Bloomberg Big Take: China's Growing Youth Jobs Crisis Risks Economic Setback - Bloomberg - "The most educated generation in China’s history was supposed to blaze a trail towards a more innovative and technologically advanced economy. Instead, about 15 million young people are estimated to be jobless, and many are lowering their ambitions. A perfect storm of factors has propelled unemployment among 16- to 24-year-old urbanites to a record 19.3%, more than twice the comparable rate in the US. The government’s hardline Covid Zero strategy has led to layoffs, while its regulatory crackdown on real estate and education companies has hit the private sector"
China Makes It a Crime to Mock Country's Heroes - The New York Times - "She mocked the toxic masculinity of users imagining themselves as Dong Cunrui, a textbook war hero who, according to Chinese Communist Party lore, died valiantly during the civil war that brought the party to power in 1949. For that passing reference, the woman, 27 and identified in court only by her last name, Xu, was sentenced last month to seven months in prison... The Cyberspace Administration of China, which polices the country’s internet, has created telephone and online hotlines to encourage citizens to report violations. It has even published a list of 10 “rumors” that are forbidden to discuss. Was Mao Zedong’s Long March really not so long? Did the Red Army skirt heavy fighting against the Japanese during World War II to save its strength for the civil war against the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek? Was Mao’s son, Mao Anying, killed by an American airstrike during the Korean War because he lit a stove to make fried rice? A poster of a film about Dong Cunrui, who was a textbook war hero according to Chinese Communist Party lore, during an exhibition in 2006 in Nanjing, China. Asking those very questions risks arrest and, now, prosecution. “It is a sign of the establishment of an absolute political totalitarianism,” said Wu Qiang, an outspoken political analyst in Beijing... The party once could rely on the financial inducements of a booming economy and coercive control of the security state to cement its rule, but now appears to be using political and historical orthodoxy as a foundation, said Adam Ni, a director of the China Policy Center in Australia and editor of China Story... The tougher slander law took effect shortly after the disclosure by the government in February that four Chinese soldiers had died during a clash with Indian troops along the disputed border in June 2020. Within days, at least seven people were charged for questioning the official version of the death toll, which was reportedly much higher. They included Qiu Ziming, a prominent blogger with 2.5 million followers on Weibo, the country’s Twitter-like social media platform. Although he and the others were arrested under a longstanding article in the criminal code called “picking quarrels and provoking troubles,” Mr. Qiu, 38, was prosecuted under the new law, even though the changes went into effect 10 days after he made his comments. In May, after being shown confessing on state television, he was sentenced to eight months in prison. The campaign has inspired vigilantism, with internet users calling out potential violations. The Jiangsu branch of China Unicom, a state-owned telecommunications company, came under investigation after a public uproar started when its Weibo account posted a recipe for fried rice on what was Mao Anying’s birthday. It is not clear whether the company faces criminal charges, but its account was suspended. A poster advertising “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” a new and wildly popular patriotic film that mythologizes a major Chinese military intervention in the Korean War that was once questioned by senior Communist Party leaders. Some of the cases involved historical events that historians in China have previously debated and studied, at least until now."
In China, roads to nowhere and a surging debt burden fuel recession fears | The Star - "China’s current troubling growth slowdown is not a passing setback, often blamed on a zero-COVID policy that has curbed economic growth with lockdowns of factories and population centres. vIn fact, China’s five-year GDP growth rate peaked long ago, in 2007, at 11 per cent. It has fallen every year since, to just under four per cent in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. If China was to abandon its forced, or artificial, growth model for one that more closely aligned with Western consumer economies, Beijing would have to accept a roughly 50 per cent drop in its annual GDP growth rates, to the two per cent to three per cent of mature Western economies. That’s the recent assessment of prominent U.S. economist Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University in Beijing. Pettis is not alone in having long argued that China must convert to a largely consumer economy. GDP growth in a consumer economy is much more sustainable and productive than state-sponsored and debt-financed infrastructure and property investment. Since the mid-2000s, that kind of investment in China has yielded unproductive assets, including vacant industrial parks and subdivisions, and roads to nowhere. The dangers of a bloated real estate sector that accounts for as much as 30 per cent of Chinese GDP were symbolized by last year’s effective collapse of land developer China Evergrande Group. Evergrande triggered a crisis throughout the vast Chinese property sector. Meanwhile, consumer spending accounts for less than 40 per cent of the Chinese economy. The global average is about 60 per cent. “China has by far the lowest consumption share of GDP of any economy in the world”... The Beijing fixation with state-sponsored infrastructure investment made sense in modernizing a country after five decades of neglect ending in the late 1970s. That’s when China embraced market liberalizations that spurred economic growth and lifted about 400 million Chinese from poverty to the middle class. But that model is now outdated, producing negative returns on state investments while contributing to one of the world’s biggest debt loads. China’s officially reported debt-to-equity ratio in 2020 was 270 per cent... What sustains China’s forced-GDP growth model is vested political interests and the model’s perceived role in helping maintain full employment, essential in maintaining social order in a country without a Western-style social safety net. But that model of “fictitious GDP growth,” as Pettis labels it, has ultimately failed everywhere it has been used. The most conspicuous failures include the Soviet Union’s forced-growth practices in the 1950s and 1960s, Brazil’s adoption of those methods in the same period, and Japan’s state-accelerated growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The necessary scrapping of that failed model was followed everywhere by economic malaise, often lasting for decades."
Microsoft blocks Bing from showing image results for Tiananmen ‘tank man’ - "Microsoft has blamed human error after its search engine, Bing, blocked image and video results for the phrase “tank man” – a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down tanks during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square – on the 32nd anniversary of the military crackdown. Users reported that no results were shown for the search query in countries including the US, Germany, Singapore, France and Switzerland... Microsoft Bing is one of the few foreign search engines that are accessible in China, because the company has agreed to censor results for sensitive terms such as the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square or Falun Gong... In 2014, the Guardian reported that Bing was censoring results for Chinese-language users in the US for many of the same terms that Bing censors inside China, such as Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square and Falun Gong. In 2009, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about receiving seemingly censored results on Bing when he searched for topics such as the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square, and Falun Gong using simplified Chinese language characters. A company spokesman told Kristof that the pro-CCP results were due to “a bug”."
What these buzzwords say about Xi's China - "Hu Jintao - Mr Jiang's successor and Mr Xi's immediate predecessor - was never referred to as the party's "core". He was more a consensus builder, less a strongman, and by his time, the era of collective leadership which Deng Xiaoping had ushered in was considered a norm - or so people thought. Given Mr Xi's swift concentration of power, analysts say, presenting himself as the Party's "core" was the natural next step... between the 1980s and 2012 - "red country" can be found less than 20 times in the pages of the People's Daily. But it has certainly made a comeback - last year alone, it appeared 72 times. "The resurgence of the term is a reflection of how Xi wants the Communist Party to be the central force in Chinese politics and society," says Neil Thomas, a senior China analyst at the Eurasia Group. Mr Xi has repeatedly called on his countrymen and women to "introduce red genes into their blood and heart" so that "the red country can be passed on for generations". The Party has clearly returned to every sphere of people's lives - and the return of the "red country" is not the only evidence of that. Private companies listed in China are required to establish their own branch of the Chinese Communist Party. Even Buddhist monks took part in last year's Party history quiz to mark its 100th anniversary. Cinemas are now dominated by patriotic movies. "Xi Jinping is a true believer in the Party's mission and it's role in China's national rejuvenation," Mr Thomas says. That mission, he adds, includes "restoring China to what he sees as its historically bright position as one of the world's pre-eminent powers". "Anti-China forces", a term typically used to criticise the West and its position on China, has been around for decades... Nationalism within China too is on the rise. Anyone criticising the government could be perceived as "anti-China", and people are encouraged to report such behaviour to authorities... The term "struggle" dates back to Mao who often used it to mobilise people... Mr Xi made the term "great struggle" his own - it has become a popular buzzword over the years. In 2021, it appeared in the People's Daily 22 times more than it did in 2012 when Mr Xi first came to power. It's a way of evoking Mao's time and appealing to the roots of the Communist Party, according to Zeng Jinghan, a professor of China and International Studies at the University of Lancaster. The term is increasingly used when discussing the challenges China grapples with - both internally and externally, be it the pandemic or the "anti-China forces" blocking its path. The "great struggle" is also a sign of a more "confrontational attitude" to tackle both challenges"
Simu Liu accused of insulting China in 2017 interview praising Canada for taking his family in - "Those who came down hard on Liu accused him of belittling China. They also questioned his motive of playing the Shang-Chi Chinese superhero role having left China in the first place."
Confucius Institutes in universities ‘part of Party’s propaganda system’, think tank finds - "Only four of the 30 Confucius Institutes set up within British universities by the Chinese Government are solely providing “cultural and language” education... The majority of the institutes are conducting other activities, which in some cases include political lobbying and in other instances, the facilitation of technology partnerships... University administrators have repeatedly justified the institutes by claiming that their focus on language and culture was anodyne... The institutes established in British universities have long been criticised by academics and politicians over their legal structure in which the embedded are supervised by a Chinese organisation alongside the host university. MPs have warned the institutes are effectively a front for the Chinese Communist Party to clamp down on critical views of China and that they are having a “chilling effect” on academic freedom."
Chinese netizens slam M’sian rapper Namewee for ‘suggestions’ to Taliban that sound like China - "Malaysian rapper Wee Meng Chee, better known as Namewee, has been banned by Chinese social media site Weibo... Though his post was titled "Measures that the Taliban have to take to stabilise Afghanistan", Chinese netizens were furious as they interpreted his comments as insinuating the situation in China... Namewee raised eight "recommendations" to the Taliban to secure their rule over Afghanistan, including "banning Facebook, Youtube, Google, and other evil online media, to prevent citizens from interacting with people outside of the country". "If there are any citizens that are unsatisfied with the government, (the Taliban) should build a prison to re-educate these people, and invite foreign media to interview them, while forcing them to act like they're happy with the circumstances"... Namewee also mentioned that the Taliban should "set up their own official news sites, messaging apps, and social media to broadcast official news, and tell the citizens that those criticising them are fake news fabricated by evil foreign powers". "The Taliban should erect huge statues of their leaders, paste slogans everywhere on the streets, and brainwash the students in school by telling them how great the Taliban leaders are"... the Taliban should also "encourage their citizens to blast people who criticise their rule online"... Some comments could still be seen, however, with a netizen writing, "How dare you oppose the party". Meanwhile, netizens in a Facebook group, "Motherland China will become the number one superpower", celebrated his ban. A comment read, "He's a traitor to the Han people, his songs aren't that good, he's anti-China and supports Taiwan's independence, he's not a good person." Discussions elsewhere on Facebook yielded different comments, however, with netizens responding to the news with memes that poked fun at Chinese president Xi Jinping."
The Historical Nihil-list: Cyberspace Administration Targets Top Ten Deviations From Approved History - "Since his ascension to the top of the Party in 2012, Xi Jinping has shown little tolerance for “historical nihilism,” a catch-all term for critical appraisals of the Party’s rise and rule...
Did Hu Qiaomu author “‘Snow — to the tune of Spring in Qin Garden”?
Did the Party center unseal Deng Yingchao’s diary to research its own history?
Did the Five Heroes of Langya Mountain slip (instead of jump) off the cliff?
Was Mao Anying martyred because he gave his position away while making egg fried rice?
Is Lei Feng’s Diary fake?
Was the Long March less than 25,000 li?
Did the Battle of Luding Bridge actually happen?
During World War II, did the Communist Party avoid confronting the Japanese army directly?
Zhou Bapi and Huang Shiren were good landlords. Was Land Reform a mistake?
America never planned to invade China. Was the Korean War not fought in self-defense?...
Jeremy Brown, a historian at Simon Fraser University and recent author of “June Fourth: The Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989,” suggested that the trivial nature of the list’s “rumors” may have been exactly the point
This is such a bizarre list, full of trivial distractions, that my initial reaction is that it is meant to deflect attention from more meaningful and controversial moments in Party history (rectification in Yan’an, suppression of counterrevolutionaries, Anti-Rightist Movement, Great Leap Famine, Cultural Revolution, Shadian Massacre, Beijing Massacre, Karamay Fire, and so on). In other words, the topics on the list of “rumors” are actually safe and okay for people in China to discuss and debate online. In fact, Party authorities want people interested in history to spend time and energy debating stories and trivialities that can be easily deflected in a short video. The purpose of Party history inside China is to correct “mistakes” and promote a “correct” story that affirms the Party’s greatness. Other topics are so sensitive that they cannot be discussed at all; to mention them as rumors would be to acknowledge that they are worth discussing and debating on the basis of historical documents that can be publicly scrutinized.'... former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that Deng Xiaoping told him the “battle” [of Luding Bridge] was largely the concoction of propagandists... Deng had a habit of making dismissive comments about Party history to foreign guests. In one famed account, actress Shirley MacLaine told Deng that a Chinese scientist told her he was happy to be sent down to the countryside. Deng responded: “He lied. That was what he had to say at the time.” It is hard to imagine Xi making similar comments... As proof of the CCP’s contributions [to the war against Japan], the CAC cited a number of the Party’s theoretical contributions to anti-Japanese warfare including the 1935 August 1 Declaration, a call for a united front with the KMT, and Mao’s 1938 lecture series, “On Protracted War,” that outlined the CCP’s strategy for defeating Japanese imperialism."
Five reasons why China's economy is in trouble - "1. Zero Covid is wreaking havoc... Experts agree that Beijing could do more to stimulate the economy, but there is little reason in doing so until zero Covid ends. "There is not a lot of point in pumping money into our economy if businesses cannot expand or people cannot spend the money," said Louis Kuijs, chief Asia economist at S&P Global Ratings.
2. Beijing isn't doing enough... This includes investing more in infrastructure, easing borrowing conditions for home buyers, property developers and local government, and tax breaks for households...
3. China's property market is in crisis... Home buyers have been refusing to make mortgage payments on unfinished buildings and some doubt their houses will ever be completed...
5. China's tech titans are losing investors
A regulatory crackdown on China's tech titans - which has already lasted two years - is not helping."
China indefinitely delays release of 3rd quarter economic stats - "This move by the National Bureau of Statistics was announced during China's national congress of the Communist party which occurs twice a decade, The New York Times reports. The delay has drawn suspicion that the data may be worse than expected... China is the world's second-largest economy, and the decision to delay statistics is a potentially costly one. Investors all over the world closely watch China's quarterly data... this is considered an unusual move as countries almost never delay releasing statistics as it could lead to less confidence in their economy. China also delayed the release of the September data for retail sales, industrial production, and fixed asset investment."
Damn CIA!
UK police enter Chinese consulate in Manchester to rescue protester dragged inside and beaten by staff - "A pro-democracy Hong Kong protester was dragged inside the Chinese consulate in Manchester and assaulted, prompting British police officers to enter the compound and rescue him. A group of demonstrators were staging a protest outside the Chinese consulate general in Rusholme on Sunday afternoon against the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, when unidentifed men appeared out of the building and began clashing with the protesters. Video footage shared widely on social media showed people from the consulate kicking and tearing down posters before engaging in a scuffle with demonstrators... a number of men wearing masks and protective vests walked out of the consulate and began destroying posters, before walking away with a satirical portrait of Chinese president Xi Jinping."
Xi's China has made 3 foreign policy mistakes: Bilahari Kausikan - Nikkei Asia - "The first big mistake was prematurely abandoning Deng Xiaoping's approach of 'hiding your capabilities and biding your time.' The trigger point there was the 2008 global financial crisis. It led to far too much boasting. This is an irreversible mistake because once you boast, even if you shut up, people are not going to forget what you said. The second connected mistake is again around 2008. [China's leaders] actually began to believe their propaganda. America, in particular, and the West in general are in absolute decline and cannot recover, they thought. America may be in relative decline and it's got a lot of problems, that is true. But the decline is relative, not absolute. About a month or so ago, Peking University Professor Wang Jisi gave an interview in which he makes a very important point. He says do not believe the U.S. is in absolute decline; the U.S. is only in relative decline vis-a-vis China because we are growing. The U.S. is still absolutely dominant over every other major country, Wang said. This is a very brave thing for him to say because it is a direct contradiction to what his boss is saying -- that the East is rising. And the third thing is this 'no limits' partnership with Russia. Russia will be a permanent liability to China. Russia can only get more and more dependent on China. China may get some cheap energy but as we can see, China is more worried about getting entangled at a time when there are so many domestic economic problems and growth is slowing... Diplomats should be able to be very tough if necessary in order to achieve their goals. It is not all about being nice and polite. This is what I used to tell my younger diplomats. Your job is to advance Singapore's national interests. Preferably by being nice and polite but if required, by using whatever means necessary, even if it means being nasty. But the point is to advance your goals. Now this wolf-warrior diplomacy, I don't see how China's interests are being advanced. In fact, I think they are damaged. But these wolf warriors are really talking to the people in Beijing and not necessarily the people outside... You excite your people so much and at some point you may find yourself trapped by your own propaganda. If you don't meet your people's expectations, you will look weak... international relations revolved around U.S.-Soviet relations for over 40 years in the Cold War. But I think that U.S.-China relations are more complicated than U.S.-Soviet relations. I don't like this term 'new Cold War.' It misrepresents the nature of the relationship. The U.S. and the Soviet Union each led separate systems and it was a competition between systems. Essentially it was a binary competition, either A or B. The two systems were connected only at the margins. In the U.S.-China relationship, [both countries] are vital parts of a single system... the Chinese may want to dominate this single system and the U.S. wants to preserve its domination. But neither one of them wants to destroy the other because to destroy the other means to destroy the whole system and that's too costly"
Analysis: 105-year-old party elder sends blunt message to Xi - Nikkei Asia - "At 105, Song Ping is the Chinese Communist Party's oldest retired official. Famous for once pressing former President Jiang Zemin to fully retire, Song has recently appeared in public for the first time in years... In a congratulatory message for an event on Sept. 12, the centenarian said that the policy of reform and opening-up "has been the only path to the development and progress of contemporary China and the only path to the realization of the Chinese dream." These are words that President Xi Jinping himself spoke nearly five years ago. Song cleverly used Xi's own words to send a message to the top leader. Xi originally made the remark during his New Year's address that was released on Dec. 31, 2017, marking the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy by former leader Deng Xiaoping. But Xi has rarely repeated the remark... Song has raised a red flag. Born in 1917, even before the Chinese Communist Party was established, the centenarian has signaled that Deng's reform and opening-up policy is to be defended at all costs. It is an undaunted and politically dangerous move. Song served as a Politburo Standing Committee member under Deng after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. He also served as a secretary to former Premier Zhou Enlai. He is well-versed in the finer points of intraparty struggles... authorities began to delete parts of Song's speech related to reform and opening-up. The irony is that authorities are deleting Xi's very words made several years ago. By late September, many more related articles became impossible to view. The fuss reflects Xi's anger and woes. Nevertheless, the Gansu Daily, the mouthpiece of the party's Gansu provincial committee, published a bold commentary that publicized Song's message, although stopping short of mentioning Song's name. Song once served as Gansu's top official... That the message about reform and opening-up came from Gansu is noteworthy and has triggered speculation that the Song-Hu-Wen troika is sending a message... Song's latest call for reform and opening-up to be firmly maintained also will not pay off anytime soon. Song's message came four months after a notice from the party's General Office calling for retired elderly people to refrain from criticizing the current leadership. Those who violate discipline will be severely punished, the leadership warned. Half a year before the notice was issued, there was a big incident in which prominent Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused a party elder -- Zhang Gaoli, a former Politburo Standing Committee member and vice premier -- of sexual abuse. The scandal involving Peng's relationship with Zhang became an international topic ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics. But it had a different meaning in terms of China's domestic politics. It gave Xi a perfect pretext to place both retired and incumbent party leaders under surveillance and gather information about them. The Peng scandal was very favorable for Xi's bid to further consolidate his power."
New Title for Xi Stokes Fears of a Mao-Style Personality Cult - Bloomberg - "President Xi Jinping has accumulated so many titles he’s been called the Chairman of Everything. But one gaining traction among Communist Party elites is raising concerns of a Mao Zedong-style personality cult. Lingxiu, or “leader,” is a revered title of praise previously reserved for Mao, the founder of the People’s Republic, who was referred to as “the great leader” when the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. While party officials and state media have occasionally bestowed the title on Xi in the past few years -- in the form of renmin lingxiu, or “people’s leader” -- this week has seen more cadres using the term, including at least two Politburo members... Last year, the party’s Central Committee vowed that upholding the current leadership “in no way involves the creation of any kind of personality cult -- something the CPC has resolutely opposed.”... Reviving the lingxiu title was risky because of existing “resentments against the Maoism of Xi Jinping”... Elements of Xi’s Covid Zero policy have drawn comparisons with the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political and social chaos driven by Mao’s desire for complete control."
Opinion | Thank You, Xi Jinping - The New York Times - "this was not what was generally expected when you first became paramount leader 10 years ago. Back then, many in the West had concluded that it was merely a matter of time before China was restored to its ancient place as the world’s dominant civilization and largest economy. China’s astonishing annual growth rates, frequently topping 10 percent, put our own meager economic progress in the shade. In one industry after another — telecommunications, banking, social media, real estate — Chinese companies were becoming industry leaders. Foreign nationals flocked to live, study and work in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing; well-to-do American parents boasted of enrolling their children in Mandarin immersion classes. At the policymaking level, there was widespread acceptance that a richer China would be vastly more influential abroad — and that the influence would be felt from Western Europe to South America to Central Asia to East Africa. Though we understood that this influence could at times be heavy-handed, there was little political will to curb it. China seemed to offer a unique model of capitalist dynamism and authoritarian efficacy. Decisions were made; things got done: What a contrast with the increasingly sclerotic free world... Those hopes haven’t just been disappointed. They’ve been crushed. If there’s now a single point of agreement between Donald Trump and Joe Biden — or Tom Cotton and Nancy Pelosi — it’s that you must be stopped. How did you do it? Your war on corruption has turned into a mass purge. Your repression in Xinjiang rivals the Soviet gulags. Your economic “reforms” amount to the return of typically inefficient state-owned enterprises as dominant players. Your de facto policy of snooping, hacking and intellectual-property theft has made Chinese brands like Huawei radioactive in much of the West. In 2020 F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray noted in a speech, “We’ve now reached the point where the F.B.I. is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case every 10 hours.” Your zero-Covid policy has, at times, transformed China’s great metropolises into vast and unlivable prison colonies. Your foreign policy bullying has mainly succeeded in encouraging Japan to rearm and Biden to pledge that America will fight for Taiwan. All of this may make your China fearsome. None of it makes you strong. Dictatorships can usually exact obedience, but they struggle to inspire loyalty. The power to coerce, as the political scientist Joseph Nye famously observed, is not the same as the power to attract. It’s a truism that may soon come to haunt you — much as it now haunts Vladimir Putin as his once-fearsome military is decimated in Ukraine. You could still change course. But it seems unlikely, and not just because old men rarely change. The more enemies you make, the more repression you need. Surrounding yourself with yes men, as you are now doing, may provide you with a sense of security. But it will cut you off from vital flows of truthful information, particularly when that information is unpleasant. The Achilles’ heel of regimes like yours is that the lies they tell their people to maintain power ultimately become lies they tell themselves. Kicking foreign journalists out of China makes the problem worse, since you no longer have the benefit of an outside view of your compounding troubles."
Reagan's plan defeated Gorbachev's communism. It can beat communist China, too - "When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 the country was in a similar situation as today – runaway inflation, a stagnant economy, and in retreat around the world after a long running failed foreign war. The Arab oil embargo of the 1970’s had driven global energy prices sky high, giving the oil-exporting Soviet Union record profits. They used the windfall to launch a military buildup, develop a more capable and lethal nuclear arsenal and expanded globally. They launched proxy wars with Communist allies worldwide. By the late 1970s it seemed like the U.S. was in irreversible decline... Ronald Reagan disagreed. He believed the fundamental flaws of communism – a centrally planned economy and self-perpetuating Communist party dictatorship – would inevitably cause the Soviet Union to collapse from within. His goal was to speed it along with Peace through Strength. It sounded like a bumper sticker slogan. Actually, it was a comprehensive and ambitious strategic plan to win the Cold War without firing a shot. Reagan wanted a strong military to deter the Soviet Union, not to defeat it on the battlefield. At the same time, he would use our economic, technological, and ideological superiority to target the Soviet Union’s inherent weaknesses. He hoped an enlightened Soviet leader would eventually come to power and make changes necessary for survival of the Russian people. Mikhail Gorbachev was that man. Reagan’s Peace through Strength rested on three pillars: reinvigorating the American economy, rebuilding America’s military strength, and restoring a sense of patriotism and purpose in the American people."
Good luck, with a US that has lost faith in itself
U.S. Military Bases Sell Chinese Govt-Made Smart Devices With Privacy Policies Stating Data Can Be Sent to China. - "Two brands of smart television primarily sold in the U.S. – TCL and Hisense – have drawn recent scrutiny... 'TCL incorporated backdoors into all of its TV sets exposing users to cyber breaches and data exfiltration. TCL also receives CCP state support to compete in the global electronics market, which has propelled it to the third largest television manufacturer in the world'. Skyworth, another major Chinese television manufacturer, has been accused of cooperating with the Chinese government to spy on users of its products. The company reportedly installed a secret app to do so... The capability to exploit Smart TV technology and user data is an extension of a mass surveillance program already being carried out by the Chinese Communist Party in rural areas of China. Dubbed “Project Xueliang” also known as “Project Dazzling Snow” or the “Sharp Eyes Project,” the government of China is using televisions and phones to spy on its citizens, even activating the video cameras on people’s devices in a deeply Orwellian fashion."
Xi is turning China into a hermit kingdom abandoned by tech - "As Xi vowed to “resolutely win the battle in key core technologies”, the people who he needs most to win that battle were leaving. The latest US technology sanctions are savage, finally targeting the toolmakers that keep China’s most advanced chip factories running... Today, the entire industry is asking two questions: can the China chip plants run without US staff and parts? And in the longer-term, can they catch up with Western technology? Neither will be easy to do. The fabs, as chip-making factories are called, are among the most complex scientific achievements of mankind: a miracle 50 years in the making. There are 16bn transistors on an iPhone chip, the size of the fingernail on your little finger. The lines that carry the electrons in these dense multi-layered circuits are just a few atoms apart. A great deal can go wrong. Vibrations from a truck hitting a bump miles away can wreck the delicate manufacturing process. So the biggest burden of building even a modest $5bn (£4.4bn) fab comes not from the sticker price of a lithographic machine – which is $150m a pop – but keeping the temperamental devices happy so that yields are reliable. “With most equipment, the Chinese are five to ten years behind, and in some areas they are 20 years behind,” says Dylan Patel, chief analyst of Semi Analysis, a boutique semiconductor research and consulting firm. Very soon we’ll find out just how much foreign technology China has already stolen and replicated in secret. In last year’s annual report, ASML disclosed that one Chinese company was already infringing its intellectual property. But while Chinese engineers can copy very proficiently, catching up only means matching today’s start-of-the-art technology. Invention is a continual process. In ten years, ASML and others will have moved on – we hope. You may well ask why, with China hawks in Congress demanding such radical action since 2018, the US has been dithering, and only just triggered these sanctions now. One fear was blowback onto the US companies... Blowback fears were exacerbated by the post-Covid chip shortage too... But the Ukraine conflict, and renewed high tech transfers between China, Iran and Russia have made this the top priority. These latest sanctions show that we’re at war. "For 30 years we all thought intertwined economies would provide stability. But it’s impossible to separate consumer and military applications for chips – and we’re going to have 30 years of pain decoupling the supply chains," says Ron Black, chief executive of the chip design business Codasip... Senior executives at China’s technology companies – and I’ve met a few – typically have degrees from Stanford and Harvard. They’re international in their outlook. They assumed that the escalator of globalisation and increasing prosperity was a given. Now they look at China’s demographic catastrophe – the population is estimated to fall by nearly a billion people to 587m by 2100 – and see Xi turning China into a hermit kingdom. This is not what they signed up for. The future suddenly looks very cold."
