CHINA

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And if anyone's keeping score,

China is forecast to have per capita gross domestic product, adjusted for purchasing power, equal to $25,307 in 2025.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/ ... come-surge

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Here's a helpful note from this week's New Scientist. It's paywalled.

Christoffer Koch at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and Ken Okamura at the University of Oxford analysed China’s covid-19 data in May using a statistical fraud-detection technique. They found “no evidence of manipulation”, concluding that China’s distribution of cases was similar to that of the US and Italy.

“I’m sceptical of the numbers initially reported by China, but it’s clear they’ve succeeded in containing the virus,” says Zoe Hyde at the University of Western Australia. “If there were major epidemics in Chinese cities today, we’d see evidence of it.”

Various signs point to a country largely in control of the virus. Many other countries have plunged into recession but China’s economy grew in the third quarter of this year. China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on 19 October that the country’s economy grew 4.9 per cent between July and September compared with 2019.

Domestic travel, too, has largely rebounded. Throughout China’s Golden Week national holiday, which began on 1 October, 637 million local trips were taken, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, about 80 per cent of last year’s figure.

[...] In Beijing, which saw an outbreak linked to the Xinfadi food market in June, the government shut several districts surrounding the market, and conducted mass testing and contact tracing during that period.

“It’s extremely expensive to do that kind of aggressive intervention – much more expensive than public health measures that are used elsewhere in the world,” says Cowling.

The approach is resource-intensive, but minimises longer term disruption, says Cowling. “After those two or three weeks, everyone can get back to normal.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... z6fTu9VCVn

Clearly the "extremely expensive [...] aggressive intervention" is hundreds of times cheaper than not cleaning the virus out. Australia did it too. Sadly the UK and America never even tried.

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This is video from two days ago, taken in Guangzhou. The Washington Post led an article with it today focused on "the steady decline in U.S.-China relations".

Almost a year ago, China was ground zero of the coronavirus. In the first couple of months of 2020, some American commentators argued the spike of infections and the initial bungling response by local authorities in the Chinese city of Wuhan could constitute China’s “Chernobyl” — an epochal disaster that would expose the fundamental failings of Beijing’s opaque, autocratic, one-party state.

But as 2020 draws to an end, it’s in the United States where the shadow of Chernobyl looms, hovering over a politically-divided nation that passed 300,000 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday amid a mammoth onslaught of new cases. Whatever China’s original sin in the emergence of the disease — and the questions that still surround its official accounting of deaths and infections — its leadership has reason to believe it handled the situation markedly better than geopolitical adversaries in the West.

https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2 ... rder-trump

[magentaflame]

I'm just going to allow you to sink yourself. One of us is going to be interned . Just not sure which one of us it will be.

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I'm just going to allow you to sink yourself. One of us is going to be interned . Just not sure which one of us it will be.

It's on a par with "you'd all be speaking German if it hadn't been for us", it might end up interesting to historians as an example of blinkered nationalism in the 21st century but it has nothing to do with any real-world event, past present or future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Bowd ... -AGS-62%29 on the other hand is quite real. What possible legitimate non-aggressive excuse would anyone have for operating units like that inside an international trigger-point hotspot. How would America respond if China had units like that mapping the Maui Channel in International waters?

[magentaflame]

https://www.9news.com.au/national/chris ... 303b610f17

Meanwhile, Taiwan has said 25 Chinese military aircraft entered its air defence identification zone (ADIZ) yesterday, the most on any single day so far this year.
Taiwan's National Defence Ministry said the flights surpassed the previous high this year of 20 Chinese military planes entering the ADIZ on March 26.
Last week, China's armed forces conducted military exercises to the west and east of Taiwan, a move analysts said was a warning to the island and the United States.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday the US stands behind its commitment to Taiwan to make sure it can defend itself as Beijing increases its aggressive tactics.

"All I can tell you is, it would be a serious mistake for anyone to try to change the existing status quo by force," he said when asked if the US is prepared to defend Taiwan militarily.
Asked if that meant the US will respond with military force, Mr Blinken said he would not get into hypotheticals and reiterated the country's commitment to Taiwan.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be won over peacefully or by force.
Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, and most Taiwanese favour maintaining the current state of de facto independence while engaging in robust economic exchanges with the mainland.

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Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, and most Taiwanese favour maintaining the current state of de facto independence while engaging in robust economic exchanges with the mainland.

That's an interesting sentence. It suggests to me that if you asked "most Taiwanese" if they would still "favour maintaining the current state of de facto independence" if China blocked "robust economic exchanges with the mainland", then "most Taiwanese" would prefer reunification. The writers wrote their sentence with "while" for a reason, it wasn't accidental. A sight of the raw poll results would be far more interesting than their carefully crafted biased conclusion.

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Catch-up on Americans having to pay to bring goods into their own country, with particular attention to "impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from four south-east Asian countries" as proxies for Chinese manufacturers.

TL;DR

And if anyone's keeping score,

China is forecast to have per capita gross domestic product, adjusted for purchasing power, equal to $25,307 in 2025.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/ ... come-surge

And if anyone's keeping score there's even a graph at the World Bank showing US$24,569.3, as of 2023. I can't find a more recent figure.

As of the moment, April 2025, it would appear America has chosen to go head to head with PRC on a fight for financial supremacy. For example,

US trade officials are preparing to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from four south-east Asian countries, while the International Energy Agency has said lessons from the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had not been fully learned.

The US commerce department has announced the new tariffs, targeting companies in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, after an investigation begun a year ago when American manufacturers of solar panels accused Chinese companies of flooding the market with subsidised, cheap goods.

Products from Cambodia would face the highest tariffs, of 3,521%, because its companies did not cooperate with the US investigation, while products made in Malaysia by the Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar face duties of just over 41%; rival Trina Solar’s products from Thailand will incur tariffs of 375%.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... rgy-summit

and the US tariff on general goods imported from China stands at 245%:

Trump has raised tariffs on China to 145 percent. This means Chinese goods sold to the US are now taxed at 2.45 times their original price, making them much more expensive and less competitive in the US market. China has retaliated with 125 percent levies on US goods.

Google.

This is uncharted territory but it certainly makes America an unpredictable trading partner for the foreseeable future. The rest of the world can absorb Chinese solar panels until the cows come home - and will, one hopes - without any change from previous world-normal trading terms. America, as intended by the Trump administration, will rebuild its domestic capability in building solar panels and only use its domestic production. As far as I can see, that just increases the world production of solar panels. And so with whatever else is under the new 10% general tariff America has currently imposed on the world at large. These are tariffs imposed on Americans by Americans to bully them into buying domestic products. The world can continue to trade with every other nation at conventional rates. The Trump experiment will be interesting to watch.

U.S. administration under President Donald Trump has actively threatened tariff escalations against countries that do not align with its trade policies.​

China: The U.S. imposed tariffs up to 145% on Chinese goods, citing unfair trade practices. President Trump indicated these tariffs could be reduced if China made concessions, but they "won’t be zero" .​

Canada and Mexico: In February 2025, the U.S. announced 25% tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico, excluding Canadian energy exports, which faced a 10% tariff. These measures were justified under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, citing concerns over drug trafficking and immigration .​

BRICS Nations: President Trump warned that countries attempting to undermine the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, particularly BRICS nations, would face 100% tariffs .​

Colombia: After Colombia refused to accept deported nationals via U.S. military flights, the U.S. threatened escalating tariffs starting at 25%, increasing to 50% if compliance was not met. Colombia eventually agreed to the U.S. terms .​

Southeast Asia: The U.S. plans to impose tariffs as high as 3,521% on solar panels imported from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, following investigations into alleged unfair subsidies by Chinese firms operating in these countries .​

Strategic Use of Tariffs

The administration's approach involves using tariffs not only to address trade imbalances but also to exert geopolitical pressure. For instance, countries purchasing oil from Venezuela were threatened with 25% tariffs, aiming to isolate Venezuela economically .​

Additionally, the U.S. has indicated that allies may face tariff reinstatements if they do not align with U.S. policies, particularly concerning relations with China .​

These aggressive trade policies have led to significant global backlash. The World Trade Organization reported an 80% drop in U.S.-China merchandise trade, signaling a shift towards separate global trade blocs . Countries like Canada and members of the European Union have initiated consumer boycotts against U.S. products in response to these tariffs .​

ChatGPT summary

In the longer term, President Trump has a deserved reputation now as an unreliable liar in both domestic and foreign affairs, supervising an Administration of the most pitiful bunch of political lightweights ever seen in DC. It will be interesting to see how the 2028 election pans out - and of course the 2026 mid-terms. And if, as seems probable, the President is carted off into palliative care for mental degeneration, the abilities of JD Vance will come to the fore. My prediction is he'll condemn the previous idiocy and try to recover, to no effect whatever. He would need to stop being a fundamentalist fact-deaf hick and learn to be a politician first.

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In the unlikely event that China's top politicians would welcome my advice, here's the obvious answer.

Don't ring them, don't email them, don't whatever diplomats do. And when they call, your diary's full. You're at the beach all next week. You'll get back to them after the weekend, except don't. And when they're really really getting anxious, suggest an exploratory get-together next March. Unless of course the President of the USA would like to go on the record, personally, saying on TV how much he regrets pissing the world about, in which case okay, maybe a week this August isn't out of the question. In other words, this is entirely a matter of face.

America can set its import tariff for any goods from any country, all it has to do is live with the consequences. And, by the look of it, build its own solar panels.

China does not need America.

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Well done that man. Everybody wants to be a part of what we’re doing.

Beijing said on Thursday that any claims of ongoing trade talks with Washington were “baseless”, a day after Donald Trump suggested there were active discussions with China about tariffs.

Asked on Wednesday if his administration was “actively” talking to China, the US president said: “Actively. Everything is active. Everybody wants to be a part of what we’re doing.”

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he would set tariffs over the next couple of weeks, insisting that a deal with Beijing “depends on them”.

Pushing back at these comments earlier today, He Yadong, a spokesperson for China’s ministry of commerce, said:

There are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States.

Any claims about progress in China-US economic and trade negotiations are baseless rumors without factual evidence.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/liv ... -live-news

Trump all you like, Mister President, you are a stranger to the truth.

[Bryn Mawr]

China certainly have the upper hand in this and are starting to hit America where it hurts, 50+ planes ordered from Boeing by Chinese Airlines who are now refusing to accept delivery plus a couple being returned to Boeing post delivery.

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Those planes can be resprayed if they're already painted, and passed elsewhere to reduce the waiting list. But without the removal of export restrictions by America I can't see China continuing to buy Boeing. If any domestic market would improve from buying local it's Chinese aircraft manufacturers, and that's a long view.

[Bryn Mawr]

Those planes can be resprayed if they're already painted, and passed elsewhere to reduce the waiting list. But without the removal of export restrictions by America I can't see China continuing to buy Boeing. If any domestic market would improve from buying local it's Chinese aircraft manufacturers, and that's a long view.

When their entire output of that model is 38 a month then loosing 50 sales has to be significant.