We Don't Have to Trade With China

Yet we still do.

Pourquoi?:

 

 

Who could have shot this down?

We could have.

But, you know, Canada:

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says Ottawa didn’t tell the public about China’s spy balloon that was spotted over North America because there were “lives at stake.”

“There are lives at stake. There are techniques at stake. This is complex stuff,” Mendicino told the Canada-China House of Commons committee on Feb. 6.

Mendicino was being challenged by Conservative public safety critic Raquel Dancho on why the Canadian public didn’t learn about the balloon from the federal government, raising concerns about transparency.

“Canadians actually found out about the spy balloon that was over Canadian sovereignty for several days not from your government, not from a Canadian news agency, but from an American one. Do you find that acceptable?” Dancho said.

 

Yes, he does. 

We wouldn't want to upset China, would we, Marco?

For the same reason why the RCMP will not shut down illegal Chinese police stations in Canada, deports its inhabitants, seize any material found in these stations, or shut out TikTok.

There there is this:

 

When Justin said he admired China's dictatorship, he meant it.

That's why he won't sanction China's genocide of the Uighurs but will let them in to vote Liberal.

Never forget, Uighurs.

**

Chinese state-owned television aired footage of a high-altitude balloon dropping hypersonic weapons in 2018.

The stunning footage displays a high-altitude balloon, not dissimilar from the one that traversed over the United States last week, carrying three hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) into high altitude and dropping them for testing.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on the weapons test in September 2018. The footage has since been deleted from Chinese media, but photographs and short clips can still be found online.

In one post from 2018, a Twitter user shared footage from Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, which shows the balloon lifting the three HGVs from the ground.

** 

Don't crawl into bed with the devil:

Built near a spewing volcano, it was the biggest infrastructure project ever in this country, a concrete colossus bankrolled by Chinese cash and so important to Beijing that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, spoke at the 2016 inauguration.

Today, thousands of cracks have emerged in the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, government engineers said, raising concerns that Ecuador’s biggest source of power could break down. At the same time, the Coca River’s mountainous slopes are eroding, threatening to damage the dam. 

“We could lose everything,” said Fabricio Yépez, an engineer at the University of San Francisco in Quito who has closely tracked the project’s problems. “And we don’t know if it could be tomorrow or in six months.” 

It is one of many Chinese-financed projects around the world plagued with construction flaws.

During the past decade, China handed out a trillion dollars in international loans as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, intended to develop economic trade and expand China’s influence across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Those loans made Beijing the largest government lender to the developing world by far, with its loans totaling nearly as much as those of all other governments combined, according to the World Bank.

Yet China’s lending practices have been criticized by foreign leaders, economists and others, who say the program has contributed to debt crises in places like Sri Lanka and Zambia, and that many countries have limited ways to repay the loans. Some projects have also been called mismatches for a country’s infrastructure needs or damaging to the environment.

Now, low-quality construction on some of the projects risks crippling key infrastructure and saddling nations with even more costs for years to come as they try to remedy problems.

“We are suffering today because of the bad quality of equipment and parts” in Chinese-built projects, said René Ortiz, Ecuador’s former energy minister and ex-secretary general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

**

A vocal critic of China and leader of the most populous province in the Solomon Islands has been removed from office after a no-confidence vote by the provincial legislature on Tuesday, Australian state broadcaster ABC reported.

Daniel Suidani, premier of the South Pacific nation's Malaita province, is a longtime critic of the country's deepening relations with China, which culminated in a security pact signed last April. He has banned Chinese companies from the province and accepted development aid from the United States.

Malaita's provincial assembly ousted Suidani in a unanimous vote on Tuesday, said the ABC. Suidani and his supporters boycotted the vote, ABC said, adding he had not yet spoken to the media about the results.

Scuffles broke out after the vote. Police fired tear gas into a crowd of more than 100 Suidani supporters after the scuffle, in which stones were thrown at police, broke out, said eyewitness Samie Waikori, a reporter with Island Sun News. Waikori said the protesters later dispersed.

 **

Federal agents have dismantled an alleged Chinese-Australian money laundering organisation that moved an estimated $10 billion offshore while amassing a blue-chip property portfolio comprising Sydney mansions, a luxury city building and hundreds of acres of land near Sydney’s second airport.

On Wednesday, Australian Federal Police officers seized properties and luxury assets worth at least $150 million and arrested and charged nine suspects, including two alleged Chinese-Australian gangsters in Sydney with a combined personal fortune estimated at more than $1 billion.

 **

The US is beginning to detain imports of aluminum products suspected of being made through forced labor, particularly from China’s Xinjiang region, according to one of the world’s biggest shipping firms.

**

A man who worked in a Chinese factory assembling the iPhone 14 witnessed a colleague getting his pay reduced for spending too long drinking water, a report said.

Nicknamed Hunter, a 34-year-old who worked at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China, shared with nonprofit tech publication Rest of World insights into what it is like to work in a windowless workshop assembling iPhones.

Hunter told Rest of World he had worked in a number of roles at the plant over more than a decade, and that his last assignment included working on the iPhone 14 Pro assembly line last year. He worked 10-hours shifts and had to assemble 600 iPhones every day.

His every move inside the factory was monitored by the "xianzhang" – or line leaders – who frequently reprimanded people, he said. Hunter told Rest of World he had a strict hour-long lunch break and if he had to go to the toilets, he would need to make up for the lost time.

In the facility distinguishing between day and night was difficult, Hunter said.

He witnessed a colleague get a pay cut for taking too long to drink water, while another was shouted at for completing only 40 tasks in an hour when others had managed 60.

**

After Marge Simpson decides she wants to buy a “Pedalon” exercise bike, she is delighted to learn that it will let her travel the world from the comfort of a gym in Springfield. 

On one such ride, an instructor called Jesse invites her to tour the Great Wall of China. “Behold the wonders of China,” he tells Homer’s long-suffering wife. “Bitcoin mines, forced labour camps where children make smartphones.” Though the scene might seem innocuous enough, Disney Plus, which screens The Simpsons, is taking no chances.

The episode, One Angry Lisa, has been withdrawn in Hong Kong, prompting concerns over self-censorship under Beijing’s national security laws, which effectively criminalise opposition.