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Is China turning nasty?

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by GrumpyCabbie, Sep 20, 2012.

  1. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    First it was the confrontation with Japan last week and now the US Ambassador's car is attacked.

    China probes attack on US ambassador's car - Telegraph

    BBC News - China-Japan row: objects thrown at US ambassador's car

    The worry is that NOTHING like this happens in China without the say so or go ahead from the top. So was the latest incident with the Ambassador just China giving a warning shot. Will we see more of this as their economy collapses?
     
  2. amm0bob

    amm0bob Permanently Junior...

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    China is not our friend. And not your's either Bra... when the crap filters down to them, they will guide their minions to do harm with the cameras rolling.
     
  3. Trebuchet

    Trebuchet Senior Member

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    Yep, you're spot on here. (y) Unfortunately, here's some more . . .

    china threatens japan - Google Search
     
  4. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    OK so Japan should pull all their factories out of China and bring them home. If there's no room there, then I know somewhere more than happy to accommodate them :) (hint; near me)
     
  5. Chuck.

    Chuck. Former Honda Enzyte Driver

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  6. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    The Japanese factories are in China for the cheap labor and access to raw materials.

    I can sympathize with the Chinese on the matter of the islands. Imperial Japan took them over in the 1890s from china, taking chinese territory and commiting war crimes until the US defeated Japan in WWII. China was an ally back then and Japan the enemy. The US held on to them until 1972, and had them revert to Japan in the cold war. Today this is between China and Japan and the US should stay out of it.
     
  7. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    I've just looked up the history in wiki and it appears that China has had an interest in the islands right back to 1534, though Japan took control of them in 1894.

    Funny how oil reserves brings out the worst.
     
  8. Munpot42

    Munpot42 Senior Member

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    This aint about oil reserves, it's just old fashioned nationalism and for some reason someone is stirring up old hatreds. My guess is that the Chinese government, concerned over their economy is creating a divirsion, typical tactic for dictatorships, for when things are not going well, you need an enemy to blame, even if you have to make up one.
     
  9. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    Ah, you mean like Argentina with regard to the Falklands?

    Timeline of the history of the Falkland Islands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



    Always fun and games involved in who was there first. I personally blame the Romans for invading Britannia in 43ad. I am still awaiting a formal apology from Italy for the crimes of their great great...great grandparents and possibly some compensation for the loss of my ancestors way of life and crimes committed against them. Well, that seems to be the way of things lately.
     
  10. Corwyn

    Corwyn Energy Curmudgeon

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    Typical tactic for democracies too for that matter.
     
  11. walter Lee

    walter Lee Hypermiling Padawan

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    China has multiple internal factions within the communist party vying for power.
    Party politics is a close door affair so the in- fight between Chinese *progressives* and *conservatives* factions are not out in the open like in the USA. All the world sees is the winner of these internal power struggles.

    The recent Japan China row over the Senkuku Islands is motivated by deep sea floor mining rights - the sea floor in that area has active volcanic action - which is spitting out rare earth minerals on to the sea floor. It's not a stable area (i.e. extraction/sequestering of the mineral has some risk) but the mineral are on the surface of the sea bed - Japan is capable and now mobilized to extract it. I'm not sure if the Chinese have the ability to extract it or not - but there are military/political forces in China that want to stop Japan from doing so.

    China already has easy surfacing mining access to rare earth minerals along the Gobi Desert/Tibetan Plateau and wouldn't suffer the least without the Senkuku Island rare earth deposits. However, from what I understand, the Senkuku Island would represents Japan's first domestic source of rare earth minerals - depriving Japan of the Senkuku Island appears to be a move to prevent Japan's hi tech industry from having its own rare earth source and thus keep Japan dependent on Chinese rare earth ores which certain Chinese agents hope to leverage into access/transferring of Japanese manufacturing technology to China.
     
    austingreen and zenMachine like this.
  12. Munpot42

    Munpot42 Senior Member

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    Thanks, I appreciate the depth of the answer, there is more to it than I realized.
     
  13. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Local: Kunming is so 'out of the way' that anti-Japan steet protests have not happened here.

    Country-level: China is doing a top leadership transition next month. Having such 'external' matters for people to think about could really take pressure off internal concerns, which are by no means zero. Keeping China eyes turned away from the Chengdu guys and the Laoning guy who seem to have exported a bunch of money, could make this power transition smoother. OTOH, letting people protest (against Japan or what have you) is tricky because there is a lot of pent-up desire to protest...anything.

    In the short term I don't think this has a lot to do with drillable marine oil (one-decade timescale) or mineable marine REs (two-decade timescale). Here, it represents a balance to get the CCP leadership transition done, w/o too much noise.

    America is not the only other example of holding a Foreign Enemy on high to get the next election/promotion done. Ya ta hey!

    A few months later I'll be looking for diplomatic/economic solutions with Japan on the North, Phillipines etc. on the South, and all the rest. The 'decades into the future' perspective here is interesting, but perhaps not the real short-term story.
     
  14. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    'Continental' rare earths are by no means rare - Australia may be the next major online before US, followed by Brazil and Madagascar. In each case, 'somebody' needs to be paid off nyuck nyuck. I suppose that all of those will crank up before any deep marine deposits are sucked up. Anywhere.

    I could be wrong about that though, so we'll just have to keep watching.
     
  15. walter Lee

    walter Lee Hypermiling Padawan

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    You are wrong.

    China has a virtual monopoly on RE via having priced out all other global RE mining operations. Chinese mining operators/companies were able to undercut global RE prices by strip mining without repairing the environment - so Chinese RE mining operations are environmental disaster areas. Most non-Chinese RE mining operations must repair the environment after sequestration and this raises their operational cost over the less environmentally friendly Chinese RE mining operations. It takes about 2 to 3 years to get a land-based mining operation at full capacity. I am not sure how long it will take to get a sea floor mining operation fully running but in this case the RE are concentrated enough so that sequestration is economically viable and it represents an economical viable domestic source for Japan - which would break China's virtual monopoly of RE in the Pacific Region. There are other active sea floor volcanic region other than Senkuku Islands in the Pacific region but the Senkuku Island represents the first one which is outputting RE elements. I am not sure how common an underwater volcanic region (active or not active) which has or is current outputting RE elements at high enough concentration for economically viable mining operation but it seems to me finding them atleast for now it is uncommon. Hence - the squabble.


    About two years ago, the PRC/CCP put a cap on it cheap RE raw ore exports but trade policy does not restrict finished goods with RE in them. My understanding this cap was not out of concern for the environment rather that the PRC/CCP agency involved are hoping that this will/would motivate foriegn corporation/countries to transfer RE manufacturing tech to China which still is more or less trade secrets (chemical/material/industrial engineering stuff) and represent the current tech advantage that developing countries/non-chinese hi tech corporation have. Hi tech countries like Japan and the USA have stock piles of RE in reserve just in case of a temporary embargo but eventually those stockpiles will be deplete if recycling of RE is not implemented.
     
  16. walter Lee

    walter Lee Hypermiling Padawan

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    As the Chinese central goverment under goes a leadership transition, it may be problematic for the CCP to clamp down on regional political manuevering and unrest. I agree that political xenophobia and ethnic scapegoating could be part of an internal political manueverings or a smoke and mirror to divert attention to the recent scandaleous murderous corruption cases at the top ranks of the CCP. Albeit - since Chinese politics is hardly a transparent process - I will withhold any final judgement and just say that such a concern is not without some circumstantial evidence. My reading on CCP politics - suggest that the key is sway the members who represent the PLA - and the main PLA concern is holding the nation together.

    A while back I remember reading that while Vietnam has no domestic mining industry - it has teamed up with foriegn mining concern to investigate deep sea floor mineral extraction ... I would not be surprised if the Phillipines does the same...
     
  17. zenMachine

    zenMachine Just another Onionhead

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    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/science/earth/arctic-resources-exposed-by-warming-set-off-competition.html?pagewanted=all

    “The Arctic has risen rapidly on China’s foreign policy agenda in the past two years,” said Linda Jakobson, East Asia program director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, Australia. So, she said, the Chinese are exploring “how they could get involved.”

    In August, China sent its first ship across the Arctic to Europe and it is lobbying intensely for permanent observer status on the Arctic Council, the loose international body of eight Arctic nations that develops policy for the region, arguing that it is a “near Arctic state” and proclaiming that the Arctic is “the inherited wealth of all humankind,” in the words of China’s State Oceanic Administration.
     
  18. SPEEDEAMON

    SPEEDEAMON Professional Car Nut

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  19. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    I agree with Walter Lee that mining production costs (in general) here are lower than many other countries, both because of labor costs and lax environmental management. Low costs in shaft mining (coal) as opposed to surface work (REs) are particularly noteworthy in coal mining here, because the injury and fatality rates are high. Perhaps unequaled in the world, scrimping on worker safety, and I think that's nasty.

    But I don't understand how China RE export policy can exclude other producers by low cost, and also control the global market by limiting exports. Seems contradictory.

    Anyway, global land-surface RE deposits are 1/4 to 1/3 in China, depending on who's numbers one prefers. Ultimately it would be hard to control the world market of anything with such a narrow pie slice.

    CCTV news this morning mentions a growing list of retaliations and re-retaliations, China vs. Japan. Hard to predict how all this can get de-escalated.
     
  20. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    It's a balancing act. Exporting just enough to keep the global price low. China also doesn't have to keep the price really low. Just low enough to make the start up cost of a new mine, or expansion unattractive. Environmental laws, for things like impact studies, in other countries also increase the cost and time of opening a mine.