Sitrep: Here Comes China – Taking the lead – a dialogue on democracy in China

By Amarynth for the Saker Blog including a number of data points from Godfree Roberts

Did you know that a huge International Forum on Democracy is ongoing in China right now?  This is before the supposed Biden “Summit on Democracy” which is an attempt to divide the world into Democracies and Autocracies, according to the wishes of the rules-based international order.

As we have seen so often from China, they acted with incredible speed and presented their own high-quality International Forum.  They also published a Chinese White Paper on Democracy and it outlines how their Whole Process People’s Democracy functions for their people:  http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/1204/c312369-9928374.html

In addition, China released a full report on the state of US democracy:  http://www.news.cn/english/2021-12/05/c_1310352578.htm

Interesting to note the tussle for the meaning of ‘democracy’ between PRC, or rather CPC, and the Empire in the CGTN piece.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-12-04/Opening-ceremony-of-international-forum-on-democracy-begins-in-Beijing-15IRPiuCnsI/index.html

China has learned over the past three years how to defend itself against accusations coming from the combined Western influence sphere.  Although we know that the media in general still balances toward the combined Western Sphere, there is now a serious contender in the room with the ability, incredible speed of implementation, track record, education, and creative expressive talent to gain media supremacy in getting their message to the world.

Oh, the poor ‘partners’ …

Australia

The ‘partners’ are being led by their noses.  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the US and its allies are the “biggest beneficiaries” of Australia’s trade row with China. Washington is in bed with Canberra, at the same time, it points the finger at Beijing and in the background, it picks up Australia’s lost Chinese trade.  So, simply stated, all the trade that Australia lost in their trade row with China, from coal to iron ore to meat, the US quietly picked up.

Taiwan

From Taiwan, I hear a similar activity is taking place but this is not yet confirmed by the needed 3 sources.  The idea of keeping the issues with Taiwan hot, is that the Taiwanese semiconductor foundry company (TSMC), the biggest employer in Taiwan with a raft of supporting industries around it, is being moved lock, stock, barrel, and existence to new facilities in Arizona.  We will wait for more confirmation, but this is a very dangerous move to make, as TSMC is not only the biggest semiconductor company in the world, the industry itself depends on a highly educated and trained workforce.  The Taiwanese workforce will lose its lunch.

But…

Following the US sanctions, China’s government stood up and took notice, and, being China, it wasn’t long before they developed a long term plan: Build from the ground up an entirely China developed chip manufacturing system that is 100% free from foreign companies and intellectual property.

Beijing hired over 100 TSMC specialists to help build their own semi-conductor industry and has been diligently building its own chips so it is not reliant on Taiwan:

https://sputniknews.com/20200812/beijing-seeks-100-tsmc-chip-staff-in-bid-to-boost-chinese-tech-self-reliance-in-major-trade-war-1080143216.html

To that end, a couple of years ago China set up several institutes of technology dedicated to training the physicists, engineers and workers needed to develop chip manufacturing techniques and technology that is free of western IP. The timetable is to be able to bulk manufacture 14nm chips (think PC desktops from two years ago) by 2024, to manufacture the current generation of chips by 2028 and to be equal with the best in the world by 2030.

The Chinese know that the “silicon tech route” is nearing its end and so they know that they can’t win the competition following that route. So their investments in the silicon route will remain limited.

The thinking in China is now focused on what comes after “Moore’s Law”. They know that the West is invested in the silicon route and needs to recuperate its huge investments by generating profits in that route. This means that the West will not be able to focus its investments on newer routes for the foreseeable future. Such a situation is seen as an opportunity : few competitors and the potential to being first to master these new technological routes.

Chinese technology institutes are fully immersed in these new routes. And huge investments are now being realized to try to leapfrog the Western Silicon Route by focusing on carbon chips or photonic-chips that seem to promise far higher speeds and far lower energy consumption…

China’s New Hypersonic Aircraft Is Based on a Rejected NASA Design

And it can go faster than five times the speed of sound.

A team of researchers in China has built and tested a prototype hypersonic flight engine that is allegedly based on a design that was scrapped by NASA over 20 years ago, according to a report from the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The prototype itself might not lead to a production version of hypersonic aircraft. Still, in a paper in the Journal of Propulsion Technology, the team behind the machine said “understanding its work mechanism can provide important guidance to hypersonic plane and engine development.” 

NASA’s scrapped X-47C program is revived

The original design was proposed by Ming Han Tang, a former chief engineer of NASA’s hypersonic program in the late 1990s. Tang’s Two-Stage Vehicle (TSV) X-plane design was at the center of the Boeing Manta X-47C program, as per the SCMP report. However, before the program could verify the viability of the design, it was terminated by the U.S. government due to its high costs as well as a series of technical issues.

Unlike the majority of hypersonic aircraft proposals, which feature an engine on the underside, the TSV X-plane design by Tang has two separate engines on each side. At lower speeds, the engines work as normal turbine jet engines. With no moving parts, the configuration then allows the aircraft to quickly switch to high-speed mode to accelerate to more than five times the speed of sound.

Now, Professor Tan Huijun and colleagues at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Jiangsu, China, have constructed a prototype based on Tang’s original specifications. They were able to do this due to the fact that the blueprints for the Boeing Manta X-47C program were declassified in 2011. Huijun and his team tested the prototype in a wind tunnel that allows testing in conditions resembling flight at Mach 4 to Mach 8. The tests revealed that Tang’s proposed engine design works in these conditions, meaning they should be able to conduct further tests and build new iterations of their prototype. 

The race to go hypersonic

The U.S. and China are in the midst of a space and aviation race. According to the SCMP article, a number of high-profile Chinese scientists quit NASA and other government engineering firms in the U.S. in the late 90s due to strained relations between the two countries. This reportedly coincided with the start of China’s hypersonic weapons program in the early 2000s.

China’s space agency recently announced that it is building a fission reactor for the Moon that will reportedly be 100 times more powerful than one in development by NASA. China’s government also announced earlier this year that it will collaborate with Russia on a lunar space station, which will directly rival NASA’s lunar Gateway program. In October, China also launched a hypersonic missile with “an advanced space capability” that took U.S. officials by surprise.

In July, meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force granted a hypersonic aircraft startup called Hermeus a $60 million contract to develop a prototype aircraft within three years that could travel at speeds of Mach 5 using only one engine. The race to go hypersonic is in full force.

China facts tell it all.

Seriously. When you see what the United States is, how it operates, and what it is doing you cannot help but come to the most obvious of obvious conclusions. video 60MB

Impressions of China

video 24MB

How Chinese Democracy works…

What most people seem not to know is that this internal process of representation in the party is mirrored at the level of state institutions :

— direct public elections take place at the local level of rural villages (since the nineties if my memory serves me well). Everyone can decide to be a candidate and all villagers can vote for the candidate of their choice. Cities rely on voluntary participation in local “quarters” (sorry I don’t know the right English word). The same goes on in the lowest party structure which is the local cell.

— the elected officials of the multiple villages then elect their representatives at the district level by choosing among themselves who they think is the most qualified to have authority over themselves in the future.

— and this representation mechanism is repeated at the higher institutional levels till the top echelon the Political Bureau.

The West calls democracy the fact of voting for representatives every 4 or 5 years. But in the meantime the citizens have no say over any decisions at the different institutional levels of state power.

In China things are quite different.

Representatives, elected directly by the people or elected among themselves, have to implement the will of the people. This is done through various consultation mechanisms.

Direct consultation means asking for the citizens’ opinions about the texts of a legislation before it is being voted upon… Some legislation texts come for public consultation then are reworked by the Congress and the reworked version comes back for further consultation…

Indirect consultation means various polling techniques. The implement of the will of the people necessarily implies that congress members know what the people want. Polling in China is not about getting someone elected. It is about legislating according to the will of the people…

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A taste of China

Dancing at the gateway to the Tibetan plateau. video 4MB

William Buffet Explains

Video 2.4MB

The Chinese are able to save money

They they can. In a nation that is not for-profit, that cares about the well being of it’s people, of course families can save, strive and grow. video 6MB

All the latest from Godfree Roberts’ newsletter,

Here Comes China:

BeiDou conducted the first inter-satellite and ground station communication using using lasers instead of radio signals, transmitting data a million times faster than radio and increasing satnav accuracy 4000%. Read full article →

A high-speed railway linking China to landlocked Laos opened Friday. The 660-mile, 160 km/h line runs through mountains and ravines from Kunming to Vientiane. Read full article →

Premier Li Keqiang says the establishment of a centre in Hong Kong to handle Asia – Africa trade and investment disputes will strengthen the city’s role as an arbitration hub and “provide more convenient and efficient dispute resolution services” for parties in both regions. [It also bypasses the WTO–Ed.] Read full article  →

China’s service trade rose 13% YoY to $659 billion in the first ten months of the year. Service exports rose 29% YoY, and service imports rose 1%. In October alone, the country’s service trade hit 414 billion yuan, up 24% YoY. Read full article  →

China now leads the world in trade of both goods and services and its trading partners now cover 230 countries and regions. China contributed 35% of the growth in global imports in the past five years. Read full article  →

Meeting its carbon goals could save China trillions: China could dodge $134 trillion in climate-related losses by meeting carbon neutrality targe. China is predicted to see an 81% reduction in its accumulative climate-related losses by 2100 if it achieves its carbon neutrality target, according to a new study from think tanks in Beijing and London. Read full article →

And extreme ethics violation in my view:  In 2018, Dr. He Jiankui shocked the world by announcing that he had used the CRISPR genome-editing technique to alter embryos that were implanted and led to the birth of two children. Today, the children are healthy toddlers and Western researchers want to get their hands on their DNA.  Read full article →

China has doubled installed renewable energy capacity since 2015, to one billion kW, or 43% of total installation: Wind power generation increased 30% year-on-year (299 million kWs), solar power generation grew 24% (282 million kWs), and hydropower remains at 385 million kWs; Cost inflation delays solar energy expansion. Read full article →

New groundwater regulations tackle overuse and contamination of 16 billion m³/year of water. Fines could reach  $783,000 daily. Right now 44% of groundwater monitoring stations record Grade V, the lowest water quality. Read full article →

China is scouring the countryside to find native seed, animal and fish genetic resources in a national germplasm census to protect “family property” and gain self-reliance in crop and animal breeding. “Excellent” plant and animal resources will be protected on company-run farms if they are in danger of extinction or turned over to Chinese breeding companies to exploit their commercial potential to propel Chinese seed companies as global competitors. Read full article →

Guinea-Bissau and Eritrea join the Belt And Road Initiative. Guinea-Bissau covers 36,125 square kilometres, with a population of 1,874,303, and like China’s Macau, was once part of the Portuguese Empire. Eritrea also signed an MoU with China to join the BRI and is expected to cement China’s presence in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, with interests ranging from a military base to protect shipping, in addition to infrastructure projects in ports and railways. China has been investing in the country for some time. Read full article →

To conclude, China developed its policies to deal with its national issues. But in so doing it has created both practical and theoretical achievements which are the world’s most advanced. China has never asked other countries to learn from its example, but neither can if forbid them to do so. Given the gigantic scale of China’s achievements anyone with sense in the world will study these intently. The “Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century” is therefore not only key for China, it is a document of crucial importance for the entire world. Learning from China.