Cheng Lei has spent three years in a Beijing jail. This is her message to Australia By Eryk Bagshaw August 10, 2023 https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/c...her-message-to-australia-20230809-p5dv8u.html Cheng Lei misses the bushwalks and the trees. The suburban butchers and fish and chip shops. “In my cell, the sunlight shines through the window, but I can stand in it for only 10 hours a year,” she says. When she feels alone in her three-by-three-metre cell in Beijing, she mouths the places she has lived and visited: Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Perth. Cheng Lei has been detained by Beijing for three years. “I relive every bushwalk, river, lake, beach with swims, and picnics and psychedelic sunsets,” she says. “The sky that is lit up with stars, and the silent and secret symphony of the bush.” The memories transport her from her endless isolation, the impossibility of her predicament, the torture of being held for an unknown crime and an unknown sentencing date. Sunday marks three years since the 48-year-old journalist was suddenly detained on vague national security charges by the Chinese government after working for Chinese state-TV network CGTN in Beijing for almost a decade. On August 13, 2020, Chinese state security visited Cheng at home and took her to “residential surveillance” – an anodyne term that masks months of brutal interrogations to extract a confession in the Chinese legal system. Australia’s ambassador to China, Graham Fletcher, was not allowed to enter the court for Cheng’s trial in Beijing.Credit: Getty Images Since then, she has been stuck in a Beijing prison cell. The date for her verdict has been extended six times. She has always maintained her innocence. Australia’s ambassador to China, Graham Fletcher, was blocked from entering the closed court in Beijing to attend her trial in March last year. The Australian government has few details on the specific charges against her. Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has raised her case in every meeting with her Chinese counterparts, including with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in July. “I want to acknowledge Ms Cheng’s strength, and the strength of her family and friends through this period,” Wong said in a statement. In China’s opaque legal system, the delays can mean one of two things: prosecutors still have not found enough evidence of espionage to guarantee a guilty verdict would be delivered by the Beijing court, which maintains a 99 per cent conviction rate. Or her fate is linked to the relationship between Australia and China, and Cheng is a pawn in a broader diplomatic dispute that has consumed four years and involved $20 billion in trade strikes, two governments, and the 48-year-old mother of two. Her compatriot Yang Hengjun has spent more than four years behind bars on vague national security charges. “I haven’t seen a tree in three years,” Cheng says in the messages dictated to Australian officials on their most recent consular visit to the mother of two in July and released by her partner, Nick Coyle, on Thursday. “Most of all I miss my children.” Coyle says three years is a long time for Cheng and her family in Melbourne and Perth to be stuck in an endless cycle of uncertainty. “She has missed her daughter going to high school. Her parents aren’t getting any younger and Lei is their only child. So time is getting more and more precious,” he says. “It’s the big things and all those little things that we take for granted about life in Australia.” Coyle says Cheng continues to show remarkable resilience. “It’s something everyone should be very proud of,” he says. “She has a lot of very good reasons to get through this and to get through to the other side.” Cheng, who was born in China, grappled with her identity growing up. Like many immigrant children, she oscillated between the traditions of her parents and the kids who surrounded her at school. Cheng says memories of kindness have helped sustain her during her detention. But she grew to appreciate the ocker and the yiayias, the salt water whirling in her ears, the Sunday flea markets and the immigrant family-run takeaway shops. Brisbane in the 1990s was a pot of suburban Australia, and Cheng melted right into it. “I had two identities that would often fight for the upper hand depending on the context and company,” she says in her dictated messages. “Even when I was a bewildered 10-year-old in 1985, I remember arriving on a Qantas flight and experiencing sitting on a toilet for the first time. I received such kindness from strangers and friends. My [teacher] taught me hot and cold by running my hands under the tap. When I was assaulted in my own house, the kindness that I experienced from people, including [police] officer Mabbutt, ... helped me. “Memories of this kindness have come back to me now and restored me. This is a love letter to 25 million people and 7 million square kilometres of land, abundant nature, beauty and space.” Once a year, Cheng’s bedding in jail is taken into the sun for two hours to air. “When it came back last time, I wrapped myself in the doona and pretended I was being hugged by family under the sun,” she says. “It is the Chinese in me that has probably gone beyond the legal limit of sentimentality.” Despite the fog of loneliness and despair, Cheng has not lost hope. Or her Australian sense of humour. “I can’t believe I used to avoid the sun when I was living back in Australia,” she says. “Although knowing Melbourne weather, it will probably rain for the first two weeks after I return.”
China won’t take the US military’s calls. A top general claims that makes war more likely By Matthew Knott August 13, 2023 https://www.watoday.com.au/politics...at-makes-war-more-likely-20230813-p5dw4e.html China’s military is becoming dangerously arrogant and is fuelling the risk of war with the United States by refusing offers to communicate with commanders in the Indo-Pacific, one of America’s most senior military officials has warned. Lieutenant General Stephen Sklenka, deputy commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said he feared that China would seek to establish a military base in Solomon Islands or another Pacific nation as it sought to dominate the region. Sklenka added that he saw value in Republican congressman Mike Gallagher’s idea of positioning US hypersonic missiles in Australia and other key locations across the Pacific as a way to deter China from launching an invasion of the self-governing island of Taiwan. “We do not want this fight to happen, and to do that you need to present a credible, combat-capable force west of the international date line,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Canberra. “It’s my belief that the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] responds only to strength and that strength needs to be demonstrated persistently.” Sklenka said trends in the region were “not going the right direction in many ways”, pointing to a rise in “unsafe and unprofessional activities” by the Chinese military. The Philippines last week accused China’s coast guard of firing a water cannon at its vessels in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, an action it described as illegal and dangerous. Sklenka said the US military’s top priority was preventing the breakout of a war with China, but this goal was being stymied by the “non-existent” dialogue between Chinese and American military commanders. The Chinese Coast Guard allegedly used a water cannon against Philippine vessels in the South China Sea.Credit: Reuters He said the lack of engagement at the “war-fighting level” increased the risk that a misunderstanding could morph into conflict. “Admiral Aquilino [the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command] has had a standing invitation to talk with his eastern theatre and southern theatre counterparts but had received no response,” Sklenka said. “I got to Indo-Pacific Command over four years ago, I’ve worked for two combatant commanders. Neither one of those gentlemen has ever been able to have a conversation with their counterpart. It’s dangerous.” The Chinese military’s eastern theatre command covers the East China Sea and Taiwan Strait, while its southern theatre command includes the South China Sea. Sklenka, who is based in Hawaii, continued: “The problem we’re having is that the Chinese treat communication as a reward for behaviour that suits their interests. “My response is: that’s not what great powers do. Great powers talk to each other even when they don’t agree. They talk to each other because that’s the only way we’re going to understand each other and reduce the risk of a miscalculation occurring.” Sklenka said he believed increased training by China’s People’s Liberation Army was breeding a new sense of confidence and assertiveness. “That increased assertiveness is going to cause, I think, a hubris that turns into arrogance,” he said. “And when they start getting arrogant that’s going to be a problem because the fact is that we’re all flying and operating high-performance machines.” Former prime minister Kevin Rudd, now Australia’s ambassador to the US, said last week: “We are in a region where the risk of crisis, conflict and war is real – not a theory, it’s a real threat.” While there was much focus on the possibility of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Sklenka said there were several possible triggers for a conflict between the US and China including an island grab by Beijing in the South China Sea. He said he does not take Beijing at its word when it says it does not want to establish a military base in Solomon Islands, a nation with which it has signed far-reaching security and policing agreements. He noted that Beijing denied having any plans to establish a base in the African nation of Djibouti before doing so in 2017. “Despite the Chinese saying right now they have no intent to build a military base in Solomon Islands, we have to ask ourselves: do they have the capabilities? I think that they do. And I will be surprised if they don’t if they don’t at least try.”
‘Little blue men’: Is a militia Beijing says doesn’t exist causing trouble in the South China Sea? Analysis by Brad Lendon, CNN Published Sat August 12, 2023 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/12/...a-philippines-tensions-intl-hnk-ml/index.html CNN — News that a Chinese coast guard ship fired water cannon on a smaller Philippine counterpart in a disputed area of the South China Sea should be worrying enough, given the region is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflict. But look more closely at video footage of the incident and tucked away in the details is something arguably even more striking: some of the most compelling evidence yet, according to analysts, of the links between the Chinese military and an alleged maritime militia sometimes referred to as Beijing’s “little blue men.” Footage supplied by the Philippines of last weekend’s incident shows multiple Chinese vessels blocking its ship from supplying a remote military outpost on Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands. Most of the Chinese ships involved are marked “China Coast Guard,” but among the flotilla are also at least two blue-hulled vessels that resemble fishing boats. Western marine security experts – along with the Philippines and the United States – believe those boats belong to a Beijing-controlled maritime militia that experts say is hundreds of vessels strong and acts as an unofficial – and officially deniable – force that China uses to push its territorial claims both in the South China Sea and beyond. The vessels are part of the same force, they say, that swarmed Whitsun Reef, another Philippine-claimed feature in the Spratlys, with up to 220 vessels in 2021. “In this particular operation, we can actually conclude that this Chinese fishing vessel is not just a fishing vessel but a Chinese maritime militia taking orders from the Chinese coast guard to support their operations in blocking our resupply,” Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said at a briefing last week. The latest incident came as the Philippines tried to resupply a contingent of marines it keeps on Second Thomas Shoal – a feature of the Spratly Islands that has long been disputed between the two countries. The remote shoal lies more than 620 miles from mainland China’s southernmost shore and some 120 miles from the Philippine island of Palawan. The Philippines grounded a World War II-era warship, the Sierra Madre, on the shoal in 1999 to assert its claim to sovereignty and now keeps its marines stationed on it, but the vessel’s isolation and aging condition make it a relatively easy target to harass. After the confrontation last weekend, China claimed the Philippines had violated its sovereignty by grounding the ship on the shoal. “The Philippine side has repeatedly promised to tow away the ‘grounded’ warship, but 24 years have passed, and the Philippines has not only failed to tow away the warship but also attempted to repair and strengthen it on a large scale to achieve permanent occupation of the Ren’ai Reef,” a China Coast Guard statement said, using the Chinese name for the shoal. The action it took last weekend “was professional and restrained, which is beyond reproach,” it said. Chinese authorities did not respond to a CNN request for further comment on the issue. Philippines accuses China of firing water cannons at its ships in South China Sea The shoal is just one of many disputed features in the South China Sea, where Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also all have competing sovereignty claims. However, China’s claims are by far the most expansive; it insists almost all of the 1.3 million square miles of the sea are its sovereign territory, despite a 2016 ruling by an international tribunal in the Hague denying those claims. Over the last two decades China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports. Western experts warn that the alleged militia – with hundreds of boats allegedly funded and controlled by the People’s Liberation Army – is a force to be reckoned with. As the Whitsun incident showed, they say, it could be used to swiftly surround any disputed reef or island, acting either alone or in concert with the coast guard or the PLA Navy. While the latest video is not the first time suspected militia vessels have been caught on camera, many experts believe it is one of the most compelling illustrations yet of how the Chinese military and the militia interact. That symbiotic relationship became even clearer in2021 when the China Coast Guard came under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Central Military Commissioneffectively making it part of Beijing’s military. “There’s no way they (China) can pull that operation off without it being pre-planned and there being real-time communication between the two,” said Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis and a former US defense official. ‘Gray zone’ tactic China, for its part, doesn’t acknowledge the existence of any such maritime militia. In the past, when questioned, it has referred to the ships as a “so-called maritime militia.” But Western experts say this deniability is part of the point. Ray Powell, director of SeaLight at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University, said the militia helped China operate in the “gray zone,” by carrying out actions just below what might be considered acts of war but that achieve the same result – Beijing gaining territory or control without firing a shot. Both Powell and Morris say what China is trying to do around the Second Thomas Shoal is essentially a blockade, a naval maneuver preventing free access to it. The Chinese vessels “physically blockaded the supply ship. It’s hard to deny that there is an actual blockade going on,” Powell said. An official blockade by the PLA Navy would be an act of war, the analysts point out. But by using the militia instead – keeping things in the gray zone – China keeps the operation below the level of a confrontation that might require a response under the US-Philippines mutual defense treaty, the analysts say. Was this an own goal by China? But Morris says evidence like the video released by the Philippine Coast Guard helps arguments in Washington, Manila and other foreign capitals that the maritime militia should be treated as a legal combatant. “If (the US) can prove they are under the command of the China Coast Guard, which is under the command of the Central Military Commission,” Washington can make the claim that this is an act that could trigger the mutual defense treaty, Morris said. That could possibly lead to the US Navy or US Coast Guard playing a role in escorting future resupplies of the Philippine marines on Second Thomas Shoal. However, Powell points out that neither Washington nor Manila may have the stomach for the increased tension that would likely result from a US presence in these operations. “A blockade is an act of war. That term is so pregnant with implications that people in official positions are going to continue to be very circumspect about using it,” he said. The grounded Philippine navy ship Sierra Madre, which Manila uses to stake its territorial claims at Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands in the disputed South China Sea, as pictured on April 23, 2023. Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images China’s waiting game Analysts say they don’t see any appetite in Beijing for actual combat over Second Thomas Shoal, but they also say China can afford to play a waiting game. Lionel Fatton, an international relations professor at Webster University in Switzerland, says the shoal is a good spot for China to practice “gray zone” tactics and “demonstrate their capability of causing trouble in anticipation of greater US involvement in the area.” Washington is getting access to more military facilities in the Philippines, including on Balabac in Palawan province, not far from the shoal. Meanwhile, as Powell points out, the condition of the Sierra Madre means it is the Philippines that is under pressure time-wise. The Madre is a former US Navy tank landing ship built more than 70 years ago and slowly corroding away. Keeping it habitable isn’t easy. Indeed, doing so just got a little harder as the supply boat China prevented from reaching it last weekend had been carrying materials intended to shore it up. “The Sierra Madre is visibly rusting away, it is becoming structurally unsound. At some point it will begin to breakup and otherwise become uninhabitable,” Powell said. “At which point China’s strategy works because all they have to do then is sort of ‘rescue’ the poor Philippine sailors off the shoal because they’re the only people around. “And (then they will) control the shoal,” Powell said. “Unless something changes, that is what will happen. It’s just a matter of when it will happen.”
China Helping russia with Helicopters, Drones and Metals - Media August 20, 2023 https://en.defence-ua.com/news/chin...helicopters_drones_and_metals_media-7686.html Photo for illustration / russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, left, and Chinese Defense Minister General Li Shangfu. A ceremony in Moscow, April 18, 2023. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo via AP) Sanctioned russian companies involved in the defense production have received tens of thousands of components from China since the outset of russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine According to the Telegraph investigation China is helping to arm Russia with components for helicopters, drones, optical sights and crucial metals used by the defence industry. Russian companies, including those under sanctions, involved in the manufacture of missile launchers, armored vehicles and strategic bombers, have received tens of thousands of shipments from China since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began through the first quarter of this year. Among other things, Chinese companies supplied the Russian Federation with 1,000 drones, six helicopters, optical sights, products made of titanium alloys used in arms production, as well as spare parts for aircraft, including military ones, the publication claims. The Mi-26’s spacious cargo bay can carry up to 100 troopers. Photo: Handout Among the recipients of these products were the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Russian Guard, Rostec, Tupolev, and other state structures of the Russian Federation. At the same time, China insists on maintaining neutrality and tries to pose as a key peace mediator in negotiations aimed at achieving peace, the newspaper emphasizes. Overall, trade between China and the Russian Federation this year is expected to exceed $200 billion, setting a new record, despite the fact that Chinese exports to other countries have dropped significantly. According to a June analysis by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a trade data visualizer, exports of goods with potential military uses more than tripled over the past 12 months compared to the previous period.
The slide of China's economy continues... China’s economy is in trouble. Here’s what’s gone wrong https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/21/economy/china-economy-troubles-intl-hnk China has long been the engine of global growth. But in recent weeks, its economic slowdown has alarmed international leaders and investors who are no longer counting on it to be a bulwark against weakness elsewhere. In fact, for the first time in decades, the world’s second economy is itself the problem. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng (HSI) Index slid into a bear market on Friday, having fallen more than 20% from its recent peak in January. Last week, the Chinese yuan fell to its lowest level in 16 years, prompting the central bank to make its biggest defense of the currency on record by setting a much higher rate to the dollar than the estimated market value. The issue is that, after a rapid spurt of activity earlier this year following the lifting of Covid lockdowns, growth is stalling. Consumer prices are falling, a real estate crisis is deepening and exports are in a slump. Unemployment among youth has gotten so bad the government has stopped publishing the data. To make things worse, a major homebuilder and a prominent investment company have missed payments to their investors in recent weeks, rekindling fears that the ongoing deterioration of the housing market could lead to heightened risks to financial stability. A lack of resolute measures to stimulate domestic demand and fears of contagion have triggered a new round of growth downgrades, with several major investment banks cutting their forecasts of China’s economic growth to below 5%. “We downgrade China’s real GDP growth forecast … as the property downturn has deepened, external demand has weakened further, and policy support has been less than expected,” UBS analysts wrote in a Monday research note. Researchers at Nomura, Morgan Stanley and Barclays had previously trimmed their forecasts. That means China might significantly miss its official growth target of “around 5.5%,” which would be an embarrassment for the Chinese leadership under President Xi Jinping. It’s a far cry from global financial meltdown of 2008, when China launched the largest stimulus package in the world and was the first major economy to emerge from the crisis. It’s also a reversal from the early days of the pandemic, when China was the only major developed economy to dodge a recession. So what’s gone wrong? Property woes China’s economy has been in doldrums since April, when momentum from a strong start to the year faded. But concerns have intensified this month following defaults by Country Garden, once the country’s largest developer by property sales, and Zhongrong Trust, a top trust company. Reports that Country Garden had missing interest payments on two US dollar bonds spooked investors and rekindled memories of Evergrande, whose debt defaults in 2021 signaled the start of the real estate crisis. While Evergrade is still undergoing a debt restructuring, troubles at Country Garden raised fresh concerns about the Chinese economy. Beijing has rolled out a raft of supportive measures to revive the real estate market. But even the stronger players are now teetering on the brink of default, underscoring the challenges Beijing faces to contain the crisis. In the meantime, debt defaults at property developers appear to have spread to the country’s $2.9 trillion investment trust industry. Zhongrong Trust, which managed $87 billion worth of funds for corporate clients and wealthy individuals, has failed to repay a series of investment products to at least four companies, worth about $19 million, according to company statements from earlier this month. Angry demonstrators even protested recently outside of the office of the trust company, demanding payouts on high-yield products, according to videos posted on Chinese social media seen by CNN. “Further losses in the property sector risk spilling over into wider financial instability,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics at Capital Economics. “With domestic funds increasingly fleeing to the safety of government bonds and bank deposits, more non-bank financial institutions could face liquidity problems,” he added. Local government debt Another major concern is local government debt, which has soared largely due to a sharp drop in land sale revenues because of the property slump, as well as the lingering impact of the cost of imposing pandemic lockdowns. The severe fiscal stress seen at local levels not only poses great risks to Chinese banks, but also squeezes the government’s ability to spur growth and expand public services. Beijing has so far unveiled a steady incremental drip of measures to boost the economy, including interest rate cuts and other moves to help the property market and consumer businesses. But it has refrained from making any major moves. Economists and analysts have told CNN that is because China has become too indebted to pump up the economy like it did 15 years ago, during the global financial crisis. Back then, Chinese leaders rolled out a four trillion yuan ($586 billion) fiscal package to minimize the impact of the global financial crisis. But the measures, which were focused on government-led infrastructure projects, also led to an unprecedented credit expansion and massive increase in local government debt, from which the economy is still struggling to recover. “While there is also a cyclical element to the current downturn that justifies greater stimulus, policymakers appear concerned that their traditional policy playbook would lead to a further rise in debt levels that would come back to the bite them in future,” saidEvans-Pritchard. On Sunday, Beijing policymakers reaffirmed that one of their top priorities was to contain systemic debt risks at local governments. The People’s Bank of China, the financial regulator and the securities regulator jointly pledged to work together on tackle this challenge, according to a statement by the central bank. Demographic decline What’s more, China faces some long term challenges, such as a population crisis, and strained relations with key trading partners such as the United States and Europe. The country’s total fertility rate, the average number of babies a woman will have over her lifetime, dropped to a record low of 1.09 last year from 1.30 just two years before, according to a recent report by state-owned Jiemian.com, citing a study by a unit of the National Health Commission. That means China’s fertility rate is now even lower than Japan’s, a country long known for its aging society. Earlier this year, China released data that showed its population started shrinking last year for the first in six decades. “China’s aging demographics present significant challenges to its economic growth potential,” said analysts from Moody’s Investors Service in a research report last week. The decline in labor supply and increased healthcare and social spending could lead to a wider fiscal deficit and higher debt burden. A smaller workforce could also erode domestic savings, resulting in higher interest rates and declining investment. “Housing demand will fall in the long term,” they added. Demographics, along with slowing migration from the countryside to urban areas and geopolitical fracturing, are “structural in nature” and largely outside of policymakers’ control, Evans-Pritchard said. “The big picture is that trend growth has fallen substantially since the start of the pandemic and looks set to decline further over the medium-term,” he said.
China Blasts US, Japan and South Korea for ‘Smearing’ Beijing Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea's president, from left, US President Joe Biden and Fumio Kishida, Japan's prime minister, arrive to a news conference during a trilateral summit at Camp David, Maryland, US, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Biden is looking for a way to weave the US trilateral relationship with allies Japan and South Korea so tightly together it wont unravel as it has done in the past. , Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- China called President Joe Biden’s trilateral summit with the leaders of South Korea and Japan a “deliberate attempt to sow discord” between the world’s second-largest economy and two of its Asian neighbors. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the leaders who met Friday at the Camp David presidential retreat had “smeared and attacked China” on a range of issues, including Taiwan — the self-ruled island Beijing calls its own. “Currently we see two trajectories in the Asia Pacific,” Wang said at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Monday. “One features efforts for greater solidarity, cooperation and economic integration,” he added. “The other features attempts to start division and confrontation and revive the Cold War mentality.” During last week’s landmark meeting, Biden discussed with South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida measures to de-risk global supply chains from their exposure to China. The three men agreed the trilateral summit would become an annual event. They also pledged to share real-time data on North Korea’s missile launches and set up a new hotline to swiftly share intelligence and launch multi-domain military exercises. China, by contrast, has currently frozen high-level, in-person military dialogue with the US. Read more: {Five Takeaways From the US, Japan and South Korea Summit} The missile agreement was always likely to upset Beijing. China enforced painful economic measures against South Korea to try to stop it from deploying a US missile defense system known as Thaad, aimed at protecting the country from a North Korean attack. Beijing’s subsequent conditions for mending those ties included having Seoul agree not to join any US-led regional missile defense system or a trilateral alliance with the US and Japan. Wang said on Monday that a regional missile agreement would “only increase the risk of confrontation and harm the strategic security interests of other countries,” and urged South Korea to address this issue “properly.” The leaders of Japan, Korea and the US also reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and raised concerns about what they called the “dangerous and aggressive behavior supporting unlawful maritime claims that we have recently witnessed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the South China Sea.” China’s stated position is that the question of Taiwan is a domestic issue, Wang said. The country earlier this year criticized Yoon when he said that the dispute between Beijing and Taiwan was now a global issue.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-10-years-left-most-153312835.html 'China Has 10 Years Left, At Most' — 100 Million Population Drop Could Lead To Economic Disaster, According To Famed Analyst
China buys half of the lithium mines on the market Elouise Fowler Reporter Aug 27, 2023 https://www.afr.com/companies/minin...e-lithium-mines-on-the-market-20230825-p5dzhc Half of the world’s biggest lithium mines put on the market since 2018 were bought by Chinese companies, underscoring the tightening grip of the world’s second-largest economy over the global battery metal supply chain. But a closer look suggests national interest arguments are posing a hurdle to future deals where the United States and its allies are concerned, pushing China deeper into emerging markets for new sources of the coveted raw material. China is reliant on lithium mined in Australia. Bloomberg Chinese firms bought 10 of the 20 lithium mines up for grabs, for an estimated $US7.9 billion ($12.3 billion), while Australian companies came a distant second, purchasing just five mines over the past five years, according to a survey of deals worth more than $US100 million by S&P Global Ratings. Chinese car makers and battery manufacturers are also increasingly taking raw material supply into their own hands to secure lithium and battery minerals, buying 23 equity stakes in lithium, nickel and cobalt companies. Demand for these vital resources is expected to surge as the world rushes to build electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels for the clean energy transition. Beijing fears its supplies of lithium, known as “white gold”, could be withheld or reduced by the US and allied nations such as Australia and Canada. The US and its allies, meanwhile, worry Beijing could weaponise its dominance over processing, as it did earlier this year for gallium and germanium by imposing restrictions on exporting the two metals crucial to the semiconductor, electric vehicle and weapons industries. Despite the US Energy Department declaring lithium as “essential to the economic or national security of the United States”, Chinese firms have been more active in lithium mergers and acquisitions since 2021, according to S&P’s report examining China’s reach. Half of the 10 lithium mines China has snapped up since 2018 are in Australia and Canada, while the other five are in Argentina, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zimbabwe, which are not allied to the US. Australia dominates lithium mining, producing 47 per cent of global lithium supplies. But it exports 90 per cent of its output to be refined in China, which continues to dominate global lithium processing and accounts for about 60 per cent of globally refined supplies. Chinese interests have not bought a mine in Australia exceeding $100 million since 2021. Australian Foreign Investment Review Board knock-backs signal China should look elsewhere, the report observes, adding that Chinese firms are facing similar challenges in Canada. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has blocked three attempts by Chinese miners to buy projects this year, including barring the takeover of financially stricken lithium miner Alita Resources by a China-linked company on advice from the FIRB in July. This, coupled with Ottawa ratcheting up tensions with Beijing by demanding three Chinese companies sell their stakes in junior miners on national interest grounds last November, has spurred China to hunt for critical mineral deposits in emerging markets. Since 2017, Chinese battery makers have struck 13 agreements such as signing pacts to secure equity stakes in miners, joint ventures or offtake agreements where firms agree to buy a portion of the mine’s output, S&P found. Most of those deals were signed with miners in the DRC, Indonesia, Argentina and Bolivia. Just four deals were signed in Australia and Canada, which had two apiece.
Taking lessons from the war in Ukraine, the Pentagon is betting it can rush thousands of "autonomous" weapons systems into production in the next two years to counter the growing threat of China. Pentagon bets on quick production of autonomous systems to counter China Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks will formally announce the initiative Monday. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/28/pentagon-autonomous-systems-china-00113083 The Pentagon is about to make a huge bet that it can field thousands of autonomous systems within two years — an attempt to use technological innovation to counter China’s much larger stockpile of traditional weapons. The ambitious effort, named Replicator, will be spearheaded by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who previewed the push in an interview. Hicks will formally announce the initiative Monday in a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference. China, China, China: Hicks said the time is right to push to rapidly scale up innovative technology. The move comes as the U.S. looks to get creative to deter China in the Indo-Pacific and Pentagon leadership has taken stock of how Ukraine has fended off Russia’s invasion. “Industry is ready. The culture is ready to shift,” Hicks said. “We have to drive that from the top, and we need to give it a hard target.” “The great paradox of military innovation is you’re going to have to make big bets and you’ve got to execute on those bets,” she added. The plan: With Replicator, the Pentagon aims to have thousands of autonomous systems across various domains produced and delivered in 18 to 24 months. Hicks declined to discuss what specific platforms might be produced under the program — such as aerial drones or unmanned ships — citing the “competition landscape” in the defense industry as well as concerns about tipping DOD’s hand to China. The Pentagon will instead “say more as we get to production on capabilities.” Why now: The Pentagon is pushing to counter threats posed by China in the Pacific amid concerns that Beijing may accrue the military might needed to invade Taiwan before the decade is out. Defense leaders are also fighting an arduous battle to quickly ramp up the industrial base to replenish military inventories of missiles and other weapons that have been sent to Ukraine, but that could also be of use in a China-Taiwan conflict. Why this tech: Autonomous weapons are seen as a potential way to counter China’s numerical advantages in ships, missiles and troops in a rapidly narrowing window. Fielding large numbers of cheap, expendable drones, proponents argue, is faster and lower-cost than exquisite weapons systems and puts fewer troops at risk. Rinse, repeat: Another major aim of the Replicator initiative is to provide a template for future efforts to rapidly field military technology. She said lessons from the Replicator program could be applied throughout the Pentagon, military services and combatant commands. “The pieces that work well, they can be replicated throughout the department where they see what we’ve been able to do,” Hicks said. “So if it’s cutting years off of a process because we’ve got the standards figured out and right. If it’s because there’s a lack of communication between two components and we fixed that problem, that kind of speeding can happen through this formal process.” Funding: Hicks predicted the price tag would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars rather than billions of dollars. She noted that the Pentagon is harnessing many programs that are already underway, but added the Pentagon may need to “augment” some spending. “Dollars are not the major challenge,” Hicks said. “Getting the production up and running and getting it at scale is.”