It's all about China

[Kriegsspiel]

Should have read the whole article, he specifically mentions Australia and Vancouver as where the Chinese launder their money.

[Smith1776]

I've had boots on the ground here in Vancouver looking at the housing market for the past several years.

It's not quite as bad now, but yeah, for a while it was unbelievable.

An entire mcmansion would be, allegedly, owned by a single asian person who listed their occupation as "student at UBC". The entire house would be fit for a mid-grade millionaire at least. Lending standards were and still are pretty lax. You can always get an appraiser to justify some value based on comparables and then get that number marked up by a few percent. The house sells for that higher price, and the other houses in the area get valued based on these increasing comparables. This creates a ratcheting up effect.

Definitely not 2008 level stuff, but the bank that I used to work at had their commercial and residential loan portfolios hit pretty hard recently according to my former coworkers. A huge portion had to be extended and refinanced.

[Kriegsspiel]

On one hand, China hates us.  It thinks we tell everyone what to do and bosses them all around (and they're right), and they already feel like they've been bossed around one time too many and so they want us to leave them the hell alone or at least treat them with huge amounts of respect while also leaving them the hell alone.  On the other hand, there isn't a single person in China who wouldn't cut their own off limbs in order to become an American or even travel to America.  They're busy sending their children to college in America in hopes that they can get a job in America after college in hopes that they can naturalize in hopes they can then send for their parents. Bonus points if it's a son! And we're busy giving a large percentage of Chinese visa applicants visas to America, knowing full well that many of them will steal our corporate/scientific/technological secrets and take them back to China when their visas expire.  It's really lame, but it's the cost of doing business with the Chinese and not closing our borders to them. Don't even get me started on this. We just recently started giving TEN YEAR visas to Chinese applicants! Again, don't get me started on this.

More Chinese students arrested for photographing naval base.

[Kriegsspiel]

Dr. Charles Lieber, a professor who led Harvard’s chemistry department has been arrested and accused of lying about his ties to a Chinese program that recruited scientists and paid them to share their expertise at Chinese universities. . . Lieber’s home was raided by the FBI [on 28 Jan].
. . .
A Senate report published last Noevember identified the Thousand Talents Plan as an open attempt to transmit US taxpayer funded research to China in order to fuel its national development. link

[dualstow]

Yeah, that was in the paper a few days ago. What is wrong with people? Does he need more money that badly?

[Mountaineer]

Yeah, that was in the paper a few days ago. What is wrong with people? Does he need more money that badly?

I heard he spends his yuan at the Wuhan meat market when on tellcation. Rats are expensive.

[dualstow]

You went there. Naughty.

[Kriegsspiel]

A female Chinese military officer was charged with spying while posing as a student at Boston University, but was able to flee the country after FBI agents interviewed her about her links to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

PLA Lt. Ye Yanqing was indicted in a separate criminal case involving Dr. Charles Lieber, chairman of Harvard’s chemistry department, who was arrested on Tuesday and charged with lying about receiving tens of thousands of dollars from the Wuhan University of Technology and lying to the Pentagon about the foreign money.
link

[Kriegsspiel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDNt_ThDYt0&t=1378s

Good situational summary by Tim Pool.

[Kriegsspiel]

Longread of the day is this transcript with Peter Thiel and Mike Pompeo discussing China. Interesting throughout.

On the subject of selling weapons to China, I just watched a China Uncensored video (here) that talked about how American companies get around the ban on selling technology to the Chinese military by selling it to "private" Chinese companies, who then work with the Chinese military.

[I Shrugged]

As Doug Casey says, all China needs to do, in order to become World Number One, is not screw up. Not do anything stupid.

Let's face it, they own us.

[Kriegsspiel]

k

[boglerdude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py7ew8zeIVE
How living in China changed my view on Trump and US politics: Californian native

Normalizing lockdowns

[Kriegsspiel]

Zeihan on Chinese population peaking.

[Kriegsspiel]

Another interesting link on Chinese demographics: Andrew Batson

[D1984]

Another interesting link on Chinese demographics: Andrew Batson

Agree with the general tone and facts of this article but one quick caveat/quibble:

Mr. Batson seems to imply that the lower-than-replacement fertility of northeast China in particular (and of China in general) is in large part due to strict enforcement of the one child policy and its demographic aftereffects. But if we look at Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore (especially if using CIA or OECD data instead of just Singstat data on that last one) we can see that all have experienced record low--and in some cases at or near 1.0--TFRs despite not having the disadvantages China has (to wit, not having a "One Child Policy" and also the whole "not being a repressive Communist dictatorship" thing); their TFRs are either similar or somewhat lower (or in some cases much lower) than even the (actual) TFR data from China (by which I mean assuming China's real not-cooking-the-data TFR is closer to 1.25 or 1.3 than 1.4 or 1.45)....and this is despite financial and/or tax incentives in many of these countries to have more children.

Why do these countries all have such low TFRs and why can't they seem to do much about it (not that the US has any right to boast in this regard....in early May 2021 the preliminary US TFR data for 2020 came out and IIRC it was at just over 1.62......which is the lowest since we have been keeping accurate records starting in the 1920s and is a dramatic decline from the roughly replacement 2.07 or 2.08 TFR of as recently as 2008)?

[Kriegsspiel]

Well, I'm not certain on the reasons for the demographic problems China is facing, but I think it's clear that they're going downhill.

[pp4me]

I was surprised to learn that despite everything you see nowadays with the "Made in China" label and the impressive cities they have built, they still rank very low in worldwide income statistics. According to this website

https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... by-country

they rank just behind the Dominican Republic with a median household income of $6180 per year, or barely more than $500/month.

[Kriegsspiel]

This clip, from China Uncensored. The part about collecting data on pregnant women with tests developed in conjunction with their military? Yowzer.

[Kriegsspiel]

The Semiconductor Heist Of The Century

Arm is widely regarded as the most important semiconductor IP firm. Their IP ships in billions of new chips every year from phones, cars, microcontrollers, Amazon servers, and even Intel's latest IPU. Originally it was a British owned and headquartered company, but SoftBank acquired the firm in 2016. They proceeded to plow money into Arm Limited to develop deep pushes into the internet of things, automotive, and server. Part of their push was also to go hard into China and become the dominant CPU supplier in all segments of the market. . .
link

Interesting times.

[dualstow]

The Semiconductor Heist Of The Century

Arm is widely regarded as the most important semiconductor IP firm. Their IP ships in billions of new chips every year from phones, cars, microcontrollers, Amazon servers, and even Intel's latest IPU. Originally it was a British owned and headquartered company, but SoftBank acquired the firm in 2016. They proceeded to plow money into Arm Limited to develop deep pushes into the internet of things, automotive, and server. Part of their push was also to go hard into China and become the dominant CPU supplier in all segments of the market. . .
link

Interesting times.

(also from the article) Despite formally being fired, Allen Wu has remained in power. He ousted executives that were loyal to Arm. He has even hired security paid for by Arm China that reports to him. This security has kept Arm out of the Arm China offices.

Very interesting indeed.

Kind of messily written, but I got the gist. I looked at the wiki page for ARM too. It will be interesting to see how the Nvidia deal goes.

[dualstow]

There's a paywall, but I read a Foreign Affairs article about China seizing Taiwan in 3-5 years. Never thought this would happen in my lifetime. Xi wants to make sure it happens in his lifetime.

[Mark Leavy]

There's a paywall, but I read a Foreign Affairs article about China seizing Taiwan in 3-5 years. Never thought this would happen in my lifetime.

I can see that happening. And I don't think the US has the stomach to enter an all out war with China to defend Taiwan, even considering the dependency that the US has on the Taiwanese semiconductor industry.

I think China would provide a false option to allow the US to save face and the US would take it.

Interesting times.

[glennds]

There's a paywall, but I read a Foreign Affairs article about China seizing Taiwan in 3-5 years. Never thought this would happen in my lifetime.

I can see that happening. And I don't think the US has the stomach to enter an all out war with China to defend Taiwan, even considering the dependency that the US has on the Taiwanese semiconductor industry.

I think China would provide a false option to allow the US to save face and the US would take it.

Interesting times.

A turn of events like that will make for some interesting conversations between the US and Japan.

[Smith1776]

As someone coming with a Chinese family I must say the CCP's efforts to erode human freedoms in the country are truly disturbing.

On the OTHER hand, if the Canadian government had implemented this kind of ban when I was growing up I'd probably have a PhD and an olympic gold medal by now.

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