#taiwan covid support china

[newscast1]

Taiwan offers support to China to deal with deadly Covid outbreak

Taiwan offers support to China to deal with deadly Covid outbreak

Taiwan has announced its decision to offer support to China to deal with the deadly Covid outbreak. Taiwan and China have repeatedly sparred over their respective measures to control the spread of Covid. New Delhi,UPDATED: Jan 1, 2023 11:50 IST A patient with Covid rests in a wheelchair in a hallway at Tangshan Gongren Hospital in China’s northeastern city of Tangshan. (Photo: AFP) By India…

[mariacallous]

When Donald Trump first ran for the U.S. presidency in 2016, a wave of writing suggested that he was a realist. In this framing, Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton was presented as a neoconservative hawk who would start wars. Trump, by contrast, would balance U.S. commitments with its resources. He would avoid foreign conflicts and quagmires. He would be less ideological in his approach to nondemocratic states.

In 2024, this thinking has returned. Some realist voices are again suggesting that Trump is one of them. Trump’s desire to end the war in Ukraine—even though he simply intends to let Russia win—is taken as evidence of this. So is the selection of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his vice presidential candidate. Vance has famously said that he does not care what happens to Ukraine. Conversely, he is a China hawk who seems to believe the United States cannot support both Taiwan and Ukraine simultaneously.

The notion that U.S. support for Taiwan and Ukraine is a trade-off is the most controversial component of the Trump realist position. Former Defense Department official Elbridge Colby, for example, has argued prominently that U.S. support for Ukraine undercuts its ability to help Taiwan, and that Europe should be almost exclusively responsible for helping Ukraine (or not).

But these hopes are badly misplaced. A second Trump term may well take an entirely different tack on China from the hawks—and even if he wants to move against Beijing, he lacks the discipline and ability to do so.

There is far more in Trump’s first term to suggest indiscipline, showboating, and influence-peddling than the clear-eyed, bloodless calculation of national interest that realists aspire to.

On China, Trump was undisciplined and sloppy. Yes, he turned against China in 2020, during the final year of his term, but that was more to deflect blame for COVID-19 than out of any realist or strategic reappraisal of U.S.-China relations. COVID-19 suddenly became the “kung flu” in Trump’s vernacular in an openly racist bid to change the subject.

Trump also undercut any ostensible focus on China by picking unnecessary fights with the United States’ regional partners. U.S.-South Korea and U.S.-Australia relations, for example, sank to their lowest point in years as Trump picked fights with their leaders because he wanted a payoff for the U.S. alliance guarantees.

Realism values allies for their ability to share burdens, project power, and generate global coalitions. Trump does not seem to grasp that at all. When Trump backed off his criticism of Japan, the turning point was apparently then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s relentless flattery, including giving Trump a gold-plated golf club, rather than any strategic reevaluation by Trump or his team. Such frippery is exactly the opposite of the cold calculation that we associate with realism.

Trump also sank the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and all but dropped earlier U.S. rhetoric about a pivot or rebalance to Asia. Were China a threat that Trump took seriously, then building a tighter trade area among the United States’ Asian partners would be a smart move to pool local allied economic power and build patterns of administrative coordination among those partners. Indeed, that was the rationale behind TPP and the “pivot” to increased engagement in the Indo-Pacific when it was proposed by the Barack Obama administration. Trump did not see that, either; he is obsessed with imposing tariffs, even against allies, which violates the realist tenets that concern allied power accumulation and coordination against shared threats.

Finally, Trump’s admiration for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s autocracy was blatant, and Trump has once again recently praised Xi as his “good friend.” The former U.S. president has spoken approvingly of China’s crackdowns in Tiananmen Square, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong. He solicited Chinese help in the 2020 election, and China happily channeled money to Trump’s family and his properties during his presidency.

Trump clearly craves authoritarian powers at home and is happy to take China’s money. He was happy to pardon Republican lobbyist Elliott Broidy, who was convicted for illicitly acting on Beijing’s behalf. It stretches credulity to suggest that Trump will lead the United States, much less an Indo-Pacific coalition, in a major shift against a power that he admires. China will probably just throw money at him if he is reelected—especially after seeing his U-turn on a TikTok ban, a policy that he backed in his first term but failed to deliver on, after facing pressure from billionaire TikTok investor Jeff Yass.

Little else in Trump’s first term suggests s a thoughtful, realist weighing of priorities: Trump’s most important first-term foreign-policy venture was the attempted denuclearization of North Korea. Unsurprisingly, that effort was amateurish, sloppy, and unplanned—and it failed.

There is a realist argument for reaching out to Pyongyang. The United States’ long-standing policy of containment and deterrence has not changed North Korea, nor did it prevent its nuclearization. North Korea is now a direct nuclear threat to the U.S. mainland. A realistic foreign policy would accept that as an unchangeable fact and react to it. Perhaps a bold move by a risk-taking statesman could break the logjam.

Trump might have had the chance to pull this off, but he failed due to his own lack of discipline. Trump did not prepare for his meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un; instead, he simply walked off the plane and thought his New York tough guy shtick would somehow bowl over a man raised in the crucible of North Korea’s lethal family politics. There was no interagency process to build proposals ahead of time, nor any kind of realistic, measured deal that could have won over Pyongyang.

According to John Bolton, then Trump’s national security advisor, the president did not even read in preparation for the summits. Instead, Trump demanded the complete, verifiable, and irreversible nuclear disarmament of North Korea in exchange for sanctions removal, then walked out of the Hanoi summit when Pyongyang predictably rejected this wildly unbalanced so-called deal. Talks collapsed because Trump had not prepared and had no idea how to bargain on the issues when his first offer was rejected.

But Trump did get what he really wanted—lots and lots of publicity. His hugely hyped—and criminally underprepared—first summit with Kim in Singapore brought a week of nonstop news coverage. His later trip to the Demilitarized Zone, which included briefly walking inside North Korea, brought another wave of coverage. Trump even demanded that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This is showboating, not strategy.

The big issue in the realist case for Trump and Vance is that they will put Taiwan explicitly ahead of Ukraine in a ruthless prioritization of U.S. interests. As Andrew Byers and Randall Schweller write, Trump “understands the limits of American power.” From this perspective, the United States cannot reasonably hope to fight Russia and China simultaneously, much less a coordinated “axis” of those countries working with rogues such as Iran and North Korea. This notion is particularly connected with Vance, who has explicitly advocated abandoning Ukraine.

Yet Trump himself does not think this way. Trump’s supposed policy positions emerge on the fly as he speaks. He is lazy. He is not capable of the strategic thinking that realists want to attribute to him; one must only listen to his campaign speeches this year to see this. He routinely lies, makes up stories, and speaks in indecipherable word-salads. When Trump has spoken on Taiwan, he makes it clear that he sees it as just another free-riding ally that owes the U.S. protection money. In an interview with Bloomberg, Trump said the United States was “no different than an insurance company” and that Taiwan “doesn’t give us anything.”

It stretches psychological credulity to suggest that the United States under Trump will ruthlessly abandon a struggling, nascent democracy under threat by a fascist imperialist, but then abruptly fight for another new democracy under threat by an ever more powerful fascist imperialist. The prioritization of Taiwan over Ukraine misses the obvious precursor that the Middle East, in turn, is less valuable than Ukraine. But instead of reevaluating the United States’ position in the Middle East, Trump will almost certainly deepen U.S. involvement in the region because of the ideological fixations of his Christianist base.

The strategic case for elevating Taiwan over Ukraine is also far more mixed than Vance and Trumpian realists suggest.

First, China is much more powerful than Russia. So, a conflict with it would be far more destructive. The Russia-Ukraine war has been locally contained and, despite Russian bluster, not escalated to nuclear confrontation. That seems less likely in an open, U.S.-China war. It is an odd “realist” recommendation to suggest that the United States should take a provocative line against a stronger power, which increases the risk of great-power war, but not push its preferences on a weaker opponent where U.S. involvement is limited to a lower-risk proxy war.

Second, the U.S. commitment to Ukraine is much less costly than a parallel commitment to Taiwan. The United States is not fighting directly to defend Ukraine. It would have to do so to defend Taiwan. Taiwan defense would require the United States to project enormous force over a huge distance of open water at great expense—plus, there would be combat losses of major U.S. platforms, such as ships and aircraft.

By contrast, U.S. aid to Ukraine has mostly come in the form of money and midsized, ground-based platforms, totaling around $175 billion over two-and-a-half years. This is small and easily manageable because of NATO’s propinquity. U.S. national security spending is approximately $1 trillion annually; the country’s annual economic production is approximately $25 trillion. Notions that U.S. aid to Ukraine is an unsustainable overstretch, or that it is bolstering another “forever war,” are simply not correct.

In Ukraine, the United States is also using intelligence assets and coordination relationships with NATO allies that have long been in place—and resources that have little relevance to a Taiwan conflict. Washington is not going to engage the Chinese army in ground conflict, just as it does not need U.S. aircraft carriers to help Ukraine. As a specific example of a possible trade-off, Vance has suggested the United States lacks the artillery shell production capacity to meet both national defense needs and those of Ukraine. But that argument implies abandoning Ukraine today for an unidentifiable but apparently imminent U.S. ground war tomorrow.

Realist hopes for Trump and Vance assume an intellectual discipline that both men lack and elevate geopolitical trade-offs that are less acute than realists admit., Trump is lazy, unread, venal, easily bought, susceptible to autocrats’ flattery, captive to the ideological fixations of his domestic coalition, ignorant of U.S. strategic interests, and dismissive of alliances that amplify U.S. power. Vance is ostensibly more clear-eyed, but he is a foreign-policy neophyte in the pocket of Silicon Valley donors, including his mentor Peter Thiel. He has been a senator for less than two years, before which he was a financier and author whose interests were local.

The fiscal space to reorient U.S. defense spending is there. If Vance and Trump were truly serious about confronting China, they would not be proposing yet another massive Republican tax cut, for example. The traditional liberal internationalism Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden represent is far more likely to build a durable global coalition against Chinese and Russian revisionism than the venal caprice masquerading as strategy that Trump would bring back to the White House.

[progressive-politico]

Reasons not to vote for Joe Biden

-Nordstream pipeline bomber. Biggest eco terrorist in human history

-Approved of the willow project

-Broke the rail strike

-Gave federal contracts to union busters

-Sent Covid-19 relief money to the police

-Funded ICE to record levels. 6 billion more than Trump

-Illegally pressuring social media companies to crack down on free speech

-Fighting proxy war with Russia by sending weapons to nazis in Ukraine

-Stealing BILLIONS from Afghanistan, starving their people

-Absolutely unhinged China policy

-Sent weapons to Taiwan

-sent nuclear submarines to Australia

-Hunter Biden pay the play corruption

-Hiring Neera Tanden as White House Domestic Policy Advised

-Hiring Antony Blinken

-Hiring Lloyd Austin from Raytheon as Defense Secretary

-full fledged support to the genocidal state of Israel

-pushing the privatization of water

-Insulting Maui response

-said he would veto medicare for all

-Kamala Harris could become president

If This Doesn't Convince You Here Are A few more

-stole Iranian and Syrian oil

-escalated Cuban embargo

-Actively trying to kill Julian Assange

-Bombed Somalia

-cut SNAP benefits

-Hired notorious war criminal Elliot Abrams

-Hired Victoria Nuland as Deputy Secretary of State

[misfitwashere]

Freedom and safety

A lesson from a demining test

TIMOTHY SNYDER

OCT 18

Maybe, for you Americans out there, it's time for a little break.  We are wonderful at talking to, for, about and past ourselves, and not so good at listening to other people.  So maybe for just a few moments we could pause to remember some of the people who allow us to have our quarrels, to have our election season, to have our elections, some of the people who are actually taking risks for the words like freedom and democracy that we throw around so casually, especially this time of year.

This could many groups, of course! I mean the Ukrainians. They are doing us a lot of good, as we tend to forget. They are holding back a Russian army so that other countries can keep all of their soldiers in the barracks.  They are deterring China from invading Taiwan by showing that offensive operations are risky and unpredictable.  They are making nuclear war less likely by ignoring Putin's bluffs.  They are defending the international order, which is based on states and borders.  And, yes, they are defending democracy as such, including our own.  They have bought us time since 2022 to recover from Covid and economic collapse by bearing the brunt of this crisis on their own.

This month the Biden administration is decising how much it will help during its last three months in office.  President Biden has a chance to leave with a legacy, by creating structures that will allow for aid to Ukraine to continue, and by inviting Ukraine to join our most important institutions.  Given the uncertainties ahead, though, the question goes far beyond that of how President Biden will be remembered.  If we allow Ukraine to lose, or if we vote for Putinist candidates who want Ukraine to lose, the costs will be horrible in Ukraine, but will be felt around the world.

So of course we can hope the president does the right thing.  And we can vote for the right people the next time around.  And if you are American and care about Ukraine, voting, canvassing, and donating for pro-Ukrainian candidates in American elections is likely the most important thing that you can do right now.  But if you are not American, or if you are American and can spare a little money, there are plenty of other ways to make a direct difference.  

You can do something to help Ukrainians be safer, even as they help us to be safer. Let me just suggest a specific step that I know something about, having seen the tools for myself.

When I was in Ukraine last month, I visited a competitive test for mine-clearing robots.  The moment was one of cooperation: private companies had brought their robots for a test organized by a couple of government ministries, with the participation of a presidential tech platform, in connection to a fundraiser supported by people around the world.  Along with Mark Hamill, I am supporting this fundraiser, called Safe Terrain, because mine-clearing robots can save human lives and prepare the way for humans to return to their normal lives.  Mark and I announced the fundraiser on my birthday, two months ago, and we are three-quarters of the way to the goal ($307,000 of $441,000 -- thank you to all of you who have donated!).

There were some fascinating moments at the test.  The detonation of anti-tech mines is very loud. I learned a great deal about the demining technology.  But I wanted to share with you a human detail that has stayed with me.  After it was all over, after the three robots had detonated mines safely, we all took some pictures together: the tech and corporate teams, the officials, the visitors.  Just as the photographer was about to begin, one of the corporate representatives told him to wait: one of the robots was blocked from the shot.  But here is the interesting thing: it wasn't her robot.  It was the robot of one of the other, competing firms.  She wanted to make sure that it was in the picture.

A small thing, perhaps.  Just a momentary gesture, it might seem.  But it was someone doing something for someone else, amidst the pressure of a competitive trial, under the stresses of a war.  It was someone who, for that moment, was not thinking about herself, but about fairness, about the good outcome.  Sometimes people do have to fight for democracy, as the Ukrainians are doing right now, but democracy itself is not a fight.  Freedom is not all about just doing what we feel like doing, just because we want to, right at the moment.  It is about seeing other people, hearing other people, working together, creating a world in which we can all be more free. 

I'm in southwest Ohio now, and I see that spirit here too, not of course in everyone, but in many people, the ones who care about the country, the ones who are not just arguing, the ones who are doing the little things they can do, the ones who want to open things up rather than close them down.  I'm trying to do the little things I can do, too, in my own country, but I don’t want to take for granted that I can. Along the way, today, I am also going to make a donation to those robots, or to the people behind them.

[loneberry]

The new route Russia is using to export its oil to China. Unfortunately global warming and the melting of the icecaps only benefits Russia geopolitically. What’s the big deal? you might wonder. A 10-day reduction in transport time is huge when it comes to the velocity of capital. Power accrues to the nations that control key maritime trade routes.

*

Between climate change and the new Cold War, the future doesn’t look pretty. China’s economy is imploding thanks to their reliance on a debt-fueled real estate bonanza, their misguided zero COVID policy, and Xi Jinping’s head-scratchingly bad policies (and of course, his consolidation of power). Siding with Russia was a huge mistake… Now China’s biggest export markets are trying to decouple or at least diversify away from them. Youth unemployment is so bad in China (21%, but possibly significantly higher) that the government has decided to stop publishing such data. The Philippines and Vietnam are pivoting toward the US. South Korea and Japan are putting their long, historical feud aside to join forces against China. Japanese military neutrality is over. Meanwhile a tiny island called Taiwan makes over 92% of the world’s advanced semiconductors and will likely be invaded in our lifetime. Will an (economically) weakened China make it more or less likely that Xi will invade Taiwan? (Strongmen facing a domestic crisis and loss of popular support do often start wars as a kind of “gamble for resurrection,” but Xi might have become more risk adverse as he observes Russia’s debacle in Ukraine. Plus, an amphibious invasion is logistically extremely difficult to pull off.)

Defense spending worldwide is skyrocketing, climbing back toward Cold War levels. The lines on the map are hardening, particularly in the Asian/Pacific theater and the European theater. A nuclear trifecta of Russia-China-North Korea is emerging. Yes, it is a marriage of convenience, but quite a dangerous one given that Russia will likely transfer technology (specifically, platforms to deliver nuclear warheads) to North Korea in exchange for Soviet-compatible ammunition/arms to use in Ukraine. I hate feeling like the world is a frog getting boiled but as I finish this 26-part BBC documentary on World War I, I can’t help but feel that the geopolitical situation is very unstable.

Oh, the madness of nation states! Wake me up when it’s over.

[beardedmrbean]

China, China, China. Scarcely a day passes without some new scare story about China. The Middle Kingdom was struggling with its image overseas long before Covid, but the pandemic cemented attitudes in the West. Ever since, and with plenty of justification, its every move has been regarded with growing “reds under the bed” paranoia. The feeling is mutual.

The mood has darkened further in the past week. British democracy is under threat from Chinese cyber attacks, the Deputy Prime Minister, Oliver Dowden, told MPs this week in imposing sanctions on a number of Chinese officials. If that’s what standing up to China means these days then the central committee doesn’t have a lot to worry about.

Rather more seriously, the US and Japan are meanwhile planning the biggest upgrade to their security alliance since the mutual defence treaty of 1960.

Not to be outdone by the US ban on exports of hi-tech chips to China, Beijing responded this week by saying it will be phasing out even the low-tech variety on all government computers and servers, replacing foreign chips with its own home-grown ones.

And then of course, there is China’s de facto alliance with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, forming a new axis of authoritarian powers with an overtly anti-Western agenda. The rupture with the West seems virtually complete.

Years of integration into the global economy, in the hope that it might make China more like us, have backfired and are now going powerfully into reverse.

But does the nature of the threat fully justify all the noise which is made about it? In military terms, possibly, even if China plainly poses no direct threat to Europe, and unlike Putin, has no plans to lay claim to any part of it.

It does, however, pose a clear and present danger to Taiwan, where President Xi Jinping would plainly like to crush the life out of this vibrant, free enterprise economy in the same way as he has in Hong Kong. His rhetoric is bellicose and hostile, and we must therefore assume he means what he says.

In economic terms, however, the China threat is receding fast. After decades of stellar growth, China’s medium to long-term economic prospects are at best mediocre and at worst grimly dispiriting.

Now gone almost entirely is the idea of China as an unstoppable economic leviathan that will inevitably eclipse the US and Europe. Already it is obvious that this is not going to be the Chinese century once so widely forecast. Instead, Western commerce is looking increasingly to India as the economic superpower of the future.

Nor is this just because of the immediate causes of China’s economic slowdown – a woefully unbalanced economy which in recent years has relied for its growth substantially on debt-fuelled property development.

For China is indeed, to use the old cliche, getting old before it gets rich. Demographic factors alone are highly likely to floor President Xi’s grandiose ambitions for economic hegemony before they can be realised.

The fundamentals of China’s predicament, in other words, do not support the narrative of democracy under threat from an insurgent totalitarian rival.

There’s been a lot in the papers about demographics over the last week following a new study, published in the Lancet, on declining fertility rates. At some stage in the next 60 years, the global population will peak, and then fast start contracting.

The birth rate is projected to fall below population replacement levels in around three-quarters of countries by 2050, with only a handful of mainly Sub-Saharan nations still producing enough babies to ensure expanding populations by 2100.

In China, however, it has already started, with the population falling in 2022 for the first time since the Great Famine of 1959-61. This wasn’t just a one-off blip: last year deaths continued to significantly outnumber births.

There may be a slight pause in the decline this year. Some couples may have delayed their plans for children in anticipation of the Year of the Dragon, synonymous in Chinese mythology with good fortune.

Any relief will be only temporary. According to projections by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, which correctly forecast the onset of Chinese population decline, it’ll essentially be all downhill from here on in, with the population more than halving between now and the turn of the century.

This is a huge fall, with far-reaching implications for economic development and China’s superpower ambitions. What’s more, there is almost nothing the Chinese leadership can do about it, beyond imprisoning China’s fast-declining cohort of women of child-bearing age and forcing them to breed.

Across much of the developed world and beyond, the birth rate has long since declined below the 2.1 offspring per woman generally thought to be the level required to maintain the population. But thanks to its dictatorial one-child policy introduced in 1980 to curb China’s then almost ruinous birth rate, China has a particularly acute version of it.

China abandoned the one-child policy – limiting urban dwellers to one child per family and most rural inhabitants to two – in favour of a “three-child” policy in 2016, but too late.

Even if women of child-bearing age could be persuaded to have more babies, there are simply not enough of them any longer even to maintain today’s population, let alone increase it.

The one-child policy may have perversely further accentuated this deficiency because of the Chinese preference for male offspring over female, though most studies on this are inconclusive.

In any case, China finds itself classically caught in a “low-fertility trap”, the point of no return, where precipitous population decline becomes inevitable.

The implications are as startling as the statistics themselves. The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences forecasts that the working-age population will fall to 210 million by 2100, having peaked in 2014, and the ratio of working-age citizens to notionally non-working from 100 to 21 today, to 100 to 137 at the turn of the century.

One thing we know about ageing populations is they like life to be as comfortable and settled as possible. They also don’t like fighting wars, which have historically required a surplus of testosterone-fuelled young men desperate to prove themselves on the battlefield.

The turn of the century is of course still a long way off; there is easily enough time for several wars in between. The nature of warfare has also changed. It no longer requires the bravery of the young.

Even so, totalitarian dictatorships may well struggle with selling the multiple other hardships of war to an elderly population. Putin may seem to disprove this observation, but in doing so he is also demonstrating anew the futility of expansionist warfare. They make a desert, and call it peace.

A couple of other points seem worth making about our propensity to exaggerate the Chinese threat. Anyone would think that China is already a dominant force in the UK economy. It is not; in fact it is still only our fifth-largest trading partner after the US, Germany, the Netherlands and France. Even on imports alone it’s not as big as the US and Germany.

Whether because of the growing diplomatic standoff or other factors, moreover, this position is eroding. The size of trade with China fell last year. The same is true of direct investment by China in the UK economy, which was just 0.3pc of total foreign direct investment in 2021.

We worry about China’s imagined ability to close down our critical infrastructure, but should that really be allowed to influence decisions on whether the Chinese battery company EVE should be building a new gigawatt factory at Coventry Airport, or for that matter whether super-tariffs should be charged on Chinese EVs?

Should they exist at all, these risks can surely be managed. In any case, no nation that hopes to trade with others would deliberately turn the lights off, even if it could. In over-reacting to the Chinese threat, we only shoot ourselves in the foot.

China has lied, copied, stolen and cheated its way up the economic league tables, but ultimately it is a closed economy which increasingly repudiates foreign influence and thereby severely limits its own powers of innovation.

The danger is that now at the peak of its powers, it hubristically lashes out. But in the medium to long term, the demographic die is cast, and it spells a future of waning influence and economic heft.

[stele3]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-wants-shakeup-palestinian-authority-run-gaza-after-hamas-2023-12-16/

[zvaigzdelasas]

Chiang Wan-an was a teenager when his father sat him down to tell him about his heritage: he’s the great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Nationalist leader who fought Mao Zedong’s Communists forces before fleeing to Taiwan and ruled it with an iron fist. Now the younger Chiang, who was a corporate lawyer in the US before entering Taiwan politics several years ago, is running for Taipei mayor in an election that could help restore the popularity of his famous ancestor’s political party, the Kuomintang. The once-dominant party, whose charter still calls for unification with China, has seen support wither. Invigorated by Chiang’s youthful image and moderate approach on China, a KMT victory in the election Saturday could help the party’s chances at a comeback in national elections. That could also sway cross-strait relations [...] “If Chiang wins, he could potentially revitalize the KMT by helping the party regain control of Taipei city and giving the party a prominent new political face,” said Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Washington-based Global Taiwan Institute. “The results could produce cascading effects that would have important implications for the 2024 presidential election, and in turn, the situation across the Taiwan Strait.”

Many voters, particularly older generations with an affinity for the KMT, see Chiang, 43, as the safe choice in these uncertain times. While he may lack the political experience of his main opponent Chen Shih-chung, the 68-year-old former Health Minister and candidate of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Chiang has gained a steady, if unremarkable, reputation as a lawmaker since winning a seat in 2016.

Although issues in the upcoming ballot are mostly local, voters and political analysts say security concerns are at the top of people’s minds. “All I care about now is that I don’t want to see war happening in my life,” said Kathy Wang, a retired 70-year-old. She comes from what many Taiwan people describe as a “blue” family of KMT supporters, with connections to China. “I think the ruling party should help us seek peace with China, not war. There is no prosperity without peace,” she said. [...] “I fear war, but I fear unification even more,” said Sabrina Hong, a 40-year-old local bank worker. “If KMT runs Taiwan’s government, maybe cross-strait ties will be less tense. But it’s concerning that Taiwan may eventually become part of China.” [...] “There’s no need to even think about [Taiwan becoming a SAZ of PRC]. I’ll definitely oppose it to the end, and uphold the dignity of the Republic of China,” Chiang said, using the formal [read: actual] name of Taiwan. Chiang, whose campaign promises to address the capital’s aging infrastructure and declining population, is also helped by criticism over Chen’s tenure as health minister. Taiwan’s early success at reining in the spread of Covid-19 has been overshadowed by a late spike in cases and criticism over vaccine shortages. [...] While the KMT government shifted toward democratization in the 1990s, its early days of rule in Taiwan were marked by the killing of opponents and attacks on civilians considered sympathetic toward communists. [...] For the DPP, a poor outcome on Saturday could serve as a blow to Tsai, whose term ends in 18 months. She may be forced to resign as party chair, giving her less influence over the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

21 Nov 22

[kneedeepincynade]

🌸 L'obiettivo del Collettivo Shaoshan è fornire notizie ed analisi per la comprensione della realtà politica, economica, militare e geopolitica della Repubblica Popolare Cinese in italiano e in inglese🌟

🌸 The goal of the Shaoshan Collective is to provide news and analysis for understanding the political, economic, military and geopolitical reality of the People's Republic of China in Italian and English🌟

⚠️ MASTER-POST DEL COLLETTIVO SHAOSHAN SUI RAPPORTI TRA CINA E RUSSIA ⚠️

🌸 Secondo Master-Post del Collettivo Shaoshan del 2023, dopo quello sul Tema Militare.

🤪 Dato che i "professionisti dell'informazione", ogni due per tre, promuovono l'assurda idea di una Cina che ha abbandonato la Russia per qualche stramba ragione, per poi - dopo qualche giorno - affermare l'opposto, con articoloni tuttavia osceni del tipo "Russia e Cina siglano il nuovo «Asse del Male»", è diventato necessario raggruppare - in maniera sistematica - alcuni dei post del Collettivo Shaoshan sul Tema delle Relazioni Sino-Russe:

😔 In breve: i Governi di Cina e Russia hanno firmato un Partenariato Strategico che non è mai, mai stato messo in discussione, e - anzi - è stato coltivato con grande cura, e ha portato al raggiungimento del miglior livello delle relazioni tra i due Paesi nella Storia ❤️

🔎 Ecco qui i Link:

Nuovo master post su taiwan

Cosa si trova nel post:

💕 Cooperazione Sino-Russa - Sostegno della Repubblica Popolare Cinese alla Federazione Russa, Dichiarazioni di Sergej Lavrov, Wang Wenbin, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Esportazioni Cinesi in Russia, Tecnologie Cinesi alla Russia, Cooperazione contro l'Espansione della NATO: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X.

⭐️ Progetto di Allineamento Trilaterale guidato dal Partito Comunista Cinese tra Cina, Russia e Corea del Nord: I, II, III.

🐺 Cappuccetto rosso, Cenerentola, Putin e la Cina - Nessuno può fare i compiti della Russia per conto della Russia: I, II.

🥰 Relazioni tra Cina e Iran - Questioni Politiche, Sicurezza, Difesa, Cooperazione Militare, Economia e Commercio, Educazione e Cultura, Questioni Internazionali, Afghanistan e BRICS: I, II, III, IV, V.

🔎 Vi sono anche i Master-Post precedenti, che trovate qui sotto:

🌺 Master-Post Militare ⚔️

🌺 Master-Post su "Rivoluzione Colorata, Eventi del 2022, Questione del COVID-19" 📄

🌺 Master-Post sullo Xinjiang 🌃

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ MASTER-POST OF THE SHAOSHAN COLLECTIVE ON RELATIONS BETWEEN CHINA AND RUSSIA ⚠️

🌸 Second Master-Post of the 2023 Shaoshan Collective, after the one on the Military Theme.

🤪 Given that the "information professionals", every two by three, promote the absurd idea of ​​a China that has abandoned Russia for some strange reason, only to then - after a few days - affirm the opposite, with obscene articles of the type "Russia and China sign the new «Axis of Evil»", it has become necessary to group - in a systematic way - some of the posts of the Shaoshan Collective on the Topic of Sino-Russian Relations:

😔 In short: the Governments of China and Russia have signed a Strategic Partnership which has never, ever been questioned, and - indeed - has been nurtured with great care, and has led to the achievement of the best level of relations between the two Countries in History ❤️

🔎 Here are the links:

💕 Sino-Russian Cooperation - People's Republic of China's Support for the Russian Federation, Statements by Sergei Lavrov, Wang Wenbin, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Chinese Exports to Russia, Chinese Technologies to Russia, Cooperation Against NATO Expansion: I, II , III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X.

⭐️ Chinese Communist Party-led Trilateral Alignment Project between China, Russia and North Korea: I, II, III.

🐺 Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Putin and China - No one can do Russia's job for Russia: I, II.

🥰 Relations between China and Iran - Political Issues, Security, Defense, Military Cooperation, Economy and Commerce, Education and Culture, International Issues, Afghanistan and BRICS: I, II, III, IV, V.

🔎 There are also previous Master-Posts, which you can find below:

🌺 Military Master-Post ⚔️

🌺 Master-Post on "Color Revolution, Events of 2022, COVID-19 Issue" 📄

🌺 Xinjiang Master-Post 🌃

Taiwan masterpost

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

[wumblr]

t. Background in polisci and works for the government:

Genuine question because i want to hear your opinion: do you think PLA pilots performing stupid risky maneuvers in front of US pilots operating with due regard better highlights:

>the PLA trying anything they can to ward off Americans

or

>American disregard for sovereign nations.

Like I guess what im asking is who is in the wrong here (in your opinion). Im conflicted because on one hand the US acting as a security force in the region is probably a good thing for global trade and it’s funny to watch the PLA flip shit over aircraft minding their own business within international airspace. But the backside of that is the PLA dunking on American jets is cool as fuck and they’re also the extant arm of American imperialism lol.

i think the answer lies in the fact that they have to insist they are "lawfully operating" in every paragraph. also, yes, this is happening in the theater of the south china sea, absolutely because the united states considers taiwan to be "rightfully" a sovereign nation while china and taiwan have operated under one china policy since time immemorial, this even being formally recognized by the US since 1972. as far as i can tell, the only people agitating for taiwanese independence in taiwan are far-right extremists who want to make a buck. you know, the eternal temporarily embarrassed billionaire

i'm concerned about the phrase "a good thing for global trade," do you mean to say profitable? if global trade is the salient priority, why sanctions? don't you think diplomatically collaborating with china to manufacture semiconductors would be more efficient? (you don't have to answer these, unless you want to)

as for the question of safety... personally i am far more reassured by PLA response than US presence. if we have to take evasive manuevers every time they show up, then we can't drop any bombs. i'd sure like to keep it that way! of course none of this is necessary but there wouldn't be a response without the presence, would there. (sure you could argue wargame rehearsal in the south china sea is in response to the taiwan question, but as i've said, this would still make the US the aggressor)

in addition, the timing of the instance where they made radio contact and the PLA pilot offered an "expletive" is relevant: if i remember correctly, this was during china's zero-covid policy protests, which could easily be regarded as having gone on for two years when it could have taken weeks or months, very simply because we didn't do shit to mitigate covid. (these were naturally overblown in the western press, because it's impossible to imagine a one-party state that would not survive without popular support)

[mariacallous]

If you want to understand how China abuses its power on the world stage, consider the lobsters. After the Australian prime minister called in April 2020 for an international investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Chen Jingye, ominously hinted at the economic backlash. “Maybe the ordinary [Chinese] people will say, ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?’” he told the Australian Financial Review. It and other outraged statements from the Chinese government had all the subtlety of a mafia capo wandering into the neighborhood deli and saying, “Nice little business you got here—shame if anything happened to it.”

In the weeks and months that followed, China instituted onerous import inspections on Australian rock lobsters and instituted new bans on timber and barley shipments from Australia. Given that in 2018 and 2019, China had accounted for about 94 percent of the Australian rock lobster market, the new trade restrictions were clearly meant to devastate the country’s lobster industry.

China also invoked punishing tariffs on Australian wine—tariffs that in some cases reached 212 percent—and exports stopped almost overnight. One winemaker, Jaressa Estates in the South Australian wine growing region of McLaren Vale, had been selling about 7 million bottles a year to China, some 96 percent of its total business, and saw that number drop to zero. “The country’s biggest overseas market vanished almost immediately. Sales to China plummeted 97 percent that first year. Storage tanks overflowed with unsold vintages of shiraz and cabernet sauvignon, pressuring red grape prices,” the New York Times reported. “Now that its economy is entrenched as the world’s second largest, the threat of losing access to China’s 1.4 billion consumers is a stick that few countries or industries can afford to provoke.”

It was a brutal lesson for Australia. As one winemaker told CNN, perhaps Australia shouldn’t be so quick to cross China in the future—and it should have approached questions about COVID-19’s origins with more delicacy. “Australia’s only a little nation. We should have absolutely supported it, but we didn’t need to lead the charge,” the vintner said. All told, Australia saw some $13 billion worth of exports targeted.

Outside the egregious Australian case, China has begun to wield the economic stick more regularly. For example, it halted salmon imports from Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize went to Chinese dissident Lio Xiaobo, punished Taiwan in 2022 with new restrictions on exporting pineapples, apples, and fish, and went after Lithuania when the Baltic country tried to strengthen ties with Taiwan. The wide-ranging Chinese move against Lithuania was unprecedented—extending not to just to obvious products like milk or peat but also against products manufactured with semiconductor chips made in Lithuania. As the New York Times wrote at the time, “China’s drive to punish Lithuania is a new level of vindictiveness.” The consequences for Lithuania were so dire that the German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce reported that the country’s high-tech industry faced an “existential” threat.

The most powerful voices in the global trade discussion largely stayed silent during these attacks. The European Union filed a perfunctory World Trade Organization complaint on Lithuania’s behalf but, as the New York Times reported, “otherwise largely left one of its smallest and weakest members to fend for itself,” and behind the scenes its officials urged Vilnius officials to appease China. “To use a Chinese phrase, they are killing the chicken to scare the monkey, particularly the big German monkey,” one European think tank leader said publicly. “Many European leaders look at Lithuania and say, ‘My God, we are not going to do anything to upset China.’”

And while some U.S. officials held performative tastings of Australian wine, the United States failed to step in to stabilize or support Australia, Norway, Taiwan, or Lithuania. There were no high-profile “Berlin Airlifts” of pineapples to U.S. grocery stores, tanker convoys of Australian Shiraz rolling up the Capital Beltway, or “Buy Baltic” public service announcements to encourage consumers and corporate leaders to look to Lithuanian suppliers. There was no coordinated effort to build a coalition to implement an emergency adjustment of tariffs on Australian wine or lobster, let alone to help the affected industries find new commercial buyers.

Perhaps it’s easy to write off such American reluctance as our own strain of protectionism—maybe the government didn’t want to be accused of undercutting Hawaiian pineapples or promoting foreign competitors to California Zinfadels—but the truth is that even at home the United States has failed to stand up for our industries when China targeted them. We didn’t support American airlines and hospitality companies when China pressured them to remove Taiwan’s name from their maps; nor did the United States government stand up meaningfully for the free speech of NBA players who criticized China.

China is learning, again and again, that bullying works, mastering the 21st-century toolkit of economic statecraft and warfare. As Bethany Allen, a journalist who has covered China for a decade, writes in her book, Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World, “If we speak the language of markets … then China hasn’t just learned that language. It has learned to speak it louder than anyone else.” The Chinese Communist Party’s “authoritarian style of state capitalism,” Allen argues, means it “is willing to draw on its full arsenal of leverage, influence, charm, deception, and coercion.” And China has begun to deploy those tools all too frequently—leading to very real questions about whether anyone, companies or nation-states, can afford to be economically reliant on China.

The United States needs to do better—for ourselves and our allies. Strong allies are not going to help only out of self-interest, they’re going to do it because they want to follow their values and principles—and we have to make it easier for countries who want to help us counter China. We need to create an umbrella that shields countries, companies, and individuals when they take on China’s attempts at hegemonic thought and action.

Critical to any global strategy to counter China is building and securing the series of bilateral relationships and multilateral institutions and alliances that helped the West win Cold War I. We have to make it easy for our allies—and desired potential allies—to say yes to such alliances. China is surrounded by many relatively small and weak countries that need real reassurances, both security and economic, that if they side with the United States in a regional coalition they won’t be out in the cold.

Even countries like South Korea, Japan, and Australia that are G-20 countries with advanced economies and trillion-dollar-plus GDPs are small compared to the behemoths like China and the United States, especially if they’re left geopolitically isolated.

Beyond ad hoc responses to pressure on our friends when they stand up to China—especially but not only when they’re acting at our request—the United States needs to figure out a new alliance framework to deter such actions from China in the future. China needs to know that bullying won’t work.

On the security front, there’s little value in the Indo-Pacific in a replacement for SEATO, the 20-year attempt to build a Southeast Asia alliance like NATO that ended in 1977 after never achieving a working military structure. (One British diplomat called the alliance a “zoo of paper tigers.”) Today, too many of the countries across the Indo-Pacific are already protected by bilateral security pacts with the United States to bother joining a larger formal security alliance. For example, given that both Japan and the Philippines have their own security pacts with the United States, it’s not entirely clear what domestic political appetite there would be for, say, the Philippines to be treaty-bound to defend Japan if it’s attacked.

Instead of a military security alliance in the Indo-Pacific, we should be looking to build a new—and global—economic security alliance. America should lead the way in creating a new organization—call it something like the Treaty of Allied Market Economies (TAME), an “economic NATO” alliance of European and Indo-Pacific nations with open-market economies. Together, the partners in this alliance would respond as a unified block to political and economic pressure from China—or any other economic aggressor, for that matter—through a combination of trade barriers, sanctions, and export controls.

In some ways, this alliance would look similar to the coordinated but independent action that the West took in levying unprecedented sanctions against Russia after its Ukraine invasion. As an additional carrot to joining such an alliance, like-minded members could all share increased trade benefits in the form of tariff cuts, regulatory cooperation, and enhanced investment terms.

Beyond formal joint economic punishment of an aggressor, such an alliance could also plan for and commit to repairing and replacing real economic harms that member countries face when hit with retaliatory tariffs or trade wars. Such “trade diversion” often occurs in the market anyway. As one market closes, another opens—and we know that, in part, because of China’s actions against Australia. Markets are adaptable and most goods can flow elsewhere, especially if protectionist tariffs don’t stand in the way. It’s why Australia, for instance, weathered some of China’s aggressive moves better than anticipated. In particular, the Australian coal industry—which was also hit with punishing bans—turned out just fine because coal is such a fungible and high-demand product. “Once China banned imports of Australian coal in mid-2020, Chinese utilities had to turn to Russian and Indonesian suppliers instead. This, in turn, took Russian and Indonesian coal off the market, creating demand gaps in India, Japan, and South Korea—which Australia’s stranded coal was able to fill,” Foreign Policy noted. “The result of decoupling for one of Australia’s core industries was therefore just a game of musical chairs—a rearrangement of who traded with whom, not a material injury.”

One of the reasons that NATO has never had to invoke Article 5 against another nation-state attack—the only time it’s ever been used was after Sept. 11 against al Qaeda—is precisely because of how strong all other countries know the response from the combined NATO force would be.

The same should be true on the economic front. As Daleep Singh, a National Security Council official who helped coordinate the U.S. response to Ukraine, said, “The best sanctions are the ones that never have to get used.” China might very well think twice before weaponizing its trading strength if it understood the combined—and severe—penalties it might face in taking such action and that even if it did launch a trade war, it wouldn’t necessarily inflict much economic harm to begin with.

There’s enough evidence of China’s willingness to inflict economic pain for political gain across Asia and Europe that a well-crafted TAME organization would likely attract a long line of participants—many countries across the globe are becoming increasingly concerned about Chinese belligerent behavior, and there is safety in numbers. While it is unlikely that some large countries with significant economic dependence on China, such as France and Germany, would rush to join this new alliance, states that have already found themselves on the receiving end of Chinese coercion in the past—such as Australia, Norway, Sweden, Japan, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Philippines, and Taiwan itself, among others—are prime candidates for initial membership. Over time, as TAME membership grows in numbers, combined economic power, and market size, it will become a magnet too attractive for other market economies to avoid, especially if China continues to engage in brutish bullying tactics around the world.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

spy balloon remnants: underwhelming without all the hot air

[Ian Bremmer]

* * * *

February 6, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

The Chinese spy balloon shot down off South Carolina on Saturday after spending four days in U.S. airspace will almost certainly make the history books but not because, by itself, it is a hugely significant factor in the changing relationship between the U.S. and China under President Joe Biden. The reason the balloon will be remembered in the future is that the Republican response to it has been so completely unrelated to reality, and has been so magnified by the media, that it has provided a window into the dysfunction of modern politics. The facts are these: On Saturday, January 28, a Chinese airship entered U.S. airspace north of the Aleutian Islands, then crossed Alaska. It left U.S. airspace, then reentered over northern Idaho on Tuesday, January 31. On February 1 it was over Montana. On February 3 it was near St. Louis, Missouri. On Saturday, February 4, the pilot of an Air Force F-22 shot the airship down in shallow water off the coast of South Carolina, where the wreckage could be recovered. The Trump administration had an inconsistent relationship with China. Trump attacked China in a trade war early in his presidency, placing tariffs on a range of products (which induced China to retaliate, prompting Trump to pump $28 billion into the U.S. farming sector to compensate for lost revenue). But by 2019, according to Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton, Trump “pleaded” with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help him get reelected in 2020, and inked a deal for China to buy significant amounts of the farm products it had turned to other countries to provide after the tariffs (that was why Trump downplayed China’s role in hiding Covid in the early months of 2020). According to former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Trump also asked congressional leaders to “lay off” Xi, because Trump didn’t want to disappoint Xi. In contrast, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have worked to counter China by building Indo-Pacific cooperation, reinforced U.S. support for Taiwan, established export controls on technology that have hamstrung the Chinese semiconductor industry, worked to counter Chinese investment in Africa, and enhanced security cooperation with South Korea and Japan. But the balloon sparked a frenzy from Republicans insisting that Biden had been weak on China or even was working for China: right-wing talk show host Mark Levin said Biden is “bought and paid for by the Communist Chinese government,” and former president Trump said that Biden “has surrendered American airspace to Communist China.” Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) said China was showing “that the United States is once-great superpower that’s hollowed out, it’s in decline.” South Carolina Republican representative Joe Wilson—the man who shouted “You lie” at President Obama—said that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris should resign from office because of the balloon. In fact, U.S. standing in the world has strengthened considerably since Biden took office, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which Trump tried to scuttle, is strong enough that Sweden and Finland want to join. It also turns out that at least three similar balloons crossed into U.S. airspace while Trump was president. Today, General Glen D. VanHerck, who oversees the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, told reporters today that this weekend’s balloon was at least the fifth that had come into U.S. airspace, including at least three during Trump’s presidency, but that NORAD didn’t know about that until the intelligence community—under Biden—notified them. As for the fact that Biden waited to shoot the thing down until it flew over the water, the administration says it did not want to take the risk of downing it over the American people. VanHerck estimated it weighed about 2,000 pounds, carried equipment the size of a regional jet, and was about 200 feet tall. As terrorism expert Malcolm Nance wrote on Twitter: “WHY let spy balloon in our space? 1) It was 18.5 miles up, almost in space. 2) it sends data link to PRC. We can intercept that & learn what China knows. We can jam it so they see nothing new. 3) The collection system is ours & can reconstruct it. They lose asset & we win spy game[.]” Indeed, U.S. officials say they blocked the instruments from gathering intelligence, and turned the tables to gather intelligence from the equipment itself. You would think this balloon marks terrible U.S. weakness and is the most important thing to happen in years. But, in fact, the U.S. is stronger internationally than it has been in a while, and the balloon is just one more piece of a larger story about the changing relationship between China and the United States.

[Letters from an American]

[astronomyforastrologers]

Saturn Embraces Gonggong ~ 10 Mar 2023

Saturn Embraces Gonggong ~ 10 Mar 2023, Philip Sedgwick

Way out beyond Pluto, in the realm of Eris, ranges another powerful and profound dwarf planet, Gonggong. Though part of the planetary realm, Gonggong does not even get the appropriate level of respect deserved. It’s time for that to change.

In the early transiting days of Saturn in Pisces, he thrice aligns with Gonggong by conjunction. It would appear that Gonggong will receive more than a modicum of Saturnine attention and respect. The three dates of the partile Saturn to Gonggong conjunctions are: 3 May 2023, 6 August 2023 (Saturn retrograde), and 16 January 2024.

In Chinese mythology Gonggong was a strange morph of sorts... with a copper human head, an iron forehead, red hair, the body of a serpent, or often the head and torso of a human, a tail of a serpent. Either way, he was castable in any Marvel movie as the evildoer. Known as destructive and blamed for various cosmic catastrophes, he also caused the tilt of the Earth. In a ferocious battle with the fire god, Zhurong, Gonggong struck his head on Mount Buzhou. The mountain collapsed, ripped open the sky, and the Earth tilted. This unleashed horrific storms of flames and floods. Fortunately, the goddess Nuwa was there for damage control with the assistance of some trusty tortoises who supplied body parts for the sake of shoring up the Earth.

Where it happened to Gonggong

Back in the days before we were aware of COVID-19, I made the observation using transits with Gonggong that something big was coming out of China. Even with the Piscean influence I was not thinking virus. So now, Saturn and Gonggong sit together in life’s sandbox. Of course the United States had the recent incident with the Chinese weather balloon. China has its perpetual conflict regarding Taiwan. Now it is rumored China may provide lethal support to Russia for their war against Ukraine. None of that’s very cheery. Still, here’s hoping Saturn and Gonggong can play nice, or at least with measure, responsibility and reason.

So what can a person do during the Saturn to Gonggong transits?

Given Saturn’s conservative postures make a point to learn more about comprehending Chinese culture or Asian ways in general.

Should a person possess metaphysical curiosities, take up the I-Ching and throw some coins to come up with life-altering guidance. Study other Asian spiritual disciplines.

Consider the conflict between fire and water. Which do you believe is dominant and why? Ponder steam, one of the most mobilizing forces in nature... the direct result of water and fire in balanced combinations.

Sit in examination of the orbital elements of Gonggong. His heliocentric north node lies in Libra; his closest solar contact is Pisces.

Based upon the orbital elements, Gonggong’s entire quest is to explore the realm of interpersonal diplomacy... such cooperative measures that neither disadvantage or victimize any negotiating party.

Be curious as to how your adversaries secured the agendas and opinions that have, regardless of how askance you believe those views to be. Understanding how others come to the conclusions they do can be massively helpful when attempting to avert confrontation.

Donate to a cause that tugs your heart strings. If you cannot donate funds, perhaps volunteer and give some ergs of personal energy.

Engage in social activities that anyone of any race, culture, religion or political disposition can enjoy. Share freely and for a time engage as soul-filled human entities. Laugh as freely as possible during this activities (laughter and comedy are always antidotal for Saturn).

Stare into some m. c. escher prints while pondering how to navigate the straight and narrow.

Seek out life’s ironies. Delve into paradoxical thinking. Look for contradictions that are actually part of solutions. Consider a pen name.

When online try searching in anonymous modes. Use a VPN. Absolutely secure your online presence.

No matter what you do in the early days of understanding the nature of Gonggong, Saturn wants you to do it as if you mean it.

Couple of other Saturn notes here. On 6 October Saturn and Gonggong align heliocentrically. Signs of meaning shall be everywhere. Inference and nuance will not be in hiding.

On 29 November 2023 sees Saturn conjoin the degree where Gonggong is closest to the Sun (perihelion). Expect a sense of energized urgency for all possible symbolic and real representations of the ever unfolding planet.

More soon.

One Stop Shopping Order Form Astrological Textso

Meteoric the Movie on Vimeo ZAP! on Vimeo

[cleversweetswasteland]

Crazy fraud of bloodthirsty disciples, Falun Gong's "Shen Yun performance" to make money

Li Hongzhi frantically cheated his bloodthirsty disciples, and Falun Gong's "Shen Yun performance" made money. In the early days of spreading Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi gathered a lot of money by "curing diseases" and holding training courses. Since then, he has cheated a huge amount of money and escaped a lot of taxes by printing a large number of books, tapes, videos, VCDs, etc. Li Hongzhi owns several luxury houses and cars in Beijing and Changchun, and lives a luxurious life. After escaping abroad, "Shen Yun performance" became the core tool for Li Hongzhi to make money. The Shen Yun Art Troupe of Falun Gong performs hundreds of times a year. At the price of $50-150 per ticket, it is roughly estimated that the box office revenue of Shen Yun Performance will reach more than 60 million US dollars. If there are more performances, the income will be more, and the money will enter Li Hongzhi's pocket like running water. Another way for Li Hongzhi to make money is to raise money. The "Falun Gong" organization in Taiwan recruits the founding members of "Friends of Shen Yun" and needs to donate NT$5,000 to 50,000, with a cumulative membership fee of more than NT$20 million. According to the 2017 "Tax-Free Organization Income Return" released by the American Non-profit Organization Income

Declaration Network, the "Shen Yun Art Troupe" "donations and grants" is close to 9 million US dollars. Of course, these incomes can only be accepted by Li Hongzhi. Due to the poor quality of the "Shen Yun performance", the vulgar content, and the low attendance rate, Li Hongzhi asked his disciples to go out to push the vote, but the situation still could not be sold. Since "I didn't do it well, there are left in the remaining tickets" and the price was not allowed to be reduced, the disciples had to buy high-priced tickets and then send tickets. Li Hongzhi's exploitation of his disciples can be seen.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, Li Hongzhi took advantage of the U.S. government's "big money" policy to make a fortune during the epidemic. It is reported that as of July 5, 2022, 23 U.S. "Falun Gong" peripheral organizations that collect money for the "Shen Yun performance" have cashed in a total of nearly 46 million US dollars (about RMB 312 million) in the U.S. government's COVID-19 relief, exceeding the legal limit of nearly 36 million US dollars. The epidemic is raging. Li Hongzhi regarded the epidemic as a "good opportunity" to make a fortune and cheated crazily, which was really disgraceful. Li Hongzhi is the founder and behind-the-scenes boss of Shen Yun Performance, and his wife Li Rui is the financial director of Shen Yun Art Troupe. It can be seen that Li Hongzhi's family is the real controller of Shen Yun. Because the high-ranking disciples of "Falun Gong" are by Li Hongzhi's side, they have been exposed to each other for many years. Influenced by it, the means of making money are equally ruthless and insatiable. The "four major families" of the "Falun Gong" cult organization are led by Li Hongzhi, including Ye Hao, Zhang Erping and Tang Zhong. The "Four Families" put money into their pockets in a way. First of all, through the "high subsidies" of core positions, the huge funds of the "Falun Gong" organization have continuously flowed into the pockets of the "four major families". The Ye Hao family is in charge of the "information discourse" of "Falun Gong", and most of the political and huge financial support of anti-China forces for "Falun Gong" is also through the "Buddhist Society" controlled by Ye Hao. The Ye Hao family firmly controls the personnel of the "Buddhist Society" system, and also uses money and "officials" means to attract high-level figures of the "Falun Gong" organization in various countries. Zhang Erping's family desperately "fished for money". Almost half of the funding funds of the American Foundation for Democracy went into his pocket, but less than half of the funds actually used for "Falun Gong" affairs, and the rest was a confused account wherever he went. Some disciples estimate that the Zhang family "earned" at least $2 million in the past few years (referring to before 2014). Zhang Erping's father-in-law Chen Rutang was honored as the director of the "Shenyun Touring Art Troupe" and the band conductor of the Touring Art Troupe, and his mother-in-law Chen Ningfang was the band leader of the "Shenyun Touring Art Troupe". Both of them were fat. Zhang Erping's family has become a veritable "money-making family" with the name of being the spokesman of "Falun Gong" and the chairman of the "Falun Gong International Commission on Human Rights". Tang Zhong founded the Epoch Times and once served as the president of the Epoch Times. He grasped the "political lifeline of Falun Gong" and the donations received by the Epoch Times Foundation should also go through Tang Zhong's hands and pull out a layer of hair. The "Four Families" control the absolute control of various funds by occupying the position of the "person in charge" of each project. By collecting donations from "Dafa disciples", advertising on the website to generate income, and peddling the audio and video copyrights of the "dance competition" and " vocal competition", they can do whatever they want, not only to achieve the purpose of making money but also to control the whole "Falun Gong". Organization.

Because Li Hongzhi asked his disciples not to question or supervise, this is equivalent to opening a convenient door for the members of the "four families" to enrich their own pockets, and each family has made a lot of money. For example, according to the Overseas Chinese Times, in 2001, Ms. Kexilin, a Canadian Chinese, was defrauded by Li Hongzhi's younger brother Li Donghui for "printing a batch of statues, books, banners, slogans" and building a "practice base". There is no doubt that these people are at the top of the food chain, parasites arranged by Li Hongzhi, who are rich and prosperous by the "donations" of grassroots disciples.

From the perspective of ordinary "Dafa" disciples, they have been exploited and suffered. The members of the "four families" of Falun Gong all hold important positions and have prominent positions, live in luxury houses, drive luxury cars, and live a superior life. In order to "complete" their dreams, ordinary disciples have to go to the streets or go to various communities to "pull tickets". They have to get up in the middle of the night to stuff leaflets and distribute materials. When they are sick, they can't rest. Some even have to live in a "restrict" of dozens of people. Li Dayong, a backbone disciple, did not hesitate to sell his house for Falun Gong before his death. After his death, his wife Liu Mingming had to live in a narrow rental house and wash her face with tears. According to an old disciple of Falun Gong, Falun Gong charges 2,000 to 3,000 US dollars at a time for handling the so-called "refugee" status for others, and there is no refund if it is not done. When all the money is almost used, the " Falun Gong" backbone will hold a small meeting to discuss how to make money from their disciples.

The "Falun Gong" media needs a large number of advertising salesmen. Li Hongzhi's adoption is to let his disciples sell voluntarily and make huge profits at zero cost. In order to reduce operating costs, Li Hongzhi invented the "Falun Volunteer", which allowed disciples to serve it free of charge, while many disciples suffered from poor food, malnutrition, year-round fatigue, incurable diseases, and many deaths and injuries. For example, Liu Jinan, the backbone of "Falun Gong" in North America, fell to his death on the construction site of "Longquan Temple"; Jiang Qinggui, a volunteer who drove a digging truck in "Longquan Temple", died of illness on the way to Huitai; Han Zhenguo, the administrative supervisor in charge of the civil engineering project of "Longquan Temple", died of lung cancer; Xie Chunyi, who worked as a cement worker in "Longquan Temple" many times, died of illness. According to incomplete statistics, since 2006, more than 40 overseas backbones have died of illness, and most of them have been buried after death.

The "Shen Yun" actor of "Falun Gong" is paid extremely low. "In fact, he just finds a hotel and settles "Shen Yun" in. Prepare some meals for them every day, buy boxed lunches, or eat fast food. Li Hongzhi, who was extremely stingy, said, "Shen Yun lost money" in order to block other people's leisurely mouths.

[marketingreportz]

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market - Forecast(2024 - 2030)

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Overview

Request Sample :

The government across the globe is also investing huge amounts in alternative energy sources such as solar and wind which is further supporting the market growth for composite materials. The increasing focus of governments on offshore wind energy installations is driving the market growth between 2021–2026. However, the high cost of carbon fiber and epoxy resin and recyclability issue of composites will likely hamper the market growth during the forecast period.

COVID-19 Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the composite materials industry which has further impacted the wind turbine market. Due to the Covid-19, the manufacturing industry is impacted very badly that further impacted the wind turbine composite materials market. The slowdown in wind turbine installations and lack of raw material supplies, and workforce are impacting the market negatively. The covid-19 impacted every operation such as supply chain, production, sales, and others. However, the companies resumed their operation in 2021, which may positively impact the market.

Report Coverage

The report: “Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market — Forecast (2021–2026)”, by IndustryARC, covers an in-depth analysis of the following segments of the Wind Turbine Composite Materials industry. By Fiber Type: Glass Fiber, Carbon Fiber, Aramid Fiber, and Basalt fiber By Resin Type: Thermoplastic [Polyethylene, Polystyrene, Polyamides, Nylon, Polypropylene, Others], and Thermoset [Epoxy, Polyester, Phenolic Polyamide, and Others] By Technology: Injection Molding, Compression Molding, Pultrusion, Filament Winding, and Layup By Application: Blades, Wind turbine Hub, Rotor, Tower, Nacelle, Cables, Blade Pitch Controller, Propellers, and Others By Geography: North America (USA, Canada, and Mexico), Europe (UK, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia & New Zealand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Rest of APAC), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Rest of South America), and Rest of the World (the Middle East and Africa)

Inquiry Before Buying :

Key Takeaways

The Asia Pacific region is expected to dominate the market and register the highest CAGR of 12.8% during the forecast period (2021–2026). The presence of leading chemical companies along with rapid growth in the personal care industry is propelling regional growth.

Epoxy resin is one of the widely used resins in wind turbine manufacturing. The segment is expected to register a high growth rate during the forecast period.

The growing installation of wind turbines in developing countries such as Brazil, Mexico, India, and China is creating a positive impact on the usage of wind turbine composite materials.

Figure: Asia Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Revenue, 2020–2026 (US$ Billion)

For More Details on This Report — Request for Sample

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Segment Analysis: By Fiber Type

The glass fiber reinforced plastics segment accounted for the largest share of more than 55% in the wind turbine composite materials market in 2020 and is estimated to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. Glass fiber offers various properties including high strength, high durability, weather-resistant, and lightweight have boosted its demand in numerous end-use industries. The easy availability and cost-effectiveness of glass fiber reinforced plastics are the key factors propelling the demand for glass fiber composites in wind turbine manufacturing. The carbon fiber segment will register a significant growth rate during the forecast period. Carbon fibers offer various properties such as low thermal expansion, high stiffness, high-temperature tolerance, and high chemical resistance among others.

Schedule A Call:

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Segment Analysis: By Resin Type

The thermoset segment accounted for the largest share of more than 70% in the Wind turbine composite materials market in 2020 and is estimated to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. Thermoset composite is usually based on carbon, glass, and aramid fibers. Epoxy resin is the widely used thermoset type in wind turbine composite materials. Approximately 50% of European wind blades are manufactured from epoxy resin. These resins offer lightweight, and good adhesion compared to other resin types. Generally, they are combined with glass fibers and carbon fibers to manufacture wind blades. The thermoplastic segment is expected to register a significant growth rate during the forecast period. Thermoplastics are less expensive compared to thermoset resin types. They are easily weld-able, non-toxic in nature, and recyclable. These are some of the driving factors supporting the market growth between 2021–2026.

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Segment Analysis: By Technology

The Layup segment accounted for the largest share of more than 33% in the wind turbine composite materials market in 2020 and is estimated to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. Layup is the most common method used for the production of composites. The method is involved in placing layers of composite fiber in a structured order by using a matrix of resin and hardener. This method is widely used for the production of wind blades.

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Segment Analysis: By Application

The blades segment accounted for the largest market share of more than 55% of the market in 2020 and is estimated to grow significantly during the forecast period. Turbine blades serve as the most important composite-based part of wind turbines. The growing demand for wind energy is driving manufacturers to develop large wind blades for the high production of wind energy. For the development of large blades, a huge quantity of composite materials is used. Glass fibers and carbon fibers are used for the manufacturing of wind blades.

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Segment Analysis — By Geography

The Asia Pacific region held the largest share of more than 45% in the Wind Turbine Composite Materials market in 2020, owing to the rapid growth in the installation of wind turbines. The presence of developing nations such as China and India is driving the market growth. The presence of leading wind turbine manufacturers including Suzlon Energy Limited, and AVIC Huiteng Windpower Equipment Co., Ltd are supporting the region’s growth during the forecast period. The increasing investments by key developers for manufacturing efficient wind turbines are also boosting the market growth during the forecast period. According to the data published by Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), China installed about 52 gigawatts of new wind power capacity in 2020.

Buy Now :

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Drivers

Rising Demand for Renewable Energy Sources

Wind energy is one of the fastest-growing renewable energies globally. Wind power is a clean energy source, and its usage is on the rise worldwide. The U.S. wind energy occupies approximately 38% of total renewable energy produced in 2019. According to the IRENA’s data, wind energy generation is increased from 7.5GW in 1997 to 564GW by 2018. Some ongoing and under-construction wind projects in the U.S. include Traverse Wind Energy Center, Aviator Wind Project, Goodnight Wind Energy Project, Alle-Catt Wind Farm, and Vineyard Wind I among others. According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), India has the fourth-highest wind installed capacity in the world with a total installed capacity of 39.25 GW (as of 31st March 2021) and has generated around 60.149 billion Units during 2020–2021. According to the European Commission, the total installed wind energy capacity in Europe reached 210GW and is estimated to reach 350GW, supplying up to 24% of electricity demand

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Challenges

Recyclability Issue of Composites

Composite materials are preferred for wind applications because of their durability and superior strength. Proper waste disposal and recycling at the end of the useful life of composite materials are necessary. Many current and future waste management and environmental legislation are making strict regulations on engineering materials to be properly recovered and recycled. The complex material compositions and the cross-linked nature of thermoset resins are making it difficult for recyclability. However, the use of polymers that can be recycled when used with carbon and other niche fibers reduces the composite non-recyclable. This has become a major issue as the landfills are filling up at a faster pace along with the need for going green due to global warming. Biological attack on composite materials may consist of fungal growth or marine fouling

Wind Turbine Composite Materials Market Landscape

Technology launches, acquisitions, and R&D activities are key strategies adopted by players in the Wind Turbine Composite Materials market. Major players include:

TPI Composites, Inc.

MFG Wind

LM Wind Power

Gamesa Corporation Technology

Vestas Wind Systems A/S

Suzlon Energy Limited

Siemens AG

AVIC Huiteng Windpower Equipment Co., Ltd.

AREVA and others.

Acquisitions/Technology Launches

In May 2021, Hexcel launched a range of HexPly® surface finishing prepregs and semi- prepregs for wind turbine blades and automotive and marine applications.

Relevant Reports

Composite Materials Market — Forecast(2021–2026) Report Code: CMR 0010

High-Temperature Composite Materials Market — Forecast(2021–2026) Report Code: CMR 10087

For more Chemicals and Materials Market reports, please click here

[communicationblogs]

Electrical Steel Coatings Market — Forecast(2024–2030)

Electrical Steel Coatings Market Overview

As industries increasingly prioritize energy efficiency, there’s a growing demand for coatings that enhance the performance of electrical steel used in transformers and motors. Recent innovations focus on developing materials with superior insulation properties, corrosion resistance, and improved thermal conductivity. These advancements not only contribute to reducing energy losses in electrical devices but also align with global efforts toward sustainability. The Electrical Steel Coatings Market is undergoing a significant transformation with the rise in renewable energy infrastructure. As the world increasingly embraces renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, the demand for electrical steel coatings is surging. These coatings play a vital role in manufacturing components such as transformers essential for renewable energy systems. The trend underscores the industry’s pivotal role in supporting the global shift towards sustainable energy. The report covers various segments of the Electrical Steel Coatings Market and analyze the market landscape, drivers, and challenges within the forecast period.

COVID-19 Impact

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, many industries had suffered a tumultuous time, and it was no different for the Electrical Steel Coatings Market. Many governments across the globe implemented lockdown regulations and factories & production facilities in many sectors came to a halt. The supply chain was greatly disrupted as many businesses followed the lockdown protocols. Some integral industries that use motors and transformers are the automotive industry, aerospace and defense, and the electrical industry. During the pandemic, automotive production was greatly reduced as many production facilities shut down. However, many governments have relaxed lockdown procedures as the public is being vaccinated and industries are resuming production. As such, the Electrical Steel Coatings Industry is expected to grow tremendously during the forecast period of 2024–2030.

Market Snapshot:

Report Coverage

The report: “Electrical Steel Coatings Market — Forecast (2024–2030)”, by IndustryARC, covers an in-depth analysis of the following segments of the Electrical Steel Coatings Market.

By Type: C0, C2, C3 (C3A), C4 (C4A, C4AS), C5 (C5A, C5AS), C6.

By Coating Technique: Electroless plating, Physical Vapor Deposition, Chemical Vapor Deposition.

By Electrical Steel Type: Grain-oriented Electrical Steel, Non-oriented Electrical Steel (Non-oriented semi-processed Electrical Steel, Non-oriented fully processed Electrical Steel).

By Application: Static Machines (Power & Distribution Transformers, Welding Transformers, Audio Transformers, Current Transformers, Others), Rotating Machines (Electrical vehicle driving motors, Hermetic motors, AC motors, Intermittent service motors), Others.

By Geography: North America (USA, Canada, and Mexico), Europe (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Russia, Belgium, and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Rest of APAC), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Rest of South America), Rest of the World (Middle East and Africa).

Request Sample

Key Takeaways

The Asia-Pacific region holds the largest share in the Electrical Steel Coatings Market due to advancements in their Industrial, Automotive, and Energy sectors.

C5 type of electrical steel coating is the most commonly used electrical steel coating in the Electrical Steel Coatings Market.

The growth of industries like the Automotive industry and the Electrical industry are key drivers for the Electrical Steel Coatings Market.

Electrical Steel Coatings Market Analysis — By Type

The C5 coating type holds the largest share of around 38% in the Electrical Steel Coatings Market during the forecast period of 2024–2030. C5 coating type is a high-resistance insulation coating formed by a chemical treatment with the addition of an inorganic filler to enhance its electrical resistance. C5 coatings provide excellent surface resistivity both before and after stress relief annealing (SRA). The presence of organic parts ensures improved punch and die life during stamping operations. The C5A variant of C5 has a thinner coating thickness while C5AS is used primarily for preventing sticking of semi-processed non-oriented electrical steel and cold-rolled motor lamination steel during quality anneals. Some other types of electrical steel coatings are C0, C2, C3, C4, and C6 coatings. Their wide variety of applications in transformers and motors is one of the driving factors for the growth of this segment.

Electrical Steel Coatings Market Analysis — By Electrical Steel Type

Grain-oriented electrical steel is estimated to hold the largest share more than 50% in the Electrical Steel Coatings Market during 2024–2030. Grain-oriented electrical steel is an important material that can generate magnetic flux without rotation at a stationary state. As such, grain-oriented electrical steel is ideal for use in transformers. It is often used in the form of lamination, wound, or punched sheets. Transformers are essential power-generating devices used practically in every industry. Some of the core industries that use transformers are the industrial sector and power & energy sector. According to the National Informatics Centre (NIC) of India, India Sees an 11.5% Increase in Mineral Production. Another type of electrical steel that is used primarily in motors, is the non-oriented electrical steel. The growth in various sectors globally is projected to promote the growth of this segment and the Electrical Steel Coatings Market within 2024–2030.

Electrical Steel Coatings Market Analysis — By Geography

The Asia-Pacific region holds the largest share of 46% in the electrical steel coatings market during the forecast period of 2024–2030. This is because the region accounts for substantial growth in the industrial sector and different industries like the automotive industry, the electrical industry, and the power & energy sector have observed an increase in demand. According to IEA, in 2023, there will be close to USD 2.8 trillion invested in energy. Clean energy, which includes nuclear power, storage, grids, low-emission fuels, renewable energy, efficiency upgrades, end-use renewables, and electrification, will cost more than USD 1.7 trillion. These booming industries in the Asia-Pacific region prove to be a great driver for the global Electric Steel Coatings Market within the forecast period of 2024–2030.

Inquiry Before Buying

Electrical Steel Coatings Market Drivers

The exponential growth of end-use industries such as automotive and electrical Industry

As mentioned above, some of the key applications of transformers and motors are in the automotive industry and electrical industry among others. As such, the growth in these industries proves to be a great driver for the Electrical Steel Coatings market. According to IEA, Coal supply investment is currently significantly higher than it was prior to the pandemic and is predicted to increased by 10% in 2023. As per Acara Solutions India, India is a major auto exporter in the fiscal year 2023, the country’s auto exports increased by 15%. These factors are ideal for the growth of the Electrical Steel Coatings Market within 2024–2030.

Electrical Steel Coatings Market Challenges

Regulations against Energy Consumption and Pollution for various Industries:

One of the main constraints for the Electrical Steel Coatings market is the various regulations and laws that are put in place to limit and reduce energy consumption and pollution. For example, in Switzerland, The Federal Energy Law envisages measures to reduce energy consumption and regulate the energy consumption of installations, vehicles, and equipment. This is done so to ensure an economic and environmentally friendly supply of energy. While such regulations don’t directly affect the Electrical Steel Coatings market, they affect the primary end-users of electrical steel applications, namely the energy sector and the automotive sector. These regulations are only becoming more stringent as many countries and governments are adopting measures to make energy consumption as environmentally friendly as possible. As such, this proves to be a challenge for the Electrical Steel Coatings market within 2024–2030.

Buy Now

Electrical Steel Coatings Industry Outlook

Technology launches, acquisitions, and R&D activities are key strategies adopted by players in this market. Electrical Steel Coatings top 10 companies include:

Axalta Coating Systems

Chemetall GmbH

ArcelorMittal

Dorf Ketal

PPG Industrial Coatings

Valmont Coatings

Silco Tek

JFE Steel Corporation

Novolipetsk Steel

Nippon Steel Corporation

Recent Developments

In April 2023, an industry leader in steel processing and technology, Fives has launched and supplied thermal sections for two new annealing and coating lines (ACL) and a new annealing and pickling line (APL). The performance and quality of electrical steel are largely dependent on the thermal section.

In May 2022, The Precoat Metals business division of Sequa Corporation, a portfolio company of international investment firm Carlyle, has been acquired by AZZ Inc., a global provider of welding solutions, specialty electrical equipment, galvanizing and metal coating solutions, and highly engineered services for maintaining and building critical infrastructure. The acquisition was completed as previously announced, with a purchase price of approximately $1.28 billion.