China Geopolitical News Thread

[getready]

And I feel like I should point out, this thread has already deviated off the aims of the original post made by Jeff.

Not only has there been quite a bit of discussion and expression of personal opinion, but almost every link and every article posted aren't even geopolitically related.

In fact most of them are socio-political. I feel like this thread has already become a proxy for the differing sociopolitical views of various members to butt heads, basically since the second post (epoch times??? really??).

Fact is, any post about freedom of speech, corruption, political reform (or perceived lack thereof), or some trends in parts of the chinese population which can be construed as political (such as the chinese "exodus"), are intentionally or unintentionally criticizing and implicating the CCP's domestic policies, usually in a poor light (regardless of what the reality of the situation may be). That will always force a response by other posters who have been exposed to a lifetime of reading such articles and will respond with irritation. What will, and has resulted, is an ideological debate.


In fact, I think the only real piece of geopolitical news posted was A Mace's article at #26. Every other post has marginally geopolitical (and that's if we really stretch the definition) and they are all flamebait in their own way, imho.

imho, @Jeff, if you're serious about making this a geopolitical news thread, then make it so that only strictly geopolitical articles can be posted -- only the links and the copy/pasted article. Nothing else, no opinion, na-da.

Just my 2cents.

Concur. The contents in this thread definitely do not match the title. Was expecting more discussion of geopolitical policies and implications regarding china.

 

[broadsword]

The talk here of execution is just casual banter.

 

[SamuraiBlue]

The talk here of execution is just casual banter.

Talking of assassination as casual banter?
I really question people's sense of humor if it is for real.

 

[broadsword]

Talking of assassination as casual banter?
I really question people's sense of humor if it is for real.

It's hard to take assassination of a Chinese top leader seriously, especially by a CCP member.

 

[ABC78]

This is a problem all developing countries face. You can see long lines of people queuing outside the US embassy in Manila. People in developed countries also emigrate, although often to countries with blood ties or where their race dominates. And there is the group of people who emigrate for tax-avoidance purpose and retirement.

There's been a lot of that going on well to do people of developed countries relocating to live like a king in under developed countries.

 

[ABC78]

Well like Samurai Blue said no one has brought up that Xi had to worry about his life. You don't need security if enemies can expel Xi from power through the system. The only reason why you would need security is if your life is threatened. I could ask Blackstone to show proof but I doubt that will happen from experience. A powerful group not individuals put Xi into power. So to suggest the corrupt think if they knock-off Xi that will make life easier for them is stupidity at its finest. I'm sure in China everyone knows that assassinating Xi isn't going to stop the anti-corruption campaign. That only comes from an outsider who thinks Xi is by the definition a dictator.

If the corrupt were trying to assasinate Xi and were successful they would then be faced with an anti corruption campaign that would be merciless. A Chinese leader unsafe within his own country especially with the level of security a president has. His supporters would be even more resolute to crush the corrupt before they become their next target.

 

[Jeff Head]

Guys the initial article and discusion about Chinese government influence on businesses outside of China we accepted.

Credible reports of people leaving China and actual discussion about that report, since it dealt with event moving away from China, were accepted, along with posts like SamuraiBlues that spoke to the sampling and need for scientific analysis of those reports before a true conclusion could be drawn.

That is the kind of discussion we should have.

Talk about internal crime in China, about internal corruption and efforts to stop it are not geopolitical unless there are credible reports of geopolitical influence in it and China's response to it.

Later today I will remove off topic discussion.

Please get back on topic.

Do not respond to this moderation.

 

[Blackstone]

China and Russia are planning to build floating nuclear plants together. It's an unproven concept that, if works, could help address China's insatiable demand of energy. Their efforts haven't been successful thus far, as the project has experienced delays and cost overruns. However, if China is willing to continue dumping resource and money into the ambitions project, it might someday produce acceptable results. Also, once the technology and manufacturing techniques are sufficiently developed, the pair could build similar plants for other nations.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

China's growing military ambitions have pushed it to develop a built-for-purpose, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier . The country's growing energy demands are now following the same atomic and seaward path.

That's right; China wants to develop floating nuclear power plants -- and it's joining forces with Russia to make it happen. The latter has already laid out ambitious plans for the unproven concept, but has been smacked with setbacks and cost overruns. While China may hold a big enough checkbook to see development through, some may wonder if offshore nuclear holds a place in the future of atomic energy, especially with novel and seemingly more feasible designs being pursued by General Electric Company , Babcock & Wilcox , and even Bill Gates.

Say what?

While floating nuclear power plants seem outrageous enough to most, the prospects of Russia and China finding common ground for a massive energy deal seemed exponentially slim just one year ago. Yet, despite a relatively shaky energy relationship in recent years, the two countries have been cozying up since late spring when a $400 billion natural gas supply deal was finalized. Less than three months later the pair is extending its reach to offshore nuclear power. Apparently, the abundant energy reserves and know-how of Russia and the choking population and air of China were all the common ground needed to forge a deal.

Russia has plans of its own before China gets involved. Nuclear leader Rosatom aims to deploy the world's first floating nuclear power plant in Russia's eastern city of Vilyuchinsk in 2018. The facility will have two nuclear reactors, each about 35 MWe, and sport a planned lifetime of 38 years -- roughly in line with traditional nuclear facilities. However, the floating facility will be built on a massive barge and moored to the shoreline, which will inevitably forfeit some of the major safety advantages of a floating facility in the first place.

In 2019 Rosatom and China will begin developing up to six offshore nuclear facilities. While details have yet to be announced, Russia's original national blueprints called for floating nuclear power plants with up to 650 MWe of capacity. Whether or not reactors combine for that output will depend on the location of each new facility, but the scrapped plans do hint at power plants much larger than what is planned for 2018.

Is this the future of nuclear power?

At a time when General Electric and Hitachi are plowing ahead with novel Generation IV designs that consume nuclear waste , floating nuclear power may seem like quite the head-scratcher. It's expensive and time-consuming enough to develop novel reactor designs onshore, so why take concepts offshore? Similarly, many atomic energy leaders such as Babcock & Wilcox are moving toward smaller, modular nuclear reactors , which would also represent a solution for remote regions and large industrial complexes -- two major markets for floating designs.

However, it's important to note that two factors inflating the high cost of construction for new nuclear power plants are land and insurance. Facilities must be built close to bodies of water, which typically support higher real estate prices and larger populations, therefore making insurance costs exorbitantly high. A nuclear power plant towed offshore and surrounded by inexpensive real estate in the open ocean would not face the same problems. Additionally, in the event of an accident the core could easily be flooded with an endless amount of cold seawater. Decommissioning would also be much easier since reactors could be towed to a centralized location -- restoring the natural environment to normal nearly instantly.

The concept is actually not that new. Similar designs have been developed in the United States by researchers at Westinghouse and MIT , although the latter proposes building floating nuclear power plants far offshore and with reactor cores fully submerged -- both for added safety over the first Rosatom design.

In addition to increased safety, there's substantially more ocean available for nuclear power development than land. That's potentially great news for the planet, which will need an expedited build-out of its atomic energy capacity to make the nearly overnight changes required to stem climate change and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It may seem foreign now, but offshore nuclear may be the norm for energy generation by mid-century.

Foolish bottom line

Russia is obviously attempting to divest from the West (or at least increase its investment in the East) after the growth-restricting sanctions slapped on its economy over its role in the Ukrainian upheaval. However, floating nuclear power plants could provide real and meaningful energy capacity for Chinese cities and industry in a relatively short amount of time. In the longer term, similar concepts may even be deployed in the United States next to novel, next-generation reactor designs by General Electric and Babcock & Wilcox. It may be our only real hope to quickly stabilize the atmosphere's carbon imbalance.

 

[Blackstone]

ISIS Islamist terrorists are in the process of carving up a country for itself, with the stated aim of creating a global Caliphate. China, like the US, is directly affected by ISIS actions, and energy security is an obvious concern. However, the physics of cause-effect have other consequences for China, and two primary ones are upticks of Muslim violence in Xinjiang, aided and abetted by ISIS money, resources, and expertise, and ethnic separatism in Xinjiang and maybe even Tibet. One thing for certain, ISIS success in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan is very bad news for China too.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Beijing may have to make some tough choices when it comes to Kurdish independence.

Given fast-moving events in northern Iraq these past few weeks, the prospect of an independent Kurdistan emerging from the rubble looks increasingly likely. For the Western powers, there are several good reasons to support an independent Kurdistan: the region would likely be a relatively well-governed, stable, pro-Western ally (Amitai Etzioni makes this argument in greater detail elsewhere on The Diplomat). However, for China, which has remained tight-lipped mostly on the sidelines of this conflict so far, an independent Kurdistan could be a step too far. Since Mao and the Communists united China in the 1940s, a mainstay of Chinese communist foreign policy has been an opposition to separatism at all costs. Beijing does this not only due to its own Taiwan situation, but also because of fears that witnessing successful separatist movements elsewhere in the world could galvanize separatism in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia.

Beyond mere philosophical opposition to an independent Kurdistan, China has important economic stakes in the region. Since 2009, when Sinopec acquired Addax Petroleum, which was developing the Taq Taq oil field in Iraq’s Kurdish region, Kurdish Iraq has become a major economic nexus for China. In recent years, Chinese investment in Kurdish oil fields and infrastructure has been rising rapidly, and several hundred Chinese citizens live and work in the region. Following the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi government formalized Kurdistan’s post-1991 high degree of autonomy within the Iraqi state, allowing the region to effectively conduct itself as a state (i.e. set its own foreign policy, manage its own defense, etc). The reason the region isn’t a country yet is because of a convoluted oil-sharing agreement between the government in Baghdad and the Kurds.

One can imagine a situation where Beijing permits the emergence of an independent Kurdistan, but remains rhetorically opposed as it does so. In such a scenario, Beijing would reap the benefits of continued economic cooperation with Iraq’s Kurds, access to northern Iraq’s bountiful oilfields, and still come off as appearing as “hard on separatism.” Given the trajectory of current events in Iraq, including the Western intervention to stop the progress of ISIS, it looks increasingly likely that China will have little say in the final outcome of Kurdish independence. Additionally, while the Kurds are under threat from ISIS, they could end up emerging from this crisis with a major ace up their sleeve: Kirkuk. Kirkuk sits on 10 billion barrels of oil and should it come under autonomous Kurdish control, it could embolden the Kurds to finally declare independence. The status of Kirkuk has been a constant issue between the Iraqi government, which claims it is outside of Kurdistan in the interest of keeping the oil revenue from the fields there, and the Kurds, who claim that it is a part of Kurdish territory.

What makes Kurdistan different from Kosovo and other separatist movements is that China has strong economic stakes there. So far, China has been able to do business with Kurdistan without having to implicitly back the Balkanization of Iraq. Depending on how the current conflict with ISIS plays out, Beijing might find that its national interest is best served by backing an independent Kurdistan.

 

[Blackstone]

China is learning just how hard it is to develop shale gas technology, and the government is wisely (desperately?) resorting to free market actions by inviting private entrepreneurs to the party. But, will the country's poor IP protection policies discourage foreign experts from investing in China's supposed vast shale gas resource?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

China has halved its shale gas output target to 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) by 2020, sources reported, citing Wu Xinxiong, the head of China's National Energy Administration.

The previous targets were more of a vague prospect, Wu said at a meeting on energy development plan for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020).

In 2012, the country announced it expected to pump 60-100 bcm of shale gas by 2020, with 6.5 bcm to come on stream by 2015, according to the 12th Five Year Plan drafted by the NEA.

China has been determined to make the target adjustment as early exploration efforts to unlock the unconventional fuel proved challenging, insiders said. China’s shale gas output only reached some 0.2 bcm in 2013.

The new 30 bcm shale gas target would mostly be contributed by the country's top two state oil firms, PetroChina and Sinopec Corp, experts have said, as they hold the majority of the country's oil and gas blocks, as well as the expertise.

China, believed to hold the world's largest technically recoverable shale resources, is hoping to replicate the shale boom that has transformed the energy landscape of the United States.

About four years of early evaluations and drilling have so far yielded one large find - Fuling field - in the most prospective gas province of southwest Sichuan, but experts say the Fuling success is hard to repeat due to complex geology and high cost of production.


The government's efforts, led by the Ministry of Land and Resources, to open up the shale gas sector to independent players have had small success, as the blocks the ministry has to offer are of poorer quality and would entail hefty exploration costs.

China may continue to focus on tapping easier-to-unlock gas resources, such as tight gas, which the Chinese oil firms are more experienced in, to reach a government-set total gas supply target of up to 420 bcm by 2020.

China's tight gas output may hit 80 bcm by 2020, according to forecasts by the China Academy of Engineering, doubling its estimated output of 40 bcm in 2013.