[Plantagenet]

Whether or not China is going down remains to be seen. They do have some big challenges.

Very small arable acreage per capita
A decreasing and aging population meaning a drop in workers and government income
Need to import several commodities such as soy beans and coal which will make it difficult to sustain a rising standard of living
A widespread assumption that their star is rising, meaning citizens will be upset if/when the standard of living falls.

Everyone has problems, just how bad China's problems are remains to be seen.

I think if China is smart they are going to be working on alternative food sources.

No doubt there are smart people in China but they are handicapped by having a totalitarian government that makes monumental blunders. For instance, the decision to secretly work on modifying Bat coronaviruses to make them more deadly had to be something approved at the very top, and then the subsequent cover-up when the artificially modified Wuhan virus leaked from the Wuhan lab has been catastrophic for China and the world. Millions died because the "smart" Chinese did very dumb things. And just wait until the Indian and/or Vietnamese variants get loose in China and they have another wave of Covid later this year. Its going to be very ugly in China.

The concentration camps for the Uighurs are another dumb thing. The chinese government is committing genocide. Dumb dumb dumb.

The Chinese are far and away the number producers of CO2 and global warming today, and yet still they continue to fund and build new coal-fired power plants in China and elsewhere That is a very very dumb thing.


Maybe their next grand poo-bah in Beijing will do a better job in the future, but so far China is being hurt by their poor leadership. The current crop of Communist emperors in Beijing are doing a piss-poor job of running the Chinese empire.

Cheers!

[evilgenius]

You know, if the Chinese had been working on Coronavirus as a weapon, they might have reacted differently when it struck them first. They reacted as if their authority was threatened. All of the local officials took over and tried to hide the outbreak from the people at the top. The actual rulers had to intervene, to get things moving to combat what was going on. They weren't aware to begin with. There was originally great fear over what might happen just in China because of the situation. It was only after the virus got out that people outside of China began to make this accusation. It could turn out that the virus was developed in a lab, but there is only suspicion as proof of that. You don't have history.

[Newfie]

Plant,

I think it is because if China’s totalitarian government that they can do what Tanada is suggesting. It would be damn hard to pull off in the USA or India, and maybe even in China, but they have the best chance. And they have a lot of incentive to look into it.

They have demonstrated their ability to look forward and enforce social engineering, first with the single child policy and now that their population is set to age and decline they have adjusted to a 3 child policy. That is pretty impressive. And they are implementing the social credit system to further manipulate folks.

I dint support what they are doing but you have to recognize they are doing some pretty impressive things with social engineering.

So is it possible that they could experiment with and roll out synthetic food? Sure why not, who is better positioned to do it.

Deep fried Borg bits.

[yellowcanoe]

Plant,

I think it is because if China’s totalitarian government that they can do what Tanada is suggesting. It would be damn hard to pull off in the USA or India, and maybe even in China, but they have the best chance. And they have a lot of incentive to look into it.

They have demonstrated their ability to look forward and enforce social engineering, first with the single child policy and now that their population is set to age and decline they have adjusted to a 3 child policy. That is pretty impressive. And they are implementing the social credit system to further manipulate folks.

I dint support what they are doing but you have to recognize they are doing some pretty impressive things with social engineering.

China has done well in this pandemic but the common factor among countries that have done well is not that they have authoritarian governments but that they have a culture where conforming to the social norm is important to almost everyone and people are not hung up on the personal privacy issue. I liked the following that was written by one of our Math professors, who is originally from China, at the end of May, 2020.

"To put things in a bit of context, the sort of intervention in S. Korea, which included (and still includes) massive surveillance and mandatory quarantine (with real-time GPS tracing) simply won't work in the freedom-loving USA and the human-rights-loving Canada. Just look around the city. I see practically no lockdown at all. Hardly anyone is wearing a mask (compared to 99% or more of people in Hong Kong). "

Canada and the USA are not only disadvantaged by the focus of many people on personal freedom and privacy but we are also very multicultural societies. We've had to deal with, and continue to deal with, ethnic groups that don't want to stop the social events that are an integral part of their community. Only the smaller provinces such as Newfoundland, that attract relatively few immigrants compared to provinces such as Ontario, can claim to have a common culture and those provinces have managed the pandemic much better than the larger provinces.

[Newfie]

Yellow,

My Wife read about research along these lines several years ago. Traditionally rice required more communal farming methods than wheat so that the rice culture was more communal than wheat cultures. Mao utilized these bias’ to form a more uniform and malleable society.

I am not so sure how much of covid you can lay on cultural homogeny. Some for sure, but there is a lot unexplained going on with covid.

But for the point in discussion, the introduction of synthetic foods, yeah I can see it being a major factor.

Then again maybe Monsanto will team up with Exon and JR Renolds and they will get an add campaign going. Hell throw in McDonalds and you have a rich advertising juggernaut with a proven track record of selling us addictive stuff that kills us.

[Newfie]

UK children - 64% of diet is Ultra Processed Food.
Sounds like we are on the path to synthetic foods.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/may/ucl ... ocumentary

https://www.facebook.com/bbc/videos/how ... 627201461/

[Newfie]

A big china port closed due covid.

https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/ports ... d-controls

Impacts

https://gcaptain.com/yantian-port-disru ... ain-chaos/

[dissident]

Whether or not China is going down remains to be seen. They do have some big challenges.

Very small arable acreage per capita
A decreasing and aging population meaning a drop in workers and government income
Need to import several commodities such as soy beans and coal which will make it difficult to sustain a rising standard of living
A widespread assumption that their star is rising, meaning citizens will be upset if/when the standard of living falls.

Everyone has problems, just how bad Chinas problems are remains to be seen.

Why are imports only bad for China. Most of Europe imports its energy.

The shrinking of China's population (with a delay) is very good news for China. It will probably leverage the relatively low standard of living to have manageable costs for the growing fraction of the elderly in its society. Also, unlike in the west, people in China support their grandparents and parents into old age and don't shuffle them off into old age homes for disposal. The overhead in the west from parasites running old age homes is enormous. Minimum wage on site care providers somehow justify grotesque monthly housing rents in crappy apartment units like some geriatric hive. So the west is not a reference point for China's old age care burden.

[JuanP]

"Hog prices drop as domestic output recovers rapidly"
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1225633.shtml

Hog prices have dropped more than 50% since the beginning of the year in China, as the supply and demand have completely recovered from last year's swine flu epidemic. Some suppliers are losing a lot of money selling pigs they bought as very expensive piglets. Feed is expensive now, too.

[Newfie]

Dis,

I said it was a challenge, I do not know the final outcome.

China is looking at degrowth. Japan has been facing it for a while. Other countries, e.g. Italy, have skirted it by importing immigrants. As far as I know there is no large scale successful model for how to degrow. Things usually simply collapse into chaos.

Chinas population will shrink, at least a bit, but their consumption will likely rise, maybe a good bit. So they will have fewer producers relative to the number of consumers, while consumption per capita rises. They are resource constrained in food and energy. There will he more competition, higher prices, for both.

I still think India is the one to watch. Will they over take China? What competitive forces will evolve? The national mind set in China is more cohesive, so far. Should India become more united it could be a real force.

It is all immensely complicated and interesting to watch.

[dissident]

India is already having and going to have more problems from its growing population. It is set to have more people than China soon and will have a much slower population growth decline curve than China. China sort of overdid its growth restriction, but it is a net benefit. India will be riding the growth inertia for much longer than China. projections are for India to hit about 1.7 billion by 2050.

Considering that India is facing a water shortage from the melting of the Himalayan glaciers and is tapping out aquifers, this is not good news. From my research interactions, the forecasting of the Monsoon season is the priority in India since its agriculture pivots around it. This is not going to change as there is a shift in the population to the urban areas. This urbanization trend in my view is not going to be some simple transition to higher standards of living.

I doubt that per capita both India and China will reach western consumption levels. This is good for the planet, if not so good for the citizens of those countries. But the west is going is going to decline in standard of living as well. The trends are all there to see for those not blinkered with pathological optimism. If things were so great, then food price inflation in Canada would not be 7-10% per year. The vast majority of Canadians do not have income growth anywhere close to this. And people are utterly confused by the real estate price bubble and think that they are getting wealthier. Only if they move from the city to some other region in the hinterland or historically depressed and people do not have that freedom when it comes to jobs.

[JuanP]

"Australia needs to find new iron ore export markets"
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1225717.shtml

"Australia has good many reasons to diversify its iron ore exports, which totaled 600 million tons in 2020, as China's iron ore imports are likely to be halved by 2030 as the scrap steel recycling industry in China expands rapidly, said a top executive of a German scrap steel recycling company.

… By 2030, China's output of roughly 1 billion tons of crude steel will be produced using 400 million tons of scrap steel and 560 million tons of pig iron, Wang said."

As far as India's and China's development is concerned, I don't expect India to ever catch up with China, and I don't expect either of them to ever achieve the levels of consumption and wealth we have in the West today, and like Dissident, I think that is a good thing for the world. I also expect consumption and wealth in the West to decline significantly in the future, so China's and the West's consumption levels may be closer to each other in the future as the West falls and China rises.

I expect India to become a failed state in my generation's lifetime(I'm a Gen Xer), but I could be wrong. In 2013 I expected Pakistan to become a failed state before 2020, but the Chinese bailed them out, and they are still hanging on. I have no idea what will happen with Pakistan in the future, though. Pakistan, as it is today is not sustainable.

[Newfie]

More “interesting” news out of China.

The Covid port back up about 4 times more disruptive than the evergreen Suez incidentZ.

https://gcaptain.com/south-china-ports- ... n-spreads/

[Newfie]

Running out of containers.

https://gcaptain.com/container-shortage ... d-empties/

[Newfie]

Chinese shipping congestion continues to worsen. It now surpasses last March.

https://gcaptain.com/congestion-at-sout ... -measures/

More than 150 coronavirus cases have been reported in Guangdong province, a key manufacturing and exporting hub in southern China, since the latest wave of cases struck in late May, triggering local governments to step up prevention and control efforts that have curbed port processing capacity.

Guandong province has a population of 114 MILLION.

150 cases in a population of 114 MILLION. That is 1/3 the population of the USA.

Something does not feel correct with the threat/response ratio.

Stuff like this makes me question the lockdown motives.

AND why is this not on the MSM.

[JuanP]

Chinese shipping congestion continues to worsen. It now surpasses last March.

https://gcaptain.com/congestion-at-sout ... -measures/

More than 150 coronavirus cases have been reported in Guangdong province, a key manufacturing and exporting hub in southern China, since the latest wave of cases struck in late May, triggering local governments to step up prevention and control efforts that have curbed port processing capacity.

Guandong province has a population of 114 MILLION.

150 cases in a population of 114 MILLION. That is 1/3 the population of the USA.

Something does not feel correct with the threat/response ratio.

Stuff like this makes me question the lockdown motives.

AND why is this not on the MSM.

The problem is global, not just Chinese, though China, as the largest trading nation and exporter of the world, will understandably experience a lot of problems.

"Why the world is in a shipping crisis"
https://www.businessinsider.com/shippin ... why-2021-6

As far as the measures being taken by the Chinese to contain this last COVID cluster go, I find them completely reasonable and logical from the Chinese perspective. I would be surprised if they were not doing what they are doing. The Chinese have successfully eradicated the SARS-Cov-2 virus that causes COVID-19 many times during the last year and a half applying the same measures; they are proven to work. This latest COVID-19 cluster's origin has been tracked to imported shipping containers, is the largest in more than a year, and it is spreading faster than any previous one because it is the Delta(Indian) variant. I know that 150 cases doesn't sound like much to someone from the USA or Uruguay because our countries completely lost control of the pandemic, but, to the Chinese today, this is a very alarming situation. They are simply trying to nip it in the bud before failing completely in preventing the pandemic like Uruguay or the USA did. With the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic games starting in February, the Chinese government will do everything within its power to keep the pandemic out of China until then.

China has already given its population around 840 million doses of COVID vaccines, and are inoculating more than 20 million people per day. They have also already started giving booster shots to some people who were first inoculated more than six months ago, and research data proves that antibodies can increase up to 20 times in the people receiving booster shots. As of last week everyone over the age of 3 can get vaccinated. China will achieve herd immunity through vaccination before the Beijing Winter Olympic Games start, and maintain it through booster shots after that. I think the Chinese have the smartest, most efficient, and most effective plan to deal with the pandemic in the world.

[Newfie]

Juan,

That is generally a good article. It outlines many of the ongoing problems. But it does not discuss THIS problem, which is unique.

As to your argument about the Chineses astutely handling the virus, maybe. On the other hand you have groups screaming about Chinese atrocities against various minority groups. So it seems kinda weird that they are uber protective of one group, suffering much financial loss, while on the other hand torturing whole groups.

And maybe both things are true, but that hardly paints a clear picture of cohesive central control. It sounds more like massive regional differences which the central government is unable to reconcile.

Or maybe they know something about the virus that scares the stuffing out of them? One thing is for sure, shutting those ports is a major economic hit. One the government is not going to take lightly. It feels like there is more to this than meets the eye.

But who knows. What of the news is really true?

[evilgenius]

Why make a value judgement about food grown in a vat? Sure, there was this initial reaction to consuming liquid food. That's like my 300 lb mother going on a liquid protein diet when I was a kid. She complained about it like hell. Sticking to that, however, would have been better for her in the long run. She eventually had to get a stomach stapling, when her hips gave out. Yeah, it would have been much better if more people had demanded liquid protein. Then she could have had more choice. She may have found the flavors that kept her on the diet. I don't know though, she was fairly well bound and determined.

[JuanP]

"China launches first crew to live on new space station" AP
https://apnews.com/article/china-scienc ... 854ba846e3

"Under bright-blue morning skies, China launched its first crewed space mission in five years Thursday, sending three science-minded military pilots rocketing to a new orbiting station they’re expected to reach around midafternoon."

China has become the only country on Earth to have its own manned space station in orbit at this time. Our planet now has two manned space stations in orbit, the International Space Station(ISS) and the Chinese Tianhe(Heavenly Harmony). Only the Soviet Union and the United States have previously achieved something like this on their own in the past.

The Russians are planning to have their own manned space station in orbit by 2025, after their contractual obligations with the ISS program end and they leave the ISS in 2024.

The link below has a pretty nice 90 seconds 3D animation of the launching, space station, docking, and reentry.

"'Divine vessel' launched successfully; three astronauts aboard to reach China's space station core module"
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1226371.shtml

[Newfie]

Chinas shipping blockage worsens.

https://gcaptain.com/chinas-worse-than- ... ade-chaos/

Sometimes I wonder if they are just screwing with us.