Thread: The View, from China

Originally Posted by sabang

China isn't interested in democracy

We know.

Oh, just look at the trend of countries that diplomatically recognise Taiwan. It is downward, and includes none of the worlds larger countries. My view- once China was admitted to the UN and became one of the five UN permanent Security Council members- and concurrently Tawan was kicked out of the UN, a trend was set in motion that cannot be reversed. But softly softly, catchy monkey- I definitely think China should stick to that approach.

Originally Posted by sabang

Oh, just look at the trend of countries that diplomatically recognise Taiwan. It is downward, and includes none of the worlds larger countries. My view- once China was admitted to the UN and became one of the five UN permanent Security Council members- and concurrently Tawan was kicked out of the UN, a trend was set in motion that cannot be reversed. But softly softly, catchy monkey- I definitely think China should stick to that approach.

Yeah I guess this wasn't on any of your chinky propaganda sites. Or perhaps their inevitable whining was in the chinky whining thread.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The French National Assembly on Monday (Nov. 29) passed a resolution affirming the French government’s continued backing of Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.
The resolution, which passed with 39 voting in favor of the motion, three abstaining, and two opposing, calls for Taiwan’s inclusion in global organizations including the World Health Assembly, International Civil Aviation Organization, International Criminal Police Organization, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, according to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) press release.
This is the first time that the two chambers of the French Parliament have passed a pro-Taiwan resolution within six months, MOFA noted. The French Senate had approved its own version on May 6.

Foreign ministry thanks French National Assembly for passing pro-Taiwan resolution | Taiwan News | 2021-11-30 1200

Originally Posted by sabang

1- I do not believe China to be totalitarian

It doesn't matter what you believe.

A view from H.C.
The concentration of semi conductor companies has become a real world problem, with TSMC Taiwan, Samsung Korea, and SMIC China, showing how uncomfortably they are grouped around and in China.
SMIC in China had been nobbled to some degree by Trump, (yes Trunp did do some good things) who blacklisted SMIC blocking their access to western technology that would have allowed them to build advanced 5 nanometer chips.
An invasion of Taiwan would have China controlling most of the world market, a good reason for them to be salivating over Taiwan. That combined with a certain looney leader mounting a terroist type attack from next door on Samsung would be catastrophic to the world IT and military industries as those two companies, TSMC (54%) and Samsung (17%), currently together have over a 70% share of the world market.
This no doubt had some influence on a shift in attitude of some countries to the status and defence of Taiwan, especially the U.S. and some of its' allies.
Taiwan has played its' hand well. You dont have to be the strongest kid on the block, just make yourself indispensible to the strongest kid on the block.
The Chinese should realise that this alone makes an invasion of Taiwan unacceptable to the west. It is somewhat akin to allowing them to take control of the the entire middle east oil fields.
My perspective on the shifting world power play around Taiwan anyway.

I think your irrational CDS is for you to work out PH, so I'll leave it with you. It does seem to involve some personal/ family issues, so enough said.
Perhaps I have read too much Kafka, or history of the Third Reich, but I think calling China a totalitarian state is absurd. People do not sit around openly smoking dope in public places (while the PSB saunters by!), or quite openly dealing in weed outside Shanghai nightclubs, or mincing around while openly gay in Totalitarian societies- at least not by my definition. I have no problem with the term authoritarian.

^^ Some valid points made there Hugh, and yes I think an over concentration of manufacturing/ resource capability or even technology capability in one place is not a good thing. We are finding this out right now downunda, in the distinctly unglamorous commodity known as Urea.

I thought I posted somewhere that Australia would start constructing A Urea plant near Geraldton W.A. in 2022.
This will alleviate any shortfall. It is not a popular product to maufacture in emission sensitive countries as it has a high carbon footprint, although I believe the new Australian plant will operate at about 25% of the C02 levels produced by Chinese factories. The intent is to use wind and solar electric to make "green" hydrogen and then combine with nitrogen to make ammonia. CO2 is added to the ammonia to make urea.
The problem is once the urea is used in the soil it releases an equal amount of CO2 to the atmosphere, so there is no sequestration of CO2 in the ground.

I thought I posted somewhere that Australia would start constructing A Urea plant near Geraldton

You did- and i said Good. If you or others think China is totalitarian, well that is your opinion- just as it is mine that it is not.
Sometimes y'know, Chinese people are not willing to discuss certain matters with gweilo, because they just plain think we do not understand.

Originally Posted by sabang

You did- and i said Good. If you or others think China is totalitarian, well that is your opinion- just as it is mine that it is not.

Sometimes y'know, Chinese people are not willing to discuss certain matters with gweilo, because they just plain think we do not understand.

Also apparently, the opinion of The Cambridge dictionary, but please forward me Sabangs Dictionary of contrary opinions. I'm sure it's English language definitions are far more accurate than some poxy book from a poxy English university.

Complete with an opinion of people I spoke to in person that you've never met. Well done, such insight.

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

Also apparently, the opinion of The Cambridge dictionary, but please forward me Sabangs Dictionary of contrary opinions. I'm sure it's English language definitions are far more accurate than some poxy book from a poxy English university.

Complete with an opinion of people I spoke to in person that you've never met. Well done, such insight.

It's definitely authoritarian, since sabang and hoohoo fit one of the definitions to a T:

requires complete subservience to the state.

BeiDou Conducts Laser Communication Experiment, Steps Ahead of U.S. — Could Improve SatNav Accuracy

December 2, 2021

"In a race with the U.S. to develop a laser communications network in space, China’s BeiDou GNSS has conducted an inter-satellite and satellite-ground station experiment using using lasers rather than the usual radio signals. The technology could potentially transmit data a million times faster than by radio signal to almost any location. Some experts say it could increase satnav accuracy by a factor of 6 to 40 by synchronizing the satellites’ atomic clocks with laser beams.

[Image courtesy China Daily.]

Researchers at the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics in the northeastern province of Jilin developed a shape-changing mirror telescope that it at the heart of the method. It could enable a satellite to beam data to the ground or to another satellite at several gigabytes per second, rather than kilobytes by radio frequency. BeiDou’s fastest communication performance in the experiment is classified.

In a competing but lagging development, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced on November 29 that a December 4 launch of an experimental satellite will lead to similar experiments, testing data transmission via laser beam at 2.8GB per second. This comes after a two-year delay in the project.

BeiDou and all other GNSS satellites normally inter-communicate by radio signal, which can transmit only short text messages because of limited bandwidth. With lasers, a space network could transmit data a million times faster. Laser communication offers wider bandwidth, is less vulnerable to cyber-espionage, and uses lighter, more compact technology.

A ground station for laser communication is usually a fixed facility with sophisticated devices including a large telescope, a beam tracking and locking unit, and equipment for signal processing. However, the Changchun Institute scientists and engineers packed reception equipment into a car for mobile deployment.

Laser-beam bandwidth can reach one terabyte (1,000GB) per second. Lasers are also less susceptible to being tapped by a third party, and more difficult to jam during electronic warfare than microwaves. A traditional communication satellite is usually bulky, because it requires huge antennas and lots of power to generate and transmit large numbers of radio signals. Laser devices are smaller and lighter, potentially allowing satellites built mainly for other purposes to establish high-speed communication with one another or to the ground, according to Chinese news agency reportage.

Since the 1960s, programs in the U.S., Japan and Europe have sought to develop a laser communication satellite but failed to solve some of the practical problems involved. One of these is presented by the atmosphere: air molecules can absorb or reflect light, so that too few light particles reach their destination. Turbulence can also distort or shake the laser beams so that the light signals became too blurry to read, especially in urban areas with intense human activity. The Chinese researchers in Shenyang have reportedly developed a telescope mirror that can change shape with an electric charge, to reduce the blurring effect caused by air turbulence.

Mozi, the world’s first quantum satellite, reached a download speed of 5.1GB per second in 2016 using laser equipment. Subsequently, Chinese space laboratory Tiangong 2 conducted the world’s first space-ground laser communication in daytime, overcoming another major obstacle in practical application. In 2019, a Chinese laser ground station downloaded data from a satellite at 10GB per second.

NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration

As space missions generate and collect more data, the need for enhanced communications capabilities has become pressing. Optical communications will increase bandwidth by 10 to 100 times over radio frequency systems, according to NASA statements. Additionally, optical communications provides decreased size, weight, and power requirements, for less drain on spacecraft batteries.

The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) payload includes two optical modules, which generate the infrared lasers that transmit data to and from Earth. The LCRD payload will be ride onboard the U.S. Department of Defense’s Space Test Program Satellite 6 (STPSat-6), scheduled for launch on December 4. LCRD will send test data to and from its ground stations.

Eventually, other missions in space will send their data to LCRD, which will then relay the data down to designated ground stations on Earth. LCRD creates a continuous path for data flowing from missions in space to ground stations on Earth, making a complete end-to-end system. Additionally, LCRD’s ability to both send and receive data from missions and the ground stations makes the system two-way.

Optical signals cannot penetrate cloud coverage, so NASA must build a system flexible enough to avoid interruptions due to weather. LCRD will transmit data received from missions to two ground stations, located in Table Mountain, California, and Haleakalā, Hawaii. These locations were chosen for their minimal cloud coverage. LCRD will test different cloud coverage scenarios, gathering valuable information about the flexibility of optical communications.

Future missions that decide to use optical communications could potentially use LCRD as their relay. One of LCRD’s first operational users will be the Integrated LCRD Low-Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T), a payload that will soon reach the International Space Station. The terminal will receive high-resolution science data from experiments and instruments onboard the ISS and transfer the data to LCRD, which will then transmit it to a ground station, relaying on to mission operation centers and scientists.

In January 2020, the LCRD flight payload was delivered to Northrop Grumman’s facility in Sterling, Virginia, for integration onto STPSat-6. Throughout the development process, the NASA LCRD team worked closely with the Space Force as well as commercial partners like Northrop Grumman and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory.

With LCRD relaying data for ILLUMA-T, this will be the first operational optical communications system for human spaceflight. ILLUMA-T will send data to LCRD at rates of 1.2 gigabits per second over optical links, allowing for more high-resolution experiment data to be transmitted back to Earth."

BeiDou Conducts Laser Communication Experiment, Steps Ahead of U.S. — Could Improve SatNav Accuracy - Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design

Originally Posted by OhOh

BeiDou Conducts Laser Communication Experiment, Steps Ahead of U.S. — Could Improve SatNav Accuracy

Cool. Who did they nick that off?

Eritrea Joins The Belt And Road Initiative

Nov 28, 2021 Posted by Silk Road Briefing Written by Chris Devonshire-Ellis

By Chris Devonshire-Ellis

"The north-east African country Eritrea has signed an MoU with China to join the Belt And Road Initiative. The MOU was signed on November 25 by the Chinese Ambassador Cai Ge and Eritrea’s Foreign Minister Osman Saleh.

Eritrea is strategically important as it has access to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and to Europe, as well as to waters in the Arabian Gulf and on towards the Indian Ocean.

The country covers 117,600 square kilometres, with an estimated population of 4.5 million. The national GDP is about US$6.4 billion (PPP) with a GDP per capita of about US$2,000. The economy depends mainly on agriculture, although some industrialization is taking place. Eritrea’s main agricultural products include sorghum, millet, barley, wheat, legumes, vegetables, fruits, sesame, linseed, cattle, sheep, goats, and camels. Remittances sent back to Eritrea from abroad by overseas labourers account for about 32% of GDP and remain an important part of the economy with many being based in the Gulf.

What needs to happen is to gradually bring that trained labour back to Eritrea to develop infrastructure in their own country and wean it off an agricultural base to a higher standard of industrialisation. China’s involvement will also help stabilise the country, as China’s relations with neighboring Ethiopia are also important to Beijing. Ethiopia and Eritrea have had an on-going conflict for several years with occasional flare ups. Beijing will be putting pressure on both to find solutions.

Eritrea’s cooperation is expected to cement China’s presence in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, with interests ranging from a military base to protect shipping, in addition to infrastructure projects in ports and railways.
China has been investing in the country for some time. In late 2019, the China Shanghai Corporation for Foreign Economic and Technological Cooperation (SFECO) began construction of part of the 500 km road connecting Eritrea’s Massawa and Assab harbours, both of which possess Special Economic Zones.

However, Eritrea is not yet a member of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) which has eliminated border tariffs between all other African nations. This can probably be expected to change with Chinese influence and desire to see trade increase – China’s exports to Eritrea were just US$71 million in 2020, and Eritrean exports negligible, partially due to the Ethiopian conflict. Nonetheless, the country retains its strategic importance on the Red Sea."

Eritrea Joins The Belt And Road Initiative - Silk Road Briefing

What needs to happen is to gradually bring that trained labour back to Eritrea to develop infrastructure in their own country

What will happen is that Eritrean officials will be bribed to borrow money at international loan shark rates to give to the chinkies to "bring that chinky labour" to Eritrea to develop infrastructure that solely benefits the chinkies.

It's called "Belt & Owed".

international loan shark rates

Can you provide any, erm, evidence of this 'arry? Or is it just more hot air.

Managed economy seems to be the terminology. Of course how good that is depends upon how good the manager is! Uncle Xi's former well regarded economic guru seems to have been sidelined- which doesn't leave me or other bankerwanker types with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

In need of a baby boom, China clamps down on vasectomies

Zhao Zihuan, a first-time mother in the Chinese city of Jinan, had two miscarriages before giving birth to a son last year. The seven-hour labor ended in an emergency Caesarean section.


Exhausted by child care, the 32-year-old and her husband decided one kid was enough — so in April they began to inquire about a vasectomy. Yet they were turned down by two hospitals. One doctor told Zhao’s husband that the surgery was no longer allowed under the country’s new family-planning rules.

“I was frightened and angry at the same time,” said Zhao, who works in publishing. “What if we accidentally get pregnant? We won’t have a choice but to have the child. The burden will be too great.”


For more than three decades, Chinese authorities forced men and women to undergo sterilization to control population growth. Now, as the government tries to reverse a plummeting birthrate that it fears could threaten social stability and the economy, hospitals are turning away men seeking vasectomies.

“It’s a rather simple surgery in theory, but public hospitals will almost always turn patients away because we are aware of the risks involved in doing something that’s not explicitly okayed by the government,” said Yang, the director of a hospital in Jingzhou city, Hubei province, who gave only part of his name for fear of punishment for speaking to foreign media. “The fundamental policy is that China needs more childbirths.”

MORE MSN

Originally Posted by misskit

One doctor told Zhao’s husband that the surgery was no longer allowed under the country’s new family-planning rules.

Just amazing.

Lancang-Mekong cooperation on water resources a model for regional solutions: minister


By

Hu Yuwei


Published: Dec 10, 2021 02:22 AM

"Representatives from five Mekong countries applauded the Beijing Initiative raised by China that calls for further enhanced dialogue, technical cooperation, and information sharing on water resources in the Lancang-Mekong Basin at the recently concluded second Langcang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Forum.

The initiative was seen as a way to boost confidence in addressing common challenges such as climate change, underdeveloped water ecosystems, and political interference from some outside countries.
Held every two years in China, the forum aims to promote sustainable use, management and conservation of water resources in the Lancang-Mekong region, as well as the achievement of the water-related goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The Beijing Initiative encourages all stakeholders to provide safe and affordable water and sanitation services to vulnerable communities, women and children.

Ministerial representatives from the six countries – China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia – and more than 10 international organizations, including the Mekong River Commission and the World Bank, recognized China's efforts in bringing practical benefits to downstream sustainable development and calling for more experience sharing through the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC).

Ambassador Liu Zhenmin, deputy permanent representative of China to the United Nations, called the LMC a model for regional water cooperation.

China made good on its promise to share year-round hydrological data for the upper reaches of the Mekong River since November 2020 via a digital platform that aims to provide reliable forecasting and early warning services related to floods and droughts.

The platform came into use at a difficult time. At the end of 2019 and in early 2020, the Lancang-Mekong river basin saw floods and intense droughts, triggered by climate change.

“Following the first Forum, all riparian countries have reached an agreement on year-round Provision of Hydrological Information for Lancang River. These are excellent examples of genuine cooperation and engagement among our Mekong-Lancang riparian countries toward sustainable development,” Bounkham Vorachit, minister of natural resources and environment of Laos, said at the forum.
Also, through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has provided countries with a large number of projects to benefit local people. For example, the cooperation mechanism has seen nearly 60 technical exchange activities and helped train more than 100 young people who majored in water resources over the past five years.


The projects financed under the MLC Special Fund have produced many tangible benefits in enhancing the livelihood and well-being of Cambodian citizens. Among these projects, Cambodia has benefited from 55 projects in rural development, community business creation, water resources, agriculture, education and cultural heritage.

China also supports officials of water-related agencies and young technicians from Mekong countries in pursuing master's degrees in China.

But political interference from outside countries threaten to undermine the progress of the regional cooperation.
Li Guoying, China’s minister of water resources, warned of the risks. “At present, some countries and organizations outside the region are politicizing and stigmatizing the water resource issue, repeatedly disseminating false information, and attempting to undermine the sound cooperative relations among members. We should remain highly vigilant against this,” Li said."

Lancang-Mekong cooperation on water resources a model for regional solutions: minister - Global Times

When you watch 'Dopesick', it's easy to see the parallel in the techniques the Sacklers and Mr. Shithole share when it comes to talking bollocks.

Having only visited hong kong and never worked there, I am surprised that the foreign business community is not looking for "sunnier climes".

I smell a rat here . . . no vasectomies for Han yet forced vasectomies for Uyghurs, Tibetans etc . . .

About time.


^ Well my ex-winglady and her hubby are possibly looking to retire to the Filipines if that makes you feel any better. Cost reasons. She is American, but has no intention of going back there.