Chinese Economics Thread

joshuatree

Captain
That what you call an Energy source.
Would you consider buying oil and/or coal if you can obtain hydrogen by sticking in electrodes into the sea and hooking it up to a wind mill generator or a solar panel?
It doesn't have to generate hydrogen 24/7 as long as you can generate enough to store to answer demand.

But pure hydrogen does not naturally occur in meaningful quantities, it needs to be produced thus shen's comment that it's more like a form of storage than source. Ultimately, the efficiency of its production will be a factor in it being viable. How much energy needs to be used to produce hydrogen? If more energy is used to produce it, it's not viable. Current industrial production is via steam reforming which is powered by fossil fuels.
 

delft

Brigadier
In areas with high people and car densities it is more efficient to store the energy for the car not in a car's fuel tank but to provide it by electromagnetic means using antennae in the road surface.
The alternatives are:
produce energy / fuel - oil or hydrogen - store and distribute same - put and store in car - burn in car engine or fuel cell
or
produce electrical energy - store part of it it using perhaps hydrogen but more probably something else, necessary when you depend on wind and/or solar - distribute it to where you need it, including main roads - on the main roads cars absorb it and probably use gyroscopes or super capacitors to maintain a small working store and have enough to get home or from home to main road.
Both methods loose energy all along way but the second can be made more efficient and result in a lighter and more efficient car. That car can be made to follow the antennae so do not need to be driven and is immensely more reliable and cheaper than the Google way.
 

Silvestre

Junior Member
Registered Member
World's leadership China nowadays?! USA weres before.

I like Eishockey in USA.

I like Bruce Lee in China.

Two SuperPowers todays?! Two enemies before.
 

delft

Brigadier
Found at Zero Hedge:
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US Espionage Blowback: China Drops Apple, Cisco From State Purchase Lists
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Submitted by
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on 02/25/2015 12:23 -0500

Another quarter of leaks of ubiquitous US espionage in every corner of the world, and sure enough we get another quarter of China just saying no to spending any more money on companies which are, as far as Beijing is concerned, a natural extension of the NSA.
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, China has just dropped some of America's leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists, chief among them Cisco (which already
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), and everyone's favorite $1 trillion market cap or bust cell phone maker, Apple
.

At the same time China shifted production focus away from foreign production approved thousands more locally made products. The reason according to Reuters, and pretty much anyone else: a response to revelations of widespread Western cybersurveillance.

Expect more guide-downs, especially from Apple, for whom China is now seen as a key variable in the
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over the past year.


Chief casualty is U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc, which in 2012 counted 60 products on the Central Government Procurement Center's (CGPC) list, but by late 2014 had none, a Reuters analysis of official data shows.


Smartphone and PC maker Apple Inc has also been dropped over the period, along with Intel Corp's security software firm McAfee and network and server software firm Citrix System.


The number of products on the list, which covers regular spending by central ministries, jumped by more than 2,000 in two years to just under 5,000, but the increase is almost entirely due to local makers.

Thank you NSA: "The number of approved foreign tech brands fell by a third, while less than half of those with security-related products survived the cull."

The official story is the usual politically correct mush: "An official at the procurement agency said there were many reasons why local makers might be preferred, including sheer weight of numbers and the fact that domestic security technology firms offered more product guarantees than overseas rivals."

The reality is far simpler: Edward Snowden unleashed a can of worms that has and will lead to billion in loss profits for companies which were instrumental in granting the NSA unfettered access to all things Chinese:


China's change of tack coincided with leaks by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden in mid-2013 that exposed several global surveillance program, many of them run by the NSA with the cooperation of telecom companies and European governments.



"The Snowden incident, it's become a real concern, especially for top leaders," said Tu Xinquan, Associate Director of the China Institute of WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. "In some sense the American government has some responsibility for that; (China's) concerns have some legitimacy."



Cybersecurity has been a significant irritant in U.S.-China ties, with both sides accusing the other of abuses.

China has taken this action despite the recent complaints of the same companies who will now have to bring the bad news to their shareholders, while blaming it on the weather, or the West Coast port shut down:



U.S. tech groups wrote last month to the Chinese administration complaining about some of its new cybersecurity regulations, some of which force technology vendors to Chinese banks to hand over secret source code and adopt Chinese encryption algorithms.

The CGPC list, which details products by brand and type, is approved by China's Ministry of Finance, the CGPC official said. The list does not detail what quantity of a product has been purchased, and does not bind local government or state-owned enterprises, nor the military, which runs its own system of procurement approval.

For now the companies on the receiving, or rather non-receiving end of China's incrasingly more overt espionage protectionism, have nothing to say:

"We have previously acknowledged that geopolitical concerns have impacted our business in certain emerging markets," said a Cisco spokesman.

An Intel spokesman said the company had frequent conversations at various levels of the U.S. and Chinese governments, but did not provide further details.

Apple declined to comment, and Citrix was not immediately available to comment.

Expect that to change in the coming weeks, as the reduced guidance press releases once again hit the tape.
This will help Chinese companies and damage the competition. Thank you NSA.
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
The mainstream media reports it like China's just being unfair and it has nothing to do with the Snowden revelations. I posted in here before Snowden surfaced how some in the media were bragging that the US can spy on Xi Jinping because his wife was seen with an iPhone. And this is just banning government use not commercial. When will China do like the NSA exposing spyware on Lenovo computers to discourage consumer sales? BTW, if anyone has seen the Edward Snowden documentary, the NSA has already been doing what's said of the spyware from Lenovo and more without the use of spyware. So did they expose the Lenovo spyware revelation right before just to counter the anticipation of the documentary winning the Oscar and airing on TV the day after?
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
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Mutual Suspicion Mars Tech Trade With China
By
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and PAUL MOZURFEB. 27, 2015



BEIJING — At an elegant guesthouse here recently,
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’s top Internet regulator entertained ambassadors and diplomats with platters of tempura and roast on a spit, unusual lavishness in an era of official austerity in China, to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

But the graciousness came with a warning: Foreign companies had to behave if they wanted to stay in China’s $450 billion technology market.

In Washington on the same day, more than two dozen American tech industry executives and trade association officials gathered at an emergency meeting at the pre-Civil War building of the Office of the United States Trade Representative. They told the deputy trade representative it was time for the United States to get tough with Beijing.
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The stern words at the dueling gatherings underscored how a routine trade disagreement had quickly escalated into a complex political fight. On Friday, the battle lines became even clearer when a top United States official criticized China for the new regulations on American tech companies.

Photo
28CHINATECHsub-blog427.jpg

The Qianjiang New City under construction in Hangzhou, China, in September. Beijing has told foreign companies to behave if they want to be a part of its $450 billion technology market. Credit Qilai Shen for The New York Times
The conflict has escalated sharply for months. Now, it pits a confident Chinese leadership, alarmed by evidence of online espionage by the United States, against an awkward alliance between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley — which itself is wary of Washington but is also salivating over the huge Chinese market.

What makes this trade dispute different from others is that traditional concerns of market share and
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have become intertwined with the thornier issues of national security and espionage.

“We are at a bad point in a triangular drama,” said Peter F. Cowhey, dean of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. “The Chinese government is suspicious of American spying, and it wants to advance Chinese leadership in digital markets,” said Mr. Cowhey, who is a former director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and a former counselor for the United States trade representative. “Washington suspects the worst of Chinese commercial policy and is equally suspicious of Chinese digital espionage.”

The latest chapter in the dispute began when China said American tech companies had to submit to invasive audits and create back doors into hardware and software. The Chinese say the rules are a matter of national security, necessary to protect state and business secrets.

The rules, which will go into effect in coming weeks, apply only to banking technology for now but are expected to spread to other sectors. Other proposed regulations in China, like an antiterror law still in draft form, go even further and could force tech companies to hand over encryption keys — the passcodes that help protect data from prying eyes — to the Chinese government.

The tech companies say the new rules and the proposals are untenable. But their hands are somewhat tied.

The companies have called on the Obama administration for help, a move made with hesitation. Silicon Valley companies are also leery of the Obama administration’s using their technology for espionage, particularly after the spying revelations made public by Edward J. Snowden, the former American intelligence contractor.

Those same revelations may also be limiting the administration’s options — hobbling its ability to tell China to stop taking the same liberties with technology that the United States has taken.

The companies, and some in the American government, argue that China’s moves are not primarily about national security. Instead, executives and trade groups say, China is mostly trying to strengthen its domestic tech industry by blocking competitors.

The Obama administration has used that argument to pressure Beijing. This month, four cabinet officials, including Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Secretary of State John Kerry, sent a letter to their counterparts in Beijing, requesting the immediate suspension of the banking measures, according to an official who has seen the letter but would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

Michael Froman, the United States trade representative and also a signatory of the letter, said on Friday that the new rules violated China’s trade commitments.

“The rules aren’t about security — they are about
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and favoring Chinese companies,” he wrote in a statement. “The administration is aggressively working to have China walk back from these troubling regulations.”

Still, in many ways, China seems to hold all the cards. China has twice as many Internet users as the United States, a market expected to account for half of all information technology spending globally in 2015. Its industrial policy gives the government strong control over the economy. And its own tech companies are growing in size and capability.

American companies — eager to do business in the expanding market — are divided on how to deal with the Chinese, a weakness China has cannily exploited over the last decade.

Just a few years ago, the companies had a tacit agreement not to give in to demands that they store data in China. In 2012, Microsoft capitulated, cooperating with a local company to store data in China and help its customers meet local legal requirements. Soon after, IBM, Amazon and Apple followed suit.

A similar pattern played out in other areas, too. In each case one foreign firm accedes to a new, stricter regulation — at times providing technical expertise to Chinese partners. Soon, foreign rivals, worried about missing out, do the same. And in the long term, the local Chinese companies become competitors to their former foreign partners.

“The Chinese go to each company and say, ‘Look, don’t oppose this and we’ll give you special treatment,’ ” said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Uncertain when a rival might cave to China’s demands, most American tech companies have engaged in a delicate high-wire act, working hard to stay in Beijing’s favor while pushing the United States government to voice their grievances.

During a November visit to China, Obama raised concerns about an antimonopoly investigation into Qualcomm, the large semiconductor company. But when Qualcomm was fined nearly a billion dollars by Beijing under the antimonopoly law this month, the company’s president practically thanked China, saying “we appreciate” the Chinese regulator’s “acknowledgment of the value and importance of Qualcomm’s technology and many contributions to China.”

In previous disputes, China has tempered policies after the tech industry made enough noise. But analysts say this time is different. President Xi Jinping is tougher than his predecessors, they say, and he has taken a personal interest in the country’s tech security.

“People have to realize there is a new sheriff,” said Christopher Johnson, senior China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The documents released by Mr. Snowden, including some indicating that the American government planted surveillance code in some telecommunications exports, have also emboldened Chinese leaders. An American tech industry official said China’s top Internet regulator, Lu Wei, has often claimed the moral high ground in feisty encounters with Americans.

Mr. Lu perhaps gained more ammunition this month, when a Russian security firm reported that the United States had found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in the computers and networks it targets.

China also argues that the United States has engaged in restrictions similar to those pursued by the Chinese. The American tech official said that Mr. Lu cites the instructions by Gary Locke, then secretary of commerce, to Sprint Nextel in 2010 to not buy equipment from Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker, because of security concerns.

One potential option to help defuse the situation, said Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a former American ambassador to China, is trying to tie the technology trade issues to broader trade talks between the countries. The Obama administration is in the middle of negotiating a bilateral investment treaty with China that covers industries like financial services and energy but not technology.

“There needs to be a pathway to develop rules of the road,” Mr. Huntsman said. “These are complicated issues.”

Correction: February 27, 2015
An earlier version of this article gave an outdated title for Peter Cowhey. He is the former director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, not the current one.

Jane Perlez reported from Beijing and Paul Mozur from Hong Kong.
 

SamuraiBlue

Captain
Well you can push to the point it becomes a shove in which US will shove back.
Biggest being an embargo on Silicon wafers for CPU etching and limitation on Intel and ARM based technology.
 
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