Tag: China
Sony loses millions after rejecting China’s demand to remove Statue of Liberty from new ‘Spider-Man’ film
“In China, films are reviewed by the China Film Administration under the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinese authorities initially wanted Sony and Marvel Studios to take out the American landmark, which is prominently featured during the film’s third act, according to multiple sources.
Chinese regulators reportedly modified the original request to remove the action-packed sequence, instead asking for the removal of certain shots from the sequence that they deemed too “patriotic,” such as the scenes where Tom Holland’s Spider-Man stands on the Statue of Liberty’s crown. The regulators also suggested dimming the parts when the statue is shown to make it less noticeable.
Sony ultimately rejected the request, resulting in Chinese authorities preventing the latest Spider-Man film from being released in the biggest film market in the world. The film lost a potential $170 million-$340 million in sales from China, according to reports.”
Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Stalin, Hitler, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine | Lex Fridman Podcast
How China’s zero-Covid policy is failing Shanghai
“Shanghai, China’s bustling cosmopolis of 26 million has been under lockdown since late March under the nation’s strict “dynamic zero-Covid” protocols, a system so poorly managed that residents are frequently unable to access basic necessities like food, medications, and medical care, prompting fairly widespread, spontaneous protests both online and in real life.
The government has touted the zero-Covid strategy, the government’s system of containment using intensive testing and tracing, combined with partial or complete lockdowns when a case is detected, has kept case counts and deaths low over the past two years. But the reports coming out of Shanghai suggest that the local government was unprepared for an outbreak in the country’s economic center and cast doubt on the feasibility of zero Covid at this point in the pandemic. That’s translated into serious struggles for residents, including hours-long ambulance wait times, dwindling savings, and inadequate or rotten food supplies, among others. Although the central government is reportedly stepping up efforts to get supplies to the city, the overall policy is driving many residents to criticize the government’s policy — and Shanghai’s implementation of it — despite serious potential risks to their safety and freedom by doing so.”
…
“The Shanghai outbreak is thus far China’s most serious since the beginning of the pandemic; a staggering 200,000 cases have been reported since the outbreak started in March, though that’s likely under-reported, according to the New York Times. What started as a patchwork of temporary lockdowns to limit the spread of disease quickly turned into an interminable, city-wide shutdown with people only allowed out to take PCR tests, as a New York magazine piece explained earlier this week. Shanghai’s lockdown, two years into the pandemic, is rivaled only by those in Wuhan in 2020 and Xi’an at the end of last year in terms of strictness.
Shanghai residents’ outrage — which they’ve expressed by singing and chanting from their balconies and co-opting anti-American hashtags used by government officials to criticize the US — is borne from the fact that the government isn’t providing the stability it promises in exchange for personal freedoms, according to Rui Zhong, program associate at the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. “I think what makes people angry in Shanghai, and what made people angry in Xi’an is, Covid has been a problem for years,” she told Vox. “I think they’ve been really stunned at the degree to which their local officials haven’t necessarily prepared, including non-supply-chain issues,” like hospital admissions.”
…
“Shanghai’s local government enjoys a degree of relative autonomy in the context of President Xi Jinping’s China; it’s technically directly under the control of the central government, as a province-level city, but enjoys special status as the country’s financial hub and a showpiece for the rest of the world. Until March, the local government had handled the pandemic well, with no major outbreaks. But the rapid onset of the omicron variant and the corresponding draconian government measures are pushing some citizens to the brink.
“I have no more money … What am I to do? I don’t care anymore,” one man shouts to his whole building in a viral video on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. “Just let the Communist Party take me.””
The Chinese Threat No One Is Talking About — And How to Counter It
“a steady stream of official U.S. estimates suggests that within a decade, China will possess enough warships to dominate the Indian Ocean region if it chooses. The Office of Naval Intelligence estimated China would build 67 new major surface combatants and 12 new nuclear-powered submarines by 2030. The Pentagon’s most recent report on China’s military power raised those projections even further. Given that China already has formidable capabilities for defending itself in the east — and the heightened range and survivability of these new ships — it seems China plans to operate them far from its shores. The Pentagon also observes that China is developing the capabilities to conduct “offensive operations” deep in the Indian Ocean, presumably including naval blockades, bombardment of enemy targets, or even a combination assault by land and sea.”
…
“What exactly does China want in the Indian Ocean? In the near term, it wants to protect its Middle East oil supplies, the hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrant laborers working abroad and its overseas investments. Looking ahead, however, China has laid the groundwork to bring considerable military might to the Indian Ocean if it needs to.
With an unchecked fleet able to exercise control in the Indian Ocean — even if for legitimate purposes to protect trade and investments — China could intimidate states militarily and economically, just as it has done in the South China Sea for years, and more recently with Bangladesh, the Maldives and Indonesia. It could engage in unsafe conduct close to ships and planes, harass commercial or naval vessels, and enter other countries’ waters and airspace. Vulnerability to such coercion could compel smaller countries to side with China on issues like freedom of navigation and overflight, territorial disputes, trade negotiations, military agreements with the U.S. or its partners, human rights or relations with Taiwan.
In a military conflict, a Chinese Indian Ocean fleet would be even more threatening. It could disrupt trade flows in the Indian Ocean for the U.S. or its allies or impede American military access. China could also attack U.S. or allied forces swinging from the Mediterranean, or Middle East, or Diego Garcia, to the Pacific.
Part of the reason the Indian Ocean hasn’t received as much attention as it should is that many U.S. defense experts assume or hope they can rely on India to automatically be a “counterweight” to China in this region. For over two decades, Washington has been enamored with the idea that India, at one point exceeding 8 percent economic growth annually, would become a military powerhouse that could “frustrate China’s hegemonic ambitions.” The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy released in February counts on India to be “a net security provider,” just as previous administrations officially banked on the Indian Navy taking a “leading role in maintaining Indian Ocean security.” Some former Trump administration officials even want to formalize a Japan-style alliance.
But India’s ability to play this role is in serious doubt.”
Why the West’s China Challenge Just Got a Lot Harder
“It may seem that NATO is newly relevant as a deterrent to Russia — its original purpose — but its response cannot be simply be to return to its Cold War posture. The world has moved on even if Russia has not. Despite the war in Ukraine, China is still America’s — and thus NATO’s — most pressing problem.
The reasons are fairly clear. China has four times the population of the United States, its economy will soon exceed that of the United States and its military is larger than the US military and growing more technologically capable by the day. It is more integrated into the global economy than the Soviet Union or Russia ever has been, placing itself at the heart of many critical supply chains that the United States and its allies depend upon. It has defined itself in cultural and ideological opposition to the United States and to the idea of democracy, using its new wealth to spread the techniques of authoritarian control to every continent on Earth.
These trends continue as before, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made managing them even more difficult. Yet another disastrous result of this war will be the hardening of the Russia-China partnership that it augurs. A sanctioned Russia will rely ever more heavily on Chinese support, including on Chinese purchases of Russian energy and access to Chinese payment systems. As damaging as Western sanctions will be to Russia, isolating Russia is not really possible if China continues to provide this outlet.
But weakening the Russia-China partnership is at best a very long-term prospect. That means that, to effectively counter Russia, NATO will now need to accept that Russia and China have become part of the same problem. It will need use its newfound unity to “globalize” the alliance to include Asian democracies, coordinating policy and even force dispositions across both regions. It will also require a difficult conversation within the U.S. government and with allies about how to prioritize efforts between what may become the Pacific and European theaters of a global cold war. Those challenges will tax the resources of the US, NATO and America’s Pacific allies more than the Soviet Union ever did.”
Bringing up a child costlier in China than in U.S., Japan – research
https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinas-child-rearing-costs-far-052020959.html
China’s Intervention Sends Stocks Soaring. Powell’s Unlikely to Make That Big a Splash.
“China promised to keep its stock markets stable and implement measures to boost its economy, according to a state-run media report of a meeting of the country’s financial stability and development committee. The committee also stressed that regulators should “actively introduce market-friendly policies.
Significantly for U.S. investors, the committee said China continues to support companies’ listing of shares overseas and has maintained “good communications” with U.S. regulators, with a cooperation plan in the works. That’s quite the development – just last week the Securities and Exchange Commission named five Chinese companies that could face delisting.
So what’s changed? The pressure on Chinese stocks had ramped up in the past week as regulatory concerns returned and surging Covid cases led Beijing to lock down millions of people. The country’s links to Russia also spooked investors as U.S. officials said the Russian government has asked China for military aid. If it did help Russia, sanctions would surely follow.”
Trump’s Trade Deal With China Was an Abject Failure, Just Like the Trade War
“The so-called “phase one” trade deal inked in December 2019 by former President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping might have put an end to the spiraling trade war between the two countries, but the agreement did not result in China buying more American goods, as both leaders promised it would. In fact, during the two years covered by the deal, China imported fewer American goods than before the trade war began—meaning that the deal did not even succeed at patching up the damage caused by Trump’s bellicose trade policies.”
…
“We now know that the promised benefits did not materialize. But the costs certainly keep adding up. Auto manufacturers, for example, shifted supply chains to avoid the cost of tariffs and economic uncertainty created by the trade war—by relocating some American manufacturing jobs to China, which has become a large and growing market for auto sales. BMW, for example, shifted much of the production of its X3 sport-utility vehicle from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to China after reporting that tariffs had cut the company’s American profits by about $338 million in 2018. The higher costs imposed by the trade war caused Tesla to announce that it was “accelerating construction” of a new plant in Shanghai.
Overall, Bown estimates, exports to China would have been $26 billion higher in 2020 and $39 billion higher in 2021 if not for the impact of the trade war and subsequent trade deal. That doesn’t account for other losses sustained during the trade war, like the increased farm subsidies paid for by American taxpayers and the run-of-the-mill cost increases created by tariffs.
Aside from some positive developments with regard to China’s treatment of intellectual property and financial services, probably the only good thing about Trump’s “phase one” trade deal is that it has now expired.
“President Trump’s trade war and phase one agreement did little to change China’s economic policymaking,” Bown concludes. “Beijing seems intent on becoming more state-centered and less market oriented.””
China Brings Out the Hypocrisy in Corporate Social Justice Warriors
“Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”
Good for him. China crushed freedom in Hong Kong.
But China didn’t like hearing an NBA executive say that. Chinese TV stopped broadcasting Rockets games. The NBA then apparently told its players and front offices to shut up. Morey deleted his tweet and instead tweeted that he “did not intend to cause any offense.”
The NBA itself also apologized to China, saying that they were “disappointed” by Morey’s “inappropriate” tweet. Lebron James called Morey “misinformed.” James Harden said, “We love China.”
“China is able to strong-arm these companies…into actually acquiescing with its ideology,” complains Chen.
That ideology is often grotesque. The U.S. and other countries accuse China of committing genocide against a mostly Muslim minority group, the Uyghurs.
China imprisons them in “reeducation camps.” Leaked satellite footage shows blindfolded men, with their hands tied behind their backs, in what looks like a concentration camp.
“They are forced into slave labor,” says Chen.
A few Uyghurs who escaped say they were tortured.
But although the NBA runs ads that say, “Speak for the people who may not be able to be heard,” it clearly does not want its players, coaches, or executives to say anything about Uyghur genocide.”
…
“Hollywood doesn’t care either. The movie Mulan was filmed in the same region where Uyghurs are tortured. In the credits, Disney gave “special thanks” to government departments in Xinjiang, where the abuse occurs.
Fast and Furious 9 actor John Cena, promoting his movie to people in Taiwan, said, “Taiwan is the first country that can watch F9.”
What was wrong with that?
“He had the audacity to allude to the fact that Taiwan was a country,” says Chen, “rather than a territory owned by China.”
I don’t know what China said to Cena or Universal Pictures, but soon Cena was on Chinese social media, groveling to China, saying “sorry” over and over. “I have made a mistake….I really love and respect the Chinese people….I made a mistake,” he pleaded.
Chen calls that pathetic. “I think the Chinese government actually takes a lot of pleasure knowing that they can actually strong-arm individuals and companies into capitulation to its own political ideology.””