Category Archives: China

Clone China

Posted on by

This is an interesting development:

Jaguar Land Rover has won a legal case to prevent a Chinese car brand from selling a copycat vehicle, ending a three-year court battle. In 2016 the UK-based carmaker sued Jiangling Motor Corporation for its Landwind X7 sport utility vehicle, which the company claimed bore extremely similar resemblance to the Range Rover Evoque. On Friday the Beijing Chaoyang District Court ruled that five major features of the car were copied, and ordered Jiangling to cease production, sales and marketing of the vehicle.

…

Several international carmakers have complained about local brands copying their designs, but the case is the first time that a Chinese court has ruled in favour of an overseas manufacturer over a Chinese carmaker.

For all the talk about China taking over the world in terms of technology, while their progress is based largely on ripping off other people’s designs to produce versions of inferior quality it’s difficult to see how. If China does start to innovate, one of the biggest problems they’ll face is stopping others copying their intellectual property as they have done. Perhaps this latest ruling is a sign the Chinese are becoming aware of this, but I expect they’re going to find abandoning that business model is a lot harder than adopting it.

Share

Purgery

Posted on by

When you work in the oil and gas business, particularly if you’re around live plant or involved in construction, safety is dinned into you with all the subtlety of Trump running commentary on the Mueller investigation. It’s so effective that when you wander outside the oil and gas environment you wonder why people are deliberately trying to lose an eye or commit suicide. The industry takes safety seriously because 1) hydrocarbons are phenomenally dangerous and 2) unlike other industries, they have plenty of money.

One of the things people involved in maintenance understand is the importance of purging vessels. If you need to do some work on a tank, separator, or drum that normally holds hydrocarbons you first empty it, then you purge it with nitrogen. Then when you open it you use an ultra-sensitive gas detector to make sure there’s nothing poisonous, flammable, or explosive left inside. I don’t know where the following video is from other than it’s Chinese and I’m not entirely sure what happened, but my guess is whatever he was doing ignited residual gas in the vessel.


Be like Stalin: purge.

(Via Obo)

Share

Africa’s choice

Posted on by

I have no problem with this:

Tanzania’s President John Magufuli has said he prefers Chinese to Western aid as it comes with fewer conditions.

It has been abundantly clear for years now that, in the main, Africans can’t stand Europeans and Americans. Several reasons are cited for this, the principle ones being Africa’s treatment at the hands of European colonial powers, the racism of white people towards Africans, and the manner in which western companies exploit Africa. This is why, every time an African leader such as Robert Mugabe delivers an impassioned speech denouncing the west, he is given a standing ovation by his peers. I therefore think it is high time European countries left Africa well alone, quit with the neo-colonialist moralising, and sorted out the mess in their own countries. China seems more than willing to fill any gap left by a European and American withdrawal from the continent, and Africans seem to think they will be treated better by their new partners. Good luck to all concerned is what I say.

China has become a major investor in Africa, challenging Western influence on the continent.

It has promised to spend $60bn in investment, aid and loans in Africa over the next three years, mostly in infrastructure development.

What’s there to dislike?

“The thing that makes you happy about their aid is that it is not tied to any conditions. When they decide to give you, they just give you,” Mr Magufuli said.

I doubt this is true and Mr Magufuli hasn’t read the small print about military bases, mineral rights, and work permits for Chinese nationals, but who am I to argue?

On 15 November, Denmark said it had suspended $9.8m (£7.5m) in aid because of “unacceptable homophobic comments” by a Tanzanian politician.

I thought the era of the white man telling Africans what to say and how to think was over, but apparently not.

The European Union (EU) is currently the East African state’s biggest development partner, giving aid of more than $88m annually.

If the Chinese are willing to match this, and Tanzania’s government is happier to work with the Chinese, then where’s the downside?

The EU announced earlier this month that it was reviewing its policy towards Tanzania because of concerns about the rights of gay people and restrictions on civil society groups.

Not decades of kleptocracy, then?

Homosexual acts are illegal in Tanzania.

There was a time when European overlords would travel to the dark continent and force the local population to abandon their savage ways and embrace western moral values. Then that sort of thing went out of fashion, but it seems it’s coming back. Which leaves me with a question: is it okay to start wearing my pith helmet again?

The World Bank has put on hold a $300m loan for an educational project, partly in response to the government’s decision to expel schoolgirls who become pregnant.

I dunno, maybe the government is trying to dissuade schoolgirls from getting pregnant? How’s western policy regarding teenage pregnancies, incentives, and educational outcomes holding up?

Young mothers would be distracted if they were allowed back in school, Mr Magufuli said in a controversial speech last year.

“After calculating some few mathematics, she’d be asking the teacher in the classroom: ‘Let me go out and breastfeed my crying baby,'” he added.

How uncouth! It’s almost as if these swarthy folk down there need civilising. I don’t suppose just leaving Africans to run their own societies is on the table, is it? Little wonder the Chinese are looking attractive. They might run off with Africa’s entire supply of minerals but at least the locals will be spared lectures on their lack of moral virtue. I can’t imagine any amount of aid money is worth that.

Share

First Rohingyas, now Uighurs and Kazakhs

Posted on by

A year ago, after watching Sky News do a report on Rohingya muslims in Myanmar, I remarked:

The reporter appeared to be firmly in the pay of a professional lobby group hired to make their case.

Around the same time I also said:

I’ve noticed a concerted effort on the part of the mainstream media over the past few weeks to get everyone interested in the plight of the Rohingyas, a minority Muslim group in Myanmar who are being hounded by the majority ruling Buddists.

I have also noticed that nobody seems to give a shit. It might be tempting to put this down to the fact that westerners don’t generally care about brown people being killed in far-off lands with no oil underneath, but I suspect there is something else at work as well: people in the west are getting a little bit tired of hearing how Muslims are suffering.

I was reminded of the Rohingya advocacy campaign masquerading as news when I read this story, variations of which have been doing the rounds in the media for the past few weeks:

Chinese officials have pushed back against growing criticism of the detention of Muslim minorities in internment camps, claiming authorities are merely providing professional training and education.

Beijing is facing allegations of mass incarceration and repression of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang in China’s north-west. An estimated 1.1 million people have been placed in internment camps, including re-education camps where, according to former detainees and other witnesses, inmates are subjected to intense political indoctrination and abuse.

That the Chinese lock up and execute large numbers of their population is nothing new, nor is their suppression of ethnic minorities, especially those who might show loyalty to a deity other than the Communist Party of China. Ask the Tibetans how they’ve fared under Chinese rule, for example. So why the sudden fuss about Uighurs and Kazakhs?

Well, thanks to the system of zakat and Middle Eastern oil and gas revenues, there is a lot of money sloshing around the world earmarked for Islamic causes. A portion of this ends up funding terrorism, but it’s also used for things like Islamic schools, construction of mosques, charity work – and lobbying. There are countless Muslim bodies sitting in every western capital, advocating Islamic causes and interests, and some of these will be well funded. Thanks to most western governments having deep sympathies with Muslim minorities and assigning them the coveted Protected Class status, Islamic lobby groups have easy access to the propaganda organs of the ruling classes, i.e. the media. Provided they don’t go against the interests of the ruling class, e.g. by questioning why they destroyed Iraq, removed Gaddafi, and sell bombs which land on the heads of Yemenis, Muslim advocacy groups are pretty good at getting articles promoting Muslim practices and interests into the mainstream media, particularly the BBC.

So that explains why every now and then we’re suddenly bombarded with “news” reports regarding the suffering of some obscure group of Muslims on the other side of the world. But why Uighurs and Kazakhs? Well, I suspect the lobby groups are aware the British and American public are more than a little tired of hearing about problems in the Middle East or Africa, and just tune out as soon as they’re mentioned. But more likely it’s because this is a case of Muslims being oppressed by non-Muslims, and by a major power at that. Muslims generally don’t care if Muslims are oppressed by other Muslims – where is the concern for Kazakhs rotting in Kazakh jails, or Uzbeks who suffered under Islam Karimov’s rule? – but if non-Muslims are doing the oppressing they don’t like it at all (especially if there are Jews involved).

Now nobody thinks the Israelis are killing Rohingyas, but Britiain has ties to Myanmar and they were a useful lever with which to exert pro-Muslim influence over a weak and hapless May government. Get invited to Downing Street to discuss the terrible plight of the Rohingyas, and while you’re there casually mention the levels of Islamophobia hook-handed jihadists are subject to in the criminal justice system. Similarly, getting a pro-Muslim angle into any geopolitical opposition to China elevates their cause by an order of magnitude; look at the boost they received by turning the Cold War a little warmer in Afghanistan. If they can hitch themselves to a general strategy of containing China (of which criticism of human rights abuses is very much a part), money, power, and prestige beckon which can be used to exert greater influence in the west.

There’s clearly a well-funded and organised strategy being executed here, and I suspect the dullards in the media aren’t even aware they’re being played. Whether the general public are as gullible, and whether they care about Muslims in far-flung corners of the world, is another matter. What is certain is these campaigns will not have the slightest effect on the policies of the Chinese Communist Party, nor Muslims languishing behind barbed wire in the Gobi desert. This is a domestic campaign.

Share

Chinese Cars

Posted on by

I’m not convinced by this:

Fifteen years ago, if you rode around in a Chinese domestic branded car, they felt like copies of Japanese, Korean, or German vehicles.  That’s because in most cases they were.  Chinese car companies that were not operating through a joint venture with a foreign brand and who therefore had to rely on their own designs largely copied popular models that were selling well.  The copying was legendary; a colleague at Toyota told me that they had a lot of respect for one of the Chinese companies in particular – their copy of one of Toyota’s popular models was so good you could take the doors off of it and put it on the corresponding Toyota and the door seals would work perfectly.  Firms in China first copied designs, then sourced parts, and finally built a factory and mass produced the car.

Right.

While some of that still goes on, leading Chinese automakers have moved on.  They have been aided by sophisticated computerized design tools that allow them to do their own design and modeling, a phenomenon that is becoming more and more important as know-how gets embedded in tools.

Designs of what? Bodywork? Engines? Gearboxes? Engine management systems? Without an example, he might be describing a copied Toyota with different bodywork.

These days, if you ride around in some of the leading Chinese brands, you will find sophisticated engines, turbochargers, complex automatic transmissions, and high levels of interior detailing.

Yes, I’m sure you will: but are they copies? And could the author tell if they weren’t? There’s a sleight of hand at play here which makes me wonder if I’m being told a load of bollocks.

The Chinese government is using the transition to electric as a way to surmount the historical advantages of incumbent car companies and nations.  It won’t be saddled by existing infrastructure for making internal combustion engines and old ways of working; it starts with essentially a clean slate.

This assumes electric cars aren’t some giant white elephant, hoovering up resources which would be better applied elsewhere. As I’ve argued before, without a major step change in battery technology, electric cars are a non-starter.

BMW recently announced plans to source batteries from Contemporary Amperx Technology Ltd. (CATL), and Volkswagen is focusing its electric vehicle development in China.

Is this because Chinese technology is wonderful or because their environmental legislation is non-existent, labour costs are low, and there are a billion potential customers outside the factory gate?

Tesla just announced plans for a new factory in China that will produce 500,000 vehicles a year.

Tesla announces grand plans on a weekly basis; few of them ever come to fruition. As an author of articles on electric vehicles, you should know this.

Chinese automakers and parts suppliers will harness the Internet in ways that haven’t been imagined in the rest of the world

Really? Those clever Chinese, eh? How will they go about this, then?

One of the things I wanted the students to see is how the Internet is evolving very differently in China, because of its “isolation” and the very different boundary conditions there.  For example, Government regulation tends to come after a new business idea has developed in the market, rather than beforehand as is generally the case in the rest of the world.

So the Chinese – who lock down the internet more than anyone else – are at an advantage because they can develop new internet-based business ideas before regulations catch up with them, and this will give car manufacturers an edge…somehow. Like many great ideas, it’s obvious once explained.

Also, physical delivery in major Chinese cities is very inexpensive, typically costing just over $1.  So it is remarkable how much Chinese consumers order things online – merchandise of course, but also lunch and al kinds of services.

Unlike in the US, Europe, and Japan where internet retail is a decade away and everyone traipses around shops. And what this has to do with car manufacturing is anyone’s guess.

We visited an automaker that offers a built-in WiFi hotspot with lifetime provisioning included.

Well that does it, I’m off to buy a Donfeng.

You can imagine the implications for turning the car into a platform.  Connected and self-driving car technologies are a natural amalgamation of complementary technologies that China seeks to dominate.

I think the guy who wrote this has come from rural China where he rode a bicycle all day. Western-branded cars have been connected to the internet for years – my own comes with a built-in SIM card – and it can best be described as a solution searching for a problem. Other than the real-time update of traffic conditions, an online search function in the GPS, and some remote-controlled functions it is largely useless. When I bought the car in 2014 the brochure boasted I could update Twitter from the car. The other day I received an email asking if I wanted to install MS-Office in my car, presumably so I could compile spreadsheets from the outside lane of the Autoroute. Any other online services I need while in my car can be accessed from my phone: none of this is new.

While the American public has a world view of the global auto industry centered on North America, Europe, and Japan, we should pay more attention to what’s going on in China. That’s where a lot of the action is going to be coming from.

I’m wondering who paid this guy and how much.

Share

Hands and Feet

Posted on by

This article caught my attention when it mentioned ice-covered islands in Russia:

TWENTY-SEVEN pairs of severed human hands have been found mysteriously washed up on an ice-covered island in Russia.

The shocking discovery was made close to the city of Khabarovsk in the Far East of Siberia, close to the border with China.

Sakhalin? Alas, no:

All but one of the 54 hands were in a bag.

Another – spotted first by a local – was lying separately on a snow-covered island in the Amur River around 18 miles downstream from the Russian frontier with China.

The sinister finds were laid out in the snow for a police picture.

I’ve probably been close to that spot – well, closer than any of my readers, anyway – on one of my frequent visits to the city of Khabarovsk. Here’s a not-very-good photo I took of the Amur river at Khabarovsk:

Yes, it was as cold as it looks. Sakhalin was not actually that cold, at least in the south. Most days it would only be around minus ten or fifteen, much warmer than mainland Russia. The north of the island was much colder though, and the winds much stronger. But Khabarovsk was absolutely freezing and the wind would cut you in half. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much snow around whereas south Sakhalin – like northern Japan  – enjoyed metres of soft, powdery snow of the sort which covered cars but made skiers and snowboarders happy. And, to my knowledge, we didn’t have sacks of hands lying around on islands.

The Siberian Times said it was a “mystery over who the sinister hands belonged to, when they were chopped off – and why”.

Fingerprints were found on one hand, and the others are being checked.

One gruesome theory is that the hands could have been axed off as a punishment for theft.

Another is that the hands were severed from dead bodies in a hospital – but it is unclear why this would happen.

Hmmm.

One fear is that the corpses were illegally used for stealing body parts and the hands were cut to prevent them being identified afterwards through fingerprints.

Local media reported that next to the remains were found medical bandages and hospital-style plastic shoe covers.

Who, other than Victor Frankenstein, would steal body parts from a corpse? What do you reckon the going rate is for a second-hand Russian liver? My best guess is someone was paid to dispose of corpses from a hospital and cut a corner by burying them in the tundra somewhere, or maybe just weighing them down and chucking them in the river to be pulled out by Chinese fishermen and served for dinner along with the more traditional toad, rat, and cockroach. To cover their tracks in case the bodies were discovered, they removed the hands and dumped them in another place.

Police have refused to comment on the case.

I bet they did. Rumour has it that when the Sakhalin police discovered body parts on the construction site of the LNG trains at Prigorodnoye – an arm here, a leg over there, head a bit further over, etc. from what was most likely one of the many victims of the mafia wars in the ’90s – they ruled it as a suicide. As one of the police chiefs said in The Wire: “I don’t want a dozen mouldering John Does added to my case list”.

Russia is not the only place where mysterious body parts turn up unexpectedly. One of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever read on the internet concerned the Salish Sea human foot discoveries in Canada:

ANOTHER severed foot inside a trainer has mysteriously washed up along the coast of the Salish Sea between Canada and the US.

The latest grisly find is the 18th since 2007 and was made by a man walking his dog in British Columbia on December 8, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The first severed foot was found on August 20, 2007. It was a right foot, size 12, encased in a shoe made in India. Authorities were able to link the foot to a male who suffered from depression, concluding he most likely committed suicide in or near water.

Of the 18 feet and shoes found, only two have been matched together.

…

The Coroners Service has been able to identify eight feet that have washed up locally, linking them to six people. They do not believe any of the cases involved foul play. More likely the victims died from accidents or suicide.

That hasn’t stopped people’s imaginations running wild with grim theories about serial killers chopping up bodies.

Wikipedia has a good entry on the Salish Sea feet discoveries, if you want to know more. Alas, they don’t yet have one on the Khabarovsk hands.

Share

Deepwater Fishing

Posted on by

Bayou Renaissance Man brings us this report:

BEIJING has discovered a major threat to its new aircraft carrier: swarms of deadly jellyfish. Now it’s racing to develop weapons of mass destruction to beat them.

Masses of the creatures can be sucked through the warship’s water intakes necessary for cooling the vessel’s engines.

Once in the cooling vents, they get mashed into a thick, sticky soup.

This blocks the cooling system, causing the engines to overheat and bringing the warship to a halt.

It then reportedly takes days to clear the pipes.

Thus the urgent need for countermeasures.

The new jellyfish shredder consists of a net, several hundred meters long and wide, which is towed by a tugboat ahead of the carrier.

This funnels whatever falls within towards an array of steel blades.

What comes out the other side is no larger than 3cm wide.

The effect is so brutal researchers report the waters the shredder passes through become murky as the jellyfish — and other marine life — corpses begin to decompose. It takes up to a week to clear.

Bayou Renaissance Man adds:

I’m afraid the deliberate destruction of marine life to accommodate the ship is characteristic of attitudes towards nature in, not just China, but most of Asia.  The prevailing attitude in many of the countries and cultures there seems to be that nature exists to serve human interests. If it doesn’t, it must be tamed, reshaped, or removed until it does.

There are some folks in my industry who concern themselves with the design of subsea equipment, basically kit that we stick on the seabed to aid in the extraction of oil and gas from the reservoir. In shallow waters, such as those in the North Sea, they have always had to design them such that trawler nets can pass over them without becoming snagged (I heard one story from decades back that a fishing vessel snagged its net on a pipeline, turned the winch on max, and promptly sunk sank itself). In deep water, which is anything over about 600m, this hasn’t been a concern as the nets don’t go down that far. However, I heard a couple of weeks ago that a Chinese fishing ship operating offshore Angola passed its nets over some equipment a mile down.

I get the impression we’ll soon be shown that Africa’s environment, like so much else in the world, is a concern only of wealthy, middle-class white folk who are chiefly troubled by the activities of other white folk. This would explain why you don’t hear much mention of Chinese fishing boats in David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series.

Share

North Korea and Nuclear Proliferation

Posted on by

Via Mick Hartley, this piece on North Korea:

But what North Korea wants is South Korea. It has always wanted South Korea, and it has never stopped saying that it wants South Korea. Its messianic vision of reunification has always rested on its express promise of reuniting Korea under its rule. You can try to pretend that away, but North Korea won’t be content to sit behind its borders and watch its legitimacy eroded away by unfavorable comparison — made vivid by every smuggled DVD of a South Korean TV drama — to a superior model of Korean nationhood.

This is consistent with a piece I quoted before, also via Mick:

North Korea would not need intercontinental ballistic missiles to strike South Korea, whose capital sits just 35 miles from their shared border. Pyongyang has had the ability to detonate nuclear devices in Seoul via short- and medium-range ballistic missiles for years. There’s also reason to question the wisdom of nuking a proud, democratic city of 25 million people before attempting to rule it.

What an ICBM does for North Korea is establish deterrence in the event of a reunification campaign.

Kim Jong Un thinks “the nuclear weapons will prevent US from getting involved,” Sun said. “That’s why we see more and more people making the argument that the North Korea’s nuclear development is not aimed at the US, not aimed at South Korea, but aimed at reunification.”

It should hardly be surprising that North Korea seeks reunification of the peninsula. When I was working in Seoul in 2005 I talked to some South Koreans about this, and they all agreed that reunification would happen one day. The only problem is Kim wants the unified Korea to be a Communist hell-hole, the South Koreans want it to look like South Korea, and the Chinese want to be sure they don’t have a hostile or (more likely) embarrassingly rich and democratic state on its borders raising awkward questions among its own population. As the BBC says:

China is key but it is a conflicted party. On the one hand it does not want to see a nuclear-armed North Korea and it has made its view clear to Pyongyang on many occasions.

Something which always gets left out of the reporting is that a nuclear North Korea is largely a problem of China’s own making. First they supplied Pakistan with the technology and materials to build nuclear weapons:

Since the 1970s, China has been instrumental in Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs. China provided Pakistan with highly enriched uranium, ring magnets necessary for processing the uranium, and education for nuclear engineers. Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, in fact, is widely believed to be based on Chinese blueprints. Worse, in 1990 and 1992, China provided Pakistan with nuclear-capable M-11 missiles that have a range of 186 miles. China reportedly has provided the technology for Pakistan to build a missile that could strike targets within a 360-mile range.

A key figure in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme was one A.Q. Khan, known as the father of the Pakistani bomb. To cut a long story short, this chap (and/or others in the Pakistani military) then wandered around the world flogging the technology to anyone who wanted it, chiefly Iran, Libya – and North Korea:

The story of the world’s worst case of nuclear smuggling took a new twist on Thursday when documents surfaced appearing to implicate two former Pakistani generals in the sale of uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in return for millions of dollars in cash and jewels handed over in a canvas bag and cardboard boxes of fruit.

The source of the documents is AQ Khan, who confessed in 2004 to selling parts and instructions for the use of high-speed centrifuges in enriching uranium to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Extracts were published by the Washington Post, including a letter in English purportedly from a senior North Korean official to Khan in 1998 detailing payment of $3m to Pakistan’s former army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, and another half-million to Lieutenant General Zulfiqar Khan, who was involved in Pakistan’s nuclear bomb tests.

It is unlikely that the proliferation of their nuclear missile technology and capabilities into North Korea via Pakistan was the intention of the Chinese government when they set out to assist Pakistan, but here we are. With Kim Jong-Un now testing hydrogen bombs, the proliferation horse has well and truly bolted.

The most logical step, although one that would horrify most people, is for South Korea to go nuclear, enabling it to retaliate in the event of a North Korean first use. The nightmare situation for South Korea is for the North to attack and before the South can eliminate the North (using conventional means) in response the Chinese step in and ensure the regime’s survival for their own ends. Yes, we’ve been here before. If the South was nuclear-armed, they could remove the regime before the Chinese could intervene and/or dissuade the Chinese from doing so in the first place.

If South Korea goes nuclear, and we’re fast approaching the point that they have every right to, Japan will quickly follow – and possibly Taiwan. This would cause the Chinese to go apoplectic, but it would be too late and their own fault. If I were the US, I’d be putting this scenario in front of the PRC and telling them it is both very much of their own making yet still within their powers to prevent it.

Share

Chinese Tourists Robbed in Paris

Posted on by

Commenter “Hugely Ceebs” points me towards this article:

Tourists from China are avoiding France amid surging violence and crime, a Chinese tourism expert has said, reporting that customers are turning to Russia as a safer destination.

President of the Chinese Association of Travel Agencies in France, Jean-François Zhou, said “increasingly violent” thefts and assaults are turning France into “one of the worst destinations for foreign tourists”.

Mr. Zhou, a representative for major Chinese travel agency Utour in France, reported a steep decline in visitor numbers from Asia, and said many tourists are now looking to Russia as a less dangerous holiday destination.

I’m going to take that with a pinch of salt. Firstly it’s Breibart; secondly the situation might be being exaggerated; thirdly nobody will go on holiday to Russia instead of Paris.

But that said:

“[Chinese tourists] are robbed in the palace of Versailles, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in front of their hotel, as they leave the coaches … In high season, not a day goes by without tourists being assaulted.”

There is a massive problem with pickpockets, beggars, thieves, scam artists, hawkers, and general criminals around the main tourist areas of Paris, particularly under the Eiffel Tower and the steps leading up to Montmartre outside the Sacré Cœur. I have known a few visitors who have had their bag snatched or pocket picked in these areas, and the perpetrators are many in number and loitering in full display of everyone waiting for an opportunity. I have often wondered why the police don’t clear them out but am told that when they do, they just move onto somewhere else. For whatever reason, probably something to do with fear of being called racist, the authorities don’t clear them out permanently.

But the situation is getting worse and can’t go on forever. It might be that the Chinese tourist agents have received a lot of complaints and they have decided to issue a warning to the French to sort it out or they really will start looking elsewhere. If this is the case then good: it’s high time somebody said something.

Share

Chinese Toys Ejected from Pram

Posted on by

It appears that the Chinese government might have some growing up to do:

President-elect Donald Trump has questioned whether the US should continue its “One China” policy, sparking fury from Chinese state media.

Under the policy, the US has formal ties with China rather than the island of Taiwan, which China sees as a breakaway province.

This principle has been crucial to US-China relations for decades.

But Mr Trump said he saw no reason why this should continue without key concessions from Beijing.

Indeed.  From all practical, political, and indeed moral standpoints, Taiwan is an independent sovereign state.  China’s claim over Taiwan is based on the rather fanciful idea that a region that the Communists failed to capture from the sitting government in the civil war 70 years ago should nevertheless belong to the Communists, even though they plainly want to be left alone.

In the interview, broadcast by Fox News on Sunday, Mr Trump said: “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”

Well, I’m not sure the sovereign rights of the Taiwanese should be subject to yet more horse-trading between the US and China.  But I find it hard to fault Trump’s logic here.

No US president or president-elect had spoken directly to a Taiwanese leader for decades. But in the Fox interview, Mr Trump said it was not up to Beijing to decide whether he should take a call from Taiwan’s leader.

“I don’t want China dictating to me and this was a call put into me,” Mr Trump said. “It was a very nice call. Short. And why should some other nation be able to say I can’t take a call?

“I think it actually would’ve been very disrespectful, to be honest with you, not taking it.”

Again, I’m finding it hard to disagree with this.  It’s almost as if Trump has some balls.

His comments prompted an angry editorial in Chinese state media outlet Global Times, known for its hawkish rhetoric.

Titled “Mr Trump please listen clearly: The One China policy cannot be traded”, it labelled Mr Trump’s move “a very childish rash act” and said he needed “to humbly learn about diplomacy”.

It also called for a strong response, saying: “China must resolutely battle Mr Trump, only after a few serious rebuffs then will he truly understand that China and other global powers cannot be bullied.”

If a simple phone call is enough to cause heart palpitations in Beijing, then perhaps this policy isn’t very robust.  As for charges of bullying, Wikipedia tells us:

The PRC has threatened the use of military force in response to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan or if PRC leaders decide that peaceful unification is no longer possible.

Trump taking a phone call from the Taiwanese leader is a “childish rash act” and constitutes bullying.  Whereas China threatening to invade Taiwan for daring to formally renounce oppressive, Communist rule is none of those things, obviously.

It’s a bold – some would say reckless – gambit, given that for China there is nothing vaguely negotiable about the island’s status.

Except for the fact that they neither own it or control it.

That may now begin to change, with the blow-hard state-run tabloid, The Global Times, true to form in being the first to up the ante, with the talk of retaking Taiwan by force, or of arming America’s foes.

The same old record, in other words.

As China gets richer and more deeply involved in the global economy and world affairs, outdated policies from Mao’s era are going to start doing them a lot more harm than good.  Despite the rhetoric – or perhaps because of it – the Chinese Communist Party is a brittle regime propped up by an economy built on quicksand.  This cannot last forever.  China’s transition to democracy is inevitable in the long term, and they might want to consider that the Soviet Union didn’t survive this and what remained needed an awful lot of assistance.  This might be in short supply if China doesn’t wind its neck in over issues like Taiwan.

Share