Miscellaneous News

fishrubber99

Junior Member
Registered Member
China has been retaliating, but the fact is that these small moves don't really hurt Chinese interests that significantly.

Take Tiktok as an example, the core technology and algorithm remain in Bytedance control and their US Tiktok subsidiary is the biggest single stakeholder in the "joint venture". This really isn't that damaging to Chinese business interests and it would've been more damaging politically for Trump to actually go through with the full ban, which is why he did a partial TACO on this issue.

Retaliation also needs to be proportionate, that's how you get escalation dominance and create incentives for the other side to back down and disincentivize further actions. Not playing all of your strongest cards immediately isn't evidence that you don't have those cards in your hand.

Some recent examples of this:

Retaliation against Panama:
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New law against unlawful extraterritorial jurisdiction that just passed:
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FriedButter

Brigadier
Registered Member
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Portugal Sells Offshore Yuan Bonds in First For Euro-Area​

Portugal has become the first euro-area country to tap the offshore renminbi bond market, raising the equivalent of about €250 million as it seeks to diversify its funding sources.

The country’s debt agency said Thursday that it sold 1.99 billion yuan of eight-year debt in a private placement managed last week by Deutsche Bank AG and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. The securities — colloquially known as dim sum bonds — are a rarity among governments outside of East Asia.

For Portugal, it’s the latest frontier for one of Europe’s most innovative bond issuers as it looks to lower interest-rate costs. It was the first euro-area country to issue onshore renminbi bonds — known as panda bonds – in 2019.

Economic ties between Portugal and China have deepened since the euro-area sovereign debt crisis. Chinese investment in companies such as utility EDP SA and grid operator REN supported a privatization drive that accompanied Portugal’s international bailout program between 2011 and 2014.

Chinese battery maker CALB Group Co. broke ground last year on a €2 billion factory in Sines on the Portuguese coast. Prime Minister Luís Montenegro visited Beijing in September, meeting President Xi Jinping, while Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento held talks earlier this year with the Chinese ambassador in Lisbon to advance cooperation.

Yuan-denominated debt isn’t the only esoteric offering in recent months. Portugal’s debt agency has also sold floating-rate notes, rather than the typical fixed-rate format. With floating-rate notes, the amount of interest tracks Euribor benchmarks.

They also included so-called floor and ceiling structures, which impose a minimum and maximum rate Portugal pays bondholders.
Interest-rate and foreign-exchange hedging transactions were executed simultaneously across the issues to align their risk profiles with those of Portugal’s main funding instruments, the debt agency said.

That means these niche deals achieve all-in costs below the comparable yields of Portuguese government bonds traded in the secondary market, it said.

Hungary is the only other member of the European Union to have sold dim sum bonds, and its sole sale in that market was back in 2016.
 

Randomuser

Major
Registered Member
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Remember that stupid Galwan movie that India Bollywood tried to create? It's gonna be delayed again because the Indian government demanded it removed all reference to China since India needs to get on it's good side or it will cut off the urea and fertilizer exports.

As some one said, how can they make a movie on something that involved China yet make no mention of it?!?!

They should just have the balls to make it and face the consequences instead of cowering out coz they are scared China won't give them any investment opportunities.
Speaking of fertilizer:


Yeah thats gonna hurt.
 

broadsword

Brigadier
So much hype

Why is faecal bacteria presence in US hotels much higher than in China?
Published: 9:00am, 17 Apr 2026

How Shanghai reduces faecal bacteria presence in hotels to less than 1%
Luxury hotels clean up their act after filthy sanitation practices, including using the same sponge to clean cups, toilets and showers


It may be luxury, but is it clean? Surface faecal bacteria is present in some rooms, according to researchers. Photo: Shutterstock
Shi Huang
When it comes to hotel rooms, “luxury” does not necessarily mean clean and hygienic. A number of studies have shown that light switches and television remote controls are among the objects with the highest levels of bacterial contamination, while toilets and bathroom sinks also contain high levels of microbial organisms.

A 2012 survey in the United States – which is still cited by the travel industry 14 years later – found that 81 per cent of US hotel samples tested positive for surface faecal bacteria. The data was presented to a conference of the American Society of Microbiology, according to a Time magazine report in 2018.

Also in 2018, 14 five-star luxury hotels in China were embroiled in a scandal when videos of unsanitary cleaning practices by their housekeeping staff were exposed, with seven of those hotels located in Shanghai.
In the video, cleaning staff were seen using the same sponge to clean drinking cups, toilet seats and shower stalls as well as to wipe drinking cups, bathroom sinks and mirrors with towels or washcloths that guests had previously used.

However, the situation in China has changed since, with a study by the Shanghai Municipal Centre for Disease Control and Prevention finding just how clean the city’s hotels have become.

The study, published in March in the Chinese-language Journal of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, examined the safety of disinfection for public items and utensils in 13,807 public places including hotels, gyms, barbershops, beauty salons, shopping malls, cinemas and hospitals in Shanghai between 2010 and 2024.
 

henrik

Captain
Registered Member
China has been retaliating, but the fact is that these small moves don't really hurt Chinese interests that significantly.

Take Tiktok as an example, the core technology and algorithm remain in Bytedance control and their US Tiktok subsidiary is the biggest single stakeholder in the "joint venture". This really isn't that damaging to Chinese business interests and it would've been more damaging politically for Trump to actually go through with the full ban, which is why he did a partial TACO on this issue.

But non-Chinese entities are holding 80% of the company.
 

horse

Brigadier
Registered Member
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Hmm ....

I would like to ask you, that are you aware that there is a total ban of rare earths enacted by the Chinese government that can be sold to any American arms manufacturer?

Also, are you aware that the civilian companies outside of China, they have to fill out long forms, including providing details of how much rare earths is use for their purposes, so the Chinese authorities would know if they were buying extra?

Lastly, are you aware that some of these restrictions seemed to have tighten even more during this Iran war.

Haha! That is why I cannot stop laughing my ass off at this damn war.

It is just too much!

:p:D
 

fishrubber99

Junior Member
Registered Member
But non-Chinese entities are holding 80% of the company.
60% of Bytedance is already owned by global investors (which are mainly Western private equity firms), and most of the board of directors are not even Chinese (there are two Americans on the board and a French national). This is not a Huawei style company. Creating a joint venture and having 80% of the ownership be American capital isn't a huge shift in terms of ownership.
 
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