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  1. #26
    I'm in Jail

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  2. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    but you do realise the article it is based on is from 2013, right?
    Correct, and it is worse now.



    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Most interesting, if it were possible, would be to see photos of those same places now- a before and after.
    Agreed.


    I would suggest that it is as bad or even worse now. 10/12 months last year showed Beijing air to be at unhealthy levels. Plus ça change . . .


    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    The mainland China I remember from the mid-late 1990's was a filthy place. The urban areas anyway. Shenzhen was a shithole. It isn't now.
    Last time I was in Shenzhen was about nine years ago - still a shithole, albeit a sterilised one as everything that shouldn't be seen was pushed to the outskirts.

  3. #28
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    Beijing air quality is appalling at times, but this is actually as much due to dust off the Gobi desert as man made pollution. For example, Shanghai isn't as bad. But there are cities in the heavy industrial regions in the north of China that are worse than Beijing!

    Anyway, continue with the research prof. They seem serious about the issue, but seeing is believing.

  4. #29
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    The most polluted cities in the world

    In 2020, India had 46 of the world’s 100 most polluted cities, followed by China (42), Pakistan (6), Bangladesh (4), Indonesia (1), and Thailand (1), according to air quality tracker IQAir. All these cities had a PM2.5 air-quality rating of more than 50.

    Nine out of the top 10 most polluted cities are in India.

    Hotan, in western China’s Xinjiang, had the worst average air quality in 2020, with 110.2.





    Fifteen of the 20 most polluted cities are in India, mostly in the north. Stubble burning spikes pollution in autumn and winter. Vehicle emissions, industry, and burning rubbish also contribute to high levels of PM2.5 and other pollutants.


    Infographic: The 100 most polluted cities in the world | Infographic News | Al Jazeera


    H'mmm- now what might Hotan (a city you have likely never heard of) have to do with white, European type folk I wonder?? GIYF
    Last edited by sabang; 03-12-2021 at 01:47 PM.

  5. #30
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    Oh dear . . . this will ensure thousands might starve


  6. #31
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    While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

    American farmers are asleep as a thief strips machinery, barn, bins, and fields of all valuables—and then returns for more. China has breached the inner walls of the U.S. agriculture industry in what has arguably been the most expansive heist in farming history, and is currently attempting to steal or hack every conceivable facet of U.S. agriculture technology.

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) openly has declared its intent to dominate high-tech industries across the world, including agriculture, by 2025. Undergirding its technological superiority effort, China has unabashed plans for a solo climb to the top rung of the global power ladder by 2049—international dominion. In order to fuel its ascendance, the CCP is engaged in widespread theft, cyber-hacking, and espionage, with the U.S. as the honey hole of illicit gain.

    A 2017 report by the U.S. Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property speaks volumes, and estimates a cost of $255 billion to $600 billion to the U.S. economy each year, and fingers China as the “principle IP infringer.” In 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) acknowledged multiple espionage benchmarks: a new China-related counterintelligence case opens every 10 hours; over half of all active FBI counterintelligence cases involve China; and across the last 10 years, economic espionage with links to China jumped by almost 1,300 percent.

    Over the past decade, China has appropriated trillions of dollars in sophisticated U.S. technology, with a keen interest in the latest advances in the agriculture industry. In 2013 and 2015, Chinese nationals were nabbed in flagrante delicto by federal authorities, attempting to transport pilfered corn and rice seed to China. However, as the arrests and prosecutions made national headlines, the hard evidence remained ignored. Based on a cursory examination of the CCP’s espionage footprint, the seed thefts are merely emblematic and represent the tip of the iceberg: Beijing is looting the American farm.

    “Happening Right Now”

    * In 2011, when Mo Hailong, the U.S. director of international business for Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group, was spotted crawling through Iowa corn rows in two separate incidents, pocketing Pioneer and Monsanto seed corn, the curiosity spurred a multi-year FBI investigation, and revealed Hailong was mailing high-value seed to a relative in China.


    Hailong and several Chinese cohorts were arrested in 2013, attempting to board a plane for China, and their luggage contained the purloined proof of old-school crime. Hidden beneath a façade of microwave popcorn bags and Subway napkins, authorities found hundreds of seed samples.

    Hailong received 36 months in prison. (At least five years prior to the arrests, documents revealed high-quality praise from China regarding Hailong’s stolen seeds, suggesting the total haul was massive.)
    * Weiqiang Zhang studied biotech crop production at Kansas State University, obtained a doctoral degree in rice genetics at Louisiana State University, and gained employment at Ventria (Kansas-based private biopharmaceutical corporation using GMO rice in production of recombinant proteins) as a seed breeder.

    Zhang gained access to a climate-controlled seed room and stole samples representing $75 million in research. He then used USDA letterhead to send counterfeit letters to six crop research colleagues in China, inviting them on a tour of Ventria and several more U.S. agriculture stops. The delegation brazenly showed in 2013 and made the rounds (including Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark., where Zhang’s main accomplice, Wengui Yan, worked as a research geneticist), but were seized by U.S. Customs agents during a routine luggage inspection that found hundreds of seeds, including corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat. Zhang was sentenced to roughly 10 years in prison.


    * In 2008, Haitao Xiang began working for Monsanto as an imaging scientist at The Climate Corporation. A key digital part of The Climate Corporation’s big data platform was a proprietary algorithm tagged the Nutrient Optimizer. Xiang was nabbed (with a one-way ticket to China) at the airport, allegedly with a micro SD card copy of the algorithm in 2017.

    The corn, rice, and algorithm cases grabbed headlines, but their significance is suggestive of what lies beneath, i.e., they showcased a fraction of theft incidents. “It’s fair to label these cases as tip of the iceberg or tip of the dinner fork,” says Col. (Ret.) John Mills, a national security professional and former Director of Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and International Affairs at the Department of Defense. “I mean they are a drop in the bucket. For so long, U.S. counterintelligence has been focused on Russia, yet China presents a threat many orders of magnitude greater. China is intent on cataloguing seed and DNA on a vast scale, and they’ve spent at least 10 years vacuuming up every piece of tech from every sector in the U.S. You can be absolutely certain: Agriculture is right up there at the top and this is happening right now.”

    Playing for Keeps

    With 1.4 billion mainland citizens at the supper table, China is desperate for more farmland. Although Chinese President Xi Jinping rarely wastes a speech opportunity without mentioning food security, China is the No. 1 ag commodity importer worldwide. (Significantly, soybeans rate as the No. 2 import annually, bookended by commercial aircraft and automobiles.)


    China’s agriculture minister recently announced the country will expand its farmland, explains journalist and documentary filmmaker Lance Crayon, adding that “China’s plan is to have farmland the size of Ireland by the end of 2021, and because the goal was announced, it will be achieved.”

    However, revamping 16.5 million acres into farmland in 2021 (indeed, roughly equivalent in size to the Republic of Ireland), pales in comparison to the overall plan. A decade back, the CCP announced a new farmland projection for 132 million acres in roughly 10 years. Turning acreage outsizing the entire state of California into “high standard farmland” is plain testament to China’s intention to achieve unprecedented levels of food security.

    Further, in 2017, ChemChina dropped $46 billion on Syngenta, gaining access to transgenic seeds and crop protection products. The acquisition represents a single plank in China’s platform to keep its base fed as it pursues an all-costs drive toward the acquisition of ag technology.

    Far beyond ensuring grain and meat for the most populous nation in world history, the CCP pegs a reliable food supply as a vital component of its move toward the No. 1 global power spot. China is playing for keeps: In 2013, Xi kicked off the Belt and Road Intiative (BRI), an infrastructure project that aims to give China unparalleled access to global trade by 2049—the 100-year anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

    Complementing BRI, Made in China 2025 looms as another alarming CCP program. Announced in 2015, the 10-year initiative projects domination of 10 high-tech sectors by 2025—including information technology, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, electric vehicles, aerospace engineering, advanced electronics, biomedicine, high-speed rail, maritime engineering—and agricultural technology.


    Additionally, Xi plans to modernize China’s armed forces by 2035—on pace to rival the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific. (Chinese military spending reached $252 billion in 2020, outpacing the military expenditure of any nation except the U.S.) Significantly, Xi has an entire army command dedicated to cyber warfare, the Strategic Support Force, part of his military reform effort. Xi also included a Military-Civil Fusion program written into China’s constitution: Any private sector innovation must be transferred to the military. (Expressed in the People’s Liberation Army Daily, civil-military industrial espionage in countries such as the U.S. is euphemistically described as “picking flowers in foreign lands to make honey in China.”)

    Xi and the CCP face a simple calculus: Any move on the international catbird seat requires top-drawer agricultural production technology, and if it can’t be bought or developed—it can be stolen.

    Softest Target

    China’s ruling authority consists of 90 million CCP members. They remain committed to a sworn oath of allegiance, promising to “carry out the Party's decisions, strictly observe Party discipline, guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party, work hard, fight for communism throughout my life, be ready at all times to sacrifice my all for the Party and the people, and never betray the Party.”

    According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, "The Chinese intelligence services strategically use every tool at their disposal, including state-owned businesses, students, researchers and ostensibly private companies, to systematically steal information and intellectual property.”

    A third of all international students in the U.S. are from China, roughly 360,000 Chinese nationals, who pay upwards of three times normal tuition rates, representing at least a $14 billion influx for American universities and local economies.

    In 2019, Joe Augustyn, a 28-year veteran of the CIA, said, "We know without a doubt that anytime a graduate student from China comes to the US, they are briefed when they go, and briefed when they come back.”

    “They don't just come here to spy ... they come here to study and a lot of it is legitimate," Augustyn said. "But there is no question in my mind, depending on where they are and what they are doing, that they have a role to play for their government."

    Considering 360,000 Chinese nationals enrolled in U.S. universities (many of those land grant universities with heavy agriculture research concentrations), if the CCP taps merely 1% of its student exports as direct intelligence sources—the math translates to 3,600 information sources on U.S. soil. And if the CCP taps far greater numbers of students in U.S. universities, as many analysts believe, the level of CCP surveillance jumps exponentially.

    John Mills estimates a high percentage of China’s foreign students in the U.S. funnel information to the CCP. “It’s my opinion that many are either working for the Ministry of State Security (China’s CIA-FBI hybrid organization), and 100% are fully aware of their obligation to the CCP. That is the price to be here. Part of their presence here, granted with CCP permission, is a promise, often a quid pro quo, to assist the CCP in getting whatever is needed.”

    “The FBI woke up to this threat far too late, and now we are in very deep,” Mills continues. “It is the CCP’s goal to steal, glean, obtain, transcribe, and photograph anything of value from the U.S., and the agriculture sector is right at the top. China is a net food importer and that is a strategic vulnerability of the CCP.”

    and more (Full Article)- https://www.agweb.com/news/business/...ina-stole-farm


    Lets go over there and steal their- Tea!

  7. #32
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    I'm going to stick my neck out here and say if the chinkies are fucking over Bayer (who own Monsanto), for that they get my vote. It is the worst kind of predatory corporation.

  8. #33
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    China stockpiling food at historically high levels

    In China, food security matters. Many of the old generation, still alive today, remember times of Want. Food security is an oft beaten drum by the CPC- to the point of dear Uncle Xi lamenting the wastefulness of modern Chinese eating habits.







    China is stockpiling food at historically high levels and now has more than half of the world’s maize and other grains. By mid-2022, the country is estimated to hold 69% of the world’s corn reserves, 60% of rice, and 51% of wheat.

    At the end of 2021, NIKKEI Asia reported that China, with less than 20% of the world’s population, has managed to stockpile more than half of the world’s maize and other grains, leading to steep price increases across the planet and dropping more countries into famine.1

    On January 5, 2022, Bloomberg reported that food prices have hit 10-year highs, causing worldwide concern.2

    “Supply-chain bottlenecks, labor shortages, bad weather and a surge in consumer demand are among the factors responsible for the spike. So, too, is a lesser-known phenomenon: China is hoarding key commodities,” Bloomberg’s Adam Minter said.

    According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, China will hold 69% of the world’s corn reserves, 60% of its rice, and 51% of its wheat by mid-2022.

    China is maintaining its food stockpiles at a ‘historically high level,’ said Qin Yuyun, head of grain reserves at the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration.

    “Our wheat stockpiles can meet the demand for one and a half years. There is no problem whatsoever about the supply of food.”

    The projections represent increases of around 20 percentage points over the past 10 years, and the data clearly shows that China continues to hoard grain.1

    In 2005, China was importing food (not including beverages) for less than $10 billion USD.

    In 2010, the number rose to more than $20 billion USD and continued rising year-over-year until $80 billion USD in 2019 and nearly 100 billion in 2020, up to 4.6 times from a decade before.

    References:
    1 China hoards over half the world’s grain, pushing up global prices – NIKKEI Asia
    2 One Reason for Rising Food Prices? Chinese Hoarding – Bloomberg

    Featured image: Food silos at Dailan, China on January 11, 2022. Credit: Copernicus EU/Sentinel-2, TW


    China stockpiling food at historically high levels '-' The Watchers

  9. #34
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    So is this another good news story you are peddling?

  10. #35
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    It's a pretty happy story Mike- hopefully one that can provide some inspiration for other developing world nations trying to claw themselves out of widespread poverty.
    Since Deng Xiaoping quietly turned old style Maoism on it's head (while effusively praising Chairman Mao, and taking no personal credit) the progress of China has been astonishing. Many in the West view this as a threat- but they have not invaded anyone, and Taiwan can wait.

  11. #36
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    But it isn't is it. Take the ever increasing food imports, where are they from. Mostly 3rd world countries who's people exist at subsistence level with the chinkies buying out their land through corrupt govt officials and former farmer/owner paid a pittance for the land, the chinkies then pay slave wages and treat the workers likewise.

    If yoy want examples look them up yourself, you can start close to home with cambodia and stick a pin in most of Africa below sub-sahara.

  12. #37
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    Taters.

  13. #38
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    ^^ So if I am to take this literally, you resent China because it can feed it's people adequately, and buys some of it's food from the rest of the world? Jeez, that's a bit rich coming from a brit. And exactly what third world countries is China starving with it's food imports?

    We seem to have no such begrudgement in Australia, au contraire we see opportunity (or did, before scomo)-


    Food and beverage to China

    Trends and opportunities

    The market

    China is the world’s second largest buyer of imported food and beverages after the United States with total imports exceeding A$130 billion in 2016 (UN Comtrade).

    Australia is China’s 6th largest supplier of food (behind the United States, Brazil, Canada, Argentina and Thailand) with exports valued at A$5.3 billion in 2016. The value of Australian exports of processed foods increased by an average more than 40 per cent between 2015 and 2016.

    Euromonitor estimates that retail sales of packaged food will total RMB1.5 trillion in 2017 – with up to 10 per cent of sales taking place online. Rising disposable incomes and associated ‘lifestyle upgrades’, overseas travel, food delivery apps and increasing product choice both online and offline continue to sustain strong annual growth.

    While spending and consumption patterns vary strongly by region, age and income group, consumers across China are most attracted to products that offer:

    • food safety and high quality
    • superior taste
    • better nutrition and other functional benefits
    • high quality packaging
    • superior freshness
    • convenience



    Buyers of packaged foods in major cities also demonstrate a strong preference for well-known and established brands that are readily available in Australian retail outlets and promoted by word-of-mouth.

    By comparison, shoppers in smaller and regional cities are more price sensitive and less brand conscious.

    Opportunities

    Australia is generally well understood among Chinese consumers and Australian products have a reputation of being natural and manufactured under the highest quality standards—a feature which also appears regularly in sales and marketing campaigns of other international suppliers.

    By 1 January 2019, the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement will provide most Australian processed food products, such as breakfast cereals for example, an import duty advantage of up to 25 per cent against products supplied by countries without a free trade agreement (see Tariffs).

    Increased investment cold chain logistics by major e-commerce companies is addressing high consumer demand for fresh produce – with annual growth in the online sales of this category increasing by 80 per cent per year (China’s E-Commerce Research Center).
    Enquires received by Austrade show interest in:

    • milk powders (including infant formula and adult milk powder), UHT and pasteurised milk, yoghurt, cheese and butter
    • seafood (particularly saltwater shell fish such as oysters, crabs, lobster and abalone)
    • fresh fruits (citrus, table grapes, cherries and mangoes)
    • oats and other breakfast cereals
    • chilled and frozen beef
    • processed foods
    • baby food
    • wine and craft beer
    • natural fruit juice



    Continued strong growth in bakery chains and coffee consumption will also provide supply opportunities for dairy ingredients and soft drinks.

    Full- Food and beverage - China - For Australian exporters - Austrade

  14. #39
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    The chinky parasites are plundering food all over the world, usually by bribing corrupt officials, and at the expense of the locals.

    Or, as in Laos, they bribe to get access to the land, overfarm it until useless, and leave it drenched in toxic pesticides so it's of no use to anyone.

    They are a cancer on the planet (in many cases, literally).
    The next post may be brought to you by my little bitch Spamdreth

  15. #40
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    Australia is China’s 6th largest supplier of food (behind the United States, Brazil, Canada, Argentina and Thailand)
    Haters gonna Hate. Begrudgers gonna Grudge.

  16. #41
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    China's Total Food Imports: $105B
    • Imports from Top 10 Partners: $75.3B (72% of total)
    • Imports from Rest of World: $29.3B (28% of total


      • China's Total Food
        Exports:$59.6B


    • Exports to Top 10 Partners: $38.3B (64% of total)
    • Exports to Rest of World: $21.3B (36% of total)



    How is China Feeding its Population of 1.4 Billion? | ChinaPower Project


    Seems like Australia is moving up in the rankings of food exporter to China (or was, pre scomo). Losers gonna Lose.
    Last edited by sabang; 07-05-2022 at 08:56 AM.

  17. #42
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    What a bunch of dickheads


  18. #43
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    . . . disgusting dickheads . . .


  19. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Haters gonna Hate. Begrudgers gonna Grudge.
    Morons gonna moron . . .

  20. #45
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    The question should be:
    Why China doesn't live?

    They only work and eat!

  21. #46
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    That’s it! I’m giving up Pangolin for lent.

  22. #47
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    Have you talked it through with him.

  23. #48
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    China whining again . . . blaming everyone else for their own failings


  24. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by HermantheGerman View Post
    Why China doesn't live?
    A visit or two may change your opinion of what Chinese people enjoy.

  25. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    A visit or two may change your opinion of what Chinese people are instructed to enjoy.
    FTBFY.

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