Infinite Unknown

China is poised to sign a $2bn (£1.3bn) deal to build a railway line in Iran in the first step of a wider plan to tie the Middle East and Central Asia to Beijing.

The Chinese have already built a railway line serving Tibet, above, and now plan a modern variant on the old ‘Silk Road’ through Central Asia Photo: AP

China’s railways minister, Liu Zhijun, is expected to visit Tehran this week to seal the deal, according to his Iranian counterpart, Hamid Behbahani.

“The final document of the contract has already been signed with a Chinese company and the Chinese minister will visit Iran on September 12 to ink the agreement,” said Mr Behbahani.

The new line will run from Tehran to the town of Khosravi on the border with Iraq, around 360 miles as the crow flies, passing through Arak, Hamedan and Kermanshah.

Eventually, the Iranian government said, the route could link Iran with Iraq and even Syria as part of a Middle-Eastern corridor. That could also benefit the 5,000 Iranians who make pilgrimages each day to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.

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Tags: China, Economy, Global News, Government, Iran, Politics

What could possibly go wrong?

“Floating Chernobyls-in-waiting” are coming to a sea near you after a major international agreement was signed last week, according to critics of nuclear power.

Russia reached a recent milestone when the hull of the Akademik Lomonosov was launched into the Baltic Sea

China and Russia agreed to expand co-operation over nuclear power, specifically on uranium exploration and safer power plants - but also on floating nuclear reactors.

“It’s a case of Homer Simpson meets the Titanic,” says Ben Ayliffe, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace. “The idea is just mind-boggling.”

Unsurprisingly, he is appalled by the idea.

Russia has been planning floating reactors for quite some time, but reached a recent milestone when the hull of the Akademik Lomonosov was launched into the Baltic Sea.

The reactor is not complete, but the barge that will house the plant was launched on June 30 at the Baltyskiy shipyard in St Petersburg - and China has been watching developments very closely indeed.

Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom said the plant would be “absolutely safe” and predicted “big interest from foreign customers - especially in developing nations”.

Floating reactors can be used in inaccessible places where there is no electricity grid - including exploring for oil in the Arctic or Antarctic.

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Tags: China, Global News, nuclear, Nuclear Power, Russia, Technology

Just that there never was a defense. This entire financial crisis has been engineered.

This will also not be a double-dip recession, but the Greatest Depression ever.

The United States, Japan and large parts of Europe have exhausted their policy arsenal, leaving them defenceless against a double-dip recession as recovery slows to ’stall speed’.

Nouriel Roubini said the US growth rate was likely to fall below 1pc in the second half of the year Photo: BLOOMBERG

“The US has run out of bullets,” said Nouriel Roubini, professor at New York University, and one of a caste of luminaries with grim forecasts at the annual Ambrosetti conference on Lake Como.

“More quantitative easing (bond purchases) by the Federal Reserve is not going to make any difference. Treasury yields are already down to 2.5pc yet credit spreads are widening again. Monetary policy can boost liquidity but it can’t deal with solvency problems,” he told Europe’s policy elite.

Dr Roubini said the US growth rate was likely to fall below 1pc in the second half of the year, despite the biggest stimulus in history: a cut in interest rates from 5pc to zero, a budget deficit of 10pc of GDP, and $3 trillion to shore up the financial system.

The anaemic pace compares with rates of 4pc-6pc at this stage of recovery in normal post-war recoveries.

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Tags: China, Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Global News, Government, Japan, Nouriel Roubini, Politics, Recession, U.S.

Bon appétit!

Organic food sales have taken off in China after a series of safety scares, including the disclosure that one in 10 meals is cooked using oil dredged from the sewer.

Police inspect illegal cooking oil, better known as ‘drainage oil’, seized during a crackdown in Beijing Photo: AFP/GETTY

The Chinese now consume more than twice as much organic food as health-conscious Japan.

The market is worth an annual 10billion yuan (£1billion) having quadrupled in the past five years. For comparison, the British organic market is worth roughly £2billion. Interest has been promoted by a series of scares including toxic beans, contaminated milk and pork, pesticide-laced dumplings, chemically-tainted chicken, and the growing presence of what is known as “sewage oil”.

Night soil collectors typically visit the drains behind restaurants late at night to scoop up dregs of oil, which they filter and resell.

The government, which released the figures, has promised to take action against the practice. But since there are no laws against skimming oil from drains, police have had to release any suspects.

In April, a man was caught in broad daylight collecting oil at a sewer in Zhengzhou, Henan province, which he admitted intending to sell to street food vendors for 300 yuan a barrel.

“There is no way to prevent this oil from returning to the food chain,” said Zhen Zhiquan, 32, the manager of a company in Qingdao that turns sewage oil into biofuel.

“Companies like us buy around 10 to 20 per cent of the oil that is dredged from the sewers, but at least 80 per cent is recycled,” he said.

Xie Lili, 25, runs an organic store on the internet. In the aftermath of the oil scare, she said she had seen “a huge increase” in demand for organic salts, oils and spices.

“The volume is 10 to 15 times greater. People became quite scared and preferred to cook at home,” she added.

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Tags: China, Food, Global News, Health, organic

Before you read the Financial Times article below, read this, if you haven’t done so:

- Mike Krieger: This Is The Last Dance:

They refuse to allow the yuan to strengthen because they know that once they do that it will mark the real end of the dollar era. So instead they are spending like crazy on infrastructure ahead of them allowing the dollar to plunge.  Then the strong yuan will be employed to purchase all the commodities they need to utilize their infrastructure and the OECD gets priced out. To those that talk about yuan devaluation, you need to be specific.  Devaluation versus what?  Versus commodities generally along with other currencies?  I can buy that argument very easily.  Versus the dollar, highly doubtful.  Why? The latest data says China owns $877.5 billion in U.S. treasuries. All they have to do is start dumping and the dollar is finished as the Fed will be forced to print so many dollars it will make Mugabe blush.  People need to wake up.

(Mike Krieger, formerly a macro analyst at Bernstein, and currently running his own fund, KAM LP, summarizies the pretend reality we are all caught in now, knowing full well America is set on a crash course with reality at some point, yet sticking our collective heads in the sand, as the collapse will be some time in the “indefinite” future. In the meantime, banks will continue to boost US GDP by peddling “financial innovation” and restructuring advice to countries like Greece… and nothing else.)

And what happened to the US dollar since China allowed the yuan to strengthen?!!!

And now Illuminati bank JPMorgan and …

Aug. 26 (Financial Times) — A number of the world’s biggest banks have launched international roadshows promoting the use of the renminbi to corporate customers instead of the dollar for trade deals with China.

HSBC, which recently moved its chief executive from London to Hong Kong, and Standard Chartered, are offering discounted transaction fees and other financial incentives to companies that choose to settle trade in the Chinese currency.

“We’re now capable of doing renminbi settlement in many parts of the world,” said Chris Lewis, HSBC’s head of trade for greater China. “All the other major international banks are frantically trying to do the same thing.”

HSBC and StanChart are among a slew of global banks – including Citigroup and JPMorgan – holding roadshows across Asia, Europe and the US to promote the renminbi to companies.

The move aligns the banks favourably with Beijing’s policy priorities and positions them to profit from what is expected to be a rapidly growing line of business in the future.

The phenomenon will accelerate Beijing’s drive to transform the renminbi from a domestic currency into a global medium of exchange like the dollar and euro. Continue reading »

Tags: China, Citigroup, Dollar, Economy, Global News, Government, HSBC, JPMorgan, Politics, U.S., Yuan

BEIJING (AP) — Authorities have halted shipping through China’s massive Three Gorges Dam on the upper reaches of the Yangtze river because the dam will experience another flood peak Tuesday.

Water levels at the world’s largest hydroelectric project have been at high levels for weeks from record rains, which have also lashed other parts of the country, triggering landslides and flooding, and causing deaths and billions in damage.

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Tags: China, Environment, Global News, Three Gorges Dam

Related article:

- Floods cut off N Korean city (Telegraph):

North Korea has been forced to deploy military units to rescue 5,000 people who were left stranded by a fresh wave of flooding along the impoverished state’s border with China.

BEIJING (AP) — Flooding has forced the evacuation of more than a quarter-million people in northern China along its border with North Korea, state media said Monday.

Heavy rains over the last several days caused the Yalu river, which marks the border, to breach its banks, although the water level had started to fall late Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency state media said Monday.

It said four people died, including a couple in their 70s and a mother and son, after their homes in Dandong were swept away by flash floods. Xinhua said 253,500 residents have been evacuated after the Yalu rose to its highest level in a decade.

An official with the Water Resources Department in Liaoning province, where Dandong is located, confirmed that four people had died though he was unable to provide details. He refused to give his name because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said torrential rain and water from the overflowing Yalu — or Amnok as it is known in Korean — swamped houses, public buildings and farmland in more than five villages near Sinuiju, the city opposite Dandong.

The report described Sinuiju and the surrounding area as having been “severely affected” by the flooding and said officials, the military and ordinary civilians were involved in rescue work. It said at least 5,150 people had been evacuated and residents were clambering on rooftops or taking shelter on hilltops.

Much of North Korea’s trade with the world passes through the city, forming a vital lifeline for the isolated, economically struggling country. Flooding in previous years has destroyed crops and pushed North Korea deeper into poverty, increasing its dependence on international food aid.

For China, the Dandong flooding is the latest disaster in the country’s worst flood season in over a decade. Landslides caused by heavy rains have smothered communities in western China and accounted for most of the more than 2,500 people killed.

Authorities in the northwestern province of Gansu on Sunday called off rescue efforts for 330 people still missing after an Aug. 8 mudslide tore through Zhouqu county, killing 1,435 people, Xinhua said. The Zhouqu government forbade digging in the debris, fearing that recovering corpses buried for two weeks would spread disease.

In the tropical island of Hainan in southern China, communities were bracing for the arrival of a tropical storm, expected to reach land late Monday or early Tuesday.

Xinhua said more than 20,000 fishing boats had been called back to their ports ahead of the arrival of “Mindulle,” which means dandelion in Korean.

—

Associated Press Writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

AP foreign, Monday August 23 2010
ALEXA OLESEN

Source: The Guardian

Tags: China, Environment, Flood, Global News

• Japan’s economy grew just 0.4% a year in second quarter

• Figures spark concern over cooling demand in Asia

• Japan facing ageing population and a strong yen

Japanese consumer spending, which accounts for about 60% of GDP, was flat in the second quarter Photograph: Junji Kurokawa/AP

Japan lost its place as the world’s second-largest economy to China in the second quarter as receding global growth sapped momentum and stunted a shaky recovery.

Gross domestic product grew at an annualised rate of just 0.4%, the Japanese government said today, far below the annualised 4.4% expansion in the first quarter. The news added to evidence that the global recovery is facing strong headwinds.

The figures underscore China’s emergence as an economic power that is changing everything from the global balance of military and financial power to how cars are designed. It is already the biggest exporter, car buyer and steel producer, and its global influence is growing.

China has been a major force behind the world’s emergence from recession, delivering much-needed juice to the US, Japan and Europe. Tokyo’s latest numbers, however, suggest that Chinese demand alone may not be enough for Japan or other economic giants.

“Japan is the canary in the goldmine because it depends very much on demand in Asia and China, and this demand is cooling quite a bit,” said Martin Schulz, senior economist at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo. “This is a warning sign for all major economies that just focusing on overseas demand won’t be sufficient.”

China has surpassed Japan in quarterly GDP figures before, but this time it is unlikely to relinquish the lead.

China’s economy will almost certainly be bigger than Japan’s at the end of 2010 because of the huge difference in each country’s growth rates. China is growing at about 10% a year, while Japan’s economy is forecast to grow between 2% and 3% this year. The gap between the size of the two economies at the end of last year was already narrow. Continue reading »

Tags: China, Economy, GDP, Global News, Japan

Many years ago Dr. Pandalis wrote in a newsletter that part of the fluoride in table salt in Germany comes from chemical waste (and if I remember it correctly even radioactive waste)!!!

(NaturalNews) Much of the fluoride added to municipal water supplies across the United States is imported from China, and is contaminated with heavy metals, according to a warning by Bernard Miltenberger, president of the Pure Water Committee of Western Maryland.

In a letter published in the Cumberland Times-News, Miltenberger notes that he first became aware of the issue in an engineering report for the city of Boulder, Colo. The report noted that the fluoridation chemicals used for the city’s water had been evaluated, and were found to contain lead levels of 40 milligrams per bag and arsenic levels of 50 milligrams per bag. The bags were being imported from China under no regulatory monitoring of acid or salt content.

Miltenberger then visited the Frostburg Water Filtration Plant in Maryland and noticed that the fluoride bags were not labeled with any importation information. He contacted the plant’s chemical supplier, Univar USA, and was then referred to Sovay fluorides. Sovay informed him that the fluoride had been manufactured by Shanghai Minthchem Development in China. Continue reading »

Tags: Arsenic, Chemicals, China, Contamination, Fluor, Fluoridation, Fluoride, Health, lead, U.S., Water

Low-income coal miners rest before starting their shift in a privately run coal mine close to You Fang Liang, Ningxia Province, north eastern China (EPA)

One of the great lies told us by our political leaders in order to persuade us to accept their swingeing and pointless green taxes and their economically suicidal, environmentally vandalistic wind-farm building programmes is that if we don’t do it China will. Apparently, just waiting to be grabbed out there are these glittering, golden prizes marked “Green jobs” and “Green technologies” - and if only we can get there before those scary, mysterious Chinese do, well, maybe the West will enjoy just a few more years of economic hegemony before the BRICs nations thwack us into the long grass.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The Chinese do not remotely believe in the myth of Man-Made Global Warming nor in the efficacy of “alternative energy”. Why should they? It’s not as if there is any evidence for it. The only reason the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming myth has penetrated so deeply into Western culture is… No. I’m going to save that stuff for my fairly imminent (Nov?) book on the subject which I hope you’re all going to buy.

What do the Chinese think about CAGW? Well, until now it was largely a question of educated guesswork, based on inferences like the fact that it was the Chinese who derailed the Copenhagen negotiations. But thanks to a new book called Low Carbon Plot by Gou Hongyang we know exactly what the official view is.

Ozboy - one of the finest commenters in this parish as well as proprietor of the Liberty Gibbet website - sets the scene nicely:

The argument [that China leads the world in renewable energy technology investment] rings a little hollow when you consider Beijing plans to build coal-fired power stations at the equivalent rate of one Australia, per year, for the next twenty-five years. The reputed Chinese fascination with renewable energy looks at best, a very long-term fallback position; at worst, a façade.

That’s what makes what you’re about to read even more startling. It’s a book called Low Carbon Plot, by Gou Hongyang and, as it’s freely available in China’s government-controlled bookstores, carries Beijing’s nihil obstat. No English translation is currently available, but our own China correspondent, Locusts, has translated the introduction from the original Mandarin, and (not entirely without risk to himself) has asked me to make it publicly available on this forum. At four thousand words, it’s a little long to insert onto a blog page, but you can navigate to it from the Rare Scribblings menu option at the top, or just click here.

It’s not so much an eye-opener as it is a bombshell. If true, it shows the Chinese government as rejecting CAGW in its entirety, believing it a conspiracy between Western governments and business to protect their own way of life, at the expense of the entire developing world-in other words, 80% of the world’s population.

Ozboy does not exaggerate.

Here, for example, is the author’s damning verdict on the Climate Change industry. Noting the irony of the spate of freezing cold weather that greeted the Copenhagen summit, the author wrily notes:

It was as if the freezing cold winter was having a laugh at all of these “Global Warming” theories. If the world was warming at an ever quickening pace, as all of these environmentalists say, then whence from such extreme cold? Whenever there are any doubts about Global Warming, it is almost as though environmentalists turn everything around and claim that this is too, a result of Global Warming. The Greenhouse Effect has turned in to a big basket, no matter what bad thing it is, just chuck it in.

He is even more damning about solar power in which, let it not be forgotten, China is supposed to be the world’s most shining example of just how well it can work. Continue reading »

Tags: China, Climate Change, CO2, Economy, Energy, Environment, Global News, Global Warming, Government, Politics