China Thread

[marcusluvsvols]

Nice. Just thought you would find it interesting man. I have been painting a lot lately and gotta keep the podcasts rolling to keep my mind sharp (somewhat anyway ). Fortunately I had fallen behind on these 2 great pods to nerd out on, Smarter Everyday and Veritasium. I recently discovered Engineering Explained and its good as well. Worthwhile to subscribe to them on youtibe IMO. Great stuff to listen to while driving, doing yard work, or building things.

 

[rekinhavoc]

Breitbart Business Digest: We Must Decouple from China on Rare Earths Now

It is essential to decouple from China on rare earths. The hard work should have started more than a decade ago. It must start today.

www.breitbart.com

"Our hypocrisy factor makes matters even more complicated for Americans because the same people on the political left who impose these strict regulations on American industries are perfectly comfortable with Communist China harvesting and manufacturing these same materials without any concern for the environment whatsoever. It is a meticulous and expensive endeavor to mine rare earths, and there will inevitably be a permitting process to minimize environmental impact, but surely there is a greener way of getting these materials than entrusting rare earths to China.

What’s more, we knew that China was capable of withholding rare earths for leverage because they had done so to Japan in 2010 over a minor political dispute.

We should have been prepared for this.

Perhaps now, we’ll finally have the reset we should have had many years ago.

“At the moment, the only light rare earth mining and processing facility in the Western Hemisphere is located in Mountain Pass, California. It reached a new high in 2024 by producing 45,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides. China produced about 270,000 metric tons of oxide in the same year,” Breitbart’s John Hayward noted in an article today. This stat is deeply concerning. We are not even trying to compete."

 

[EasternVol]

PRC's upset again that RP's landing on their own islands.

China and Philippines clash over disputed Sandy Cay in the Spratly Islands

Beijing urges Manila to ‘stop its infringement’ after Philippine personnel land on reef that has become flashpoint in South China Sea.

www.scmp.com

 

[Franklin Pierce]

Harvard Quietly Trained Members of Chinese ‘Paramilitary Organization’—After the US Sanctioned It Over Uyghur Genocide​

‘Training the XPCC risked complicity in Beijing’s atrocities against Uyghurs and other ethno-religious minorities,’ foreign policy expert says​

Harvard University quietly trained members of a Chinese "paramilitary organization" on two occasions after the U.S. government sanctioned the group for its role in the Uyghur genocide. The Ivy League institution could face "a big legal problem" as a result, according to one foreign policy expert.

In 2019, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health partnered with Beijing’s National Health Security Administration (NHSA) to launch an annual health financing course, training government staffers from across China. Harvard originally noted in a blog post that officials with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) participated in the inaugural training, but that language was scrubbed following a Washington Free Beacon inquiry.


The Trump administration sanctioned the XPCC in 2020 "in connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," describing it as a "paramilitary organization … that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party." But Harvard continued to train its members, once in 2023 and again in 2024. On those occasions, the Ivy League university didn’t include their participation on its webpages.

Harvard Quietly Trained Members of Chinese ‘Paramilitary Organization’—After the US Sanctioned It Over Uyghur Genocide

Harvard University quietly trained members of a Chinese "paramilitary organization" on two occasions after the U.S. government sanctioned the group for its role in the Uyghur genocide. The Ivy League institution could face "a big legal problem" as a result, according to one foreign policy expert.

freebeacon.com