlike other farm animals, donkeys can only produce one foal a year.

Ejiao has been used as medicine for the last two millennia, and in modern-day China it is available in various edible forms intended to aid circulation and help with aches and pains.

“Demand for donkey glue in China has affected communities halfway across the globe,” according to an article about the product in China’s state publication China Daily.

“The issue is sensitive, simply because some of these countries depend on the donkey as a working beast in both agriculture and transportation,” it said. “But this is also the reality of a tightening global network of supply and demand, and the fearsome power of being one of the largest consumer markets on Earth.”

The donkey skin trade has also become a conduit for other criminal activity, according to an investigation by the Donkey Sanctuary and researchers at the University of Oxford published in May. The report found donkey skins easily available for purchase online and that websites selling the product were also often offering endangered wildlife for sale and even illicit drugs.

There is a "vast online network of organized criminals offering donkey skins for sale, often alongside other illegal wildlife products including rhino horns, pangolin scales, elephant ivory and tiger hides," the Donkey Sanctuary said.


Africa’s Donkeys Are Being Stolen and Slaughtered for Chinese Medicine

Chinky parasites will eat anything.

More countries knocking on BRICS’ door a sign the world needs fairer governance than West-dominated one


By Global Times Published: Jul 16, 2022 04:56 PM

"BRICS, a grouping of major emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa - has become one of the trending buzzwords in global public opinion lately. After Iran and Argentina applied to join the BRICS mechanism, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt also plan to knock on the door of the BRICS for official membership, Sputnik quoted BRICS International Forum President Purnima Anand as saying.

If the trend tells anything, it is the growing charm of BRICS' strength and values, as well as the loss of attraction in the current West-dominated global governance.

Crises have been surfacing on a global level since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Quite a few countries, especially those in the West, are being confronted with crippling inflation, untenable energy costs, looming recessions and food shortage. Yet BRICS countries have shown much less sensitivity and vulnerability than the US and European countries amid these challenges.

The reason stems from BRICS members' own strength and enhanced cooperation within the group. According to the World Bank, Russia holds the world's largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. Brazil has diverse agricultural products and vast mineral wealth. Their different advantages plus the promotion of BRICS' cooperation on food supply and the exchanges of national currencies have made the group less impacted by the global crises.

More importantly, BRICS countries have the will, and, in different degrees, capability, to fix the deficit in global governance. In this regard, BRICS has already launched a series of innovations. Take the BRICS-led New Development Bank (NDB). The initial subscribed capital is equally distributed among the founding members - the five BRCIS countries. The voting power of each member is also equal based on their shares in the capital stock of the bank.

This example, just a tiny part of the BRICS cooperation though, shows that BRICS is a group where the five countries are on a completely equal footing, with equal rights to speak, vote, and make decisions. This is nothing like any Western alliance, where there is always a dominant role who has the biggest say in the bloc, and with crystal clear agenda - bloc confrontation.

When facing possible BRICS enlargement, the West can hardly hide their Cold War mentality. Since the BRICS summit was held in June, Western media outlets have been hyping the topic under the theme of East-West confrontation.

Earlier this month, US magazine Newsweek said that when NATO's "largest expansion in decades" took place, "Beijing and Moscow are looking to take on new members of their own" blocs, and BRICS was named particularly in the article. By the end of June, the Hill published a headline, "An out-of-touch G7 could lose global leadership to BRICS."

On Twitter, some Western netizens also describe BRICS as a rival of G7 and NATO. It cannot be more narrow-minded to view BRICS in this way. As if for some Westerners, when some countries get together, they are bonding to have a target to oppose, just like what the West has always done.

Cooperation has been one of the natural needs across the globe, as well as a normal state in international relations for a long time. Why deliberately twist a specific cooperation into a bloc confrontation? BRICS has simply no interest in becoming another G7 or NATO.

Instead, as stipulated in the organization's spirit, namely "openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation," BRICS calls for global security and economic governance, while emphasizing not only South-South cooperation, but also dialogues between South and North.

What BRICS is against are power politics, hegemony, the law of the jungle, all of which basically determine that in international politics, only major powers have a say, and small countries must be obedient, or even be exploited. Against this backdrop, BRICS calls for fairness and justice, a global governance in which developing countries have their due status and their voices can be heard. The BRICS just want to bring a balance in the current global order.

When the West compares BRICS with G7 and NATO, it has turned a blind eye to the fact that G7 has long become a rich countries' club, and NATO's mentality is still trapped in the Cold War. Whenever G7 attempts to put up a show to discuss various global issues nowadays, all it really cares about is containment of China and Russia.
But BRICS advocates win-win for the entire world, that is, a win-win not just for the developing countries, but also for the developed powers. This is the biggest difference between BRICS and Western blocs.

In the past, developing countries had not enough strength to reach the goal. Now the timing has come.

Regulations or legal procedures for BRICS enlargement are under discussion. It is thus unlikely that BRICS will absorb new members any time soon before relevant principles and rules are carried out. But when Turkey, a NATO ally, applies for BRICS membership, it mirrors BRICS, be it its capacity or ideas, represents something much cooler than US-dominated rules and orders. At least it signals that the world needs a reformed governance where Western voices are not the only sound."

More countries knocking on BRICS’ door a sign the world needs fairer governance than West-dominated one - Global Times

CHINA / SOCIETY


Specialized rescue, maritime management stationed in China's Nansha Islands & reefs


By Global Times Published: Jul 17, 2022 11:42 AM

"A rescue flight brigade of China's Ministry of Transport in the South China Sea, the local marine department and the maritime search and rescue center have been stationed on Nansha Islands and reefs in South China Sea to undertake emergency rescue missions, perform duties such as supervision of maritime traffic safety and prevention and control of ship pollutions in the area and to guarantee navigation safety and production activities in coastal states.

According to Xinhua News Agency on Sunday, this is a concrete measure by China that will aid the provision of public goods to the international community and that will help the country fulfill international responsibilities and obligations. The move additionally demonstrates China's vision of peaceful development and its image as a responsible major country, and helps build the South China Sea into a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation.

Statistics showed that in the past 10 years, China has conducted 197 maritime search and rescue operations in the South China Sea, successfully rescuing 1,721 Chinese and foreign people in distress, with a success rate of 95.56 percent, providing a solid guarantee for the safety of life and property and maritime navigation and transportation in the region, Xinhua reported.

The State Council, or China's cabinet, in June 2012 approved the establishment of Sansha, a prefectural-level city in South China's Hainan Province to administer the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha islands and the surrounding waters in the South China Sea."

Specialized rescue, maritime management stationed in China's Nansha Islands & reefs - Global Times

BRICS is a group where the five countries are on a completely equal footing, with equal rights to speak, vote, and make decisions.

Do you think hoohoo believes this shite?

^ From the above story ...

Chinese property developers accept farm produce for homes



Several Chinese property developers have said they would accept food as payment for homes in recent months, as they attempt to attract buyers.

The companies advertised deals to let people use produce - including peaches, water melons and garlic - as down payments on new homes.

Home sales in China have fallen for 11 months in a row, while this week a major developer defaulted on its debts.



Last week, a property company in the eastern city of Wuxi said it would allow peaches be used to offset as much as 188,888 Chinese yuan ($28,218; £23,289) in down payments for homes.

Another developer in nearby Nanjing said it would accept as much as 5,000kg of watermelon from farmers.
It valued the produce at 100,000 Chinese yuan - several times what it would cost at local markets.

Chinese property developers accept farm produce for homes - BBC News

CHINA - Daunting long-run challenges

For a nation that boasts one of the world's most rapidly ageing populations, China's vaccination rollout has been shambolic, particularly among the elderly.

Across the country, fewer than 20 per cent of those over 80 have had a booster. Even after a renewed effort since April, when Omicron first cut a swathe across the country, 89 per cent of all citizens may have had two shots but only 56 per cent of eligible people have received a booster.

In addition, there have been concerns about the effectiveness of China's homegrown vaccines and their ability to combat new COVID-19 variants, which is why the leadership has doubled down on its eradication strategy.

China's hospital system would be unable to cope with a mass outbreak.

That, however, has come at an enormous cost.
The June quarter GDP figures revealed China's economy had shrunk by 2.6 per cent from the March quarter — the worst result since the 2020 pandemic-inspired economic collapse.

On an annual basis, the economy barely eked out a gain, up just 0.4 per cent and way below most predictions. Given the notorious unreliability of official Chinese data, many suspect the real situation is far worse.

But the nation faces even greater long-term challenges.
China's population decreased last year for the first time since the Great Famine of 1960.
Its working-age population peaked in 2014 and, on some estimates, its population could halve over the course of this century.

Until now, Chinese citizens have tolerated and accepted an authoritarian regime, primarily because it has delivered rising living standards.
But with a pension system that provides significantly less support for the elderly than many developed nations, a shrinking workforce and an appalling productivity record, the pressures will continue to build on China's Communist Party if it hopes to maintain power.

At least, it may now be able to keep the lights on until after Xi secures his historic third term.

Same link as 2 posts up.

I wonder how many of our chinky friends (and others) know they are being spied on?

Thu, July 14, 2022Chinese software developer Kingsoft Corp is facing a crisis of trust after being accused of locking a novelist out of her own work written in the word processing software WPS over sensitive content, a practice the company denies.

After trending on social media, the issue has caught the attention of state media and other users have come forward with their own experiences about being locked out of their files.

Chinese word processor WPS accused of censorship after author says she was locked out of 1.3 million-character document

China keeps contributing to world economic growth


By He Yin (People's Daily) 09:09, July 20, 2022

The Chinese economy registered positive growth in the first half this year and demonstrated strong resilience despite the increasing complexity of the international economic environment, sporadic COVID-19 infections, and other unexpected challenges.


According to statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s GDP expanded 2.5 percent year on year in the first half of 2022. In particular, the growth was 0.4 percent in the second quarter.

It was a hard-won performance. Facing complicated situations both in and out of the country, China has well-coordinated epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, and effectively responded to challenges.

China always puts its people and their lives in the first place. It has built a solid wall of defense against COVID-19 and consolidated its achievements in fighting the pandemic, which protects people’s lives and health to the largest extent and maximumly stabilizes the fundamentals of economic and social development.

John Walsh, who was a professor at University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, noted that China’s anti-pandemic policies not only saved lives, but also protected the economy.

Many international personages said the Chinese economy demonstrated its resilience and potential to cope with instable international situations.

China’s economy should be observed with a dialectical and long-term view. The impacts from COVID-19 is temporary and extrinsic, while China’s economic resilience and potential are constant and intrinsic.

China enjoys a solid material foundation and a super large market. Its economy may continue to pick up given the recovery of consumption, production upturn, enhanced driving force of innovation and the implementation of a series of macro policies.


China comprehensively implements a new development philosophy, accelerates the building of a new development paradigm, and eyes on high-quality development. It is building new competitive advantages, gathering new drivers for development, and injecting ceaseless impetus into the sustained and healthy development of its economy.

Not merely has China outperformed all other major economies in the last period, it is clearly in the best position to continue to do so, said John Ross, former director of Economic and Business Policy of London.

The fundamentals sustaining China’s long-term economic growth remain unchanged. China is still an important engine driving global economic growth, and the international society is still confident about China’s economic prospects.

In the first five months this year, China saw an inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) of $87.77 billion, up 22.6 percent year on year. Besides, 185 new deals each valued at over $100 million in foreign investment were inked in the January - April period, or 1.5 on a daily basis.

According to a white paper released by the American Chamber of Commerce in China in May, most respondents believe that it is crucial to remain competitive in the Chinese market in order to remain competitive globally.

Agustin Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements recently said that China’s resilient economy would continue to be an engine of global growth.

At present, the world economy is facing increasing risks of stagflation, while major economies are tightening their policies. The unstable and uncertain external factors are also expanding. Given these difficulties and challenges, China will keep pooling resources and concentrating on its own affairs.


The Wall Street Journal said China’s subdued inflation means the countries authorities can focus more squarely on reviving economy.

Besides, China will keep expanding its high-level opening up. As the growth of global trade was losing steam, China’s foreign trade in goods grew 9.4 percent year on year, which indicated the strong resilience and potential of the country’s foreign trade.

In the second half, the second International Consumer Products Expo, the 2022 China International Fair for Trade in Services and the fifth China International Import Expo will be held. Relying on its huge market, China will create more opportunities for other countries in terms of market, investment and growth while maintaining its own sustained and healthy economic development.

The Chinese economy is not a pond, but an ocean. China has the confidence to well coordinate epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, and will strive to achieve sound economic development this year. The country will also make joint efforts with other countries to build an open world economy and inject more positive energy into global recovery.

China keeps contributing to world economic growth - People's Daily Online

Originally Posted by sabang

China keeps contributing to world economic growth

Translation: Chinkystan and their predatory loan sharking is "contributing to" the bank accounts of corrupt officials around the world.

My view. In my neighbourhood.












I was surprised to find this on a village house wall on the outskirts of town on a bike ride. It's on an island (connected by a bridge. There is a uni on the island)