WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - A video feed of a Taiwanese minister was cut during U.S. President Joe Biden's Summit for Democracy last week after a map in her slide presentation showed Taiwan in a different color to China, which claims the island as its own.
Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Friday's slide show by Taiwanese Digital Minister Audrey Tang caused consternation among U.S. officials after the map appeared in her video feed for about a minute.
Peznt Journalist
@PezntJournalist
Irony @ The Summit for Democracy 12/10
- Taiwan minister's map shows Taiwan separate from China
- Video feed is cut when it comes back to her
- "Any opinions expressed by individuals on this panel are those of the individual, and do not necessarily reflect the views US gov't"
2:38 PM · Dec 13, 2021 //
Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
The Chinese Communist Party no longer needs to censor our friend Taiwan.
Why?
The Biden admin does it for them. 🤡🤡🤡
Michael Sobolik
@michaelsobolik
WHAT?
The White House cut the video feed of Taiwan’s Digital Minister during the Summit of Democracies.
Why?
Because Audrey Tang’s slide show displayed 🇹🇼 in a different color than 🇨🇳
This is insane. https://reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/curious-case-map-disappearing-taiwan-minister-us-democracy-summit-2021-12-12/
9:13 PM · Dec 12, 2021
The Nez Perce Indians of northern Idaho received the state’s first large-scale battery from Tesla in November.
About the size of a standard shipping container, the Tesla Megapack will store power from solar panels, enabling the tribe to reduce its dependence on local dams. For decades, the Nez Perce have demanded the destruction of four hydropower plants along the Lower Snake River with claims the concrete barriers hamper a near-extinct salmon population.
The Tesla Megapack, installation company RevoluSun CEO Josh Powell told Public News Service, “allows people like the Nez Perce to control their energy where it’s being produced where they have lands.” //
A primary component of the megapack power station is lithium. The U.S. Geological Survey says the United States is home to some of the richest reserves of lithium but mines less than 1 percent of global production, according to the Wall Street Journal. The world’s top three lithium producers are Australia, Chile, and China, respectively, with the Chinese dominating refinement. Tesla sources its lithium from Chinese companies.
While reaping the rewards of Chinese lithium, the Nez Perce have become the primary opponents against mining on American soil. Their fight was chronicled by “CBS Saturday Morning” in August as tribal members protested operations on the retired site of the Stibnite Mine in Idaho. If the mine was opened, the United States would be able to tap the nation’s largest reserves of antimony, a critical mineral for missile defense systems.
Here’s an exceedingly stupid take on Communist China using subsidies to eviscerate the US economy.
China’s Export Subsidies Are a Gift:
“(We should be) making a beeline to the nearest Hallmark store to buy thank you cards to send to the Chinese government for the subsidies it provides to Chinese exporters….”
This was published just this past September. After almost two years of the global lockdown and more than six months of the all-encompassing US supply chain shortage caused by just one China (and US)-subsidized Chinese export — the Coronavirus. //
And the companies China didn’t suck out of America? They’re buying them right here in the US. Without any opposition from the officials we elect — but they own.
Why Are We Letting China Buy American Companies?
The Biggest American Companies Now Owned by the Chinese
Ten Iconic American Companies Owned by Chinese Investors
China Is Buying Up American Farms
How China Acquires ‘The Crown Jewels’ of U.S. Technology
Ah yes: The ever-increasingly dominant Digital Economy.
As we’ve seen, US Big Tech companies refuse to work with our government but are more than happy to work with China’s Communist government. But it goes way beyond just these “edge” sell-outs.
The core businesses that make the Digital Economy possible? Are one way or another almost entirely dominated by China.
Rare Earth Metals Are Critical to Tech Sector and China Dominates Market
China Dominates Global Coal Production
How China Is Dominating Artificial Intelligence
Three Reasons Why China Is the Global Drones Leader
But even before China can dominate all of these portions of the Digital Economy? They must dominate semiconductor production. Semiconductor “chips” are the digital brains behind everything technological. So of course China dominates chip production too.
China Semiconductor Imports Surge to All-Time High Amid Global Chip Shortage
Modern Infrastructure Problem: A Lack of Domestic Semiconductor Production
Why Fewer Chips Say ‘Made in the U.S.A.’:
“In 1990, the U.S. and Europe produced more than three-quarters of the world’s semiconductors. Now, they produce less than a quarter. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China have risen to squeeze out the U.S. and Europe. And China is on pace to become the world’s largest chip producer by 2030.” //
Beating Dead Horses: Forget ‘Build Back Better’ and Get Bipartisan Already
Congress has wasted many months myopically fixated on this monstrosity. Which has now created a year-end legislative log jam. Which has led to this….
Congress’ Chip-Funding Pause Raises Alarms:
“Despite bipartisan support in the Senate, a plea by the Commerce Secretary and growing desperation from industry officials, Congress still can’t get a key bill that funds the U.S. chip business over the finish line.”
The CHIPS bill should be treated as “must-pass” legislation.
Because it is must-pass legislation.
If not for international tennis stars and the World Tennis Association’s courage, we probably would never see Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai again. //
The [World Tennis Association's] CEO and stars have taught us several valuable lessons. First, China doesn’t have all the leverage, as some think. Too often, businesses, organizations, and well-known individuals in the west are unwilling to stand up to China because they believe nothing will happen because China has all the leverage. But the west has many things that China wants: western markets, financial systems, natural resources, and technology.
Like all dictatorial regimes, the CCP wants to be both “loved” and “feared.” It has invested millions of dollars in shaping global public opinion to “tell China’s story right” from the regime’s point of view, albeit unsuccessfully. It desperately needs foreign organizations’ participation in events hosted by Beijing to legitimize the regime and raise the party’s international profile in front of an increasingly sophisticated domestic audience. It will be a massive embarrassment for the CCP if a well-known organization such as the WTA pulls out of China right before the nation is ready to show off its power and prestige at the Olympics.
International businesses and organizations should recognize both the leverage they possess and the CCP’s limits. Suppose more organizations and corporations stand up to the CCP? Although the CCP would not give up oppressing the Chinese people altogether, it may not go as far as it wants.
One of the CCP’s most potent weapons is economic coercion. The party often uses market access to China to pressure international businesses and organizations to silence their criticisms and do whatever China demands. The WTA has shown that when an organization is ready and willing to bear the cost of standing up to the CCP, such an organization frees itself from the CCP’s coercion and puts itself in a powerful position. More often than not, the CCP will be more willing to compromise.
Last but not least, it’s time to realize that every interaction with China, be it a sporting event, a commercial transaction, or a cultural exchange, can quickly become a test of an organization’s morality. The CCP has taken on a “whole of society” approach and compelled all of society to follow the party’s orders. Sooner or later, all involved must choose whether to side with human rights and human dignity or an oppressive authoritarian regime.
Enes Kanter Freedom, center for the Boston Celtics and an outspoken human rights activist, wrote that freedom “must be defended at all costs.” We must “wake up and speak up. Change is coming, and no one can stop it. They can’t silence us all.” The WTA and its star athletes have shown us the way.
Another source of Worobey’s origins “investigation?” The WHO report. Yes, that WHO report that only briefly examined the potential of a lab leak. Yes, that same WHO report that contained only information provided by the Chinese Government, absent any independent investigation or acquiring of evidence. Yes, that WHO report which was partially written by Peter Daszak, funder of some of the gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And Yes, that same WHO report that even the WHO has labeled as unreliable. It is so bad that the WHO has scrapped that whole report in favor of conducting an entirely new investigation. This was known before Worobey even published this piece, yet Worobey included the report as a source to back up his findings. Nowhere in the study does he even acknowledge the WHO’s concerns with the veracity of the report, nor the acknowledged conflicts of interests for the data contained therein, including those of Peter Daszak. //
Worobey presents information as if it is the totality of possibility in these cases, thus eliminating other equally likely potentials in the process. If this market vendor isn’t the first case, which it appears it is not, then the wet market theory ends. There are no other cases known to have originated at the market before then. Ignoring the potential that the wet market was not the origination point, but was simply a super spreading event, denies the factual potential of other origins. This paper is simply a regurgitation of other previous information, just organized in a different way. Think, reorganizing deck chairs on the Titanic. Sure, the presentation is different, but it in no way changes the fact that the ship is going down.
I reached out to Worobey to ask additional questions about his study, but at the time of writing this, nearly a week and a half after my attempted contact, he did not respond to me. While it really shouldn’t matter though, I think everyone should also be aware of who funds Dr. Worobey’s research.
Worobey Acknowledgements, SOURCE: Science Magazine
Yes, that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The same one that was funding viral research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
There’s so many athletes, so many actors, so many singers and rappers out there. They’re scared to say a word because they care too much about their money – the endorsement deals, what the teams they play for say," Kanter said.
"They should know one thing: It should be morals and principles over money. It shouldn’t be the opposite way. People’s life depends on this," he continued, noting that athletes in all sports are role models to young people around the world.
Kanter added that he feels alone in his efforts to call out China for its repeated atrocities.
"So many people care too much about the business side of it," Kanter said. "But to me, human rights are way more important than anything you offer me."
"If I were in Hong Kong, I think I'll probably be in jail," said Lin, the 33-year-old deputy secretary-general of Taiwan's governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The recent events in Hong Kong have given Lin greater determination to defend Taiwan's sovereignty, he said -- and he is not alone.
As authorities in Hong Kong arrested pro-democracy supporters, including opposition politicians and newspaper editors, a growing number of people in Taiwan have reflected upon the island's future relationship with mainland China.
Since the Hong Kong protests broke out in 2019, more than 32% of respondents in Taiwan preferred a move toward formal "independence" -- twice as many as in 2018 -- according to a survey by Taiwan's National Chengchi University in June.
Chinese censors have banned the release of Christopher Robin, a new film adaptation of AA Milne’s beloved story about Winnie the Pooh, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The Winnie the Pooh character has become a lighthearted way for people across China to mock their president, Xi Jinping, but it seems the government doesn’t find the joke very funny.
The blocking of Winnie the Pooh might seem like a bizarre move by the Chinese authorities but it is part of a struggle to restrict clever bloggers from getting around their country's censorship.
When is a set of wrist watches not just a set of wrist watches? When is a river crab not just a river crab? Inside the Great Firewall of China of course.
Winnie the Pooh has joined a line of crazy, funny internet references to China's top leaders.
Beijing's intentions are increasingly concerning to the U.S. as tensions rise over the South China Sea, Taiwan and military supremacy in the region.
The images captured by Colorado-based satellite imagery company Maxar Technologies show the outlines of a U.S. aircraft carrier and at least one destroyer sitting on a railway track. //
The images captured by Colorado-based satellite imagery company Maxar Technologies dated Sunday show the outlines of a U.S. aircraft carrier and at least one destroyer sitting on a railway track.
Maxar identified the location as Ruoqiang, a Taklamakan Desert county in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
The independent U.S. Naval Institute said on its website that the mock-ups of U.S. ships were part of a new target range developed by the People's Liberation Army.
Evergrande is — or was — the second-largest real estate company in China. A couple years ago, it was the world's most valuable real estate stock. It's also been involved in an eclectic mix of other businesses, from mineral water to electric cars to pig farming. It even owns a professional soccer team. But recently it's been having a really hard time repaying a mammoth amount of debt, a whopping $300 billion worth.
The Evergrande story is bigger than just one company. It's about China's unsustainable model of economic growth, which has relied on endless investment and a mad, debt-fueled development frenzy in recent years. That model helped China soar, but the country is now experiencing some turbulence.
Trump was tough on China; kept them guessing and back on their heels. He was tough, showing strength, so they knew that they couldn’t take chances or they would hear from him. He held them in check.
What Milley did with his alleged comment was interfere in that, saying to them that they would get a heads-up before any attack. Not only was that unconscionable, it now frees their actions to push as far as they can, knowing that they will get a “heads-up” from Milley before anything happens to them. They know that Joe Biden has said that he has full confidence in Milley, so they know they can count on being tipped off by Milley and there’s no one pushing back against this. And this is incredibly bad because it feeds their ambitions for power grabs.
So what do we see now?
We see China out and out threatening to “reunify” with Taiwan.
Lijian Zhao 赵立坚
@zlj517
China government official
Taiwan is part of China. China must and will be reunified. This historical trend cannot be stopped by any force. We warn the Taiwan authorities that any attempt to seek independence and reject unification is doomed to fail.
7:08 AM · Sep 16, 2021 //
The editor of China’s state-run media Global Times says Chinese warships could “show up near Hawaii and Guam one day” and “that day will come soon.”
Hu Xijin 胡锡进
@HuXijin_GT
China state-affiliated media
Hopefully when Chinese warships pass through the Caribbean Sea or show up near Hawaii and Guam one day, the US will uphold the same standard of freedom of navigation. That day will come soon. //
Milley isn’t even supposed to have any operational command, as we previously said, so again he has no right to say anything in this regard. But he’s literally interfering in our potential future actions and plans we might have with his alleged comment, taking away their fear.
Here’s Mark Milley in 2015 saying China is not an enemy. //
In other words, he’s either ignorant or defending China. Now, whether or not he thinks China is an enemy, they obviously view themselves as our enemy. Friends don’t address each other the way they are talking to us and threatening us. It’s incredibly troubling that he’s that deluded and has allegedly inserted himself so improperly into operational command.
Biden not calling him out on this also means Biden is completely fine with his constitutional powers being usurped. If Milley sought to substitute his judgment for that of Trump, what stops him from doing the same thing with Biden? Yet, Biden professes not to care, which shows Biden’s incompetence, yet again.
Solar Panels Will Create 50 Times More Waste & Cost 4 Times More Than Predicted, New Harvard Business Review Study Finds //
Three years ago I published a long article at Forbes arguing that solar panels weren’t clean but in fact produced 300 times more toxic waste than high-level nuclear waste. But in contrast to nuclear waste, which is safely stored and never hurts anyone, solar panel waste risks exposing poor trash-pickers in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason was because it was so much cheaper to make new solar panels from raw materials than to recycle them, and would remain that way, given labor and energy costs. //
A major new study of the economics of solar, published in Harvard Business Review (HBR), finds that the waste produced by solar panels will make electricity from solar panels four times more expensive than the world’s leading energy analysts thought. “The economics of solar,” write Atalay Atasu and Luk N. Van Wassenhove of INSEAD, one of Europe’s leading business schools, and Serasu Duran of the University of Calgary, will “darken quickly as the industry sinks under the weight of its own trash." //
The solar industry, and even supposedly neutral energy agencies, grossly underestimated how much waste solar panels would produce. The HBR authors, all of whom are business school professors, looked at the economics from the point of view of the customer, and past trends, and calculated that customers would replace panels far sooner than every 30 years, as the industry assumes.
“If early replacements occur as predicted by our statistical model,” they write, solar panels “can produce 50 times more waste in just four years than [International Renewable Energy Agency] IRENA anticipates.” //
The HBR authors found that the price of panels, the amount solar panel owners are paid by the local electric company, and sunlight-to-electricity efficiency determined how quickly people replaced their panels.
“Alarming as they are,” they write, “these stats may not do full justice to the crisis, as our analysis is restricted to residential installations. With commercial and industrial panels added to the picture, the scale of replacements could be much, much larger.”
Beyond the shocking nature of the finding itself is what it says about the integrity and credibility of IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency. It is an intergovernmental organization like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, funded by taxpayers from the developed nations of Europe, North America, and Asia, and expected to provide objective information. Instead, it employed unrealistic assumptions to produce results more supportive of solar panels.
IRENA acted like an industry association rather than as a public interest one. IRENA, noted the HBR reporters, “describes a billion-dollar opportunity for recapture of valuable materials rather than a dire threat.” IRENA almost certainly knew better. For decades, consumers in Germany, California, Japan and other major member nations of IRENA, have been replacing solar panels just 10 or 15 years old. But IRENA hadn’t even modeled solar panel replacements in those time frames. //
It’s now clear that China made solar appear cheap with coal, subsidies, and forced labor. And in the U.S., we pay one-quarter of solar’s costs through taxes and often much more in subsidies at the state and local level.
And none of this even addresses the biggest threat facing solar power today, which are revelations that perhaps both key raw materials and the panels themselves are being made by forced labor in Xinjiang province in China.
The subsidies that China gave solar panel makers had a purpose beyond bankrupting solar companies in the U.S. and Europe. The subsidies also enticed solar panel makers to participate in the repression of the Uyghur Muslim population, including using tactics that the US and German governments have called “genocide.”
Scientists are excited about an experimental nuclear reactor using thorium as fuel, which is about to begin tests in China. Although this radioactive element has been trialled in reactors before, experts say that China is the first to have a shot at commercializing the technology.
The reactor is unusual in that it has molten salts circulating inside it instead of water. It has the potential to produce nuclear energy that is relatively safe and cheap, while also generating a much smaller amount of very long-lived radioactive waste than conventional reactors.
Construction of the experimental thorium reactor in Wuwei, on the outskirts of the Gobi Desert, was due to be completed by the end of August — with trial runs scheduled for this month, according to the government of Gansu province. //
When China switches on its experimental reactor, it will be the first molten-salt reactor operating since 1969, when US researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee shut theirs down. And it will be the first molten-salt reactor to be fuelled by thorium. Researchers who have collaborated with SINAP say the Chinese design copies that of Oak Ridge, but improves on it by calling on decades of innovation in manufacturing, materials and instrumentation.
China’s natural experiment in deploying low-carbon energy generation shows that wind and solar are the clear winners. //
2010–2020 Showed Strong Wins For Wind & Solar In China, Nuclear Lagging
In 2014, I made the strong assertion that China’s track record on wind and nuclear generation deployments showed clearly that wind energy was more scalable. In 2019, I returned to the subject, and assessed wind, solar and nuclear total TWh of generation, asserting that wind and solar were outperforming nuclear substantially in total annual generation, and projected that the two renewable forms of generation would be producing 4 times the total TWh of nuclear by 2030 each year between them. Mea culpa: in the 2019 assessment, I overstated the experienced capacity factor for wind generation in China, which still lags US experiences, but has improved substantially in the past few years. //
My thesis on scalability of deployment has remained unchanged: the massive numerical economies of scale for manufacturing and distributing wind and solar components, combined with the massive parallelization of construction that is possible with those technologies, will always make them faster and easier to scale in capacity and generation than the megaprojects of GW-scale nuclear plants. This was obvious in 2014, it was obviously true in 2019, and it remains clearly demonstrable today. Further, my point was that China was the perfect natural experiment for this assessment, as it was treating both deployments as national strategies (an absolute condition of success for nuclear) and had the ability and will to override local regulations and any NIMBYism. No other country could be used to easily assess which technologies could be deployed more quickly. //
My 2014 thesis continues to be supported by the natural experiment being played out in China. In my recent published assessment of small modular nuclear reactors (tl’dr: bad idea, not going to work), it became clear to me that China has fallen into one of the many failure conditions of rapid deployment of nuclear, which is to say an expanding set of technologies instead of a standardized single technology, something that is one of the many reasons why SMRs won’t be deployed in any great numbers.
Wind and solar are going to be the primary providers of low-carbon energy for the coming century, and as we electrify everything, the electrons will be coming mostly from the wind and sun, in an efficient, effective and low-cost energy model that doesn’t pollute or cause global warming. Good news indeed that these technologies are so clearly delivering on their promise to help us deal with the climate crisis.
The National Pulse.
NEWS
Biden White House Approves Licensing Deal For Chinese Communist Party-Linked Huawei, Reversing Trump-Era Hardline.
AUGUST 24, 2021NATALIE WINTERS
The Biden White House granted the Chinese Communist Party-linked firm Huawei – which was crippled by Trump-era sanctions – licenses to purchase American auto chips, according to reports. //
The decision follows the Beijing-backed tech firm hiring several lobbyists, including the brother of Biden’s White House Counselor Steve Ricchetti and CNN guests who have pushed the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
A significant number of Joe Biden’s top foreign policy advisors – including his Director of National Intelligence and National Security Advisor – participated in an event advocating against the “containment” of the Chinese Communist Party, with funding coming from various Chinese Communist regime-backed sources, The National Pulse can reveal.
The news comes as analysts review Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal, and raise questions as to the intent of the White House in diminishing America’s role in the world. //
Organized by the University of California San Diego’s (UCSD) 21st Century China Center since 2019, the annual “China Forum” has counted some of the highest-ranking officials of the Biden White House in attendance.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, “Asia Czar” Kurt Campbell, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner along with Rush Doshi and Julian Gewirtz, who lead the National Security Council’s China desk, and Melanie Hart and Mira Rapp-Hooper, who play a comparable role at the State Department, were in attendance.
One of the fifteen “key takeaways” from the 2019 dialogue – whose “sponsors” included Kurt Campbell himself, as well as Qualcomm, the Asia Group Foundation, East West Bank, and one further “anonymous” source – advocated that “competitive coexistence, rather than confrontation and containment, is the best path forward” in the context of U.S.-China relations. //
While the 21st Century China Center’s website page documenting its donors and institutional partners has been deleted, archives reveal the center was – and perhaps still is – partnered with several Chinese Communist-Party linked companies such as state-owned technology firm ZTE.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170908224439/http://china.ucsd.edu/support/institutional-partners.html
Slate magazine founders and editors including Jacob Weisberg – whose podcast company produces shows including Ibram Kendi’s “Be Antiracist” show – have participated in trips to China sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation: a Chinese Communist Pary-linked group courting journalists for “favorable coverage,” The National Pulse can reveal. //
CUSEF functions as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front: an effort determined “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority” of the Chinese government. ” “The United Front strategy uses a range of methods to influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” the U.S. government’s report on the operation continues.
We are past the point where naivete can be blamed. Rather, probable explanations are now moving toward the realm of the nefarious, either via self-interest or something else. Fauci has had ample opportunity at this point to absorb every negative revelation out of China throughout this pandemic. There is no longer any excuse for him to not affirmatively condemn their actions and pledge to sever the relationship.
That Fauci won’t do that is incredibly disturbing and suspicious.