Rugged patch: The ‘dark side’ of the moon as seen from the Chinese lunar rover after landing. — AFP
BEIJING: A Chinese lunar rover landed on the far side of the moon, in a global first that boosts Beijing’s ambitions to become a space superpower.
The Chang’e-4 probe touched down and sent a photo of the so-called “dark side” of the moon to the Queqiao satellite, which will relay communications to controllers on Earth, China’s national space agency said on its website.
Beijing is pouring billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022, and of eventually sending humans to the moon.
The Chang’e-4 lunar probe mission – named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology – launched in December from the southwestern Xichang launch centre.
It is the second Chinese probe to land on the moon, following the Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover mission in 2013.
Unlike the near side of the moon that offers many flat areas to touch down on, the far side is mountainous and rugged. The moon is “tidally locked” to Earth in its rotation so the same side is always facing Earth.
Chang’e-4 is carrying six experiments from China and four from abroad, including low-frequency radio astronomical studies – aiming to take advantage of the lack of interference on the moon’s far side.
The rover will also conduct mineral and radiation tests, the China National Space Administration has said.
“It’s a very good start,” said Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration programme, in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV. “We are now building China into an aerospace power.”
Beijing is planning to send another lunar lander, Chang’e-5, later this year to collect samples and bring them back to Earth.
It is among a slew of ambitious Chinese targets, which include a reusable launcher by 2021, a super-powerful rocket capable of delivering payloads heavier than those Nasa and private rocket firm SpaceX can handle, a moon base, a permanently crewed space station and a Mars rover.
The People’s Liberation Army “looks at space as a new strategic high ground”, said Michael Raska, who studies security and defence issues at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. — AFP
Chang'e-4 made the first-ever soft landing on the far
side of the moon at 10:26 Thursday morning, marking a breakthrough in
human exploration of the universe, according to a statement ...
China's Chang'e-4 lunar probe was launched earlier this
month, and it is expected to make the first-ever soft landing on the far
side of the moon.
During the mission, China has ...
The Huawei stand is seen during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Yves Herman / Reuters
Newspaper headline: A true multinational - A Huawei Technologies Co logo sits on display inside an electronic goods store in Berlin on December 17. Photo: VCG
2018 was the year that started
the U.S.-China tech cold war. 2019 might be the year that splinters the
global technology system into distinct spheres of influence.
Whatever you call it, the U.S.-China science and technology relationship is being violently remade. While a tightly linked technology system benefited the United States and China over the last two decades, there is now widespread concern on both sides of the Pacific that the economic and security risks outweigh the gains. President Xi Jinping has embraced and accelerated policies designed to increase the innovativeness of the Chinese economy and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers. The Trump administration has put Chinese technologies policies front and center as a danger to U.S. economic and national security. The eventual outcome of this contest may be two distinct technology systems, with other countries forced to choose if they are going to plug into American or Chinese technology platforms and standards.
Over the last year, the Trump administration has pressured Beijing to roll back Made in China 2025 and worked to prevent the flow of American technology to China. Congress passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, which expands the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ ability to investigate foreign investment in “critical technologies”, and the Department of Commerce is expected to introduce new export controls on “emerging and foundational technologies.” In November 2018, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a China Initiative to identify priority Chinese trade theft cases and evaluate whether additional legislative and administrative authorities would be required to protect U.S. assets from foreign economic espionage. The Department of Justice indicted two alleged hackers from the Ministry of State Security in December 2018 for stealing secrets from the banking, finance, telecommunications, health care, energy, and automotive industries.
Huawei, the Chinese telecom manufacturer, sits at the center of this new cold war. 5G, the next generation of mobile communication technology, promises greater speed and capacity, and will enable the internet of things, automated vehicles, and other innovations. It will also introduce new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. While U.S. officials have never publicly provided evidence that Huawei equipment has backdoors or been tampered with, they warn that allowing the company to be involved in the build-out of 5G networks raises unmanageable security risks, and they have steadily increased pressure on the company at home and abroad. In January, after scrutiny from U.S. regulators, AT&T walked back from a deal to sell Huawei smartphones in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission proposed making it harder for smaller carriers to use the Universal Service Fund to pay for future purchases of telecom equipment from Huawei. In August, President Trump signed a bill that prohibited any carrier with any substantial amount of installed Chinese telecom equipment from federal government contracts.
Washington has pressured its allies not to use Huawei. In August, Australia effectively banned Huawei from supplying equipment to develop the country’s 5G wireless infrastructure. In November, the New Zealand government rejected a local telecom's proposal to use Huawei equipment in its 5G network upgrade. In December, a major British telecom announced that it would remove Huawei equipment, and UK intelligence officials have flagged security shortfalls in Huawei software. Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, India, and Japan are reportedly considering banning or limiting Huawei. While not directly connected to the cybersecurity concerns of Huawei products, the detention of CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada on charges she misrepresented subsidiary relationships in order to deceive U.S. banks into conducting business with Iranian telecommunications companies in violation of U.S. sanctions has raised the tensions around the company considerably.
The United States is also working with its allies to slow Huawei’s expansion in third markets. Australia objected after the Solomon Islands signed a deal with the company to explore building a link between it and the Australian mainland, and the government eventually stepped in and will pay for the bulk of the construction to keep Huawei out. Efforts by the United States, Japan, and Australia to stop Huawei in its efforts to build a submarine telecommunications cable to Papua New Guinea were not as successful when the country decided that it could not afford to walk away from a project that was more than half finished. As one minister put it, “Whatever views Australia or the U.S. might have in relation to cybersecurity, as far as Huawei or China are concerned, those are for the big boys to worry about.”
The race for 5G is far from over. U.S. companies hold a strong position in patents and technological development. Chinese telecoms are rapidly developing competing technologies, benefit from government support in roll out and implementation of 5G services, and often offer their products at prices twenty to thirty percent cheaper than their competitors. The challenge for Washington is to create an environment that supports innovation at home and a shared approach to 5G security with its friend and allies. The competition is likely to pick up in 2019, and the end result increasingly looks like separate spheres of technology influence.
China-US relations are the most important bilateral ties,
and more Chinese listed the trade friction between them as the most
impressive international event in 2018, according to a latest survey
report on how Chinese people view the world.
After this tough year, China has more adequate policy and
mental preparations, no matter how 2019 turns out. China needs to be
well-prepared for difficulties. No external force can bring China down
and those who try will pay a hard price. This is the confidence that
2018 has brought China.
Data points to slowing exports, companies warn of ongoing disruption
While 2018 was the year trade wars broke out, 2019 will be the year the global economy feels the pain.
Bloomberg’s Global Trade Tracker is softening amid a fading rush to front-load export orders ahead of threatened tariffs. And volumes are tipped to slow further even as the U.S. and China seek to resolve their trade spat, with companies warning of ongoing disruption.
Already there are casualties. GoPro Inc. will move most of its U.S.-bound camera production out of China by next summer, becoming one of the first brand-name electronics makers to take such action, while FedEx Corp. recently slashed its profit forecast and pared international air-freight capacity.
“Any kind of interference with commerce is going to be a tax on the economy,” said Hamid Moghadam, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based Prologis Inc., which owns almost 4,000 logistics facilities globally. “And the world economy is probably going to slow down as a result of it.”
Financial markets have already taken a hit. Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that the trade war news has accounted for a net drop of 6 percent in the S&P 500 this year. China’s stock market has lost $2 trillion in value in 2018 and is languishing in a bear market.
Recent data underscore concerns that trade will be a drag on American growth next year. U.S. consumers are feeling the least optimistic about the future economy in a year, while small business optimism about economic improvement fell to a two-year low and companies expect smaller profit gains in 2019.
Synchronized Slowdown
Global growth is set to decelerate in coming years
https://youtu.be/EaOmPx4sGOw
Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development What Our Economists Say...
For the world economy, the threat of trade war has dissipated, not disappeared. Three risks stand out. First, 90 days of talks between China and the U.S. might end in failure, with higher tariffs following. Second, even without an increase in tariffs, front-loading of exports in 2018 will reduce shipments in 2019. Finally, looking beyond the trade war, early warning signs from PMI surveys to FedEx profit warnings flag a softening of demand.
--Tom Orlik, Bloomberg Economics
The International Monetary Fund forecasts trade volumes will slow to 4 percent in 2019 from 4.2 percent this year and 5.2 percent in 2017. They warn that trade barriers have become more pronounced.
Europe isn’t insulated either. While Germany’s key machinery sector will produce a record 228 billion euros ($260 billion) this year, the trade disputes are among reasons why growth will slow, according to the VDMA industry association. Output will increase about 5 percent in real terms in 2018, the most since 2011, before growth slows to 2 percent next year.
Then there’s the risk of the U.S. placing tariffs on auto imports from Europe and Japan, a move that would damage relations between some of the world’s biggest economies. The arrest of Huawei Technologies Co. Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou illustrates the risk of unexpected developments that can quickly inflame already tense relations.
"‘Trade divergence’ since 2018 and the ‘Tariffs-Limbo’ into 2019 are likely to keep a high degree of uncertainty and continue to have an impact on trade and investment plans," New York-based Citigroup global markets economist Cesar Rojas wrote in a recent note.
The critical question is whether Washington and Beijing can strike a deal by the March 1 deadline. If they succeed, a cloud will be lifted off the world economy. But for now, the threat that tensions will linger is a brake on business expansion plans, and thereby the global economy.
Dippin’ Dots LLC is among those caught in the crossfire. The U.S.-based maker of ice cream and other frozen products spent three years breaking into the Chinese market and opened its first stores in the country this year, only to pay double-digit tariffs on imported dairy products. CEO Scott Fischer said if the U.S.-China talks fail and additional tariffs are added, he’d be forced to rethink strategy, supply chains, and where in the world he expands.
“From an entrepreneur’s perspective, our question is how long will this continue?" Fischer said. “It’s hard to plan business in this environment."
— Bloomberg With assistance by Sveinung Sleire, and Christian Wienberg
China's breakthrough technologies 2018: Year in Review
From the world's longest sea bridge to the homegrown AG600 amphibious aircraft, from the world's fastest bullet train to the energy-saving "artificial sun"... China is emerging as a science and technology powerhouse. Click this video for some of China's breakthrough technologies in 2018.
China’s business people, researchers, scholars say they ‘feel the chill’ in US
Growing China-US tensions have affected technology cooperation as Chinese scientists and researchers in cutting-edged sectors such as big data and artificial intelligence have seen rising obstacles in working with US counterparts this year.
Tensions have intensified after Canada announced the detention of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US.
This move is believed to be part of the US' intentions of dampening Chinese companies and investment, which aroused worries that McCarthyism is back in Washington.
"Some open-sourced platforms developed by American firms, such as in the machine learning algorithm sector, have started to limit access or charge fees for tapping into those platforms," a senior scientist in a Shenzhen-based AI company, who asked for anonymity, told the Global Times on Thursday.
"Some Chinese scientists were denied visas this year when they planned to attend academic meetings in the US, and the US' cautious attitude toward Chinese engineers has become more obvious," he said.
The Chinese academic community has felt the chill in relations since the beginning of this year, and the recent arrest of Meng has escalated conflict between the US and China. Some industry representatives even deemed the arrest as a long-term plan by the US to curb China's rise in high technology.
Meanwhile, the effects of the tension have also expanded to business. Hong Kong political risk consultancy SVA said they noticed a remarkable increase in inquiries from US-based companies about potential problems of traveling to China after Meng's detention for fear of China's retaliation, the Japan-based Nikkei Asian Review reported on Tuesday.
A Hong Kong-based financial technology company also moved two investor meetings from Shanghai to Manila to avoid being affected by Meng's case in consideration of its US co-founder, according to the Nikkei report.
The Trump administration has been restricting visas for the Chinese academic community studying in sensitive research fields to one year since June 11, reflecting its efforts to stop alleged intellectual property theft and hinder China's push for technological supremacy, the New York Times reported in July.
"The consensus of curbing China's influence has been forged inside the US government, and Chinese companies should be well prepared for confrontation in the long term," Sun Qingkai, partner of the major Chinese AI firm CloudWalk, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Sun's remarks are echoed by the tendency of Americans to habitually doubt anything related to China, particularly to Huawei at this moment.
The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, released a report in October 2017 on safe cities. The report, supported by Huawei, speaks highly of a new policing technology implemented in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and the Chinese city of Lijiang but failed to mention that the technology was provided by Huawei.
An opinion piece of The Washington Post published on December 7 listed financial support from Huawei to Brookings and interactions between the writer of the report, Darrell M. West, who is also Brookings vice president, and Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.
It then said that such relationship raises doubts over West's scholarship practices and represents "a worrying example of China's influence on one of America's leading think tanks" without providing any hard evidence.
China's cooperation with other countries was also negatively affected, especially those in high-tech sectors. An example is the Japanese government's recent ban on Huawei and ZTE from official contracts. The move followed an earlier warning from the US about security risks involved in using Chinese-made equipment, Washington Post reported on Monday.
McCarthyism warning
The current US strategy of blaming China for its own domestic economic and social problems reflects the country's anxiety and myopia facing these problems, which would only worsen the situation, Zha Xiaogang, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Zha warned that although it seems impossible for the US to return to the McCarthy-era "red scare," when the anti-communism campaign penetrated all aspects of US society, such risks remain if the situation continues to escalate.
"There is already a dire ripple effect from the US-China trade war, which will hurt the US itself and global technology collaboration," said the Shenzhen-based senior scientist.
However, technology companies have been urging more cooperation instead of confrontation, which would hurt global advancement in this sector.
Major tech giants such as US firms Google and Apple, and China's Huawei have highlighted the importance of global collaboration, which will be the driving force for technology advancement.
Google Vice President Jay Yagnik told the Global Times in an earlier interview in September that technology has been a greater "uniter" globally from a historical view. Instead of thinking about competition, companies should think about it in terms of bringing the world together and taking society to the next level.
It is in everyone's best interest that the US and China reach an agreement on trade and future intellectual property and technology collaboration, Chris Dong, global research director at International Data Corporation, told the Global Times on Thursday.
"A more open market with less government intervention, and with mutual respect and reciprocity, will benefit not only a healthier US and China trade relationship, but also the talent and knowledge exchanges," Dong said.- Global Times
Canada can end Huawei case, but will it?
The global business community has been alarmed by the
executive's arrest in Canada. This has created uncertainty over
international travel among corporate executives. Unconditionally freeing
Meng will allay such apprehensions.
China detains 2 Canadians
China has informed the Canadian government of the
detention of two Canadians who are under investigation on suspicion of
jeopardizing China's national security, saying their legal rights will
be protected.
https://youtu.be/eO4vHvd20EE
US act on Tibet visits interferes in internal affairs: experts
The US is on the verge of passing a law that would deny
the entry of Chinese officials who are involved in restricting
foreigners from visiting Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, with
Chinese experts slamming the move for using US domestic laws to
interfere in China's internal affairs, and called for a tit-for-tat
retaliation if it were implemented
Mr
Ren Zhengfei survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a
telecom giant with US$92 billion in revenue that strikes fear among some
policymakers in the West.PHOTO: EPA-EFE
HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) - At the sprawling Huawei Technologies campus in Shenzhen, the foodcourt's walls are emblazoned with quotes from the company's billionaire founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei.
Then there's the research lab that resembles the White House in Washington. Perhaps the most curious thing, though, are three black swans paddling around a lake.
For Mr Ren, a former People's Liberation Army soldier turned telecom tycoon, the elegant birds are meant as a reminder to avoid complacency and prepare for unexpected crisis. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs at Huawei, whose chief financial officer, Ms Meng Wanzhou, who's also Mr Ren's daughter, is in custody in Canada and faces extradition to the United States on charges of conspiracy to defraud banks and violate sanctions on Iran.
The arrest places Huawei in the cross-hairs of an escalating technology rivalry between China and the US, which views the company, a critical global supplier of mobile network equipment, as a potential national security risk.
Hardliners in President Donald Trump's administration are especially keen to prevent Huawei from supplying wireless carriers as they upgrade to 5G, a next-generation technology expected to accelerate the shift to Internet-connected devices and self-driving cars.
Mr Ren is a legendary figure in the Chinese business world. He survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a telecom giant with US$92 billion (S$126 billion) in revenue that strikes fear among some policymakers in the West. Huawei is the No. 1 smartphone maker in China, and this year eclipsed Apple to become second maker globally, according to research firm IDC.
Though it has a low profile compared with China's Internet giants, Huawei's revenue last year was more than Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and and Baidu Inc combined. About half of its revenue now comes from abroad, led by Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The company's high-speed global expansion has come under fire for years, starting with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US' derailing of an acquisition in 2008. More recently, Australia, New Zealand and the US have blocked or limited the use of Huawei gear.
The arrest and prosecution of Ms Meng in US courts comes amid a far bigger US-China struggle for technology dominance in the decades ahead - and could have huge, and potentially severe, consequences for Huawei. Mr Ren declined an interview request from Bloomberg News.
"It gives Trump a bargaining chip," said Mr George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University's China Centre. "She's the daughter of the CEO, Ren Zhengfei, himself a former PLA officer, and Huawei's alleged dealings with Iran are just the latest in a string of concerns."
An outright ban on buying American technology and components, should it come to that, would deal Huawei a crushing blow. Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed just such a penalty on ZTE Corp, also a Chinese telecom, and threatened its very survival before backing down.
Both Huawei and ZTE are banned from most US government procurement work.
A full-blown, commercial ban in the US would not only apply to hardware components, but also cut off access to the software and patents of US companies, Mr Edison Lee and Mr Timothy Chau, analysts with Jefferies Securities, wrote in a report.
"If Huawei cannot license Android from Google, or Qualcomm's patents in 4G and 5G radio access technology, it will not be able to build smartphones or 4G/5G base stations," they note.
The company's legal troubles in the US may also spill into other markets.
"Government telecommunication infrastructure requirements are essentially locking out the Chinese supplier in critical growth markets," noted Morningstar Research equity analyst Mark Cash in an e-mail. "Additionally, telecom providers without government imposed restrictions may start limiting their usage of Huawei equipment for their 5G network build-outs."
If there's a Darth Vader in the minds of Chinese national security hawks in Washington worried about China's rising tech power, it's Mr Ren. In China, though, he's feted as a national hero, who rose from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of wealth and status in Chinese society.
His grandfather was a master of curing ham in his village in Zhejiang province, which afforded Mr Ren's father the chance to become the village's first university student, according to a 2001 essay by Mr Ren about his upbringing, which was published on a website linked to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
His father, Mr Ren Moxun, was a Communist Youth League member, who later worked as a teacher and an accountant at a military factory, but who kept up his rebel fervour under the Kuomintang by selling revolutionary books.
After moving to rural Guizhou province, he met his wife Cheng Yuanzhao and gave birth to Mr Ren Zhengfei, the oldest of two sons and five daughters.
The family lived on modest teaching salaries. In one of Mr Ren's speeches, he remembered how his mother read him the story of Hercules, but withheld the ending until he came home with a good report card.
Famine Years
During the Great Leap Forward campaign that started in the late 1950s, a famine came to his home town after Communist Party industrialisation and collectivisation policies went off the rails. Mr Ren recalled in his essay how his mother stuffed into his hand each morning a piece of corn pancake while asking about his homework. His good grades gained him entry to the Chongqing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture.
After graduation, he worked in the civil engineering industry until 1974, when he joined the PLA's Engineering Corps as a soldier, and worked on a chemical fibre base in Liaoyang. Huawei says he rose to become deputy director, but did not hold military rank. He does, however, often pepper his speeches with military references.
"Our managers and experts need to act like generals, carefully examining maps and meticulously studying problems," Mr Ren said in a speech posted on a website for Huawei employees.
Mr Ren's Communist Party credentials aren't as deep as his father's. He attended the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party in 1982, and once cited the party's dogma of "a struggle that never ends" when defending the company's tough work hours.
But Mr Ren was a bookworm as a child and was denied acceptance into the Communist Youth League, according to the book Huawei: Leadership, Culture And Connectivity, a book co-authored by David De Cremer, Tian Tao and Wu Chunbo.
He didn't become a Communist Party member in the PLA until late in his military career. However, a 2012 House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report on Huawei asked why a private company had a Communist Party Committee, which has become common among China's Internet giants.
Mr Ren retired from the army in 1983, and joined his first wife to work at a Shenzhen company involved in the city's special economic zone. It was around then that he had to sell off everything to pay a debt related to a business partner, and lost his job at Shenzhen Nanyou Group, as well as his first marriage, according to Ren Zhengfei And Huawei by author Li Hongwen.
Comeback Play
After a period of sleepless nights while living with family members, Mr Ren saw an opportunity. When China began its economic opening under Deng Xiaoping, the telephone penetration rate was lower than the average rate in Africa, or 120th in the world. He founded Huawei with four partners in 1987 with 21,000 yuan in initial working capital, just above the minimum threshold required under Shenzhen rules.
Huawei started out as a trader of telecom equipment, but the company's technicians studied up on switchboards and were soon making their own. Workers put in long hours in Shenzhen's swampy heat with only ceiling fans. Mr Ren kept up morale with subtle gestures, like offering pigtail soup to workers putting in overtime.
The company became known for its "mattress culture" in which workers would pass out on office mattresses from exhaustion. In 2006, a 25-year-old worker Hu Xinyu, who had made a habit of working into the wee hours and then sleeping at the office, died of viral encephalitis. Some Huawei employees subsequently committed suicide.
The deaths triggered a revision of the company policy on overtime, and the creation of a chief health and safety officer role.
It wasn't the only move Mr Ren made to stabilise morale. He used to pay his workers only half their salaries on payday, but eventually decided to convert the other half of employee salaries and bonuses into shares. The company's 2017 report shows that he has a 1.4 per cent stake, giving him a net worth of US$2 billion.
Wolf Culture
Huawei struggled for market share, with foreign companies using so-called "wolf culture" of aggressive salesmanship, which sometimes materialised in the form of Huawei employees flooding sales events with several times more salespeople than competitors.
The company ventured into international markets in the 2000s, with telecom equipment that was more affordable than products of competitors such as Cisco Systems. Huawei later admitted to copying a small portion of router code from Cisco and agreed to remove the tainted code in a settlement.
Mr Ren since stepped up the company's research and development. Of its 180,000 employees, about 80,000 are now involved in R&D, according to the company's 2017 report, and the company has been known to recruit some of China's top talent out of universities.
The company recently refocused on existing markets after the US government called Huawei a national security threat, and cited concerns over its possible control of 5G technologies. Mr Trump signed a Bill banning government use of Chinese tech including Huawei's, and has even contacted allies to get them to avoid using Huawei equipment.
Collectively owned by its employees, the company is known for a culture of discipline, in which no one, Mr Ren included, has their own driver or flies first class on the company dime. Lately, Mr Ren has been warning employees against using fake numbers or profit to enhance performance. The company set up a data verification team in 2014 within the finance department, which was overseen by Mr Ren's daughter.
In a recent speech posted on the Huawei employee network, however, he called for patience with critics, but rejected foreign intervention. "We will never give in or yield to pressure from outside," he said.
That maxim is going to be soon put to the test by the US Department of Justice.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech
giant Huawei, who was granted a $7.5 million bail, is unlikely to be
extradited to the US because she is charged for political reasons,
analysts said.
Professor Dr. Wang
Former Executive of Halliburton
DID HUAWEI VIOLATE IRAN SANCTIONS?
No, they didn’t.
CFO Meng was arrested supposedly for “violating Iran sanction”. This has to be the most grotesque distortion of justice since the US was the country who unilaterally pulled out IN VIOLATION of an agreement they had signed with multiple nations earlier !!! In other words, the guy who broke a solemn promise made, violated the agreement, then made sanction an American domestic law is now force feeding this law arbitrarily on the rest of the world by arresting someone who refuses to violate the agreement ! Is this making any sense to anybody?
Huawei created a subsidiary to do business with Iran, and the CFO is being charged with lying about the relationship between Huawei and the subsidiary.
This seems totally ridiculous to me since when I worked at Halliburton, we did EXACTLY the same thing ! Not only was our CEO never arrested, he was invited to join the government & became Vice President Dick Cheney !!!!!!!
The moral of this story is for normal businesses to be extremely vigilant & recognise the true faces of America & Saudi! One tosses you in jail for breaking twisted laws they make up as they go along & the other goes after you with a bone saw. Both are gangsters, far worse than the Mafia, because the Mafia at least have the decency to commit crimes secretively, while the thugs in American & Saudi governments commit their crimes blatantly in the open, with complete disregard to the laws & sovereignty of another country, bullying their way through, trying to justify their actions by smearing the victims... then run publicity campaigns to sway public opinions while accusing others of crimes against human rights.. ??!!
I am sure there are nice people in USA & in Saudi & i don’t want to generalise, but i have seen time & again in the States that if ever their oversized egos feel threatened, they can turn into totally evil, nefarious subhumans capable of the most despicable deeds.
The arrest of Meng is a case in point.
I went to the States starry eyed with high hopes & expectations, ready to learn a democratic system far superior than ours. Well, after my Ph.D and a few working years, I stand corrected.
Life in the States has taught me to be proud of my people and my country. Grass is definitely NOT greener on the other side. America is very strong in “hypes”, they talk big but deliver little. China does the opposite. American government spends on military, lives in “now”, supports the rich, & works for re-election. The Chinese government spends on infrastructure, works for the people, eradicated poverty & follows 5-30 year plans. These are facts, not propaganda, not campaign promises.
I can’t tell you how happy I am to be home again. Not only is the food much better, more importantly, I can finally stop worrying myself sick... about my elderly mom getting mucked, my attractive wife getting raped...my children getting bullied, drugged or shot in schools...Having to live in constant fear everyday is the ultimate violation of my human rights.
Huawei clash shows deeper US-China battle for global influence as power coming from high-tech sector
Bail hearings proceeded this week after Meng
Wanzhou(pic), the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, was
arrested in Canada on Dec 1 because of alleged violations of US
sanctions against Iran. The case threatens to derail a trade truce
struck the same day between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
HONG KONG: The Trump administration has insisted the arrest of a top Huawei executive has nothing to do with trade talks. In Beijing, it’s just the latest US move to contain China’s rise as a global power.
Bail hearings proceeded this week after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, was arrested in Canada on Dec 1 because of alleged violations of US sanctions against Iran. The case threatens to derail a trade truce struck the same day between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
Even if the two leaders manage to strike a broader deal, the arrest shows that the US-China conflict goes far beyond trade. The world’s biggest economies are now engaged in a battle for global influence that will ultimately determine whether the US remains the globe’s predominant superpower, or China rises as a viable counterweight.
“The sentiment in Washington now is not just a Trumpian mercantilism – the desire to bring back factory jobs to Wisconsin or wherever,” said Nick Bisley, a professor of international relations at La Trobe University in Melbourne who has written books on great-power politics. “It is a desire to significantly cut ties with China because of that larger perception it presents a strategic risk.”
A bipartisan consensus has emerged in Washington that China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation hollowed out US manufacturing and allowed it to grow rich. That increased economic power is now at a point where it risks eroding key American military advantages around the globe.
China insists it plays by the rules, and doesn’t challenge US dominance. Even so, three areas in particular worry American strategic planners: Technology, the dollar and the ability to project military power overseas.
A year ago, the White House identified China’s growing technological prowess as a threat to US economic and military might. American companies have long argued that China forces them to transfer intellectual property and sometimes steals trade secrets – all of which Beijing denies.
In justifying tariffs, Trump’s team has cited Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” strategy to become a global leader in state-of-the-art technologies from aerospace to robotics. So far, China has resisted those demands, arguing that doing so would crush its economic potential.
Huawei in particular epitomises the threat. Earlier this year, Trump blocked Broadcom Inc’s US$117bil hostile takeover bid for Qualcomm Inc over concerns that Huawei would end up dominating the market for computer chips and wireless technologies.
The fear is that wireless carriers may be forced to turn to Huawei or other Chinese companies for 5G technology, potentially giving Beijing access to critical communications. Those concerns have prompted the US to ban Huawei’s products for government procurement, and Australia, Japan and New Zealand have reportedly followed.
China has fought back, with foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang saying this week that Huawei didn’t “force any enterprise to install forced backdoors.”
“The competition is really focused in the areas where future strategic and economic dominance come from,” said Michael Shoebridge, director of the defense and strategy programme at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“The Huawei arrest is right in the middle of this because both America and China see their future global power as coming from the high-tech sector.”
The dominance of the dollar has allowed the US to effectively control the world’s financial system, underpinning its superpower status. Yet Trump’s increased use of sanctions to assert its foreign-policy goals has prompted a wide range of nations – from China to Russia to the European Union – to look for an alternative.
The Trump administration added nearly 1,000 entities and individuals to its sanctions list in its first year, almost 30% more than the Obama administration’s last year in office, according to law firm Gibson Dunn. The complete list now runs to more than 1,200 pages.
Sanctions are a key tool for the US to subdue potential adversaries like North Korea, but they also can affect friends and allies. The EU, which objected to reimposing sanctions on Iran, this month unveiled plans to mitigate the so-called “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar.
During a visit to China last month, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the two nations were looking at ways to boost the use of their currencies through allowing the use of China’s UnionPay credit card in Russia and Russia’s Mir card in China. “No one currency should dominate the market,” he said.
“We are potentially at the beginning of a systemic shift that may take some time to play out,” said Gregory Chin, associate professor at York University in Toronto, and a political economy specialist. “The political will is building and coalescing.” — Bloomberg
Great news and why Washington is harboring so much envy and hatred against China.
After watching the video "National Sovereign Network IPV9 officially unveiled", I realized why cyber security is national security and what enabled the US Government to amass so much wealth from every other country in the world.
Day after day and each time we surf the internet, read our emails, WeChat, QQ, WhatsApp, etc., and use WiFi for whatever reasons including video streaming on smartphones and smartTVs, we have to use the United States Internet protocol IPV4. This is the parent server and the main root server for WWW or the worldwide Internet.
China had signed an agreement with the United States to rent the worldwide Internet for 20 years from the year 2000. Every year, China and the rest of the world have been, and currently still pay rents to the United States monopoly. The annual rents are increasing with the ever rising increase in usage, including 500 billion in 2007 and 1.8 trillion in 2017. By the end of 2020, it is estimated to be even more which is only the rent from China alone! Every other country in the world are also paying rents for Internet usage to the US. How much is that transfer of wealth! How can a country not be rich when it possesses such a humungus monopoly? If the ordinary American people ain’t receiving a share of this fabulous windfall, then their country’s elites like Trump, Clinton, Bush, Wall Street banksters like Goldman Sachs, etc., can perhaps be made to divulge their secret.
Thankfully for China (also quite likely for Third World countries) by 2014, China independently developed the IPV9 parent server and the main root server with independent intellectual property rights. Having achieved this quantum leap, China tried to negotiate with the United States to introduce to the world its new IPV9 protocol. Not surprisingly, it was rejected.
Then in 2015, a team of Chinese delegation of technological experts unveiled and gave a test introduction of IPV9 to members of the UN General Assembly. The team of experts were able to prove that both the security and quality of IPV9 far exceeded that of the United States’s IPV4 and IPV6.
The two nations were then given the opportunity to present their case at the end of which the UN Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of China’s IPV9.
After further discussions, the UN General Assembly handed over management of the worldwide internet to China for 100 years. That is to say, when the current lease with the US expires in 2020, China will assume leadership and management of the worldwide internet with its superlative IPV9 parent server and the main root server.
All the receiving and transmitting stations in China have now been completed. To date, 25 countries have signed lease agreements with China with the rest of the world to follow. In 2019, IPV9 will be put into trial operation. When the lease with the US expires in 2020, the old and outdated American IPV4 will be closed and China's new generation Internet, namely the “Internet of Things IPV9”, will be up and running. If Internet IPV4 and IPV6 made the United States brilliant, then the Internet of Things IPV9 will bring immense glory and blessings to China and the rest of the world for the next hundred years!
Quantum Computing, AI and Blockchain: The Future of IT - Talks at Google
https://youtu.be/MozDSajpLTY
Prof. Shoucheng Zhang discusses three pillars of information technology: quantum computing, AI and blockchain. He presents the fundamentals of crypto-economic science, and answers questions such as: What is the intrinsic value of a medium of exchange? What is the value of consensus and how does it emerge? How can math be used to create distributed self-organizing consensus networks to create a data-marketplace for AI and machine learning?
Prof. Zhang is the JG Jackson and CJ Wood professor of physics at Stanford University. He is a member of the US National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He discovered a new state of matter called topological insulator in which electrons can conduct along the edge without dissipation, enabling a new generation of electronic devices with much lower power consumption. For this ground breaking work he received numerous international awards, including the Buckley Prize, the Dirac Medal and Prize, the Europhysics Prize, the Physics Frontiers Prize and the Benjamin Franklin Medal.
He is also the founding chairman of DHVC venture capital fund, which invests in AI, blockchain, mobile internet, big data, AR/VR, genomics and precision medicine, sharing economy and robotics.
