LyrArc Article Gist
Merkel visits China in August 2012 with a large trade delegation including heads of SAP, Siemens, VW and BASF. Germany's largest export market is in the eurozone, at the same time growth in exports has surged to China and India. Between 2005 and 2011, German exports to the EU countries increased by 24%, to the U.S. by 6.3%, and to China by 206%, according to German government data. German investment in China was 26 billion euros in 2011. By contrast China's investment in Germany is small- only about 1.2 billion euros. The impression is that large firms such as VW and Siemens make up most of the investment. In actual fact the German Chamber of Commerce in China says 5000 German companies operate in China, employing 220,000 people, and three fourths of this is from the German "Mittelstand," midsize family owned companies. The Foundation for Family Businesses, representing 400 German Mittelstand companies says it needs more help regarding intellectual property protection in China and is not as well represented in the German trade delegation....

LyrArc Article Gist
Efforts to revive the Chinese Communist party, and facilitate the evolution of a new economic--political model that helps control corruption. Efforts also to get the involvement of non-governmental organizations from society. The city of Shenzen, near Hong Kong, is being used as the model. It was here that the current economic-political model was first established, through the Shenzen Special Economc Zone.

LyrArc Article Gist
Japan's military budget will become the third largest after the US and China and take on offensive capabilities, under the new plan of prime minister Kishida. More than half of Japanese now support Japan taking on this role in defense against China and to ensure an open Indo-Pacific. The military buildup calls for $320 billion in spending over 5 years to deter China, and includes missile deployment. The national security paper released in Dec 2023 says- "The strategic challenge posed by China is the biggest Japan has ever faced." To do this Japan's foreign and defense ministers met with their counterparts in the US this week, ahead of a meeting in the US between Kishida and US president Biden. 

LyrArc Article Gist
What is it like in Fushun, China? A city of 1.7 million in northern China it was a city that led in China's revolution against feudal regime and colonial occupation, and in cutting the birth rate. It is similar in size to Detroit, yet has only 5000 births compared to 20,000 in Detroit. Signs of aging are everywhere in Fushun as China's birthrate drops below 1.  For population to remain stable birthrate has to be 2.1. It is 0.7 in Fushun.

In Fushun most refineries and coal mines are closed. A third of the population is over 60 years old and half of the young people have left the city. In 10 years half of the population will be 60 years old. 

LyrArc Article Gist
China chooses periodic blockades or air-sea coordinated exercizes around Taiwan's 12 mile waters as a strategy to respond to US Indo-Pacific strategy of keeping lanes of sea traffic and navigation on oceans open to all nations. This is seen as less risky than an outright invasion. Military exercises in August 2022 are seen as preparing for such a strategy.  The US is the destination for $541 billion and Europe $521 billion in products Made in China in 2021, which make China the manufacturing powerhouse in the world. Without the export of $1 trillion in Chinese products thousands of factories and millions of Chinese workers would remain idle. It is unbelievable that China is risking so much with its Taiwan policy with no idea of what the consequences would be years from now. It took China three decades after the gradual opening by 1990 and a willingness on the part of American and European governments and business to give up much of their own manufacturing leading to loss of jobs in communities across both America and Europe and much pain from this loss, for China to get to $1 trillion in exports. This situation may never come back as the supply chains shift and jobs return home and to countries that are becoming competitive in infrastructure and capabilities in Asia. Such competition between nations is not unknown as it was with Imperial Japan in the Pacific just 100 years back. The US maintains its position as keeping navigation on the oceans of the world open and rule of law, and it is on these foundations that China was able to get the strong manufacturing and exporting position it has now that no nation has enjoyed in history to this extent. Only the British come close in the nineteenth century. So much of China's progress in the twentieth century was a result of cooperation and support from America, from the first university Tsinghua in Beiijing, to the war against imperialist forces of Japan, to the rebuilding of China's manufacturing and technological competitiveness with American business cooperation. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Two US carrier strike groups and 17 naval ships prepare for joint exercizes with Japan's Self-Defense Forces off Okinawa in the first week of October 2021. In late September a British aircraft carrier group goes through the Taiwan Straits. China has flown aircraft near Taiwan's airspace before. On October 1-5 over a period of 4 days China sends 150 fighter, bombers and other aircraft near Taiwanese airspace. This situation is reminiscent of the situation in 1950-53 during the period of the Korean War when US president Harry Truman sent the Seventh Fleet to the Straits of Taiwan. In 1954 Chinese artillery started the shelling of offshore islands Quemoy and Matsu. This happened again in 1958 under president Eisenhower. At that point the US sent a naval contingent to the Taiwan Straits. The crisis was resolved through talks with China. Eisenhower then setup a joint defense agreement with Taiwan.  Here the Taiwan Defense Minister says China is capable of an invasion of Taiwan in 2021 but "it has to calculate what it would cost and what kind of outcome it would achieve." He also says that after 2025 "it would have lowered the costs and losses to a minimum." As US companies seek expansion in China the situation is changing rapidly in 2021 in the other areas.The US under president Biden sees the wars under previous presidents and the economic policies of not investing in American industrial strength have created risks for America in its role in the world. Biden seeks to restore American industrial strength through massive investments. It has been reported that Taiwan even considers the concentration of world semiconductor industry in Taiwan a way to assure the US dependence on Taiwan for semiconductors would lead to allied economic commitment to Taiwan in addition to defense commitments already given. In a sign of awareness of the distorted situation in semiconductor manufacturing that American companies such as Intel have allowed to happen, including ceding essential technologies in manufacturing semiconductors to other nations, the Biden administration has pushed to reverse these policies giving $52 billion in state aid. President Biden talked to president Xi of China in early September in a 90 minute call. This was aimed at easing hostility between the two countries. During that call the two leaders had agreed to abide by the Taiwan Relations Act, that states Taiwan's status should be resolved through peaceful means. It was passed in the US Congress in 1979 during the period when the US restored diplomatic relations with China. The situation today resembles that in the period after the Korean War into the late 1950's when China under Mao continued shelling of islands under Taiwan from the mainland. This makes the existing supply chains that make the US, Europe and India overly dependent on China,Taiwan, Singapore, for manufactured goods look antiquated and out of place. American companies such as Apple, GM, Black Rock and American financial companies are caught in a bind as they operate as if nothing is happening, when a lot has changed during the coronavirus pandemic. The Biden administration is pursuing its own long term policy for restructuring the supply chain for American industry. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
See these pictures of the Yangtze River and the Poyang Lake in BBC to understand how the decades of hyper growth in China with use of coal and fossil fuels unprecedented in history were not good for China and the world. The Yangtze river has never recorded less rainfall than this year since records began in 1961. That hyper growth is being followed by slight or flat growth both situations China and the world could have avoided if a steady growth pattern was put in its place. Common sense and wisdom would have done better than economists and business  in the US and local governments in China that dictated a self-interested pattern of hyper growth that led to ravaging communities in the US and the EU by shipping all manufacturing to China, then starting to reverse this process as the same ravaged communities in the US and EU responded in elections in the US and EU. None of the participants in this now take responsibility for their role in the changing climate and natural disasters one sees in 2022. China now faces the task of rebuilding its entire fossil fuel driven industry along renewable energy lines, when it is at the end of a property driven, land sale driven boom, with local governments finances precarious.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Trade is just one aspect of the Biden Economic plan. It covers US manufacturing and jobs, Climate Change Action and Renewable Energy, Cost of Living and Wages for workers, Interest rates and inflation, and Capital Allocation with government partnering with the private sector in key industries such as electric cars, solar panels. It has the overwhelming support of most Americans- seven out of 10 Americans favor it polls show. What is described here in the Washington Post as a change from decades of trade policy since Reagan/Bush, Clinton/Obama, is also a response to the loss of key midwestern states by Democrats to Trump in thepresidential election of 2016, and the upheavals for democracy that Biden calls the struggle for the soul of the nation on the White House website. Biden is simply saying that the old policies were a mistake, a huge mistake, and Biden is correcting the Trump response which was loud but lacked the substance that is in the Biden plan through capital allocation in size and government actions to back this up. In this move he now has the support of both Democrats and Republicans. As Greg Ip has pointed out in the WSj no one during the Clinton administration when it engaged China with the World Trade Organization on trade imagined China would replace America as the dominant nation in manufacturing, the size and th scale also affected the climate, the environment in China, and created huge inequalities in the US and China that both nations are trying to correct, Biden in the US and Xi in China. It could even be said these policies were a failure because the size and scale simply overwhelmed everything else with growth rates in China of 12-14%, and the fallout in the near collapse of the economy in the years ahead from hypergrowth.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The action taken by local and government officials to address the high PM 2.5 pollutant levels and smog in Harbin, China, in October 2013. For the first time the Ministry of Environmental Protection has powers to take serious action. It is sending out inspection teams to cities across China for the winter to make sure environmental regulations are enforced. One big change is that cities now report in real time the change in pollutant levels for PM 2.5, the worst pollutant. By Oct. 2013 113 cities in China carried the live reports on websites. The Ministry has published a list of the 4189 factories in China that create 65% of total industrial air pollutants in China. The Jinping-Li Keqiang administration supports the stronger enforcement and has set a goal of reducing PM 2.5 levels by 15- 25% each year for Tianjin, Beijin and Hebi province in northern China, compared to 2012 levels. These three regions have been given the target of reducing coal use by 80 million tons a year.

LyrArc Article Gist
At a joint seminar, the central banks of China and S. Korea express their strong opposition to the U.S. Federal Reserve's QE III program. Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong-soo said: "The rise in global liquidity could lead to rapid capital inflows into emerging markets including South Korea and China and push up global raw material prices. Therefore Korea and China need to make concerted efforts to minimize the negative spillover effect arising from monetary policies of advanced nations." For China this makes its own policy decisions harder. Chen Yulu, adviser to the central bank People's Bank of China says about inflation and bubble fears: "on the one hand China needs to stabilize growth, but on the other hand China is very worried about a property price rebound." Slowing growth makes the capital inflows smaller but the concerns persist for the longer term effects of the U.S. Fed's QE programs.

LyrArc Article Gist
Rottgen says that the low point of the Copenhagen talks was reached when it was becoming clear the China was not even willing to accept unilateral pledges of the industrialized nations to reduce emissions by at least 8% by 2050. The Chininese he says said that was too little for them. At which point the Europeans said we could perhaps offer 100%, but that would have to be the end- for mathematical reasons. and Rottgen points out that at that point he and others realized that the Chinese were not concerned about agreeing on CO2 reductions, but rather with preventing them. It was at that poit that US President Obama went in for face to face talks with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Rottgen also faults the US where he says the elites realize that something has to be done about Co2 but cannot get the majority of people to support the changes and sacrifices required because of political reasons. Says Rottgen about the Americans "they prefer to have cheap money to consume, and they don't want to limit their CO2 emissions, so that they can continue to do things their way." Rottgen also sees the CO2 targets as away to get Germany and other nations to develop the most advanced technologies, and because of the German lead in this area he sees it as a way ensure Germany's economic future....

LyrArc Article Gist
Panama Canal ad US control of a passageway through the seas the US build in the 1900's. The New Monroe Doctrine under DJT takes America back to the days in 1900 when president Teddy Roosevelt pushed thorugh the actions neded to build the Canal connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. TR had the US Army Corps of Engineers start work in 1904 and said the famous words "Let the Dirt Fly." When Colombia refused to make this happen he formed the new nation of Panama. TR realized the importance of connecting the oceans- foresight for the massive expansion of world trade in the 1960-2025 period raising standards of living for the 3 billion people in India/China/Asia and for the 1 billion people of the EU and the US. Never before in history has such ahuge change in living conditions  and hopes and aspirations happened. Today when American ingenuity, invention and sense of purpose is derided or ridiculed, it serves as a reminder of the great endeavors that happened under American leadership and continue to this day into the future. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Strident tone of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defending tariffs, the economy, and affordability. Bessent defends the DJT administration's tariffs plan, its effort to bring back jobs, its policies on gas prices that have cut inflation, and the president's Big Bold Beautiful Bill with it's provisions for Businesses to expand investment in the economy using a rapid depreciation provision. He has called the critics as having "Trump Derangement Syndrome." Part of this is based on his economic experience and understanding of how tariffs can be used to level the playing field where the EU, Japan, China, Mexico and other countries have taken advantage of trade policy for their own gains to the detriment of the US and communities in the Nation that lose jobs and factories. One of the assets to the current administration of DJT is Bessent's grasp of financial markets, his extensive experience in the field as a business person. He was able to convince the president to withdraw tariffs or mitigate tariffs to adjust for the effects on financial markets in the US and worldwide.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
One way to ease the supply of oil cutoff from the Middle East to Asia (to India, Japan and South Korea) is to ease sanctions on the oil on tankers on the sea (large inventories at sea) and from Russia. US president DJT says -“We have sanctions on some countries, we are going to take those sanctions off until this straightens out. And then who knows, maybe we won’t have to put them on because there will be so much peace." 

Treasury Secretary Bessent says the same thing that “waiving certain oil-related sanctions to reduce prices," would be good way to ease the impact of the war on prices.

This will help Russia balance its budget and who knows it may make it possible to open up new discussions for peace in Ukraine as the US acts as an intermediary in negotiations to end the war. From the larger interest of US, China, India + Indonesia, of Russia and Ukraine, and of Europe,it makes sense to end that war.