Podcasts about hambantota

Hallo ihr Lieben! Herzlich Willkommen aus Sri Lanka – genauer gesagt aus Hambantota! Diese Region ist für ihre Safaris bekannt und natürlich habe ich mich intensiv über alle Möglichkeiten informiert und mich bewusst gegen die bekannten Touren entschieden, da sie entweder total überlaufen sein sollen oder die Tiere nicht gut behandeln – beides ein absolutes No-Go für mich. Stattdessen sind wir in den unbekanntesten Nationalpark gefahren, und das war die beste Entscheidung überhaupt! Wir hatten den ganzen Park für uns allein, konnten den Tieren ganz nah sein und haben eine unvergessliche Zeit erlebt. Hört selbst, wem wir alles begegnet sind und warum Daniel beinahe mit Krokodilen gebadet hätte. Nach der Safari haben wir ein paar Stunden Familienzeit in einem traumhaften Resort verbracht – mit Wasserrutschen, leckerem Essen und einem atemberaubenden Sonnenuntergang. Ein Tag, den wir wohl nicht so schnell vergessen werden. Viel Spaß bei der Folge. *** WERBUNG: Alle Must-Have Kreuzfahrt Produkte findet ihr hier in Oksana's ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon Storefront⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Milari Shop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: *** Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Oksana Kolenitchenko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Daniel Kolenitchenko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-g20-and-its-fallout-india-the-swing-state-imec-and-trudeaus-tantrums-13162212.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialA fortnight after the end of the G20 Summit in New Delhi, it's worth revisiting what really materialized, and what India can expect out of all the hard work that went into it.First, the positives. The flawless execution of the Summit is something the Indian leadership and  officials deserve to be congratulated on. There were all sorts of things that could have gone wrong – including security worries – but the whole thing was done with clockwork precision. In a way, this is unsurprising: Indians revel in complexity, and surely running this event, despite the VVIP foreigners, was easier than pulling off the Kumbha Mela. Many pundits had written off the Summit, citing the absence of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, and predicting that it would be next to impossible for there to be a consensus based on which a common declaration could be accepted by all. In the event, the 83-paragraph Leaders' Declaration, wide-ranging and comprehensive, was seen as a diplomatic triumph, with everybody giving in a little on their positions in the interest of the G20 community.The fact that NATO members had to swallow a watered-down condemnation of the Ukraine war, without actually naming Russia, has been framed as a ‘climbdown by the West for the sake of G20 unity' by the Financial Times. That's pretty good spin, but it was remarkable that they didn't seem to be bothered by such ‘G20 unity' at the Bali Summit, 2022. There are more plausible reasons for this ‘climbdown'. One is that the Ukraine war is not going according to plan, which anticipated Russia being beaten by now, both militarily and financially. On the contrary, the EU continues to be Russia's biggest customer, by far. So the sanctions have failed, and the EU is probably fed up with energy shortages. Plus, the Ukrainians don't seem to be making much progress with the much-hyped ‘counteroffensive'. NATO could well be on the point of throwing Zelenskyy under the bus any day now. The West appears to be backpedaling furiously, and they have made such miscalculations before: 1971, Bangladesh; 1975, Vietnam, and so on. Ironically, POTUS Biden went to Vietnam after the G20 Summit, and announced billions of dollars worth of deals in semiconductors and AI, among other things. What a U-turn from the 1970s! Kissinger would be turning over in his grave, except he's still alive.A more optimistic reading of the G20 outcome could well be that India has finally become a swing state. While it is precarious being a swing state, it also has benefits: you get courted by both sides, and you can play them off against each other. India's persistent and aggressive fence-sitting, combined with its robust economic performance, is now making others pay a little more attention to India's needs. But it also invites hostility.There was evidence of this new reality, in a back-handed sort of way, in Canadian PM Justin Trudeau's hissy-fit against India accusing it of a hit-job on a Khalistani terrorist. Trudeau has his own reasons (hurt amour-propre, perhaps), but the Washington Post reported that nobody else in the Anglosphere agreed to support him, with Biden going to great lengths “to avoid antagonizing India and court the Asian power as a strategic counterweight to China”. Even the usually hostile BBC said, “On the grand geopolitical chess board, India is now a key player”. Deep State is not amused. Nor are the rest of the Five Eyes.India's transition from ‘non-aligned' to ‘multi-aligned' has come at the right time. I do hope India does not get swayed by its own rhetoric of being the ‘champion of the Global South' and go back to the Nehru-era ‘king of the banana republics' self-image. Pretending to be the leader of the Third World, and all the NAM exertions got India nothing at all. In 1961, the entire Third World voted 90-1 against India's decolonization of Goa, which was startling. However, things are a little different now that India is looking out for its own interests first and foremost. In that context, the formal induction of the African Union into the G20 is a win for India, especially in light of the stacking of BRICS+ with friends of China. Looking at it from India's point of view, the African Union means especially East Africa, which is part of the Indian Ocean Rim, India's backyard. Africa will be the fastest-growing area, in population and GDP, over the next few decades, and the giant continent's people face problems quite similar to those Indians face. East Africa has millennia-old trade links with India. For instance, a 1500 year old Malabar-built uru, a wooden ship made of teak, was found buried, well preserved in the sands near Alexandria, Egypt, indicating ancient commerce.It is in the context that the new Spice Route, or the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), is also a good initiative. For one, it is fairly direct competition to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has been dogged by accusations that it is ‘debt-trap diplomacy' that ends up with valuable assets extorted from others, as in Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, now forced into a 99-year lease agreement as the debt payments became onerous. Having said that, and despite the fact that a growing India will have more trade with Europe as in the millennia past, it is not entirely clear that the IMEC will take off. On the one hand, there is the history of prized Indian goods like spices, gold, gems, etc. The Roman Pliny the Younger complained that their treasury was being emptied because of the demand for spices and in satisfying “the vanity of [our] women” with cosmetics etc. from India. India of the future may not become, or may not be allowed to become, a workshop of the world at the scale of China. After all, China will not go off into that good night without raging, raging. An article by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times pointed out that ‘peak China' may be some time off. I usually disagree with the man, but here I agree: China's obituaries are a bit premature. It will also double down on a new and improved BRI.Going back to IMEC, there are also practical difficulties even if the political will and funding can be arranged: the port of Haifa, Israel, which would be a logical choice for it, has a major terminal where China is the concessionaire, and so does the Greek Port of Piraeus. Interestingly enough, Adani Ports has control over the older terminal at Haifa, and is reported to be seeking a terminal at Piraeus as well. How curious that Soros keeps attacking Adani again and again: perhaps he is acting on China's behalf as well?Chances are that IMEC will remain a pipe-dream, but there is more of a chance that the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) that India has excelled in may be appealing to many other nations. According to the World Bank, India only took 6 years to achieve development that would normally take 47 years, because of the efficiency improvements due to digitization. This is something the Global South can use. There is also a negative from the G20. The upsurge in infiltration and the huge standoff against terrorists in Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir, may well be a Chinese signal that they can ratchet up mischief any time, and that the G20 success should not go to India's head. Given that there is a lot of alleged infiltration into and coziness by the Chinese into the Canadian establishment, Trudeau's tantrums may also be inspired by China: the other shoe dropping. All in all, India gets a solid A- for its G20 efforts; the outcomes, alas, may only be a B-.1300 words, 20 Sept 2023  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

Troisième épisode de notre série « nouvelles routes de la soie, dix ans après » au Sri Lanka et plus précisément au sud de l'île au 22 millions d'habitants, l'ancien fief du président déchu Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Coup de projecteur sur le port d'Hambantota, construit avant le lancement des « nouvelles routes de la soie » et devenu au fil du temps le symbole des dérives mégalomaniaques des Rajapakse, qui ont plongé le pays dans le chaos et l'une des pires crises économiques et politiques de son histoire. Pour rejoindre la pointe Sud de l'île depuis la capitale Colombo, il ne faut désormais plus que 3h30. Flambant neuve, inaugurée en 2015, l'extension de l'autoroute du Sud financée et construite par les Chinois est tout un symbole. La première autoroute du pays, qui relie aujourd'hui les ports de Colombo et d'Hambantota et les deux aéroports internationaux de Colombo et de Mattala, fait partie des nombreux projets d'infrastructures développés à coup de milliards de dollars de crédit, et aujourd'hui sous le label des « nouvelles routes de la soie ».Le cas du port en eau profonde d'Hambantota est encore plus emblématique. Pour rembourser une partie de ses dettes, le Sri Lanka a dû accorder une concession de 99 ans sur les activités commerciales du port à une entreprise publique chinoise (CMPH). Ces projets sont qualifiés « d'éléphant blanc », une expression tirée d'une légende thaïe pour désigner tous ces investissements démesurés qui ont contribué à ruiner le pays. Et dans le cas d'Hambantota, à exacerber le conflit entre l'homme et la faune sauvage.Un écosystème chambouléDepuis la construction du port d'Hambantota, la coexistence ancestrale entre les humains et les éléphants n'est plus du tout pacifique. Début juillet, en seulement trois jours, quatre villageois ont perdu la vie suite à des attaques d'éléphants sauvages. Ces comportements hostiles s'expliquent par la déforestation et la dégradation de l'habitat naturel des pachydermes, qui les obligent à rechercher des ressources vitales en dehors des forêts et des zones protégées. A Hambantota, les villageois rapportent la mort tragique de 17 personnes en un peu plus d'un mois. Au niveau national et selon les données officielles, 2022 a connu une mortalité record avec 145 décès d'humains et 433 décès d'éléphantsA Gonnoruwa, un village à une dizaine de kilomètres au nord du port, Nanini vient d'apprendre la mort de son fils, piétiné par un pachyderme alors qu'il se rendait à son travail. Le jeune homme avait emprunté comme chaque matin un raccourci, créé par l'entreprise qui a construit l'autoroute pour acheminer son matériel et qui traverse une réserve forestière. L'aire censée être une zone protégée est gérée par le bureau de la faune sauvage. Les villageois dénoncent une absence totale de signalisation ou de clôtures électriques pour protéger les humains. Sur ces terres à majorité cinghalaise et bouddhiste et dont près de la moitié des habitants vit en dessous du seuil de pauvreté, la vie ne tient qu'à un fil.Roshan Rajika peut en témoigner. Ce passionné d'environnement reçoit chaque jour des appels de villageois paniqués pour lui signaler la présence d'éléphants dans leurs rizières ou à proximité de leur maison. Une nuit, tous les rouleaux électriques des petits commerces dans un des villages ont été saccagés. Un éléphant affamé était passé par là.Le quadragénaire a filmé des centaines de vidéo de ces créatures majestueuses. Il se souvient du temps où la zone de Karagan Lewaya abritait une riche biodiversité. Autrefois visité par des oiseaux migrateurs et des troupeaux d'éléphants, l'espace est désormais occupé par le complexe portuaire et un gigantesque terrain qui sera transformé à terme en zone industrielle. Roshan en veut beaucoup aux autorités. « Je n'ai rien contre le développement, mais il n'y a eu aucune étude de faisabilité, de protection de la nature ou de stratégie pour éviter le conflit actuel homme-faune. Tous ces projets ont été initiés par notre gouvernement. Quand la construction du port a débuté, les autorités ont bâti des villages pour reloger les fermiers sans tenir compte des éléphants. La construction du port et des nombreux villages a grignoté leur habitat naturel et ce avec la bénédiction des politiciens locaux. »Des éléphants blancsC'est aussi l'avis de Saman Sudarashana, le secrétaire de l'association des fermiers de la région, qui dénonce les incohérences du gouvernement. « Notre district compte environ 450 éléphants. Le gouvernement a reconnu la région comme une zone de conservation de l'habitat des éléphants tout en lançant des projets de développement comme l'aéroport de Mattala, l'autoroute, un stade de cricket ou encore un gigantesque centre de conférence. Tout cela a été construit au beau milieu des aires protégées poussant les éléphants à venir se nourrir sur les terres agricoles. » Le secrétaire de l'association souligne le ras-le-bol de la population locale. « Personne ne se soucie de notre bien-être ni de celui des animaux. À cause de tous ces projets mal planifiés, des gens perdent leur vie, des maisons sont saccagées. Et les récoltes, cultivées au prix de nombreux sacrifices, sont détruites. Ce n'est pas la faute des éléphants, ce sont les élus qui ont mal géré la situation. Malgré les fréquentes manifestations et plusieurs grèves de la faim, les fermiers savent qu'ils ne peuvent compter que sur eux-mêmes. Dans cette zone sèche qui souffre de problèmes chroniques d'approvisionnement en eau potable, l'un des enjeux majeurs sera de trouver des financements pour construire un réservoir d'eau pour les éléphants, seule solution viable et durable, estime Saman Sudarashana.Ces éléphants blancs ont non seulement ruiné le pays mais aussi bouleversé la vie de centaines de familles, expropriées de leurs terres et relocalisées à des kilomètres plus au nord en échange de maigres compensations. Piyadasa 75 ans tient une petite épicerie en bord de route. C'est aussi le domicile de sa fille et de ses deux petits enfants. Le septuagénaire vivait à l'emplacement du port et cultivait des noix de cajou bio, destinées à l'export. La production lui permettait de vivre très correctement.  « Avant 2007, nous pouvions subvenir à nos besoins, vivre de notre travail. J'avais près de six hectares de terres cultivables, se souvient-il nostalgique. Aujourd'hui j'ai tout perdu. Je ne gagne que 10% de ce que je gagnais avant. Toute la région s'est transformée en zone semi-urbaine. Près de 180 familles dont une trentaine qui étaient mes voisins sur le site du port ont été relocalisées dans le village. Et je n'ai eu que 3 200 euros de compensation. »Impact économiqueInterrogé sur ce qu'il pense de la famille Rajapaksa, dont Hambantota est le fief ancestral, l'épicier répond sans ambages. « Tous les politiques sont pareils. Vous savez, j'ai des liens familiaux avec les Rajapaksa du côté paternel. Mon père m'a toujours dissuadé de voter pour eux. Il me disait : "les Rajapaksa sont tous des escrocs !" Moi, je suis pour Sajith Premadasa, le chef de l'opposition. Je ne soutiens pas non plus l'actuel président Ranil Wickremesinghe car il a des liens de parenté avec la femme de Mahinda Rajapaksa. Ils sont tous corrompus et se protègent les uns les autres. »Le district d'Hambantota compte environ 600 000 habitants, dont la majorité vit de l'agriculture et de la pêche. Le port de pêche avec son marché se situe à environ 3 km à vol d'oiseau du port international d'Hambantota.Le regard fatigué, vêtu d'un sarong et d'une chemise à carreaux, Jaufer Moulana, 57 ans, pêche depuis l'âge de 12 ans. Sa vie aussi a été chamboulée depuis la construction du port en eau profonde, qui se trouve sur la route stratégique des cargos entre l'Europe et l'Extrême-Orient.« Les cargos nous créent pas mal de problèmes. Avant, on pêchait à l'emplacement du port et on attrapait beaucoup de poissons. Aujourd'hui, la Marine nous interdit de nous y attarder à cause du passage des navires. Dans l'idéal, on aimerait pouvoir y aller le soir et rester jusqu'au matin, mais si un navire passe à ce moment-là, nos filets sont détruits. C'est déjà arrivé trois fois cette année. » Jaufer se plaint de l'énorme manque à gagner. « On nous oblige à quitter la zone, avant même d'avoir réussi à attraper assez de poissons. Vous ne pouvez même plus y planter un hameçon ! Je n'arrive plus à rentrer dans mes frais. » Et de fait, ce matin, le pêcheur n'a rien gagné, il n'a même pas pu couvrir ses dépenses d'essence, entre 10 et 15L qu'il a dû acheter à crédit.Pour comprendre ce sentiment d'abandon et l'inaction des élus, nous avons tenté de rencontrer le secrétaire de la mairie du district, M. Sumanasekara. L'entretien sera de courte durée. Le regard fuyant et le ton sec, l'agent du gouvernement a refusé de répondre à nos questions. Il nous a invité à écrire au ministère de l'Information pour obtenir une autorisation.Quand une porte se ferme, une autre s'ouvre, disait le célèbre écrivain espagnol Cervantès. Cette règle ne s'applique malheureusement pas à Hambantota. Sous un faux prétexte, la visite du port géré par la compagnie China Merchants Port Holdings, pourtant acceptée des semaines en amont et avec à l'appui une liste de questions que nous souhaitions poser, a été annulé à la dernière minute. Selon le service de presse du port, la personne dont on n'a jamais eu le nom et qui était chargée de nous faire visiter le port a dû quitter le pays de manière impromptu pour assister à des réunions urgentes.« No Go Zone »Le complexe portuaire ressemble à une base militaire. Les quatre routes menant aux terminaux sont coupées par des check points, truffés de caméras et surveillées par des agents privés et parfois aussi la marine sri-lankaise. Impossible de s'en approcher. Notre chauffeur de tuk-tuk a dû s'arrêter à deux reprises pour un contrôle routier aux abords du complexe portuaire.Un salarié du port a tout de même accepté de répondre à quelques questions par téléphone et sous couvert d'anonymat. Le jeune homme a confirmé que l'activité principale du port était le transbordement de véhicule. Combien de navires accostent le quai ? Entre dix et quinze selon lui, sur les trois derniers mois et les deux premiers de l'année. C'est la période où le trafic est le plus intense. L'écrasante majorité des employés sont des locaux. Tandis que les Chinois, quelques dizaines, travaillent dans le bâtiment de l'administration portuaire, auquel les Sri-Lankais n'ont pas accès.Notre interlocuteur ajoute que les salaires sont satisfaisants et que les repas sont fournis par l'entreprise. Une ombre au tableau toutefois : depuis que le port est géré par les Chinois, les promotions se font très rares et l'incertitude demeure étant donné que les contrats sont renouvelés tous les ans. Globalement et pour conclure, l'employé du port voit un impact plutôt positif sur sa vie et celles des jeunes de son village. Une cinquantaine ont pu être embauchés dans le port.Monsieur 10 %Frappés par une crise économique sans précédent depuis plus d'un an, les villageois résignés, reconnaissent qu'ils ne peuvent compter que sur eux-mêmes. Le malaise est profond à Hambantota. Un mot revient dans toutes nos conversations : la corruption. Une corruption endémique en particulier dans les sphères du pouvoir et autour du clan politique des Rajapaksa.Aruna Kulantuga, économiste politique à Colombo dénonce la cupidité des élites. À titre d'exemple, il cite le nom de l'un des frères de l'ex-président : Basil Rajapaksa, ancien ministre des Finances, communément appelé « Monsieur 10 % ». On l'a affublé de ce surnom en raison des commissions qu'il a perçues sur tous les contrats signés ces dernières années.  Et dans le cas d'Hambantota, l'économiste revient sur un épisode de 2014, lorsque l'ancien gouvernement Sirisena étranglé par les dettes cherchait une issue de secours.« Le coût du crédit pour la construction du port était estimé à 1,2 milliard de dollars. Mais l'entreprise qui a construit le port a révélé que la construction avait coûté 900 millions. Où sont passés les 300 millions restants ? Personne ne le sait. Une enquête diligentée en 2014 et menée jusqu'en 2019 a simplement conclu que tout cet argent avait disparu. Il ne se trouve pas dans le pays, ni même en Chine. Cet argent apparaît sur des comptes à Dubaï ou dans des propriétés luxueuses en Grande-Bretagne. Des centaines de millions de dollars ont été blanchis sans qu'on ait pu apporter des preuves. »Piège de la dette ?En moins de 20 ans, les investissements chinois au Sri Lanka ont augmenté à près de 12 milliards de dollars. Aujourd'hui, le pays doit 10 % de sa dette totale et 20 % de sa dette publique à la Chine seule, soit la plus haute proportion parmi ses nombreux prêteurs.Etranglé par les prêts, Colombo a dû se résoudre à céder à la Chine l'exploitation de son port du Sud pour 99 ans. Hambantota est ainsi devenu l'exemple par excellence en Occident du « piège de la dette », un terme utilisé pour la première fois en juin 2018 dans une enquête du New York Times et qui a depuis été largement diffusé dans la presse occidentale et parmi les chercheurs pour dénoncer la stratégie prédatrice de la Chine. Le cas du Sri Lanka a dans le même temps écorné les grandes ambitions de prospérité véhiculées par Pékin dans sa promotion des mégaprojets associés aux « nouvelles routes de la soie ».Mais pour l'analyste économique Thilina Panduwawala, le terme de « piège de la dette » est inapproprié dans le cas du port d'Hambantota. Son travail de recherche consiste comme il dit à séparer « les mythes de la réalité ». Il revient sur les étapes successives du projet. « Les principaux bailleurs sont les Chinoises Exim Bank et China Development Bank. Les emprunts ont débuté vers l'an 2000. Entre 2007 et 2014, le Sri Lanka a emprunté 1,2 milliard pour la construction du port d'Hambantota. Dès 2016, il devient évident que le pays est incapable de rembourser ses dettes. Ranil Wickremesinghe alors Premier ministre évoque au Parlement le lourd fardeau de la dette. Il décide de louer le port à China Merchants Port Holdings en échange de 930 millions de dollars, afin de renflouer les caisses vides en devises étrangères, et d'éviter de contracter de nouvelles dettes. »C'est à partir de là que l'on commence à parler de confiscation des avoirs par la Chine. Or, en réalité, aucune clause de ce type n'existe dans le contrat, souligne Thilina Panduwawala qui affirme avoir consulté le contrat que lui et son équipe rendront public prochainement. « Le crédit contracté auprès d'Exim Bank continue d'être remboursé, la dette n'a pas été effacée et l'argent perçu par la signature du bail à servi à accroitre les réserves de change », conclut-il.Aruna Kulatunga réfute également la théorie du piège de la dette. Ce dernier explique comment le clan Rajapaksa, tout puissant au sortir de la guerre civile en 2009-2010, a cherché à asseoir sa popularité en se lançant dans des projets trop coûteux. « Si l'on regarde les chiffres, plus de la moitié des emprunts provient de créances privées, c'est-à-dire du marché obligataire, accordés à des taux assez élevés entre 4 et 8 %, tandis que les taux des prêts bilatéraux étaient plutôt bas de l'ordre de 3 ou 4 %. Le leadership de l'époque a été frappé par un égo démesuré. Pour perpétuer cette adoration, ils ont investi tous azimut sans se soucier des conséquences. »Toute la responsabilité repose, selon l'économiste politique, sur les autorités sri-lankaises. « Ce ne sont pas les Chinois qui sont arrivés pour nous dire prenez, prenez l'argent, c'est nous qui avons emprunté. On le sait maintenant, car les données commencent à sortir, que les Chinois nous ont conseillé d'aller doucement, de ne pas nous précipiter. »Principe de neutralitéLe résultat est là. La Chine contrôle désormais le port septentrional et Aruna Kulatunga craint les conséquences géopolitiques de cette situation. « Lorsque vous regardez la carte de l'Asie du Sud, vous voyez un port chinois au Pakistan, au Bangladesh et dans le sud du Sri Lanka. Ces ports forment un triangle parfait qui encercle l'Inde. Notre voisin a donc toutes les raisons de s'inquiéter. Car en cas de confrontation, et c'est possible, on ne peut pas l'exclure, l'Inde sera encerclée. Pourquoi avons-nous accepté cela ? Nous n'aurions jamais dû, ce n'était pas dans notre intérêt. »L'expert rappelle le principe de neutralité que son pays s'est toujours imposé dans l'histoire contemporaine. « Nous n'aurions jamais dû être entraînés dans cette rivalité. Nous aurions dû garder une politique d'ouverture de nos ports, de nos eaux territoriales, de notre espace aérien. Et non pas vendre ou louer. Et puis 99 ans, c'est long ! On dit que le centre d'affaires Port City à Colombo est un bail de 99 ans. En réalité, c'est bien plus : une partie restera chinoise à tout jamais ! »Selon Aruna Kulatunga, la Chine compte prochainement investir 4 milliards de dollars supplémentaires, notamment dans la construction d'une raffinerie de pétrole uniquement destinée à l'export. Parmi les candidats sont cités le Chinois Sinopec, le plus grand raffineur d'Asie, ou encore Aramco, le géant pétrolier saoudien.Pour comprendre l'importance du port d'Hambantota il suffit de regarder une mappemonde. Le port se situe à seulement 10 miles nautiques de la route maritime commerciale Est-Ouest la plus fréquentée au monde. Pour comprendre les enjeux de ce port sur la carte des « nouvelles routes de la soie », nous avons interrogé Yasiru Ranaraja, le directeur de BRI SL. Cette organisation internationale de développement et de conseil s'intéresse de près aux projets en lien avec les « nouvelles routes de la soie » au Sri Lanka et dans la région.« Les navires chinois qui transportent du pétrole passent par le détroit de Malacca. La Chine achète la grande majorité du pétrole à l'Arabie saoudite, ses navires empruntent la route maritime ouest/est qui passe par Hambantota, puis le détroit de Malacca jusqu'à la mer de Chine du Sud. S'il arrivait quelque chose, la Chine aurait un grave problème. »Selon Yasiru Ranaraja, l'initiative chinoise comporte plutôt des aspects positifs pour son pays. « Le Sri Lanka pourrait devenir à l'avenir l'emplacement idéal, une base pour le commerce de l'énergie dans la région. Je pense que le port est stratégiquement important aussi bien pour la Chine que pour nous. Le Parlement sri-lankais avait dès les années 1970 des projets pour ce port, ce n'est donc pas nouveau. »Le district d'Hambantota, considéré comme l'une des régions les plus pauvres du Sri Lanka, a bénéficié d'un flux d'investissements considérables. À ce jour, le port et ses 60 km2 de terrain n'ont pas produit les recettes escomptées. Les activités du complexe portuaire sont encore très loin du rêve de Colombo de transformer l'île en hub régional. Pour développer la région et rendre le port viable et lucratif, Pékin devra injecter dans les prochaines années des milliards de dollars supplémentaires. Des projets titanesques à mille lieux des préoccupations et des attentes de la population.

On this week's Cricket…Only Bettor Ed Hawkins, Sam Collins, Paul Krishnamurty and Richard Mann preview three games across thre formats. The big one is England v Ireland in a Test, then they're seeking value in the T20 Blast in The Roses derby between Yorkshire and Lancashire and they finish with an ODI in Hambantota between Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. All the best picks, plays and strategies and the Best Bets. Read the latest insights and tips on cricket at https://betting.betfair.com/cricket/ 18+ Please Gamble Responsibly. Visit www.begambleaware.org

The Chinese debt trap narrative was started based on the purported surrender of the Port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka. When Colombo fell behind in its payments to the China Exim Bank for the loan, the story goes, Beijing seized the port as collateral.Now, six years later, a pair of Sri Lankan researchers, Umesh Moramudali and Thilina Panduwawala gained access to the original China Exim Bank loan documents for the port and confirmed that the Chinese predatory lending narrative, as it's been told, just isn't true.The pair join Eric & Cobus to discuss their new report that debunks many of the myths surrounding Chinese lending to Sri Lanka, specifically related to the controversial port.SHOW NOTES:The China-Africa Research Initiative: Evolution of Chinese Lending to Sri Lanka Since the mid-2000s: Separating Myth from Reality by Umesh Moramudali and Thilina Panduwawala: https://bit.ly/3PF1cHrThe Diplomat: Demystifying China's role in Sri Lanka's debt restructuring by Umesh Moramudali and Thilina Panduwawala: https://bit.ly/3v4r3iHJOIN THE DISCUSSION:Twitter: @ChinaGSProject| @stadenesque | @eric_olander | @UmeshMoramudali | @ThilinaKalharaFacebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProjectFOLLOW CAP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC:Français: www.projetafriquechine.com | @AfrikChineعربي: www.akhbaralsin-africia.com | @AkhbarAlSinAfrJOIN US ON PATREON!Become a CAP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CAP Podcast mug!www.patreon.com/chinaafricaproject

The Chinese debt trap narrative was started based on the purported surrender of the Port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka. When Colombo fell behind in its payments to the China Exim Bank for the loan, the story goes, Beijing seized the port as collateral.Now, six years later, a pair of Sri Lankan researchers, Umesh Moramudali and Thilina Panduwawala gained access to the original China Exim Bank loan documents for the port and confirmed that the Chinese predatory lending narrative, as it's been told, just isn't true.The pair join Eric & Cobus to discuss their new report that debunks many of the myths surrounding Chinese lending to Sri Lanka, specifically related to the controversial port.SHOW NOTES:The China-Africa Research Initiative: Evolution of Chinese Lending to Sri Lanka Since the mid-2000s: Separating Myth from Reality by Umesh Moramudali and Thilina Panduwawala: https://bit.ly/3PF1cHrThe Diplomat: Demystifying China's role in Sri Lanka's debt restructuring by Umesh Moramudali and Thilina Panduwawala: https://bit.ly/3v4r3iHJOIN THE DISCUSSION:Twitter: @ChinaGSProject| @stadenesque | @eric_olander | @UmeshMoramudali | @ThilinaKalharaFacebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProjectFOLLOW CAP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC:Français: www.projetafriquechine.com | @AfrikChineعربي: www.akhbaralsin-africia.com | @AkhbarAlSinAfrJOIN US ON PATREON!Become a CAP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CAP Podcast mug!www.patreon.com/chinaafricaprojectSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Zongyuan Zoe Liu, fellow for international political economy at CFR, leads the conversation on global economics. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to today's session of the Fall 2022 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Zongyuan Zoe Liu with us to talk about global economics. Dr. Liu is a fellow for international political economy at CFR. She previously served as an instructional assistant professor at Texas A&M's Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, D.C. And before that, she completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Columbia-Harvard China and the World program and the Center for International Environment and Research Policy at Tufts University. She served as a research fellow and research associate at many institutions—the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, NYU's Stern Center for Sustainable Business, and at the Institute for International Monetary Affairs in Tokyo. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System?, published by Cambridge University Press; and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions, forthcoming in 2023 by Harvard University Press. So we will stay tuned for that. So, Dr. Liu, thank you very much for being with us. This is a very broad topic, but it would be great if you could give us your analysis of the state of the global economy today. LIU: Yeah, thank you very much, Irina, for inviting me to do this. I really, truly appreciate the opportunity to engage with our college and national universities, both the faculties and the students. This makes me feel I'm very much still part of the academia community. So thank you very much, Irina, and thank you, everybody, for tuning in today. So I wanted to begin by saying that as an economist one thing that I learned is that we are very bad at making forecasting. And, once that forecasting is already very bad, but—and forget about the long run. But that being said, I hope our conversation today can at least exchange some perspectives in terms of how we think about global economy and how we think about some policy-relevant natures. So the first—I will begin by saying two statement, and then I will delve into it. The first statement I would say that I'm afraid that geopolitics probably would make economic forecasting, which is already a very difficult business, but geopolitics would likely make this business even more difficult going forward. And this is because global economic prospect will be more influenced by geopolitics and geopolitical tensions, in addition to pure supply and demand. So that is to say, for our—all our college students and our graduate students, who are either pursuing a political science degree, international relations, or economics, or anybody who are vaguely interested in understanding global economics, now this is the time to realize, well, the models may not—the models had their limitations before, and their limitations are probably going to be even more pronounced going forward. The pure supply-demand dimensions—price is set in certain ways—probably are not necessarily going to go that way. One such example would be the European Union and the United States are considering putting a price cap on Russian oil. And what does that mean? That probably means, well, it almost feel like for a long period of time there was this global cartel called the OPEC or OPEC+. These are the so-called sellers' cartel. And they have the power, the monopolistic power almost, in terms of setting the price of oil in the global market. But now we are probably going to see the other part of the story, which is what about a global buyers' cartel? And that is essentially what a price cap means. So long story short, I think geopolitics would play a lot into our analysis of global economics forecasting going forward. And then my second sort of quick statement would be in terms of global economic status today. I would say the key—like, let me take a step back. When we think about economic development, we tend to think about factors of production. Like, for our—again, for our students who probably learned this at the beginning of the semester, this is the time to refresh your concept. But key factors of production—one is resource, the other is technology, and then the other is labor. In terms of resources, you can think about natural resources as well as capital. So these three fundamental factors of production, I would say, they are all going through a period of changes. And these changes are not necessarily in a good way. So that, long story short, a lot of the changes now in global economic conditions may not necessarily be good. And I'm happy to go into a detailed analysis of why resources are not necessarily changing in a good way, or technology, or in terms of labor and demographics. But I'm also happy to stop here and then sort of answer questions or explain further going forward as well. FASKIANOS: Great. We will go to all of you to ask your questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) So we already have a question. It's from Fordham University. Raised hand. So you're going to tell us—have to tell us who you are and unmute yourself, or accept the unmute prompt. There you go. Q: Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: OK, great. Yes, so I'm a third-year student at Fordham University. My name is Valerie Bejjani. And my question for you, Dr. Liu, pertains to your paper—your Cambridge-published paper—about non-dollar alternatives, which I find very fascinating. And it made me think about something I read for an international political economy class about how Keynes first introduced a non-dollar alternative called the bancor during the Bretton Woods Conference, but the U.S. shot it down. So I was curious about your opinion on this, whether you think it was a mistake for the U.S. not to accept it, and what you think the implications—the historical implications are for BRICS countries today that are trying to devise their own non-dollar alternatives? LIU: Thank you very much, Valerie, for your great question. And I have to—since we're on the record—I just have to say, this is not a planted question. (Laughs.) And I very much appreciate that you've given me the opportunity to talk about the research that I did before. So just a quick background about that research that I did, I finished the research last year—yeah, last year in the summer, in July. So when I submitted my manuscript, there was a review process, right? And then that was the moment when not everybody were interested in SWIFT, in SPFS, in China's cross-border banking—Cross-Border Payment System, or CIPS. So a lot of these alphabetic soups that everybody here are familiar with now, last year before Russia's invasion of Ukraine nobody was even interested. And one of the reviewers was even telling—had a comment there saying that, well, you know, don't necessarily think that these are good examples that deserve to—so many real estate. (Laughs.) But and then my publisher somehow engineered it such that my—that Cambridge publication came out right on the day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which was—that was—as a researcher, you probably can never hope the timing in that way. So going back to your question, Valerie, I would say I highly appreciate that you raised the question. And I respect that—highly respect that you are already getting yourself familiarized with Keynesian and all the other historically speaking alternative monetary system or monetary concept as well. So that's all good. So keep doing what you are doing now and I look forward to continuing our conversation going forward. So your question, if I understand it correctly, so is it a good idea for the United States to shut it down, right? So I mean, if I were—I was obviously not in the policymaking room in those days, but I can certainly understand why the United States would want to maintain the dollar's dominant currency status in the global financial system. That's because if you are able to—if the dollar were the dominant currency, in the existing dollar—in the existing global financial system, that basically means on the one hand we can issue debt cheaply. And that literally means the U.S. Treasury is the proxy for risk re-asset. That has huge implications not just for our government debt and our physical expenditure. It also has a tremendous amount of stabilizing factor for our domestic financial institutions and the expansion of our banks in the international market. So from both public perspective and the international perspective, those are good. And the United States has, from a policymaking perspective, all our financial policymakers had their right to shut it down. Now, but if you ask this question from an alternative perspective—say, if you ask the question for—to, let's say, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney—former governor. If you ask him, he would probably tell you, well, this is a terrible idea that the United States would shut it off, because he specifically said in 2019 at the Jackson Hole symposium, when all the major central bankers were gathered in the big hall and talking about monetary policies, he was the one standing in front of everybody saying that, well, it's a terrible idea to have one single currency, which is the U.S. dollar, to dominate the global financial and monetary system. That is the reason why the system is not stable, hence we need to have an alternative system. Like a basket currency or something like that. So, if you ask people like him, he would be—like, be in favor of the diversity—of a more diversified global monetary system. And again, if you ask the countries like China or, for that matter, Russia or Iran, they would be way much more in favor of a much more diversified monetary system as well. And that may not necessarily, from, exchange rate perspective, exchange rate risk is an important aspect, but the more important aspect probably is from the geopolitical hegemonic power of the U.S. dollar. Which means, the U.S. sanctioning power really resides in the dollar being the dominant currency. So right now, we hear about U.S. can sanction Russia, sanction other countries. How that is being executed, it is literally being executed by our banks no longer processing the bank transactions of all the Russian banks. Hence, when people talk about kicking Russia off the SWIFT system, it's not just that the transaction cannot go out. It literally means in practice nobody can send a message with Russian banks. Like, there was no communication. So the entire dollar system is based upon the SWIFT system, which 90 percent of the messaging to process the transactions are using dollar. And then, because the expansive power of our U.S. banks, it literally means all international trade literally has to be settled—the settlement has to be done by U.S. bank, who has U.S. dollars. And in order to access that transaction mechanism, only SWIFT can get the job done. You also have to literally tap into either the Fedwire System or the CHIPS system, which is the clearinghouse system based here in New York. So in order for this whole system—in order to have this whole system to make your dollar payment work, you literally have to maintain on the one hand a connection, on the other hand have connections with the dollar settlement system. And that's why when Russia was kicked out of SWIFT, a lot of other countries who are not necessarily on the good side of the United States started to get worried because people used to think, well, kicking somebody—kicking some banks off the SWIFT system is almost the financial version of a nuclear bomb. It's the nuclear option of cutting somebody from the international financial system, of which the U.S. dollar is the dominant currency, the primary invoicing currency as well. And then on the other hand, lesson learned from this sanction experience, especially from the perspective of China, is that, well, previously we've already laid out a lot of this planning system—meaning the infrastructure used to internationalize the renminbi, such as the China—the China's CIPS system. Policymakers inside China started to wonder, well, since the planning is already there, it's not too much to ask just to add additional function. So the previously, from a functional-wise, China's renminbi payment infrastructure is really not about bypassing sanctions, because in my research I realized when—I interviewed people who actually participated in the designing of the system. And I remember talking to three people on three different occasions, and they all mentioned one point, which is without the CIPS system, the international using of renminbi, really—the user experience was really, really terrible. And the reason it was terrible was simply because there are more than two thousand of small and medium-size banks in China. You are familiar with the big four—ICBC, Bank of China and all that—but those are the major banks. More Chinese bank—more than two thousand of the smaller Chinese banks, they don't have a direct connection with the SWIFT system. Which basically means in order to make transactions across border, it really takes time and the cost of transactions are extremely high. Therefore, in order to improve user experience, they literally had to design a system that can facilitate this cross-border transaction. But when geopolitics plays into it, especially since 2018 when U.S.-China trade war started to get really escalated to a higher level, a lot of those conversations started domestically. And then Russia's invasion of Ukraine really accelerated this whole process. So I hope that sort of give you a broader—it's a long answer, but I hope that gives you a deeper understanding of what has been going on, and what are the—what are the instrument—the functions of the instrument. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. I'm going to take a written question from Abraham—he goes by Abe—Borum. Dr. Liu, you mentioned OPEC within the context of NATO and the U.S. efforts to limit Russia energy policy. What are the second- to third-order effects on other sectors of global markets? And Abe is a graduate student at the National Intelligence University. LIU: Abe, that's a great question, I have to say. And I would strongly encourage everybody here, especially our undergrad and graduate students—to think not just the first-order or direct impact, but also the second-order effect. So I appreciate this question, because then you give me a little bit opportunity to elaborate on why I think on the natural resource aspect our global economy is not necessarily heading towards the right direction. So just tie back into Abe's question to begin with, right now since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the hydrocarbon prices, and more specifically oil prices, oil prices have been increasing. Although in recent—in recent weeks, it has relatively been stabilized a little bit, but it's still way much higher than pre-pandemic, that would be 2019, right, Irina? 2019, right? (Laughs.) My timeline is all blurred. So I checked this morning, price might have changed slightly. But when I checked it this morning Brent today, this morning when I checked, it was trading about $88 per barrel. And remember in 2019 what the price was? That was something around—the average price in 2019, that was $64. So we are literally talking about more than $20 per barrel more expensive. And then WTI, that is, what, U.S. benchmark, right? WTI was trading at $96 per barrel – close to 96 (dollars). Like 95.99, something like that. And in 2019, Brent was trading on average $57 per barrel. So close to double. So higher energy prices, that basically would directly translate into higher production costs across the board for energy—because every sector need energy, whether it is electricity, whether it is other types of energy. So it directly translate into higher electricity prices. This is important for the United States. This is very relevant for the European Union as well. So higher production costs would literally raise the price of the output. And that is going to further exacerbate the inflationary pressure. And that is going to make the Federal Reserve, and the ECB, and the Bank of England measures to curb inflation even more difficult. And then on the other hand, I also wanted to mention that right now the added layer of geopolitics making this even more difficult. We already see this happening, which is, Biden made his trip to Saudi Arabia, but it did not get the intended consequence or intended result, which is trying to get Saudi Arabia and OPEC in general to stabilize the global oil market. And OPEC+, about a week ago, decided that they are going to cut their production by about two million barrels per day. That is about the daily consumption of, I believe it's China, or something like that. So from that perspective, by limiting production, that is going to further—that is from a pure supply/demand perspective, right? If we hold supply—we hold demand constant and if you reduce the supply, that is going to further raise the upward pressure for the prices. So geopolitics is probably going to further put upward pressure for the prices as well. And then finally, the final point I would want to make there is that right now OPEC countries—OPEC+ countries in particular—they might be—have this existential threat, which is the net zero transition. Right now, what is most valuable for Russia, or for Iran, for UAE, for Saudi Arabia—their most valuable export comes from hydrocarbon. It could be oil. It could be natural gas. So in the long run, when the entire global economy moved to zero dependence on hydrocarbon, that basically means for Russia—that's probably more close to 70 percent of their GDP and government revenue. That is going to be gone. Think about how the Russian economy can make up that much amount of revenue in the short run? That's very difficult to think about, especially these days. And this can be applied for countries like Saudi Arabia as well. Therefore, these countries—these hydrocarbon-exporting countries—they have this existential threat. Which is their most valuable export might become no longer valuable in the long run. So that's why they are—they are inherently very interested in carving a closer relationship and, more importantly, a relatively stable relationship with their stable buyers. And the buyers these days are going to not necessarily be the United States because, you've heard all these stories about the U.S. are energy independent and so on and so forth. But, you know, we can—that's a different story. And when people say U.S. is very largely energy independent, there are so many reasons that argument can be rebutted. But let me just say, U.S. does not necessarily consume a lot of energy from—exported by Saudi Arabia. But who does? China and India. So right now, China's largest energy—in terms of volume—largest energy supplier is Russia. But in terms of pure monetary value that China actually pays, and the largest receiver of Chinese money for energy, that is Saudi Arabia. Therefore, earlier this year you probably read the news about Saudi Arabia might consider allowing renminbi to pay for Saudi oil. There might be more opportunity in there, because they might be very interested, especially MBS, because of all his behaviors, might expose a lot of the Saudis individuals under U.S. sanctions. And on the other hand, China already established a renminbi denominated oil futures market. And that—although, the volume today is relatively—the volume today is relatively low, but the growth is very rapidly. So if all these major oil-exporting countries hypothetically—if they decided to suddenly switch their—the pricing of their oil overnight into renminbi instead of the dollar, we could potentially see the dollar's pricing power and invoicing power in global trade would be diminished. And that is because the infrastructure, the facility is already there. Although the volume of renminbi-denominated oil futures is still relatively low, the plumbing is there. And once you have the plumbing there, there is no way to go back. So now what the United States should do is to make sure that everybody is still very much interested in maintaining the existing dollar-based system and maintaining the pricing of commodity using U.S. dollar. And that brings in the discussion about putting an oil price to Russian oil instead of just a wholesale sanction of Russian oil. As long as we are putting a price cap to it, that basically means we are—yes, we are hurting Russian export, but still we are allowing Russian oil flowing into the international market. That still makes the dollar's pricing power in global commodities relevant. So from that perspective, I think it's the right move to preserve the dollar system. But on the other hand, those countries that are not—again, not necessarily on the geopolitical good side of the United States, they do have the intention to hedge against the risk of being sanctioned. And they need the—they need buyers to buy whatever that they have are valuable today. I hope that makes sense to you. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. I'm going to take the next question, a spoken question, from Dr. Seebal Aboudounya, an associate lecturer at the University of College London. You can correct me on the pronunciation of your name. Q: Yes. Hi. The pronunciation is perfect. Thank you very much. So I have two students here from the international public policy program. And they would like to ask questions. So I will just hand over to them. Thank you. Q: Hi, professor. I'm Cici and I'm a graduate student from UCL. I'm really glad you can give me a speech and answer my questions. And I want to ask questions about Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As we all know, that Belt and Road Initiative has employment more than ten years, since 2013. And it seems as the most important foreign policy for China and their President Xi. And it has already achieved many success. So I want to ask, what's the core purpose of Belt and Road Initiative, and how can we evaluate it? And do the countries in BRI view it in a positive or a negative way? Thank you. Q: Thank you very much. And the second student will now ask a question. Q: Hi, Doctor. My question is, what's the future of global economy under the impact of Ukraine war, China-U.S. competition, and COVID-19? Thank you. Q: Thank you very much. LIU: All right. Thank you very much, Professor Aboudounya. And let me just being with the first question from Cici, right? Thank you very much, Cici, for asking this important question. And I'm so glad that you are asking something about BRI, because I do think it's important for people to understand this whole Chinese initiative. You are absolutely right that the BRI is a very important Chinese foreign policy initiative. And I would even say that the BRI is—or, the Belt and Road Initiative—is Chinese President Xi Jinping, his signature foreign policy initiative during his first two terms. Now he just recently got his—as the general secretary of the party—he just got this third term. So we'll see how BRI being played out going forward. But at least during his first term as the president of China and as the party general of the Chinese Communist Party, that was his signature foreign policy initiative, or grand strategy, if you will. So in terms of what it is and how we think about it, those are great questions. So there are very simple answer to say—to describe what BRI is. You can think about it as a global-spanning infrastructure project. So that's what it looks like. If you just put—if you just—if we have an Excel spreadsheet and we just look at, at least all the—every single project that BRI has been doing, it's really about infrastructure. And more specifically, more than 70 percent of BRI infrastructure projects are related to energy, are energy-related infrastructure projects. Therefore, you can also think about BRI as infrastructure orientated and combined with the idea of establishing China's access to global energy resources. And then, if you think about it from China's domestic perspective, why Xi Jinping decided to start this BRI initiative and what are the connections of the BRI with previous Chinese policies? I would say the reason—fundamental reason why Xi Jinping started this BRI was because of the fundamental domestic problem which is the overcapacity in China's production sector, especially steel, concrete, and a lot of these infrastructure-related sectors. And that takes place after global financial crisis, and then China's spending four trillion—four trillion yuan to stimulate its economy, and it created the major overcapacity issue at home. And the international economy—or international demand or demand from outside of China was not enough—or especially the Western market like United States or European market, they were not growing as fast to be able to absorb China's overcapacity. Therefore China really have to think about how to distribute in a broader global market to solve its overcapacity issue. So Xi Jinping, in one of his meetings, he had this saying—and I think it's very revealing, so I quote him. So he did say this, and I translate it, obviously, into English. So he said: Our overcapacity problem might be other countries—might be beneficial to other countries. In other word, we are producing a lot of this stuff that we do not use, and we are losing money. But if we are able to sell it to other countries, that might be good for them and good for us, as well. So that was—could we—if we give him the benefit of the doubt, is that a good way—is that a good intent? Sure. If we give him the benefit of the doubt, if everything he implemented perfectly, that could be mutually beneficial. And indeed, if you look at all these BRI forums or BRI summit, a lot of these are related to improve their connectedness, solve overcapacity issue, and even BR specific government-to-government level industrial production coordination fund. In other word, if government are establishing lots of money to coordinate—so much you are going to produce, how much I am supposed to produce. The idea is really to tackle the problem of overcapacity. But again, reality when you are looking at how this is being implemented, nowadays it varies. There's a very good Rhodium Group report that you probably—if you just google Rhodium Group BRI, they have this report analyzing the BRI lending. And that's where BRI really come into—really encountered a lot of problem. So you are probably familiar with the whole narrative of the data trap, so depending upon who you are talking to—so if you talk with—if you talk to Chinese project managers, or if you talk to Professor Deborah Bräutigam at SAIS/Johns Hopkins who runs the China Africa Research Initiative—if you talk to folks like them, they might tell you, well, you know, it's really not about the data trap but really speaks to the fact that China is really, really inexperienced in terms of the development finance and in terms of lending, and that the reason is that they really have a limited capacity to do, on the one hand, the environmental impact assessment. Many of these—you will be shocked. Many of these projects they do not even have a real environmental impact assessment. And on the other hand, because a lot of these lendings are directly being lent out by Chinese policy banks—and more specifically, if you look at Africa, that would be China import and export bank, they have a limited capacity to evaluate all these business plans. And I remember talking to a project manager in Mali, so I asked him, have you interacted with all those folks on how you do your—how you do your bidding in order to get the money. So this person, he was very frank with me, and he said, well, I understand how the—I understand how they want the number to look like in order to give me the loan, so I just cook the numbers so that I can get the loan. In other word, there is not necessarily an internally robust risk management process in getting out of these loans. Therefore, am I surprised to see that so much of Chinese—so much of China's BRI loan now are in trouble, like in countries like Zambia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and a couple of others.   So am I—am I surprised about that? I'm not surprised because if you followed this and if you realized that there is a lack of the internal risk management process, that's the result you are going to get. And it is also because of the debt, combined with the contract term, which is when you are signing a contract like—it's like, I go to the bank and I say, I am Zoe, and I bank with Charles Schwab or Bank of America. Hey, I'm going to buy a house, so how about you lend me the money. This is literally the way how contract negotiating works. And then, guess what? The banks are going to say, hey, Zoe, I do not know who you are, although you look like a good person. I do not want to lend you the money at this rate. I'm going to lend you the money, and you have to put down a collateral. So collateral is the idea that, in case I, Zoe, can no longer pay back my loan, I literally have to give up some sort of tangible asset to the bank. Now in the case of Sri Lanka, that was what happened to Hambantota. So long story short, is that combined with the collateralization of this BRI debt really feeds this debt trap narrative because, well, if it looks like you are setting the countries up to debt, and you are collateralizing their critical infrastructures, this looks like debt trap to many observers. So I can't—I have a lot of sympathy to this debt trap narrative, but really, when we think about BRI debt and how BRI is being implemented, we really need to think about two sides: on the one hand, the policy side; and the other side is really about implementation, because without implementation the policies are only a piece of paper, isn't it? So, I really encourage you to look more specifically into the details, and if you are interested in learning more about BRI, there are a lot of data set that are available. On the one hand, William & Mary—William & Mary have the aid data. If you just google William & Mary and google aid data, you will see their entire data related to BRI. And then the other website that—I would have to say, my colleague and I here at the Council, we have this BRI tracker. My colleague Benn Steil, he run—he had this BRI tracker. So you can take a look at that. And then the Council also published a BRI report last year—last year, right, Irina? We have a BRI Task Force report, so definitely check that out. And then finally there is also Boston University has the global policy institute. They have this China—they have a specific China-oriented research team, and they have—they also run seminars occasionally, and webinars—you can sign up for it and you can have access to their research. We also have this BRI data, so make sure that you check those out so that you can look at all the contract, you can look at what are the—where exactly—at what level project are being implemented. I hope that sort of covered the ground for that with BRI. And then go back to the other question—the other question about the future of global economy, especially the impact on Ukraine. I really appreciate this question as well because it's—it's really dear to my heart, too, and the research in itself is dear to my heart and to many of my colleagues here at the Council. And then, on the other hand, we also—everybody are surprised about how fast and how coherent the sanctions on Russia were able to take place. It used to be like—I myself included—like when the Europeans decided—the European Union decided, basically the next day after—following the U.S. sanctions, they basically decided that they are going to do the same. I was like, oh, gee, looking across the Atlantic, I don't think I understand you guys. It almost feel like you guys could never agree on anything anytime soon, but now, it's like overnight there is this agreement on sanction of Russia. I feel like, oh, this is unprecedented. So from that perspective, I do think the—Russia's war on Ukraine, it reunited the U.S. alliance system, and from economic perspective, I think it's very important in the sense that a lot of the economic differences that we used to have—for example, the Eurozone or, in particular, the ECB might have interest in letting the euro play a bigger role in the global system and all that. So a lot of these are—a lot of these disagreement are going to be surpassed by the priority, which is to address Russia's aggression in Ukraine. And then on the other hand, we are also seeing that, yes, European Union, despite of their heavy dependence on Russian oil and gas—and Russian gas in particular, they are willing to participate in setting a deadline to say by this—by the end of this year we are going to phase out Russia's—our dependence on Russian energy. And in that context, it is good for American energy industry in the sense that we can—here in the United States we can—in the context of making sure that our domestic energy security is secured, right, or we can't export our LNG to our—to meet the need of our European allies. So that is another good aspect of it, and then in terms of—and then finally, I would—along the line of energy I would also say this probably is also going to accelerate the transition to net zero in terms of technology and putting more resources into this technology related to energy transition. That might be related to hydrogen. Canada is already exporting its hydrogen energy to Germany and German trains are now—some German trains are now run on hydrogen power. It would be cool to check it out—how it looks, right? So that means, from energy perspective at least we are seeing the realignment of this energy supply, energy demand dynamic. And because energy is so important for production and for energy growth, that is sort of a stabilizing factor. But that being said, still we are not—I am not saying that the Europeans aren't going to—are no longer having problems. And the Europeans are still going to have problems and the IMF revised downward European growth prospect next year. They downgraded to—even further to a lower point. I believe it's point—it used to be—it used to be about 1.3 in the energy outlook earlier in July, but I think this time—a few days ago when I checked again, there are new economic outlook. They've revised it down for EU—European advanced economies that it was revised down to .06 percent growth. From that perspective combined with high inflation, literally we are seeing that Europe—the advanced European economies—or broadly speaking, Eurozone as a whole—probably are going to head towards, maybe recession is a very, very harsh word, but it definitely going to run into serious economic troubles. So in the long run, this is not a good—this is not good looking. And in the short run, at least, this is not good looking, right, and in the—if we broaden the horizon back, focusing on the economy. Another factor that constrained European growth are, in particular, let's say, the major powerhouses like Germany. A critical part of that is, they are suffering from two issues. One is their cost of electricity is simply too high, and I'm talking about this relative to—it's much higher than the United States for sure, but they are not—they are much higher than China, as well. So China energy per kilowatt is in the magnitude of 0.002 or 0.003 magnitude. And where is Germany? Germany is something like ten times of that. We are talking about .38 per kilowatt. So that basically means if your fundamental electricity cost is high, and when energy price goes up higher, electricity price is also going to go up high, and then your entire manufacture industry is going to face a higher cost. And that, combined with demographic challenges, refugee challenges, it simply means that the government are going to have a whole lot of difficult time to deal with their expenditures. So again, both from energy perspective, from cost-of-production perspective, from the demographic perspective—aging population, refugee problem—and on top of that you probably would also have to think of—take care of the aging population, meaning added social welfare costs and pension costs, so those are—those mean slowing economy, especially on advanced economies, are not necessarily looking nice. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Isaac Alston-Voyticky, who has written a question but also said, happy to ask it, so why don't you unmute yourself, please, and give us your affiliation. Q: Hello, my name is Isaac Alston-Voyticky. I am at CUNY School of Law and CCNY's Colin Powell School. I am actually graduating this semester, so—(laughs)—anyway, so my question is you posed the three classic core components of economics. Would you think in the modern day, given the immaterial nature of so much of our global market and marketplace, that knowledge as the foundation of neoclassical economics, plays an equal role as a component of modern economics? And I mean that obviously in the concept that knowledge is known, unknown, real, surreal, and unreal, of course. But also, to your first kind of opening point when you said that, you know, it's really hard for economists to model out and do predictions. When we talk about improving data sets and analysis across like IPE, international affairs, you know, implementation of international law, one of the issues we have is a lot of our economic models are still too variable-based, and that we haven't really gone past that. So if we think about it from the quantum computing, we have X, Y, Z, and T, and that's just your bare, you know, next level. And I would imagine we can do that if we find the right components so, hopefully—and, I mean, I don't know what kind of answer you have, but I'm very interested to hear. LIU: Yeah, Isaac, first of all, congratulations for getting—you are in CUNY, right? And so you are right here in the neighborhood, so you know—right? So feel free to—feel free to, on the one hand definitely check out our award-winning website, and then if me or our colleagues could be of help, just feel free to stop by. And so these are two great questions obviously, and you touch upon a lot of the complaints and the frustrations that I have with modeling—(laughs)—right? So the first question, knowledge, I fully agree with you that so far our economic models have not been able to fully appreciate, or fully absorb, or fully model the role of knowledge; for that matter, even finance. Finance, at least has this term called the intangible asset when you are evaluating a firm, and therefore your mergers and acquisitions, you pay the so-called goodwill based upon how much you value the intangible asset; meaning like knowledge, expertise, and so on, so forth—so patent and all that. So from that perspective, I think the knowledge is definitely going—knowledge is definitely going to be extremely more important going forward, and I say that both—from three aspects. The first is knowledge can improve the quality of your human resources, which touch upon basically the labor force which reverts back to one of our three factors of production. And then knowledge also is necessary for technology, and that is another factor of production. And then finally the other would be knowledge, technology, and other resources. So resources, there is capital and non-capital, meaning natural resource and all that. And there are—then the confounding factor of knowledge is being played more here because better financial expertise—well, obviously, depending upon how you use it, but sometimes, financial expertise tend to run itself in trouble. It outsmart itself; it's not necessarily good. But if we are able to—if we have better knowledge about financial market, about our debt—I go back to your second question—better data about financial market and better knowledge to improve our use of natural resources or the efficiency—improve the efficiency. Or the next day, if we all have a battery and move toward renewables—these are going to be extremely—go back to the Schumacher model—these are going to be extremely disruptive, but in a very good way. But the reason I am cautious about, you know, we may not necessarily going there overnight is because, on the one hand—technology R&D takes some time, it's expensive, but then on the other hand, it's just in the processing, the implementation part. It's really—a lot of geopolitical factors plays into it because when we think about knowledge, knowledge and the technology, those are the things that we tend to think they tend to diffuse themselves, like knowledge—you exchange knowledge, and that's the foundation of new knowledge being created. You stand on the giant's shoulders, right? Knowledge and technology tend to diffuse itself, and right now what we are observing is, on the one hand, there are a lot of—there are a lot of export controls towards certain countries, and then on the other hand, countries like China are also—are trying very hard to lower the cost of the relatively cheaper technology, right, or the less advanced technology. And that basically means if a country can or—especially a country like China can quickly achieve economies of the scale, are able to find an alternative that is cheaper but at a lesser technology, but will still get the job done, then probably that—in the short term, it can service China and also service a lot of developing economies. But for a country like China, that is not necessarily good in the long run. And then on top of that, because of export controls, because of a lot of geopolitical tensions between China and the rest of the world, but the long-run trajectory over China's indigenous development capacity is still there; China's people—there are still U.S.-trained Chinese scientists going back to China, but it is going to tremendously slow China down and making it very difficult and very costly. So if we think that, for the past forty years or so—or for the past twenty years since China joined WTO, if we believe that cheap Chinese goods tend to be—tend to benefited the rest of the world in many ways, then a slowed-down Chinese economy is bad news for the global economy, probably more true than not. China is the largest trading partner for more than 120 countries in the world, so if Chinese economy slow down, that have major ramifications for the rest. And then go back to your second question with regard to, you improve the database and in terms of modeling the limitations—that's a frustration that I have nowadays. Yes, the model themselves—oftentimes I go into a meeting, listen to a talk—especially in the econ papers, the econ paper would begin with—it's very sterilized. You begin with assumptions, and then you talk about your independent variables, your dependent variables. Right now we are really in a world where your independent variables can be—your independent variables might be suddenly changed because of geopolitics, or because of some disruptive technology, or simply because supply chain means you used to be able to get rare earth, but then if you are Japan in 2007, you were no longer able to get rare earth reliably from China. So those are going to significantly shift your calculation. Therefore I would say, I really don't have a good answer in terms of how to improve at researcher perspective, but hopefully, as you said, quantum computing, artificial intelligence might help us to get as much better information as possible. But that being said, quantum—a lot of these quantum computing and artificial intelligence is—it used to be the case that a lot of statistics are garbage in, garbage out. Hopefully, our AI and the quantum computing, as we train themselves, they can learn better than the human beings. I'm not exactly comfortable about saying that, but that's my hope. FASKIANOS: I have some—a written question from Todd Barry, adjunct professor at Hudson County Community College in New Jersey. Is it possible that China would turn inwards and switch an economy to import substitution industrialization, producing all goods domestically, without imports, like Latin America tried to in the 1970's? LIU: Right, that's a great question, and when you were asking that I was immediately thinking about the Chile and its car industry. And that was a disaster. The East Asian model, in terms of the import substitution—that's the East Asian miracle, especially applicable to, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea to a certain extent, as well. In the case of China I would say I would be really hesitant to—in retrospect if we have this conversation twenty years down the road, I would be really, really—I would be really sad to realize that this year is the moment—or October is the—October 2022 is the moment when China started to turn inward because that is going to be disastrous for China's long-term growth. China's decade-long of double-digit growth benefitted from an open economy, benefitted from being able to trade with the rest of the world, and the United States actually welcomed China into the global system. Therefore I would be very, very sad to see this is the moment. Now is there a—is there the risk? I do see the risk, and I do see the narrative there, especially with President Xi Jinping's emphasis on domestic circulation. If you think—I would argue—in my latest publication with the CFR.org, I made this argument to say the important—the dual circulation, especially the domestic circulation, it is a departure from previous going-on strategy because going out is starting from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. These are really the idea of prioritizing the international market. It's really about using international market to develop the Chinese economy. And dual circulation is a departure from that. It's not to totally abandon globally—the global market, but it really is—it prioritizes domestic market: domestic demand, domestic supply, domestic technology and—domestic technological innovation capacity, and making international market relatively supplementary. And if even—and Xi Jinping even—if Xi Jinping even intend to make the international market more dependent on China's domestic market, meaning making the rest dependent more on China. So there is the narrative there. However, in practice, I don't—I don't see how Chinese companies are able to do this because the Chinese company—a lot of Chinese companies, especially multinational Chinese companies, they still need to have access to global capital, global technology. And although it becomes—especially on the technology side has become increasingly difficult. But it is to the benefit of the Chinese company, Chinese people, and China's long-term growth potential to maintain an open economy. But there is the chance that might not happen, and if we think—if we do believe that Xi Jinping has a timeline with reference to Taiwan, then he—obviously, if there is a war breaking out, then obviously there will be consequences, and we can imagine Western sanctions, and that basically means the Chinese economy is going to be severely isolated from the global system. So from that perspective, right now a lot of these zero-COVID policies are very much—the way that I think about it is it could be interpreted as it's a drill, or it's a preparation to make sure that China is developing internal capacity to be able to absorb as much sanction shock as possible. But I don't think that—I do not think Xi Jinping is going to make up a decision and going to make a move to Taiwan, say, tomorrow. As long as we can kick the can down the road, I think that's good. FASKIANOS: Out of time, and I am sorry to say that we couldn't get to all the questions, but we appreciate it. Zoe did mention a few resources that our task force on the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as the Belt and Road tracker—we dropped the link in the chat, but we'll also send a follow-up note with links to some of those things. She also does a lot of writing on CFR.org In Briefs and articles, so you should go to CFR.org. And you can follow her on Twitter at @zongyuanzoeliu. So I encourage you all to do that. This has been a terrific hour, so thank you again, Zoe. We appreciate it. LIU: Thank you, Irina, for having me. And I really do appreciate this opportunity to engage with every participant here. If I did not get a chance to answer your questions, or if you have other questions, just feel free to reach out to Irina or feel free to reach out to me. We are here, and the Council really appreciate and the—really appreciate the colleges and student, and the Council actually—we do a lot of stuff related to education, you know—not just at a college level. We also do at high-school level— FASKIANOS: High school— LIU: —middle-school level, and even—we also even have games for kids. So if you haven't tried those out yet, just try it out. FASKIANOS: Thank you, Zoe. So our next academic webinar will be on Wednesday, November 9, at 1:00 p.m. (EST) with Lauren Kahn, who is here at the Council, on military innovation and U.S. defense strategy. And again, I just wanted to shout out. We have our CFR fellowships application deadline for educators is available. You can check it out at CFR.org/fellowships. The deadline is October 31 so it's right around the corner. Follow us at @CFR_Academic. And again, go to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org. So thank you all for being with us. Have a great rest of your day. (END)

Sri Lanka recently found itself caught in a diplomatic tussle between China and India over the planned visit of Chinese naval vessel the Yuan Wang 5, to the port of Hambantota. India opposed the visit because it considers the vessel a spy ship, while China maintains that it's just a research vessel. And that saga is but one example of how Sri Lanka must walk the line between Asia's two largest powers. How can Sri Lanka maintain a sense of balance in its bilateral relationships with the two Asian giants? And will there come a time when Colombo will have to choose a side? Geopolitical analysts Dr Pradeep Taneja and Dr Chulanee Attanayake join presenter Ali Moore to examine the state of India-China power dynamics and what this means for Sri Lanka.An Asia Institute podcast.Produced and edited by Profactual.Music by audionautix.com.

Afghanistan has seen a year under the Taliban, and yet this regime is still struggling to find its legitimacy and engagement with the world. What remains the ground reality for ordinary Afghans? How can regional powers engage with Afghanistan to restore peace and address the impending ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region? China's sudden presence at the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, sends out a strong signal that it still holds significant leverage over the crisis island nation and the Indian Ocean. Should India be alarmed over Beijing's growing influence as relations fray between the two countries, particularly with India appealing restraint and voicing support for Taiwan, what moves are anticipated from both parties? What does Foreign Minister S Jaishankar's visit to Latin America mean for trade relations with the continent? How can India strengthen its bilateral ties in South America through potential collaboration? Tune into this latest episode of Ideas Factory podcast on PolicyPod with Nagma Sahar, Senior Fellow at ORF and Harsh Pant, Director of Studies and Head of Strategic Studies Programme at ORF as they divulges into India's foreign affairs strategy with its neighbours, new partnerships in South America and China's footprint in Asia-Pacific. For More ORF Podcast Click Here: www.orfonline.org/podcasts/ #China #US #Taiwan #Afghanistan #taliban #SriLanka #SriLankaEconomy #internationalsecurity #IndoPacific #Indo-China #Beijing #SouthAmerica #trade #ORF #PolicyPod #HarshPant #NaghmaSahar

On August 26, China's Ambassador to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong published an article in a Sri Lankan newspaper in which he drew parallels between American leader Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, and India's objections to Chinese tracking tracking vessel Yuan Wang-5 docking at Sri Lanka's strategically significant Hambantota port. In the article, without naming India, he effectively accused India of bullying Sri Lanka, and interfering with its sovereignty by trying to pressurise it over its decision to allow the docking of the Chinese vessel. He concluded his piece by saying that China and Sri Lanka should join hands to protect their respective sovereignties from countries such as the US and India. India's response was uncharacteristically sharp. In a series of tweets, the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka charged the Chinese Ambassador with “violating basic diplomatic etiquette”. Is the entire episode, involving India, Sri Lanka and China an outlier, or are we likely to see more such confrontations as the geopolitical competition in the Indian Ocean heats up? What are Sri Lanka's options in this scenario?

Facing arguably its worst economic crisis, Sri Lanka needs China more than ever. The country needs an IMF loan to see it through these times and such a deal is only possible if its major creditors agree to a debt restructuring programme.

First, Indian Express' Deep Mukherjee joins host Utsa Sarmin to talk about the death of a 9-year-old Dalit boy in Rajasthan's Jalore district after being beaten up by his upper caste teacher for drinking water from his pot. Second Indian Express'Associate Editor Shubhajit Roy discusses India's concerns over Yuan Wang 5, a Chinese vessel docking at Sri Lanka's Hambantota port and how that may affect New Delhi and Colombo's relationship. Third, we give an update on the attack on Salman Rushdie whose 1988 book "The Satanic Verses" attracted death threats and a fatwa against the author.

AMONG the headlines for Tuesday, August 16, 2022,  former navy chief Tan Sri Ahmad Ramli Mohd Nor pleaded not guilty at the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court earlier today,  to three charges of criminal breach of trust over the littoral combat ship scandal. Ahmad Ramli is accused of fraudulently approving payments worth RM21.08 mil to three firms in his capacity without the company's board agreement. Also, a Chinese research ship has docked in Sri Lanka's Hambantota port despite Indian concerns. The Yuan Wang 5 was given permission to dock on the condition it would not carry out research while in Sri Lankan waters, said port officials.  Listen to the top stories of the day, reporting from Astro AWANI newsroom — all in 3-minutes. We bring you the headlines, weekdays at 5 pm. Stay informed on astroawani.com for these news and more.

Is India now being put on the spot? Despite vociferous objections from India and the US, Sri Lanka has decided to allow a Chinese spy ship to dock at Hambantota. How should India/ QUAD respond? #ChineseSpyShip #YuanWang5 #SriLanka #Hambantota #taiwanstrait #india #China #MalaccaStrait

In this edition of #GlobalPrint, ThePrint's Senior Consulting Editor Jyoti Malhotra explains how a tale of two navies in 1971, the American and the Soviet, resonated this week as India welcomed a US ship to its port for “repairs and maintenance”, even as it expressed its concerns to Sri Lanka about a Chinese ship berthing at the Hambantota port.----more----Read this week's Global Print here: https://theprint.in/opinion/global-print/tale-of-two-ships-how-delhi-is-asserting-indianness-of-indian-ocean-to-china/1075328/

A possible berthing call by a Chinese surveillance vessel, the Yuan Wang 5, at Sri Lanka's Hambantota port, has led to Beijing protesting loudly about New Delhi's suggestion to Colombo that the tracking ship be denied entry. Colombo has said that it had asked Beijing to defer the call by the Yuan Wang 5 at a time when the country faces a dire economic crisis. After Indian concerns, the Chinese in a harsh statement asked New Delhi not to disrupt “normal exchanges” between Colombo and Beijing. The Chinese ambassador to Sri Lanka also had a meeting with President Ranil Wickremesinghe about the issue. Can India ensure that the Yuan Wang 5 does not come calling to Hambantota? Haven't Chinese submarines and a warship come to Sri Lankan ports earlier? Don't American ships come to Trincomalee? 

Hindi News (हिंदी समाचार), India's objection to spy ship going to Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, जासूस पोत के श्रीलंका जाने पर भारत की आपत्ति और चीन की जिद से उलझी बात? जानने के लिए पूरा एनालिसिस सुनें navbharatgold.com पर डेली न्यूज़कास्ट में, सुबह 8 बजे से। इसके साथ दिन की सबसे ज़रूरी और प्रमुख खबरें सुनना या पढ़ना न भूलें।

China vs India on its soil is hardly a sporting fixture that Sri Lanka can watch from the ringside without getting hurt itself.

The Post's Beijing-based diplomacy correspondent Laura Zhou analyses Beijing's political and economic relationship with Sri Lanka, “debt traps” and the Hambantota port; tech desk editor Zhou Xin discusses the US pressure on Netherlands-based ASML, the world's premier builder of semiconductor-making machines, to ban exports to China and its impact on China's tech industry.

A version of this essay was published by Swarajya magazine at https://swarajyamag.com/world/the-quad-will-china-dominate-the-indo-pacific-as-the-us-reverts-to-atlanticism-what-can-india-doA lot has happened in the last week or two: POTUS Biden’s visit to Japan for a Quad summit and related economic moves; China’s outreach to Pacific Islanders for security pacts; and the World Economic Forum pow-wow in Davos. In some sense, the Ukraine war and related disruptions have taken a back seat, even though related inflation and shortages are a long-term story. In my opinion, the Biden Administration is pursuing self-defeating policies as far as the Indo-Pacific is concerned. On the one hand, it may be because (as is the norm in India) one political party wants to undo whatever their rival had done when they were in power. On the other hand, there is a curious lack of historical memory about great-power games: the US seems to be either blase about, or reconciled to, Chinese domination of Asia/the Indo-Pacific. None of this is good as far as India is concerned. In a harsh analysis of India’s clashes on the Kashmir/Tibet border with China, two anonymous but trenchant critics suggest India has been defeated already: “China-India Border Crisis Has Quietly Resulted in Victory For Beijing’, based on the fact that the Chinese military buildup is well-nigh impossible for India to overcome.Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Meanwhile, there is increasing criticism of American involvement in – indeed responsibility for – prolonging the Ukraine war, surprisingly from the pro-Democrat, pro-war pages of the New York Times: “The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the US Deserves Most of the Blame.” A slightly dated (April 1) article on “The Military Situation in Ukraine” had already given a cogent explanation of how reality on the ground was vastly different from the narrative.What I fear is that Ukraine will become a quagmire for not only Russia, but also the US. As the NYT op-ed said, it’s not much of a leap from a proxy war to a secret war. The US is rather good at getting into unfortunate messes like this, and then having to declare victory and run like hell: see Vietnam or Afghanistan. Two brutal articles from Tablet magazine, “Three Big Questions That the American Establishment Got Wrong” and “Wingnuts vs. Factions: The two theories of American government—one fantasy, one reality” purport to show how making bad, often really bad, decisions is par for the course for US administrations, in particular Democrats. All this presages the possibility that Ukraine will be a tar baby for the US and its NATO allies, and a drain on their national treasuries. It also means that their national attention will be riveted on Russia and Ukraine for the foreseeable future, leaving China free to run rampant in Asia. Democratic Party power brokers are anyway Atlanticists fighting the Cold War all over again. Let us, therefore, consider the Indo-Pacific from a perspective where the US is increasingly hors de combat. There is this theory of the “three island chains” in the Pacific as first propounded by American John Foster Dulles, according to CSIS.org, which further states that today we have to add two more island chains in the Indian Ocean. John Foster Dulles is attributed with designating the islands stretching from the Kurils, the Japanese home islands, and the Ryukyus to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia as the “first island chain” in the 1950s. The second chain stretches from Japan through the Marianas and Micronesia, and the third is centered on Hawaii...The addition of a fourth and fifth chain in the Indian Ocean would better describe emerging Chinese maritime strategy. Chinese naval planners hope to deny adversaries the ability to operate within the first island chain during a conflict, contest control of the second island chain, and operate as a blue water navy within the third island chain. A new fourth island chain through the middle of the Indian Ocean would reflect China’s ability to challenge its geostrategic neighbor India with dual-use facilities in Gwadar, Pakistan, and Hambantota, Sri Lanka. A fifth island Chain, originating from China’s base at Doraleh, Djibouti, would reflect Beijing’s ability to pursue its developing commitments afar, such as harnessing economic resources, conducting anti-piracy operations, and protecting Chinese living abroad. [emphasis added]This is alarming, as the ‘fourth island chain’ is basically the ‘String of Pearls’ intended to strangle India and tie it down in the so-called ‘South Asia’, by negating its undoubted geographic advantage of straddling the sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. The Chinese submarine pen at Hainan in the South China Sea, with easy access to the Indian Ocean via the Straits of Malacca, is already a threat to Indian interests and blue-water navy aspirations. In addition, China is currently in the middle of a furious ship-building frenzy, so they will also have surface ships, including aircraft carriers, capable of projecting force a long way into the Indian Ocean. Just as they have done in the Himalayas, and the South China Sea, China is using ‘below-the-threshold of war’ tactics to build up its capability until one day its foes are forced to submit. Degringolade.POTUS Biden has made it clear that his administration has very little interest in Asia. He made three trips to Europe before his very first trip to Asia: a quick visit to Japan (and South Korea), where he attended a meeting of the Quad and a coming-out party for the newest American-mooted economic proposal, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. This seems to be too little, too late, after the US exited the Trans-Pacific Partnership.The IPEF also seems like a face-saving measure, and it is increasingly evident that Biden’s alleged new enthusiasm for Asia is as empty as earlier POTUS Obama’s botched ‘pivot to Asia’, which was a lot of hot air with no substance. I also remember with fury Obama’s granting of hegemony over ‘South Asia’ to China: like the Pope once divided the world between Portugal and Spain. As though Obama were dispensing papal bulls. As Indian geostrategist Brahma Chellaney suggests on Nikkei Asia in “Biden’s empty Taiwan rhetoric reveals Quad’s core weakness”, Biden’s statement about US military support for Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion may be mere bravado. There are two reasons. The first is that, as Biden’s minions clarified after his alleged gaffe, US military involvement is not within the scope of US agreements with Taiwan and/or China, which maintain the fiction of “One China”. The second is that, given its diminished industrial capacity (China has hollowed it out), the US cannot fight two major wars at once: Ukraine and Taiwan. To emphasize their disdain for the alleged ‘pivot’, the Chinese sent strategic nuclear bombers towards Japan while Biden was there, accompanied by Russian bombers. As I write this, China has just sent 30 warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense zone. The signals are clear: they threaten to invade Taiwan. Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.In the meantime, China is attempting to expand its footprint in the Indo-Pacific. It scored a coup with the Solomon Islands where it signed a wide-ranging agreement. According to a podcast from The Economist, a leaked draft shows that the agreement allows Chinese police and soldiers to be deployed in the Solomons for a broad range of reasons. It stops short of setting up a military base, but only just.Beyond this, Chinese FM Wang Yi had a blitzkrieg in the Pacific, visiting 8 island nations over 10 days, and on May 30th, he signed agreements in Fiji with a consortium of 10 of them. A draft talked about trade, tourism, security, training of police, forensic labs, and cyber-security, according to The Economist podcast Base Motives? China in the Pacific.The entire Belt and Road Initiative was a covert effort to gain access to ports, and turn them into Chinese military bases (although it has stalled a little now because of its predatory debt-trap diplomacy side-effects, as best seen in Sri Lanka). Beyond Djibouti in 2017, Gwadar and Hambantota, there are others like Cambodia’s Ream military base where China has facilities.China is also quite likely causing the sharp spike in global food prices. Economist Shamika Ravi tweeted as follows, and this is a good reason why India did a U-turn on wheat exports: instead of enabling Chinese proxies to buy it up, India will only do government to government deals. Thus the picture is of a diffident America shuffling off into Atlanticist and Anglosphere dead-ends like AUKUS (Britain brings almost nothing to the picture in the Indo-Pacific), while a more confident China is expanding its reach. Its saber rattling threatens Taiwan immediately, and India, Japan and South Korea more indirectly. The context of the Quad is also a far cry from what Abe Shinzo first envisaged as a tight military and economic alliance. It is pretty much a mere talking-shop. For instance, it is clear that none of Australia, Japan, or the US will send a single soldier to fight China on India’s behalf on the Kashmir/Tibet border. The creation of AUKUS (there are rumors about JAUKUS with Japan and CAUKUS with Canada as well) basically means India is being left out in the cold. Again. It has to depend on itself. Atmnirbharata. There is talk of a Quad-Plus, including South Korea and New Zealand. But not Vietnam and Indonesia, which are more significant? New Zealand, especially under woke Jacinda Ardern, is marginal; in fact Australia is also of little interest in the Indian Ocean. There is also political instability in Australia: Scott Morrison was replaced by Anthony Albanese overnight.I can remember at least five-six Australian PMs in the recent past, including die-hard Sinophile Kevin Rudd. How can you have continuity in such a situation? How can anybody depend on Australia to deliver on Quad? Similarly, Japanese PM Kishida Fumio is a far cry from the sensibly militaristic and nationalist Abe Shinzo. In the US, the switch from Donald Trump to Joe Biden has meant chaos regarding the Indo-Pacific. And after this November’s elections, it is likely that Biden will be a lame duck: his approval numbers keep hitting new lows, and hostile Republicans are likely to take over the Senate, leading to a war of attrition: bad news for foreign policy.In the middle of all this political turmoil, it is hard to imagine that the Quad is going to get better.Meanwhile, the developed nations of the West are merrily carrying on with their old agenda as in the Davos shindig, as though there is no end in sight for the party. Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times sounded a warning, as if one were necessary in the wake of the carnage of stock market crashes and soaring inflation. But no, laissez les bon temps rouler! Let the good times roll!And that’s exactly what India is up against. The rest of the world (with the possible exception of Japan) does not care. India has to assume it can only depend on itself, Quad or no Quad. It has to build up its military and economic muscle, and industrialize while keeping a low profile. The Thucydides Trap is a likely scenario, and presumably it will exhaust both the protagonists, leaving the door open for India to ascend to the G3 and then to the G1.1850 words, June 1, 2022 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

Farmers in Sri Lanka's Hambantota struggle to keep crops alive without effective fertilisers, with rampaging elephants — displaced due to ill-conceived infra projects — posing another threat. ----more---- https://theprint.in/world/how-organic-diktat-chinese-infra-brought-farmers-to-their-knees-on-rajapaksa-turf-hambantota/971038/ 

China and Sri Lanka are set to deepen bilateral "vaccination diplomacy" with a leading Chinese pharmaceutical company to set up a manufacturing plant to produce covid doses in President Gotabhaya Rajapakse's home district of Hambantota. The new factory will be set up under a contract that will allow Sri Lanka to obtain nine million Covid-19 vaccines from a Chinese pharmaceutical company, Palitha Kohana, Sri Lanka's ambassador to China, told the Hindustan Times. Palitha Kohana said the agreement between the State Pharmaceutical Corporation of Sri Lanka (SPC) and the Chinese state-owned Sinovak Biotech was "very close to completion". "It will be set up at a specialized pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Hambantota," the Sri Lankan ambassador said

_10 districts of the country have been identified as dengue high risk areas. The National Dengue Eradication Unit has pointed out that dengue fever has increased in 10 districts namely Colombo, Gampaha, Kalutara, Kandy, Kurunegala, Ratnapura, Kegalle, Matara, Galle and Hambantota. The number of dengue patients has increased with the onset of monsoon rains. According to the National Dengue Eradication Unit, the majority of these cases are in the upper province. More than 10,000 dengue patients have been identified so far this year, with seven deaths.

Listen to the latest news from around the world this week from our weekly "Around the World" foreign news review. - ඉන්දියාවේ දරුණු කොරෝනා තත්වය, චීනය සහ ශ්‍රී ලංකාව අතර සිදුවුනු සිදුවීම්, මුහුදේ ගිලීගිය ඉන්දුනීසියානු සබ්මැරීනය, සඳ තරණයට සම්බන්ද වුනු මයිකල් කොලින්ස්ගේ සමුගැනීම, ඇමරිකාවේ රාජ්‍ය පාලනයට ප්‍රථම වතාවට සම්බන්ද වුනු කාන්තාවෝ ඇතුළු තොරතුරු අද SBS සිංහල සේවයේ 'ලොව වටා' සතියේ විදෙස් විත්ති සමාලෝචනයෙන්

Day 20 – Lenten Prayer and Reflection – 17th March 2021   As we look at the message today, reading one is from the book of Isaiah 49:8-15 and then we'll move on to the gospel which is John 5. Let's look at the book of Isaiah 49:8-15. Before we look at verse 8, what is happening here is that this reading is a part of the celebration of the people who are joyful in returning from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem. That's what we're going to read. This is what is taking place. They are in a celebration mode, where they're joyful to return from exile from Babylon. But they are still in exile. And their lives are still led in hardship and bitterness. They're sad and they don't know what to do. They are worrying and they are in fear. But what is happening here is the prophet is assuring them that good times are coming ahead of them. That God is creating something new in their lives. The prophet is assuring them. And this passage that we're going to look at, is in response to the cry of God's people. In fact this reading is about restoration. You can write down, we're going to talk a lot about restoration. God says, "I will restore your lands and I will give back your inheritance." That's where we are going to start from. What is happening? They were in exile and it is a celebration of the people who are joyful, who are returning from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem. And now this is like the cry of the people, they are still facing this hardship, they are still going through bitterness, sadness and the pain of loss, and then the prophet is assuring them that God is going to do something in their lives. There are good times ahead. So we'll start from Isaiah 49:8 Isaiah 49:8 This is what the Lord says: "In the time of my favour I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, What is God saying? It's what we looked in the beginning. "In the time of my favour I will answer you," so the people who know they are celebrating from the exile, they are coming out, and they are still suffering, they are in hardship and bitterness, and God is telling, "In the time of my favour I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and make you to be a covenant for the people." So God is telling, I'm going to restore you. He's telling the captives and the prisoners, "Come out. I'm going to do something new in your life." So this is what God is trying to do to these people who are living in exile. Let's move onto verse 9. Isaiah 49:9 to say to the captives, 'Come out' and to those in darkness, 'Be free!' "They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill. What is God telling? He's telling to the captives, "Come out." And He's telling those who are in darkness, "Be free." And God is calling us today and in this time of Lent, from exile into this light. God is calling us who are prisoners, who have been captives, who are caught up, what is God telling? "Come out." Instead what is God doing to us? He's giving us freedom. Those who are living in captivity, those who are living in darkness, God is calling us to be freed. Just like the people at that time who were captives, who were caught in a certain place, God is calling us to be free. So let's look at verse 10.   Isaiah 49:10 They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water. What is God saying? There will be no hunger, there will be no thirst, the heat of the desert will not beat down upon them and the person who has compassion, who is the Lord Himself, will guide and lead them besides springs of water. So if you take the environment there, water must have been scarce, it would have been very hot and look at what God is telling. From an external point of view, God is telling, "I'm going to look after you. You may have been in exile, you may have been caught up, you may have been living in the darkness, but I'm telling you, come out of it. And I'm going to show you my form of justice." And God is promising them that He will end their sorrows. Let's go deeper. Isaiah 49:11 I will turn all my mountains into roads, and my highways will be raised up. It's amazing, at the beginning of the year, Thaththa was talking about the super highway. We listened to, and if you follow the CRL you know that we're talking about the super highway. Although it seems so dark, it seems nothing was happening, how God opened this highway to do so many programmes. Even today if you see, the praise was led from Toronto, and I am speaking from Sri Lanka, because God has opened up this highway. What is God saying? For example if you go through the Hambantota-Galle Highway, you'll be able to see how they have paved this way through mountains. How they have paved this way through breaking rocks and all these sorts of things. So if you know, years back if you want to travel to Hambantota, if you want to travel to Galle, how hard it was to travel there. How much of resource was wasted. How much of time was wasted. But now, because of this highway, what's happening? People can easily go through to the place, and with limited resources you can get from one place to the other. So what is God doing to His people? He's telling, "I'm taking you from exile through the highway, I'm taking you to a place where you have never dreamt of." And God is telling, "I am the one who is going to do this. I'm going to give back the lands that you have lost. I am giving you fresh water, I'm not going to let the heat, consume you. You will be surrounded by lands which are fertile, untouched by heat or thirst. I am going to restore you." Remember in the beginning of the message I told you this is a message of restoration. Isaiah 49:12 See, they will come from afar--some from the north, some from the west, some from the region of Aswan." What is happening here? Now since everything is being restored, God is calling people from everywhere, to come to this land He has for them. So this verse is saying, they are coming from the north, west, region of Aswan, what does it mean? That the men of God who were in exile, who were lost, who were in darkness, now they are called to come to where God is actually placing them, healing them, returning back their land, giving them fertile lands, He has opened up the super highway, the highway for people to walk back in. God is opening such an amazing door for them. God is telling, "I am your God, you were captive, you were taken hostile by the enemies, you were caught up, you didn't know what to do, but depend on me, I am going to take you to this land, which I am giving you, which is fertile and you can live there."   Isaiah 49:13-14 Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. But Zion said, "The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me." Now it's funny. God is telling all these things, "I'm going to create a highway, I'm going to bring you back to your fertile lands, I am not going to let the heat touch you, if you're thirsty you'll have springs of water" -- all this and explaining how He's going to be there for them, He's going to take them from exile, and they'll walk from the west, north into the land -- but here, what is the reply of Zion? As human beings like us today, the Zion is skeptical. Zion is saying, "Oh no, I'm sorry. I don't think we can believe in this promise and I don't think this will happen." And if you look back, deep in our hearts, isn't that who we are sometimes? We are always doubting, always fearing. God is telling, "I'm going to give you all these things", it's already happening, we can see that, sometimes we already see that happening, we see the signs, we see the miracles. But Zion is still doubting. And in verse 15 you can see the response of God. God is telling: Isaiah 49:15 "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! All of us know who our mother is. Mother can take care of a child much more than a father and the love that a mother has, the care, and how a mother embraces a child, how a mother is so connected to the child. If you can see, how much a mother can take care of a child. And God is saying, a mother who loves the child so much, a mother who truly feels the child, embraces the child, feeds the child, even if the mother does leave this child, what is God saying He will do? "I will never forget you!" God is telling, "As you are my people, I will never forget you." God is actually full of tenderness, He's full of compassion, He's gentle, He's telling these people, "I'm going to give you all this" and what are the people saying, "Oh, I don't think we really understand your message. I don't think you're going to really give this." God is giving us promises, He's sending signs and wonders and miracles. He's giving us message beyond message, year after year. But what are we saying? "We have a small doubt. On the side we'll have a fixed bank account, on the side we'll have this small relationship. We know you are there, but on the side, just in case." But then God is explaining, even when people are going against Him, even when people don't understand His love, He's explaining to him, as his perfect God, with a lot of tenderness and compassion, He's as gentle as a mother. He's telling, "Even a mother could forget you, but I will not forget you." Those who have walked with God for many years in the CRL, or whoever you are listening, you will know this side of God. He's a tender God, a gentle God. How many times you fall and you fail? I ask my own heart, how many times I have failed the Lord, but He's this great Father, He's this great mother, who embraces you and walks with you. This is the compassion of God. This is the love of God. Now we're going to go into the gospel. Before we go, this is the message God is giving us. This is a message of restoration. This is a message of where the people who were living in darkness, the people who were living in captivity, are being brought back and there is a promise from God, God is telling, "I'm doing, I'm clearing all this for you. I'm opening a door for you" and then the people are saying, "No, we don't believe you." And then God is telling, "I'm like a mother, I'm even greater than a mother. I will never leave you nor forget you." We'll go to the gospel, John 5:17-30   John 5:17 Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." What happens before this, connecting to this passage, it's the Sabbath day, and on the Sabbath day Jesus heals this invalid man, this man who had this problem for 38 long years, who was in this state for 38 long years, what does Jesus do? On the Sabbath day, he comes and says to this man, "Get up and be healed." What is happening? On the Sabbath day since Jesus did this, the Jewish leaders were furious. They were angry. "How can you go against the Law and do this?" And then they were really upset. So what did Jesus tell this man in that passage? He says, "Pick up your mat and walk." It's funny, if it was today, what would Jesus have told this man? What do you think? He would have said, "Pick up your iPad and walk" or "Pick up your tablet and walk." Why? People are always having a tablet, a phone or something. We are holding on dearly to our electronic devices. So what did Jesus tell this man? He told this man, "Pick up your mat and walk." This healing takes place, and they question Jesus, they ask Jesus, "Why did you do this on the Sabbath day?" and that's where verse 17 starts from. What is Jesus doing throughout? He's explaining his relationship between him and his Father. So let's go to verse 18. John 5:18 For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. This is the problem the leaders of the Jews were having. They could not see Jesus as the Son of God, and now not only was God breaking the rule of the Sabbath, but now this man is calling himself the Son of God. He's equating himself the Son of God. John 5:19 Jesus gave them this answer: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself... What is Jesus trying to explain to them? Jesus is trying to tell them, "I tell you the truth. The Son can do nothing by himself." Rather he's explaining, "I'm not alone. I'm not doing this thing on my own." Then he goes on to explain. John 5:19 continued he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. Jesus is telling, "I am not alone. I am not doing these things alone. I am not just another human being trying to heal somebody. I am not just another human being living on my own mission. I'm not trying to fix my own career or do something of my own. No, I am connected to someone else. And who is that someone else? That someone else is my Father." John 5:20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these. Jesus is explaining about the love of the Father, so he's telling, "You'll do greater things than these."   John 5:21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Jesus is explaining first, "I am not alone, I'm not doing this business alone. I'm connected to my Father. I'm doing His will." Now he's saying, "I have come to give life. So if my Father can raise somebody from the dead and bring them to life, so same with me. I have come to give life. And I am not alone, I am within the Father, and the Father is within me." Jesus is actually strengthening the idea that he is not alone, he is with the Father. John 5:22-23 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son just as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father, who sent him. What is Jesus saying in this? "The Father and I are the same. If you don't honour the Father, you'll never know the Son. If you don't honour the Father, then you're not honouring the Son. Here we are two, but we are one." This is our faith, isn't it? We know God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit, but our faith is that we know them as one. And Jesus is explaining this relationship beautifully. "I am not different, I am not having my own agenda, I am connected to the Father and I am doing His will." Let's move to verse This is where we are going to connect it to the Old Testament. John 5:24 "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. Now we are beginning to see the connection from the Old Testament. What happened in the OId Testament? The people were in exile in a physical place and they crossed over to the land God had promised them. The first reading in the book of Isaiah said: "From the place of captivity they crossed over to the place where God had intended." How did they cross over? They came through the highway. They came through the super highway, they came through the place where God had asked them to come. And they were given a place where the heat will not consume them, there won't be thirst, fertile lands, all that. What happens? From a physical place of exile they came to life. What is verse 24 saying? You cross over from death to life. "He has crossed over from death to life." "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life" and in the Old Testament whoever believed in God and walked in Him were promised by the prophet that they will get this land, they will inherit this land that they have lost, and it will be full of life. In the desert there will be streams of water. Nothing will happen to you through the heat, and here in the New Testament, God is telling, "You have crossed over from death to life." How do you cross over from death to life? It is through the life of Jesus. It is through Jesus. Many have gathered from every part of the world, it said in the Old Testament, from an experience they gathered from every part of the world. But where did they come? They came to life. All of us who are here, who are born again in Jesus can testify to that. All those who are listening, you can testify. How did you come to this experience? You crossed over from a sinful life to the life of Jesus. To the life that God has given you. You crossed over. In the Old Testament it was physical but in the New   Testament, how do you cross over from this death, sin and addiction to life? It is Jesus himself. And who is Jesus himself? He's not just a man like you and me. He has his own agenda, he does not want to be build his career or his kingdom. He's telling, "I am connected to my Father. And my Father's will is my will. And if He says to restore someone, I will restore. If He says to bring someone from death to life, I will do it." Do you understand? Jesus is this life that we're called into. What are we asked to do during this time of Lent? If we are addicted, if we are wounded, if we are healed, if we are hiding in sickness, as it's said in the book of Isaiah: "Come all those who are hiding in darkness, come out." In Lent we are called to come out of this darkness. How do we come out of this darkness? We receive Jesus Christ into our lives. And then if we receive Jesus into our lives, what's going to happen? We will cross over from death to life. We will enter the super highway of Jesus Christ. And in the highway of Jesus Christ, the mountains will be made smooth and road will be made for us to walk this journey with Jesus. John 5:25 I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Beautiful, so powerful, isn't it? A time is coming, not only is it coming, it's already come. The dead, the lost, the wounded, the murderers, the rapists, the wrongdoers, those who are stuck in the world, and what is God saying? They will hear the voice of the Son of God, and who is the Son of God? Not just a lonely man on his own mission, he's connected to his Father and when he's connected to his Father, he's not come to judge, he was come to give life. And that life, what will that life do? It will bring them from death to life. It will transform them from nothingness into His glory. When they hear his voice, the dead will start living. John 5:26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. What is God saying? The Father has life. You can search for life outside, you can search for life here, you can search for joy here, you can search for this and that here, but the true life is in the Father. And the Father has given it to the Son. John 5:27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. A lot of us Christians have forgotten Christ in Christianity and we are running around. We are running around doing this, we're running around building buildings, we are running around strategizing to build the kingdom, we're running around that committee, this committee, and all that. But look at this verse. So beautiful. It says: "he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man." He is the Father's son, he's the only son, and he has been given all authority and if we don't receive him, we'll be living a good Christian life. We'll be a living a good Catholic life, but it will have no meaning, because we have not received the Son of Man. John 5:28-30 "Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out--those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be   condemned. By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. It's so amazing, Jesus is telling, "I am the Son of God, I am the Son of Man, I don't operate alone." And then he's telling, "I don't do things on my own. I don't do things for myself." If we ask our own hearts, we do things for our own self. We do it for our happiness, and it that process what is happening? We are hurting others. We are wounding others. In the process of trying to build ourselves, build the kingdom of God in that process, we are doing something wrong. But God is telling, "I have not come to judge. Instead I've come to heal." And what is God telling us? Jesus is the restorer. We looked at the beginning that we are going to listen to a message of restoration. From death to life. In the Old Testament they moved from a physical place, a physical possession into the life that God has promised them, into the beautiful place that God has promised them. And in the New Testament, God is telling, this is not a place, this is not a possession, this is not tangible, this is Jesus Christ himself. The call today is to cross over from death to life. The call today for Christians is not just call themselves Christians only but to put Christ into that Christianity. To make Jesus the centre of all this mess. We have created a mess, if you look at our country, if you look at the world, we have created a mess. Why? Because as Christians we may have been living and doing our own thing. But Jesus is first teaching us, through all those passages he's telling us, "I'm not alone, I don't do things for myself, I don't walk alone to do what my will is. I do what the Father teaches me. But whoever comes to me will be restored. If you are living in darkness, come out. If you are living in sin, come out. If you are walking in fear, if you're walking in depression, if you're caught up in sickness, the agenda of the world, God is telling, "Come out. And I am taking you to the place from death to life." And how are we going from death to life? It is through Christ himself. We are called to cross over from sin to life. We are called to cross over from death to life. I'll finish with Hebrews 12:2. It's connecting all this what I said. Hebrew 12:2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus who is the author and perfecter of our faith. In the Old Testament, it's a place, it's a possession, God is taking them from here to there. But in the New Testament, life from death comes through Jesus Christ. And it's beautifully explained -- "I have come to give life. I have not come to judge." So those who believe that Jesus Christ is here to judge you, to condemn you, to tell you how wrong you are, to show your sin, majority of the world believes that, that's why they don't come to God. God is telling, "No, you've got it all horribly wrong. I have come as more than a mother, I have come as a Father to wipe your tears, I have come to die for you on the cross and to perfect your faith. And I am the beginning of your faith, I am the perfecter of your faith," as it is said in the book of Hebrews 12:2. Today as we go into worship, we have been called to look at the restorer, we have been called to look at Jesus, who is going to take us from death to life. If you've been holding on to sin, if you have been holding on to fear, if you've been living in depression, if you're living in sickness, God is calling you to come from death to life.

Trung Quốc đang từ vị thế « cứu tinh » trở thành cơn « ác mộng » khi hiện nguyên hình là một ông chủ nợ « cầm dao đằng chuôi » và hành xử như một « con cá mập » với các nước Nam Á. Trên đây là nhận định của giới chuyên gia khi phân tích về « bẫy nợ Trung Quốc ». Sau những năm tháng mở rộng vòng tay đón nhận đầu tư và tín dụng của Trung Quốc, quần đảo Maldives trong vùng Ấn Độ Dương, với GDP 5 tỷ đô la, choáng váng khi phải trả nợ hơn 1,5 tỷ đô la hàng năm cho Bắc Kinh. Tại Islamabad, bốn năm sau khi ồn áo ký kết với Trung Quốc 51 thỏa thuận hợp tác và phát triển trong khuôn khổ chương trình « Một vành đai, một con đường » xây dựng hành lang kinh tế mở từ Tân Cương đến tận vùng biển Ả Rập, các doanh nhân Pakistan nhận thấy rằng « ngoại trừ một vài tập đoàn xi-măng, không có nhiều công ty Pakistan hưởng lợi từ những hợp đồng khổng lồ trị giá hàng trăm triệu đô la với Trung Quốc ». Tệ hơn nữa Islamabad bị cáo buộc « cõng rắn cắn gà nhà » trước sức cạnh tranh quá mạnh của các tập đoàn Trung Quốc, như ghi nhận của cây bút xã luật Khuram Husain trên nhật báo Pakistan Dawn. Từ « Con Đương Tơ Lụa Mới » đến « Núi Nợ » Theo một nghiên cứu của đại học Mỹ ở Boston công bố tháng 12/2020, trong giai đoạn 2008-2019 Bắc Kinh đã cấp 495 tỷ đô la tín dụng cho các nước nghèo. Như vậy chỉ một mình Trung Quốc giải ngân một khoản tiền đương đương với Ngân Hàng Thế Giới trong cùng thời kỳ. Nói cách khác, chủ nợ lớn nhất của các nền kinh tế đang phát triển hiện nay là Trung Quốc. Riêng với khu vực Nam Á thì sao ? Trả lời đài RFI Tiếng Việt, chuyên gia Olivier Guillard thuộc Trung Tâm Nghiên Cứu về Ấn Độ và Nam Á- CERIAS, đại học Montréal-Canada trước hết nêu bật mức độ « thân – sơ » giữa Bắc Kinh với các đối tác trong khu vực và đó là điểm khởi đầu định hướng cho chiến lược cấp vốn của Bắc Kinh cho Nam Á Olivier Guillard : « Từ gần 20 năm nay, Trung Quốc theo đuổi một chiến lược với khu vực Nam Á và phân loại các đối tượng như sau : đẩy mạnh thêm quan hệ với một số quốc gia, như là trường hợp của Pakistan, mà từ trước đến nay vẫn có truyền thống thân thiện với Bắc Kinh ; một số khác không hẳn là thù nghịch nhưng có một mối liên hệ nhậy cảm với Trung Quốc : đây là trường hợp của Nepal, hay Bangladesh. Với khối này, Trung Quốc cố gắng chứng tỏ là một người bạn tốt. Với một số khác thì Bắc Kinh dùng hầu bao để chiêu dụ, như đã làm với quần đảo Maldives và Sri Lanka. Những quốc gia này tận dụng tư bản của Trung Quốc để mở mang cả về thương mại lẫn kinh tế. Riêng Ấn Độ không cần vốn của Trung Quốc để phát triển ». Đâu là lợi thế của Trung Quốc trong mắt các nền kinh tế đang trỗi dậy ? Olivier Guillard : « Trung Quốc không cho vay với lãi suất hời nhất, nhưng lại có ưu điểm là không đòi hỏi những điều kiện đi kèm quá khắt khe như là trong trường hợp mà các nước Nam Á phải cầu viện đến Quỹ Tiền Tệ Quốc Tế, Ngân Hàng Thế Giới, hay Ngân Hàng Phát Triển Á Châu và những tổ chức quốc tế khác. Đó là một ưu thế của Bắc Kinh khiến Trung Quốc trở thành một nhà chủ nợ có sức thuyết phục cao ». Trong bài viết đăng trên tạp chí Asialyst đầu tháng Giêng 2021, mang tựa đề « Trước ông chủ nợ là Trung Quốc liệu các quốc gia trong vùng Nam Á có tránh được bẫy nợ hay không ? » chuyên gia Olivier Guillard đã chứng minh rằng Bắc Kinh luôn « cầm dao đằng chuôi ».   Olivier Guillard : « Trung Quốc cấp vốn cho các quốc gia khác dựa trên nhiều cơ sở : đương nhiên là phải kể đến yếu tố tài chính, nhưng bên cạnh đó chủ yếu là tính toán chính trị. Một khi Bắc Kinh cho vay vài trăm triệu thậm chí là vài tỷ đô la để cho Pakistan tài trợ những công trình xây dựng cơ sở hạ tầng khổng lồ, thì đằng sau đó là rất nhiều thâm ý khác. Thứ nhất, số tiền cho vay này cho phép Trung Quốc kiểm soát một phần các hoạt động kinh tế của Pakistan để bảo đảm rằng Islamabad có khả năng quản lý số tiền nói trên và nhất là có khả năng hoàn trả lại cho chủ nợ là Trung Quốc. Điểm thứ nhì là Bắc Kinh thường cho vay với lãi suất cao hơn so với thị trường, cao hơn so với lãi suất của các định chế tài chính đa quốc gia, thành thử phí tổn mà các con nợ phải hoàn trả cho Trung Quốc lại càng nặng. Điều đó có nghĩa là những nước đi vay phải bảo đảm có được một tỷ lệ trăng trưởng nào đó thì mới đủ sức trả nợ. Nếu không các nền kinh tế này rơi vào cái bẫy nợ ». Những bẫy nợ đó mang hình thức nào ? Olivier Guillard :  « Trong số những bẫy nợ một khi mà Trung Quốc đã cấp những khoản tín dụng rất lớn, đương nhiên kèm theo đó là những điều kiện để bảo đảm là sớm muộn gì thì Bắc Kinh cũng sẽ thu hồi lại vốn. Vào lúc mà các nền kinh tế cần nguồn tài trợ để phát triển, như là trường hợp của Sri Lanka hay Bangladesh. Các nền kinh tế này xem Trung Quốc như một vị cứu tinh : Bắc Kinh trích xuất vốn một cách dễ dàng nhưng Trung Quốc cho vay với lãi suất cao và ấn định một thời hạn khác ngắn ngủi để các chính quyền Colombo và Dacca phải hoàn trả. Thí dụ như Sri Lanka chẳng hạn : sau khi đã vay rất nhiều tiền của Trung Quốc, Colombo không thể thanh toán nợ đáo hạn, Bắc Kinh thúc hối đối tác Nam Á này đàm phán lại để khất hoặc xóa bớt một phần nợ. Trong cuộc thương lượng, Trung Quốc đòi Sri Lanka nhượng bộ một phần chủ quyền quốc gia có nghĩa là nhường quyền khai thác cảng Hambantota lại cho một tập đoàn của Trung Quốc trong thời hạn 99 năm. Như vậy có nghĩa là từ chuyện đi vay tiền để phát triển kinh tế, nợ của Sri Lanka đã trở thành một vấn cả về mặt chính trị lẫn địa chính trị ». Yếu tố quân sự Trong trường hợp của Pakistan, yếu tố địa chính trị quá rõ ràng : Washington càng lạnh nhạt với Islamabad, Trung Quốc lại càng chiếm lợi thế. Là một quốc gia có đường biên giới chung với Ấn Độ và quan hệ giữa Islamabad và New Delhi luôn gặp nhiều sóng gió, Pakistan nghiễm nhiên trở thành một đồng minh ở Nam Á hàng đầu của Trung Quốc Bên cạnh bang giao tốt đẹp từ những năm 1960, 2015 được coi là một cột mốc quan trọng khi chủ tịch Trung Quốc Tập Cận Bình thân chinh sang tận Islamabad khởi động dự án thiết lập một « hành lang kinh tế Trung Quốc – Pakistan » : đây là một kế hoạch đầu tư 46 tỷ đô la do vốn của Trung Quốc tài trợ để xây dựng cho « nước bạn » từ hệ thống đường xa lộ đến nhà máy điện, từ cảng nước sâu ở Gwadar mở ra biển Ả Rập đến hê thống đường sắt cho Pakistan. Đổi lại trục Islamabad-Bắc Kinh đã tăng cường đáng kể những hợp tác quân sự. Quân đội Pakistan vốn kiểm soát từ các phương tiện truyền thống đến vấn đề an ninh, quốc phòng, kho vũ khí hạt nhân và cả vế ngoại giao cùng theo đuổi mục đích kềm tỏa ảnh hưởng của Ẩn Độ ở Nam Á và cả trong vùng Ấn Độ Dương. Trong bài toán địa chính trị đó, cả phía Trung Quốc lẫn Pakistan cùng không quên một vế quan trọng đó là những hợp đồng mua bán vũ khí trị giá bạc triệu. Theo nghiên cứu của Viện Nghiên Cứu Hòa Bình Stockholm – SIPRI năm 2018, Trung Quốc cung cấp đến 70 % vũ khí cho Pakistan. Một chục năm trước đó, tỷ lệ này là 50 %. Chuyên gia về Ấn Độ và Nam Á tại đại học Montréal, Olivier Guillard, lo ngại là một phần các khoản tín dụng vay được của Trung Quốc « bốc hơi » để phục vụ quyền lợi của một số ít các nhà lãnh đạo tại các nước nghèo ở Nam Á Olivier Guillard : «  Hoàn toàn đúng như vậy. Một số quốc gia Nam Á và kể cả ở Đông Nam Á, mau mắn nhận tín dụng của Trung Quốc. Tuy nhiên tại các quốc gia này thường thiếu vắng những cơ quan giám sát về tài chính, một phần các khoản tín dụng nhận được của Trung Quốc bốc hơi, bay thẳng vào túi của một số các quan chức. Trong khi đó các dự án phát triển thì hoàn toàn không được đem ra thảo luận một cách công khai, báo chí cũng không được quyền nhòm ngó đến … Nạn tham nhũng trong một số trường hợp là điều không tránh khỏi ». Nói cách khác, hiệu quả kinh tế không mấy khi được kiểm chứng. Chỉ biết một điều là các nước nghèo lại hứng chịu cảnh nợ nần chồng chất trước một ông chủ nợ không mấy khoan dung. Olivier Guillard giải thích : Olivier Guillard : « Một số dự án đã được thực hiện nhờ vốn của Trung Quốc hoạt động tốt, thí dụ như trong lĩnh vực trùng tu các cơ sở hạ tầng. Nhưng ngược lại thì cũng có rất nhiều các công trình khác gây nhiều tranh cãi. Hiệu quả thực sự về mặt kinh tế của các dự án được tài trợ nhờ vốn Trung Quốc không phải lúc nào cũng được kiểm chứng. Điều chắc chắn duy nhất : đó là nguồn gốc dẫn hiện tượng nợ nần chồng chất tại các nước Nam Á ». Trong bối cảnh kinh tế toàn cầu khủng hoảng dưới tác động của đại dịch y tế chưa tới hồi kết, liệu rằng các nước Nam Á lại càng khó cưỡng lại với những luồng tư bản của  Trung Quốc ? Olivier Guillard : «  Đúng là như vậy, khủng hoảng Covid khiến kinh tế toàn cầu chựng lại. Tăng trưởng của Trung Quốc sụt giảm và tác động lây lan tới các nền kinh tế Á châu – ngoại trừ một vài trường hơp riêng lẻ. Các nền kinh tế đang phát triển gặp khó khăn về tài chính và bắt buộc phải đi tìm những nguồn tài trợ khác. Đây có lẽ là cơ hội để những nước này hướng tới những nhà tài trợ khác ngoài Trung Quốc. Tôi muốn nói đến Nhật Bản, Hàn Quốc hay Ấn Độ … để thế vào chỗ của Trung Quốc. Hơn nữa bản thân Bắc Kinh cũng đang phải trích xuất các khoản dự trữ tiền tệ và tài chính riêng của mình để khắc phục hậu quả kinh tế và xã hội mà khủng hoảng y tế gây nên. Lợi thế duy nhất của Bắc Kinh trong mắt các con nợ đó là Trung Quốc dễ dàng cho vay mà không đòi hỏi quá nhiều về những điều kiện như là về mặt nhân quyền, chính trị, minh bạch chống tham nhũng …    Khi cho vay như vậy thì Trung Quốc cũng có lợi : Bắc Kinh được bảo đảm rằng các con nợ của mình sẽ không về hùa với phương Tây để chọc ngoáy vào những hồ sơ nhậy cảm đối với Trung Quốc như là trên vấn đề Đài Loan, Tây Tạng, Tân Cương  ... Tôi nghĩ rằng trong hoàn cảnh hiện tại, có nghiều khả năng, bất chấp những rủi ro như vừa trình bày, các nền kinh tế đang phát triển sẽ tiếp tục chạy theo Trung Quốc, cầu viện Bắc Kinh bỏ vố, tham gia vào các dự án phát triển của khu vực Nam Á ». Tư bản Trung Quốc trở nên khan hiếm Tuy nhiên chỉ cần nhìn vào khối tín dụng mà hai ngân hàng lớn của Trung Quốc là Ngân Hàng Phát Triển và Ngân Hàng Xuất Nhập Khẩu cũng đủ cho thấy là Bắc Kinh đã tính tới khả năng các con nợ không đủ khả năng thanh toán. Năm 2016 hai định chế tài chính này cấp 75 tỷ đô la tín dụng cho khu vực Nam Á. Đến 2019 con số nói trên rơi xuống còn 4 tỷ. Giám đốc trung tâm nghiên cứu thuộc đại học Boston, Kevin P.Gallergher trên nhật báo le Monde của Pháp hôm 17/01/2021 quan niệm Bắc Kinh ý thức được rằng « nợ khó đòi có nguy cơ làm suy yếu các doanh nghiệp Trung Quốc đang thực hiện những công trình xây dựng cơ sở hạ tầng cho các nước nghèo » ở Nam Á. 

Ruvindu Gunasekera drops into the podcast this week to share his experiences of playing Cricket in Canada & Sri Lanka. We talk about growing up and trying to read and write Sinhalese, to flying in a helicopter from Colombo to Hambantota for the... --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Rare earth minerals are essential ingredients for many of the technologies that are important today and will be key in the future. In this episode, we learn about a new global economy being created around rare minerals and how the United States can catch up to the commanding lead that China has established in dominating the mineral dependent industries. Executive Producer: Coffee Infused Nerd  Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Click here to contribute monthly or a lump sum via PayPal Click here to support Congressional Dish via Patreon (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank’s online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North, Number 4576, Crestview, FL 32536 Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! 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Listen on Spotify CD095: Secret International Regulations, Listen on Spotify CD067: What Do We Want In Ukraine?, Listen on Spotify  CD003: The Free Market vs. US, Listen on Spotify Bill Outline S. 1317: American Mineral Security Act Text as of July 27, 2020 TITLE I - American Mineral Security Sec. 102: Policy We will analyze supply and demand of minerals to avoid supply shortages, mitigate price volatility, and prepare for demand growth We will map and develop domestic resources of minerals Speed up the permitting process for mineral mining and new mineral manufacturing facilities Invest in workforce training for mineral exploration and development Transfer technology and information in international cooperation agreements Recycle critical minerals Develop alternatives to critical minerals Sec. 104: Resource Assessment Within 4 years of the date the bill is signed into law, a “comprehensive national assessment of each critical mineral” must be completed which identifies known quantities of each mineral using public and private information and an assessment of undiscovered mineral resources in the U.S. The information will be given to the public electronically Sec. 105: Permitting Orders reports to be done on expediting permitting Sec. 107: Recycling, Efficiency, and Alternatives The Secretary of Energy would be required to conduct a research and development program to promote production, use, and recycling of critical minerals and to develop alternatives to critical minerals that are not found in abundance in the United States. Sec. 109: Education and Workforce The Secretary of Labor will be given almost two years to complete an assessment of the Untied States workforce capable of operating a critical minerals management industry Creates a grant program where the Secretary of Labor will give “institutions of higher eduction” money for up to 10 years to create critical minerals management programs, and to help pay for student enrolled in those programs. Sec. 110: National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program Authorizes, but does not appropriate, $5 million per year from 2020-2019 for the program created in 2005 that catalogs geologic and engineering data, maps, logs, and samples. This program was authorized at $30 million from 2006-2010. Sec. 112: Authorization of Appropriations Authorizes, but does not appropriate, $50 million for fiscal years 2020-2019. TITLE II: Rare Earth Element Advanced Coal Technologies Sec. 201: Program for Extraction and Recovery of Rare Earth Elements and Minerals from Coal and Coal Byproducts Requires the Secretary of Energy to create a program for developing “advanced separation technologies” for the extraction and recovery of rare earth elements and minerals from coal. Authorizes, but does not appropriate, $23 million per year for 2020-2027. Articles/Documents Article: Unsanitized: The HEALS Act Emerges By David Dayen, The American Prospect, July 28, 2020 Article: Pompeo’s Surreal Speech on China By Ernest Scheyder, The Atlantic, July 25, 2020 Article: Trump wants an ‘alliance of democracies’ to oppose China. It’s starting to take shape By By Shashank Bengali, Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2020 Article: Pentagon resumes rare earths funding program after review By Ernest Scheyder, Reuters, July 21, 2020 Article: Quantitative Easing vs. Currency Manipulation By Matthew Johnston, Investopedia, June 25, 2019 Article: China hands out more grain import quotas to increase purchases - sources by Hallie Gu and Dominique Patton, Reuters, May 13, 2020 Article: Trump’s tariffs on China could cost the US in its fight against the coronavirus by Audrey Cher, CNBC, April 13, 2020 Article: Mining the moon: Trump backs new space race by James Marshall, E&E News, April 27, 2020 Article: Trump wants more countries to join US policy approach to space resources, lunar mining by Michael Sheetz, CNBC, April 6, 2020 Article: Executive Order on Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources, White House, April 6, 2020 Article: As copper recovery declines, so does the tellurium supply for thin-film solar panels By Kelly Pickerel, Solar Power World, July 3, 2018 Article: Drone video shows blindfolded, handcuffed prisoners in China's Xinjiang Uyghur region By Liselotte Mas, The Observers, September 25, 2019 Article: China footage reveals hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners By Lily Kuo, The Guardian, September 23, 2019 Document: Rare Earth Elements in National Defense: Background, Oversight Issues, and Options for Congress By Valerie Bailey Grasso, Specialist in Defense Acquisition, Congressional Research Service, December 23, 2013 Article: U.S. imposes quotas on some Chinese textiles By Keith Bradsher, The New York Times, Sept. 2, 2005 Additional Resources Bill: H.R.2262 - U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, Congress.gov, November 25, 2015 Sound Clip Sources Speech: Communist China and the Free World’s Future, Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary Of State, Yorba Linda, California, The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, U.S. Department of State, July 23, 2020 Transcript: 14:00 Mike Pompeo: The Department of Justice and other agencies have vigorously pursued punishment for these crimes….And so our Department of Defense has ramped up its efforts, freedom of navigation operations out and throughout the East and South China Seas, and in the Taiwan Strait as well. And we’ve created a Space Force to help deter China from aggression on that final frontier. And so too, frankly, we’ve built out a new set of policies at the State Department dealing with China, pushing President Trump’s goals for fairness and reciprocity, to rewrite the imbalances that have grown over decades. 18:35 Mike Pompeo: It’s true, there are differences. Unlike the Soviet Union, China is deeply integrated into the global economy. But Beijing is more dependent on us than we are on them. 21:30 Mike Pompeo: The challenge of China demands exertion, energy from democracies – those in Europe, those in Africa, those in South America, and especially those in the Indo-Pacific region. And if we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build. 22:20 Mike Pompeo: So we can’t face this challenge alone. The United Nations, NATO, the G7 countries, the G20, our combined economic, diplomatic, and military power is surely enough to meet this challenge if we direct it clearly and with great courage. Maybe it’s time for a new grouping of like-minded nations, a new alliance of democracies. We have the tools. I know we can do it. Now we need the will. Speech: Attorney General Barr’s Remarks on China Policy at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, U.S. Department of Justice, July 16, 2020 Read Transcript Transcript: 13:50: The People’s Republic of China is now engaged in an economic blitzkrieg—an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent technological superpower. 14:15: A centerpiece of this effort is the Communist Party’s “Made in China 2025” initiative, a plan for PRC domination of high-tech industries like robotics, advanced information technology, aviation, and electric vehicles, and many other technologies . Backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, this initiative poses a real threat to U.S. technological leadership. 15:20 “Made in China 2025” is the latest iteration of the PRC’s state-led, mercantilist economic model. For American companies in the global marketplace, free and fair competition with China has long been a fantasy. To tilt the playing field to its advantage, China’s communist government has perfected a wide array of predatory and often unlawful tactics: currency manipulation, tariffs, quotas, state-led strategic investment and acquisitions, theft and forced transfer of intellectual property, state subsidies, dumping, cyberattacks, and industrial espionage. 16:30: The PRC also seeks to dominate key trade routes and infrastructure in Eurasia, Africa, and the Pacific. In the South China Sea, for example, through which about one-third of the world’s maritime trade passes, the PRC has asserted expansive and historically dubious claims to nearly the entire waterway, flouted the rulings of international courts, built artificial islands and placed military outposts on them, and harassed its neighbors’ ships and fishing boats. 17:00: Another ambitious project to spread its power and influence is the PRC’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative. Although billed as “foreign aid,” in fact these investments appear designed to serve the PRC’s strategic interests and domestic economic needs. For example, the PRC has been criticized for loading poor countries up with debt, refusing to renegotiate terms, and then taking control of the infrastructure itself, as it did with the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota in 2017. This is little more than a form of modern-day colonialism. 19:20: The PRC’s drive for technological supremacy is complemented by its plan to monopolize rare earth materials, which play a vital role in industries such as consumer electronics, electric vehicles, medical devices, and military hardware. According to the Congressional Research Service, from the 1960s to the 1980s, the United States led the world in rare earth production.[6] “Since then, production has shifted almost entirely to China,” in large part due to lower labor costs and lighter environmental regulation. The United States is now dangerously dependent on the PRC for these materials. Overall, China is America’s top supplier, accounting for about 80 percent of our imports. The risks of dependence are real. In 2010, for example, Beijing cut exports of rare earth materials to Japan after an incident involving disputed islands in the East China Sea. The PRC could do the same to us. 41:00: In a globalized world, American corporations and universities alike may view themselves as global citizens, rather than American institutions. But they should remember that what allowed them to succeed in the first place was the American free enterprise system, the rule of law, and the security afforded by America’s economic, technological, and military strength. Globalization does not always point in the direction of greater freedom. A world marching to the beat of Communist China’s drums will not be a hospitable one for institutions that depend on free markets, free trade, or the free exchange of ideas. There was a time American companies understood that. They saw themselves as American and proudly defended American values. Hearing: U.S.-China Relations and its Impact on National Security and Intelligence in a Post-COVID World, U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, July 1, 2020 Read Transcript Witnesess: Dr. Tanvi Madan – Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, The Brookings Institution Dr. Evan Medeiros – Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies and Cling Family Distinguished Fellow, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University Mr. Orville Schell – Arthur Ross Director, Center on US-China Relations, Asia Society Ms. Meredith Sumpter – Head of Research Strategy and Operations, Eurasia Group Transcript: 21:15 Mr. Orville Schell: We were accustomed for many, many decades. And I've written this along. piece that's in the in the record, I think is my testimony. But engagement was the kind of center of how we related to China. And what were the presumptions of that? Well, the presumption was that this began in 1972, with Kissinger and Nixon going to China, that if we simply engage China across the board, that slowly, we would have a greater likelihood of more convergence rather than divergence that we would slowly morph out of the Cold War. And what is so extraordinary about the policy of engagement and I'm not one of the people who believes it was an erroneous policy. I do, however, believe it is a failed policy. But it was not erroneous, precisely because for eight presidential administrations United States government sought, and I think this is the height of leadership, to slowly bend the metal of China, to help China in to assist China, to morph out of its Maoist revolutionary period into something that was more soluble and convergent with the world as it existed outside, of the marketplace, international order, etc, etc. And I think if you look at all of these different administrations and go through them one by one, as I've done in the piece that's in your record, it is so striking to see how one president, Republican and Democrat came in after another, usually with a rather jaundiced view of China. Ultimately, they embraced the notion that we should try to engage China. So what happened? Well, I think just to cut to the chase here, what happened was that we have a regime in China now that's very different in its set of presumptions than that pathway that was laid out by Deng Xiaoping in 1978-79 of reform and opening. Without reform, without the presumption that China will both reform economically and politically to some degree, engagement has no basis. Because if you're not converging, then you're diverging. And if China actually is not trying to slowly evolve out of its own old Leninist, Maoist mold, sort of form of government, then it is in a sense, deciding that that is what it is and that is what its model is and that is what it's going to be projecting around the world. 55:45 Ms. Meredith Sumpter: Beijing decision makers believe that their state directed economic system is the foundation of the livelihood of their political system. In other words, we have been spending our energies trying to force China to change and China is not willing to change an economic model that it believes underpins its political longevity. 56:15 Ms. Meredith Sumpter: There are limits to how much we can force China to not be China. And China is working to try to create space for its own unique model within what has been up until just now with this competition, a largely Western based market consensus of how economic systems should work. 56:40 Rep. Jim Himes (CT): Do we care if they have a more state directed model? I mean, what we care about is that like, This room is full of stuff that has Chinese inputs in it. What we really care about is do they send us stuff that is of high quality and cheap. Do we really care? You know, I mean, the Swedes have a much more state directed model than we do. So do we really care? Ms. Meredith Sumpter: We care so long as we don't see China's model as impairing our own ability to viably compete fairly. And so this gets to that level playing field. And ultimately, this is not about the political ideology driven Cold War of the past. But it's really a competition over which economic model will deliver greater prosperity and more opportunity to more people in the years ahead. So in the short term, there's all this focus on China's incredible rise and the success of its economic model. And it's not trying to export that model per se. It wants to create space for its model to coexist in this market led global economic system. Hearing: China’s Maritime Ambitions, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee: Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation, June 30, 2020 Watch on YouTube Witnesses: Gregory Poling - Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia, Director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Dr. Oriana Sklylar Mastro: Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Assistant Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University Dr. Andrew Erickson: Professor of Strategy, China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College and Visiting Scholar at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University Transcript: 21:45 Gregory Poling: Chinese interest and Chinese claims have expanded considerably over the decades. Prior to the 1990s, the South China Sea featured a dispute over islands. And then Beijing decided to declare straight baselines and internal waters around the paracels and more worryingly historic rights throughout the entirety of the South China Sea, claiming in some form all waters, all airspace, all seabed, in contravention of international law. Over the last decade, Beijing has become far more aggressive in pursuing that illegal claim. At the end of 2013, China embarked on a unprecedented campaign of artificial island building and military nation, which today allows China to deploy a 24/7 presence of naval Coast Guard and paramilitary forces throughout every inch of the nine dash line, slowly pushing its neighbors away from their legal rights, out of the waters guaranteed to them by international law. 26:00 Gregory Poling: The United States must have rotational forces deployed along the so called first island chain that rings China. And there is no place south of Japan that that can happen other than the Philippines, Admiral Davidson has recognized this. The United States might not be able to do that under Duterte, but we must prevent further erosion of the Alliance and we must prepare a plan for a post 2022, post-Duterte Philippines that will allow us to reengage. 37:00 Dr. Andrew Erickson: Here's where China's overwhelming and still rapidly growing numbers are posing very significant challenges for our efforts to keep the peace and stability in the region. In the naval dimension for example, while many advocate a US Navy of 355 plus ships, both manned and unmanned, China already has its own fully manned Navy of 360 warships according to data recently released by the Office of Naval Intelligence. 48:30 Dr. Oriana Sklylar Mastro: So the number of Chinese nationals overseas, for example, is a relatively new phenomenon. I wrote a paper about it maybe about eight years ago and you have 10s of thousands of Chinese companies operating now in the Indian Ocean region that weren't there before. That we have seen an uptick because of One Belt, One Road as well. And also China used to not be so reliant on oil and energy from outside and now they are one of the top importers and they rely on the Malacca straits for that. 1:00:00 Dr. Andrew Erickson: We see concretely already a naval base in Djibouti. And as you rightly pointed out, there are a series of other ports, where sometimes it's unclear what the ultimate purpose is. But clearly there's extensive Chinese involvement and ample potential for upgrading. 1:03:00 Dr. Andrew Erickson: China's Coast Guard really, in many ways is almost like a second Navy. It's by far the largest in the world in terms of numbers of ships, and while many of them are capable of far ranging operations, the vast majority of China's more than 1,000 coast guard ships are deployed generally near to China. Unlike Coast Guard, such as the US Coast Guard, China's Coast Guard has a very important sovereignty advancement mission. And China's coast guard by recent organizational changes is now formally part of one of China's armed forces, as I mentioned before. 1:08:45 Connolly: And meanwhile China is the title of this hearing is maritime ambitions. It's not just in the South China Sea. The fact that the Chinese built and now are operating the Hambantota port facility, which could easily become a military base because of the indebtedness of the Sri Lankan government and its inability to finance and serve the debt on that finance, has given China a strategic location, through which passes, I'm told, about 30% of all the word shipping, and it's a real nice reminder to India, that now China has that strategic location. Hearing: Impact of COVID-19 on Mineral Supply Chains, U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, June 24, 2020 Witnesses: Nedal T. Nassar, Section Chief, National Minerals Information Center, Geological Survey, Department of the Interior; Joe Bryan, Atlantic Council Global Energy Center, Hyattsville, Maryland; Mark Caffarey, Umicore USA, Raleigh, North Carolina; Thomas J. Duesterberg, Hudson Institute, Aspen, Colorado; Simon Moores, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, London, United Kingdom. Transcript: 22:00 Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK): Border closures in Africa have impacted the export of cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and platinum from South Africa. Mines in Argentina, Peru and Brazil have temporarily shut down restricting supplies of lithium, copper and iron. 25:00 Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK): The World Bank released a report last month estimating that demand for lithium, graphite and cobalt will increase 500% by 2050 to meet clean energy demand. 37:00 Nedal T. Nassar: Mineral commodities are the foundation of modern society. Smartphones would have more dropped calls and shorter battery lives without tantalum capacitors and cobalt based cathodes and their lithium ion batteries. Bridges, buildings and pipelines would not be as strong without vanadium and other alloying elements and their Steel's medical MRI machines would use more energy and produce lower quality images without helium cooled niobium based superconducting magnets. 38:45 Nedal T. Nassar: Tantalum and cobalt in smartphones for example, are now predominantly mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and refined in China. 39:00 Nedal T. Nassar: Concurrently, developed countries such as the United States have become increasingly import reliant for their mineral commodity needs, thereby increasing their exposure to foreign supply disruptions. 39:30 Nedal T. Nassar: Many high supply risk commodities are recovered as byproducts. The supply of byproducts has the additional challenge of potentially being unresponsive to demand signals, given their relatively minimal contribution to produce those revenues. 40:00 Nedal T. Nassar: Once a mineral supply chain is identified as high risk, the next step is to determine the best way to reduce that risk. Various strategies can be pursued including diversification of supply, identification and potential expansion of domestic mineral resources, increasing recycling, developing substitutes, maintaining strategic inventories and bolstering trade relations. 43:00 Joe Bryan: From communications gear that keeps our troops connected on the battlefield, to unmanned aerial and subsurface platforms to tactical ground vehicles, transitioning away from lead acid, lithium ion batteries are everywhere. That is not surprising. Energy storage can not only increased capability, but by reducing fuel use can also help take convoys off the road and our troops out of harm's way. 44:15 Joe Bryan: COVID-19 severely impacted the supply of cobalt, a key mineral in the production of lithium ion batteries. 44:30 Joe Bryan: But the lithium ion market also represents an opportunity. Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory is one example. The state of Ohio recently landed a $2.3 billion investment from General Motors and Korea's LG Chem to build a battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio. That facility will bring more than 1000 jobs to the Mahoning Valley. 45:00 Joe Bryan: Now we can't change geology and create resources where they don't exist. But we can change direction and compete for supply chains jobs in minerals extraction, processing, anode and cathode production and cell production. 45:15 Joe Bryan: The scale of global investment in the lithium ion supply chain is massive and investment patterns will have geopolitical impacts. Right now, commercial relationships are being forged and trade alliances hammered out. Decisions made over the next few years will define the global transportation industry for decades to come and plant the seeds of future political alliances. Maintaining our global influence and diplomatic leverage depends on us, not just getting in the race, but setting the pace. From establishing priorities for research and development, to setting conditions for attracting investment to most importantly, hitting the accelerator on transportation electrification. There are things we can do. But to date, our actions have matched neither the scale of the opportunity, the efforts of our competitors, nor the risk we accept, should we remain on the sidelines. 46:30 Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK): Thank you, Mr. Bryan, appreciate you pointing out the importance of mineral security for our military. Some of us think that our American Mineral Security Initiative would be a good fit within the NDAA that will be coming before us for floor action in these next few days. So thank you for that reminder. 55:45 Thomas J. Duesterberg: Let me now turn to the auto industry. Other witnesses have noted the importance of lithium ion batteries in the control of China over the major mineral resources that go into those batteries. This is incredibly important to the future of the auto industry. China has clearly targeted this industry. It has control of the resources, has a goal of producing for its own domestic market, which is the largest market in the world, 80% of electric vehicles domestically by 2025. 56:30 Thomas J. Duesterberg: China is a major producer of manganese and magnesium minerals which are associated - controls of over 80% of those magnesium resources - which is incredibly important to the future of light vehicles. Substituting alloys with magnesium products is one key to reducing the weight of all kinds of transportation vehicles and construction equipment. 57:30 Thomas J. Duesterberg: Other witnesses have also mentioned rare earths, and other important minerals for which we are dependent on China, such as just tantalum to a certain extent cadmium, these are all important to the $500 billion semiconductor industry, where the United States holds a technological lead and produces over 45% of the chips that it produces here in the United States. 59:00 Thomas J. Duesterberg: I will finally note that the solar power industry also depends on rare earths like cadmium and tellurium. And the leading producer in the United States for solar as a thin film technology that depends greatly on these minerals and gives it an cost advantage over the related products that are being subsidized heavily by China. 39:30 Simon Moores: China is building the equivalent of one battery mega factory a week. United States one every four months. 40:00 Simon Moores: Since 2017, China's battery manufacturing pipeline has increased from nine to 107, which 53 are now active and in production. Meanwhile, the United States has gone from three to nine battery plants, of which still only three are active, the same number as just under three years ago. 1:02:30 Simon Moores: Lithium ion batteries are a core platform technology for the 21st century, they allow energy to be stored on a widespread basis in electric vehicles and energy storage systems. And they sparked the demand for the critical raw materials and candidates. A new global lithium ion economy is being created. Yet any ambitions for the United States to be a leader in this lithium ion economy continues to only creep forward and be outstripped by China and Europe. 1:03:00 Simon Moores: The rise of these battery mega factories will require demand for raw materials to increase significantly. By 2029, so 10 years from now, demand for nickel double, cobalt growth three times, graphite and manganese by four times, lithium by more than six times. 1:03:30 Simon Moores: The United States progress is far too slow on building out a domestic lithium ion economy. For the opportunities that remain are vast and the pioneers have emerged. Tesla has continued to lead the industry and build on its Nevada Gigafactory by announcing supersize battery plants in Germany and China and is expected to announce a fourth in Texas which will give you the United States as first ever 100% own MMA lithium ion battery cells. Ohio has recognized the scaling opportunity and attracted $2.3 billion from General Motors and LG Chem, a joint venture. You can also turn to Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee for electric vehicle and battery cell investment success. Yet, these developments are more of a standalone achievement in a coherent US plan. 1:04:20 Simon Moores: ...Imported raw materials and chemicals are the two main components that make a lithium ion battery - the cathodes and the anodes. America is some of the best cathode know how in the business, yet only three capital plants producing under one percent of global output, while China produces over two thirds of global supply from over 100 cathode [inaudible.] 1:04:45 Simon Moores: For graphite anodes, the United States has zero manufacturing plants while China has 48 plants and controls 84% total global anode supply. 1:05:00 Simon Moores: Developing this midstream of the supply chain will create a domestic ecosystem engine, more battery plants to be built, more electric vehicles to be made, more energy storage systems to be installed, animal spark with the betterment domestic mining and chemical processing. However, be under no illusions that the United States needs to build this 21st century industry from scratch. FDR's New deal for example, built core infrastructure that the United States still relies on today. Nearly 100 years later in similar economic and industrial circumstances your country has to do this all over again. Yet, instead of dams, you need to build battery mega factories in their tenant. Instead of highways and bridges and tunnels you need to build the supply chains to enable these mega factories to operate securely and consistent. These include cathode and anode plants and the lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese sources to feed them. This has to be done at a speed scale and quality that will make most US corporations feel uncomfortable. Even more, the supply chain needs to be underpinned by bigger sized battery recycling facilities to match the scale of these operations and close the loop. One can also look to the creation of a battery creation - widespread US semiconductor industry back in the 1980s believe that the United States built in semiconductors and computing power has sustained your country's dominance in this space for over five decades. Those who invest in battery capacity and supply chains today will hold the sway of industrial power for generations to come. 1:06:30 Rep. Joe Manchin (WV): Yet here in United States, we have the General Mining Law of 1872, which frankly is nothing short of an embarrassment to our country. In 1872, Ulysses S. Grant was elected president and Susan B. Anthony was served an arrest warrant for voting. Tells you how antiquated our laws are for the hardrock mining, if we're serious about reducing our import reliance for critical minerals, our mining goals need to be updated. We need to improve the regulatory scheme for mines and low ratio at high grade areas and the claim patent system and help the mining industry put themselves in a better light in the public by establishing a royalty to share the profits with the American people. 1:09:15 Rep. Joe Manchin (WV): What portion of the supply chain either upstream or downstream needs the most attention in terms of our national security? Nedal T. Nassar: Thank you, Ranking Member Manchin. So it really the the answer depends on the commodity. So different commodities will have different bottlenecks in their supply chains. In some cases, there's a highly concentrated production on the mining stage. In other cases, it might be further downstream. So for example, for niobium, an element that's produced in only a handful of mines worldwide. And so there are very few mines that are producing it and a single mine might be producing somewhere on the order of two thirds of the world's supply. On the other hand, there might be commodities where it's really not about mining, and it's the there's enough concentrate being produced, but we're simply not recovering it further downstream, such as many of the byproducts. So, earlier, one of the other witnesses mentioned tellurium. There's a lot of tellurium in some of the concentrate that we're mining with copper. Once it gets to the our copper electrolytic refineries, it's simply not recovered for economic reasons. So there there are different stages for different commodities. And that's why I mentioned in my testimony that we do need to look at these supply chains individually to figure out what really is the bottleneck and what strategy would be most effective at reducing that bone. 1:17:45 Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK): I recall a hearing here in the Energy Committee and one of our witnesses made the comment when it came to recycling that the first place we should look to mine is within our own economy not in the earth but what we have already produced and and basically, remind, repurpose, reuse that so thank you for that comment. 1:19:20 Thomas J. Duesterberg: As Senator Manchin alluded to, we need to revise our mining laws to speed up the permitting process. And perhaps put some time limit on the impact environmental reviews and mining permitting for critical materials. 1:41:30 Joe Bryan: At the same time, from a national security perspective, we may not have minerals but we in some segment segments of the supply chain, but we do have allies and people we can work with and we need to really reach out to those folks like Australia is a perfect example. How are we working with Australia to diversify our supply chain to support our own needs and also perhaps to hedge against China? 2:01:00 Joe Bryan: As a point of reference, note the scale of the Europeans investment, just one of the tranches of funding that came out of the EU. Last December, they put three and a half billion dollars into supply chain investments. Three and a half billion dollars. That's one tranche. I think the European Investment Bank has said that something like 100 billion dollars has been channeled to the battery supply chain. So the scale of their effort is, we sort of pale in comparison to that, notwithstanding your efforts, Madam Chairman, the other thing I would say is post-COVID, it's interesting, I think Europeans have seen support for electrification and the supply chain in their stimulus packages. I know Germany and France have both targeted those industries as part of their stimulus. And I think the reason for that is, we obviously, countries are going to want to recover what they have lost, but they also are seeing this as an inflection point for them to decide where they want to be in the future. And so I think they've taken advantage of that opportunity and have have sort of doubled down on it. And I think we're in the same position as we assess where we are and where we're going. But the scale of their commitment has been, I'll say impressive. 2:11:00 Joe Bryan: Our weakness is throughout the supply chain. So if we have a stockpile of minerals, but they're not processed and usable, then I'm not sure how much good it does. If we have to ship the stockpiled minerals to China for processing, that's probably not the most ideal scenario. So I think we have to look again holistically at the supply chain, look at what we need, and figure out how we position ourselves to attract the kind of massive massive economy changing, transforming levels of investment that are happening globally to the United States. Hearing: Minerals and Clean Energy Technologies, U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, September 17, 2019 Witnesses: The Honorable Daniel Simmons - Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy, Simmons Testimony Dr. Morgan Bazilian - Director of the Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines, Bazilian Testimony Ms. Allison Carlson - Senior Vice President, Foreign Policy Analytics, Carlson Testimony Mr. Robert Kang - CEO, Blue Whale Materials, LLC, Kang Testimony Mr. Mark Mills - Senior Fellow Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc., Mills Testimony Transcript: 40:45 Daniel Simmons: Material intensity and potential global demand is illustrated by a recent report, by a recent analysis by the head of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum in the UK, using the most current technologies, for the UK to meet their 2050 electric car targets, it would require just under two times the current annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters of the world's lithium production and at least half of the world's copper production. And to put that in perspective, the UK the population of the UK is only 66 million currently, while the population in the United States is 327 million. 41:40 Daniel Simmons: Cobalt makes up 20% of the weight of the cathode of lithium ion electric vehicle batteries. Today, cobalt is considered one of the the highest material supply risks for electric vehicles in the short and medium term. Cobalt is mined as a secondary material from mixed nickel and copper ore. With the majority of the global supply mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as Senator Manchin mentioned. 52:15 Robert Kang: We need to collect far more of the spent batteries for recycling. The US currently collects less than 5%, while Europe collects approximately 40% or more. Secondly, we need to expand the United States capacity to process batteries. Today, we shipped most of our collected lithium ion batteries for recycling to China, South Korea and Europe. Increasing us processing capacity will allow us businesses to control the flow of these metals earlier in the supply chain. Lastly, we should encourage refining capabilities here in the US. A market for recycled metals will support investments to strengthen the entire lithium ion battery industry in the US. 1:17:45 Robert Kang: I've heard estimates that anywhere from about 20-30% of the world's mineral needs can be met by recycling. Sen. Angus King (ME): Well, that's not insignificant. That's a big number. Robert Kang: And actually it's reclaiming value from our waste stream. Sen. Angus King (ME): Right. Robert Kang: One way to think about this is if you could change your perspective, I believe one of the next new minds of the future, our urban cities, our homes, we have these, this material locked away in our drawers and inboxes that we don't look at too often. So if we can promote collection, if we can take these kind of, spent batteries away from, or bring them back to this industry, I think we can claim a significant amount of minerals. 1:19:00 Robert Kang: We are well aware of foreign entities now that are coming into the US and setting up recycling facilities here because they see these minerals and it's widely known that the US is one of the largest producers of spent lithium ion batteries. Sen. Angus King (ME): They're mining under our very noses. Robert Kang: Yes, sir. Sen. Angus King (ME): In a domestic resource. Robert Kang: Yes, sir. Sen. Angus King (ME): Ridiculous. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK): Who is it? Robert Kang: Well, I do know that there is a Korean company that is coming in. There is a Canadian company that's setting up facilities here, as well as we are aware of conversations and research by Chinese firms recyclers who are coming into this market. 1:42:30 Sen. Martin Heinrich (NM): My constituents, is the incredible legacy of uncleaned up mines across the west. There are thousands of them. A few years ago during the gold King mine spill, irrigators had to close off their ditches not water their crops, not water their livestock. There were municipal and tribal impacts as huge amounts of released heavy metals came downstream because of the uncleaned up legacy of 150 years of abandoned mines all across the Mountain West. So I think if we're going to, you know, create a path forward, one of the things we need to do is really think about reforming the 1872 mining act if we're going to create the the environment where some of these other things can move forward in a first world country. Hearing: Mineral Security and Related Legislation, U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, May 14, 2020 Witnesses: The Honorable Joe Balash - Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, Balalsh Testimony Dr. David Solan - Deputy Assistant Secretary for Renewable Power, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy Mr. Jonathan Evans - President and COO, Lithium Americas, Evans Testimony Dr. John Warner - Chairman, National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Batteries, Chief Customer Officer, American Battery Solutions, Warner Testimony Dr. Paul Ziemkiewicz - Director, West Virginia Water Research Institute, West Virginia University Transcript: 36:00 David Solan: Critical minerals are used in many products important to the US economy and national security, and they are particularly important to the most innovative clean energy technologies. For example, some of the minerals DOE considers the most critical in terms of supply risk include gallium for LEDs, the rare earths dysprosium in neodymium for permanent magnets and wind turbines and electric vehicles, and cobalt and lithium for electric vehicle and grid batteries. The US is dependent on foreign sources of many critical minerals. And we also currently lack the domestic capability for downstream processing and materials as well as the manufacturing of some products made from them. 41:10 Jonathan Evans: Lithium Nevada Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lithium Americas. It is headquartered in Reno, Nevada and is developing a project called Factor Pass, which is the largest known lithium resource in the United States. Factor Pass will profoundly improve the supply of lithium chemicals by producing 25% of today's global lithium demand when in full production. Currently, the US produces just 1% of lithium minerals and 7% of lithium chemicals. 49:15 John Warner: Chinese companies are buying up energy materials supply sources around the globe in order to ensure that battery manufacturers based in China have access to reasonably stable supplies of low cost materials. 1:04:30 Paul Ziemkiewicz: Some price support, if not, market support is needed in the early stages, because the first thing that Chinese will do and they've done it before, is drop the price on the market because it has its monopoly. And that'll drive anyone out of business. Mountain Pass was our only active mine right now in United States sends all of its oxide product to China for refining. Sen. Joe Manchin (WV): Is that because environmental laws in America we were making it very difficult for us to do that process. Paul Ziemkiewicz: I think, and I'm not an economist, but I think it's just because they have the supply chain. 1:16:15 Joe Balash: At the Department of the Interior, we're seeing a graying of our own staff in terms of the the expertise for mining in general and that is something that we see nationwide. 1:17:45 John Warner: There's very few universities today that actually do focus on a program to develop battery engineers, which is one of the most unique engineering fields because it does compromise and come compose of all of the engineering facets from thermodynamics to electronics and software to the chemistry of it. 1:21:20 Jonathan Evans: There are ways to do this. And I think it will be done very, very safely. If you look at traditional sources at least at lithium, but also known cobalt and others, I think projects can do good and do well. Even under the current environmental laws that we have or what's being promulgated in the future, it's possible I think to live in both worlds. 1:22:50 Jonathan Evans: You go next across the border to Canada or Australia, they still have strict environmental standards as well, but they accomplish what Senator Murkowski said. It's seven to 10 years to get approvals here in the United States. There's lots of mineral resources in those countries, it's usually about two years, because there's very strict process, agencies work together and they have, they have to get back and close the process out where things can drag. Sen. Angus King (ME): One of the things we did in Maine that was helpful, might be useful is one stop shopping. In other words, you don't have to go serially to five agencies, you have one lead agency and everybody else works through that process and that we found that to be very effective. 1:25:15 Paul Ziemkiewicz: The Japanese had a territorial dispute on some islands between Japan and China. And it was few years ago, 2010 maybe, the Chinese simply restricted the ability for the Japanese to get their rare earth supply. And the Japanese caved within something like three or four months. Sen. Angus King (ME): Because of the Japanese manufacturer of these high tech devices that needed that supply? Paul Ziemkiewicz: That's correct Senator. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)

Vành đai kinh tế Trung Quốc - Đông Nam Á là một phần quan trọng của Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường (Belt and Road Initiative, BRI) được chủ tịch Trung Quốc Tập Cận Bình khởi xướng năm 2013. Trục đường này nối tỉnh Vân Nam (Trung Quốc) đến Singapore bằng đường sắt, song song là tuyến đường cao tốc có thể được khai trương vào năm 2021. (Tạp chí phát lần đầu ngày 20/05/2019) Bắc Kinh khẳng định Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường không cạnh tranh với những dự án địa phương. Tuy nhiên, một số nước Đông Nam Á tham gia dự án hoặc phải gồng mình gánh nợ như Lào, hoặc mời thêm công ty Nhật Bản tham gia như Thái Lan, hoặc đàm phán lại để giảm chi phí như Malaysia. Việt Nam có liên hệ như thế nào với dự án đầy tham vọng của Trung Quốc ? RFI tiếng Việt đặt câu hỏi với tiến sĩ Lê Hồng Hiệp, thuộc Viện Nghiên cứu Đông Nam Á (ISEAS), Singapore. RFI : Thưa tiến sĩ, thủ tướng Việt Nam Nguyễn Xuân Phúc sang Bắc Kinh dự diễn đàn Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường (BRI) diễn ra trong ba ngày 25 đến 27/04/2019. Việt Nam có tham gia dự án do chủ tịch Trung Quốc Tập Cận Bình khởi xướng không ? Tiến sĩ Lê Hồng Hiệp : Chúng ta đều biết Việt Nam là một quốc gia đang phát triển và có nhu cầu rất lớn về đầu tư cơ sở hạ tầng. Theo một số ước tính, như của Trung Tâm Cơ Sở Hạ Tầng Toàn cầu, nhu cầu đầu tư cơ sở hạ tầng ở Việt Nam từ năm 2016 đến năm 2040 là khoảng 605 tỉ đô la Mỹ. Đây là một con số rất lớn ! Nếu huy động các nguồn lực trong nước, kể cả khi Việt Nam huy động từ các nguồn lực tư nhân thông qua các dự án đối tác công-tư chẳng hạn, con số này cũng rất là khổng lồ. Chính vì vậy, Việt Nam phải tìm cách khai thác các nguồn vốn từ nước ngoài, đặc biệt là thông qua các nguồn vốn ODA chẳng hạn. Trong bối cảnh đó, Sáng kiến Vành Đai và Con Đường của Trung Quốc cũng là một nguồn vốn tiềm năng mà Việt Nam có thể tìm hiểu, cân nhắc để có thể khai thác nếu nó phù hợp. Chính vì vậy, Việt Nam tỏ ý ủng hộ về mặt ngoại giao sáng kiến này. Ví dụ cách đây hai năm, chủ tịch nước Việt Nam, lúc đó là ông Trần Đại Quang tham dự diễn đàn hợp tác Vành Đai và Con Đường lần thứ nhất ở Bắc Kinh. Năm nay (2019), ông Nguyễn Xuân Phúc thay mặt phía Việt Nam tham dự diễn đàn lần thứ hai. Tuy nhiên, trên thực tế, để vay được những khoản vay của Trung Quốc, có rất nhiều vấn đề mà Việt Nam phải cân nhắc thấu đáo. Chính vì vậy, kể từ năm 2013, thời điểm mà Trung Quốc phát động sáng kiến này, vẫn chưa có dự án nào đáng kể, chính thức được coi là dự án thuộc Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường này được triển khai ở Việt Nam, mặc dù Việt Nam vẫn có những khoản vay nhất định từ các nguồn của Trung Quốc và một số dự án hợp tác cơ sở hạ tầng thì vẫn được tiến hành giữa hai bên. RFI : Có một số thông tin cho rằng tuyến đường cao mới ở Việt Nam có các khoản vay từ Trung Quốc. Thông tin này có đúng không ? Theo tôi, dự án đường cao tốc Bắc-Nam hiện nay vẫn chưa được triển khai. Một số thông tin cho rằng một vài công ty của Trung Quốc, trong đó có tập đoàn Thái Bình Dương, ngỏ ý quan tâm, muốn hợp tác hoặc muốn tham gia vào việc xây dựng tuyến đường này. Tuy nhiên, theo tôi hiểu thì vẫn chưa có những thỏa thuận cuối cùng. Ngay phía Việt Nam cũng chưa có kế hoạch rõ ràng cho việc xây dựng tuyến đường này, ví dụ nguồn vốn từ đâu, những bên tham gia chắc chắn cũng chưa được xác định, hồ sơ mời thầu cũng chưa được mở. Chính vì vậy, cho tới lúc này, khả năng các nhà thầu Trung Quốc, hay là việc chính phủ Việt Nam có vay vốn từ phía Trung Quốc cho dự án này không, hiện vẫn chưa được xác nhận rõ ràng. RFI : Trong chuyến thăm Hà Nội của chủ tịch Tập Cận Bình vào tháng 11/2017, Việt Nam và Trung Quốc đã ký Bản Ghi Nhớ về việc thúc đẩy kết nối khuôn khổ “Hai hành lang, Một vành đai” với Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường. Xin tiến sĩ giải thích thêm về nội dung bản ghi nhớ này ? Thực ra, khuôn khổ của “Hai hành lang-Một vành đai”, Việt Nam và Trung Quốc đã “thống nhất thực hiện” từ cách đây khá lâu, nếu tôi nhớ không nhầm là từ năm 2004. Cho tới nay, hoạt động hợp tác trong khuôn khổ hành lang Côn Minh-Hà Nội-Hải Phòng và hành lang Nam Ninh-Hà Nội-Hải Phòng vẫn chưa có những kết quả cụ thể. Trong bối cảnh đó, khi thúc đẩy Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường, có lẽ phía Trung Quốc nhân tiện làm sống lại ý tưởng này và cũng gắn nó với Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường. Đây cũng là một cách cho thấy : “À, Việt Nam cũng ủng hộ Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường này của Trung Quốc”. Tuy nhiên, như chúng ta thấy, kể từ tháng 11/2017 tới nay, chưa có những triển khai thực chất nhằm kết nối hai khuôn khổ này với nhau. Bản thân Sáng kiến Vành Đai và Con Đường của Trung Quốc cũng chưa thấy có tiến triển đáng kể nào ở Việt Nam. RFI : Đâu là những bất lợi và thuận lợi nếu Việt Nam tham gia vào dự án Vành đai và Con đường của Trung Quốc ? Có lẽ thuận lợi là Việt Nam sẽ có thêm nguồn vốn để phát triển cơ sở hạ tầng, đáp ứng nhu cầu phát triển kinh tế-xã hội của đất nước. Tuy nhiên, các khoản vay của Trung Quốc không hề rẻ, cũng không hề dễ dàng, thường đi kèm rất nhiều điều kiện, ví dụ phải sử dụng các nhà thầu Trung Quốc, mua trang thiết bị từ phía Trung Quốc để phục vụ các dự án đó. Điều này đặc biệt đúng trong trường hợp Việt Nam tại vì Việt Nam đã có rất nhiều kinh nghiệm trong việc vay vốn từ Trung Quốc. Chúng ta biết có những giai đoạn, Trung Quốc chiếm đến 90% các hợp đồng xây dựng EPC, tức là thiết kế, mua sắm và xây lắp, ở Việt Nam. Những dự án đó gây ra rất nhiều tai tiếng, ví dụ trễ tiến độ, đội vốn, công nghệ thiết bị không hiện đại, lạc hậu, gây ra chi phí bảo dưỡng lớn ; các nhà thầu Trung Quốc thuê lao động phổ thông mang từ Trung Quốc sang, gây ra những vấn đề ở địa phương chẳng hạn. Gần đây nhất, báo chí cũng đề cập nhiều đến dự án đường sắt trên cao ở Hà Nội (Cát Linh - Hà Đông). Vì vậy, tôi nghĩ là những nhà hoạch định chính sách ở Việt Nam cũng thận trọng với các khoản vay của Trung Quốc. Đó là chưa kể đến bối cảnh tranh chấp Biển Đông hiện tại. Khi Việt Nam vay của Trung Quốc, nó sẽ gây ra những ràng buộc, trở ngại khiến Việt Nam không thể mạnh mẽ có phản ứng với Trung Quốc trên Biển Đông nếu xảy ra căng thẳng. Vì vậy, nó cũng là một khía cạnh chiến lược mà Việt Nam sẽ phải cân nhắc khi muốn tham gia vào Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường này, hay cụ thể là vay vốn từ phía Trung Quốc. RFI : Nhân đang nói về Việt Nam và Biển Đông, trong Sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường, Biển Đông đóng vai trò như thế nào ? Thực ra, dự án Vành đai và Con đường là một phần trong tham vọng của Trung Quốc để khuếch trương ảnh hưởng ra toàn cầu trong bối cảnh Trung Quốc liên tục trỗi dậy trong mấy thập niên vừa qua. Liên quan đến vấn đề Biển Đông, nó không ảnh hưởng nhiều lắm tại vì nó không có các dự án được thực hiện ở khu vực Biển Đông. Tuy nhiên, riêng đối với Việt Nam, nếu như Việt Nam hay các nước có tranh chấp khác với Trung Quốc ở Biển Đông như Philippines, Malaysia chẳng hạn, vay các khoản vay lớn của Trung Quốc, và đặc biệt nếu như sau này họ không khả năng trả nợ, họ sẽ bị phụ thuộc vào Trung Quốc. Chính vì vậy, các nước này, trong đó có Việt Nam, có thể là sẽ phải chấp nhận các thỏa thuận bất lợi cho họ trong vấn đề Biển Đông. Đấy là điều có lẽ Việt Nam muốn tránh. Tuy nhiên cũng có những nước khác có thể ưu tiên vấn đề kinh tế hơn so với vấn đề Biển Đông, như ở Malaysia. Mặc dù có những phản ứng, nhưng gần đây chính quyền ông Mahathir lại tiếp tục những dự án hợp tác với Trung Quốc trong khuôn khổ Vành đai và Con đường. Đối với Việt Nam, tôi nghĩ rằng cho tới lúc này, Việt Nam vẫn rất thận trọng, tại vì có lẽ khác với Philippines và Malaysia, vấn đề Biển Đông đối với Việt Nam có tầm quan trọng rất lớn, có thể nói là rất trọng đại đối với tương lai, đối với chủ quyền của Việt Nam. Cho nên bên cạnh lý do kinh tế, Việt Nam còn có lý do về chính trị và địa chiến lược để cân nhắc và thận trọng trước những khoản vay của Trung Quốc thông qua sáng kiến Vành đai và Con đường này. RFI : Vừa rồi anh có nhắc tới chính phủ Malaysia, họ đã nối lại để tiếp tục tham gia dự án Vành đai và Con đường. Trên thực tế, họ đã đàm phán thành công giảm 1/3 chi phí. Ngoài ra, trên thế giới còn có trường hợp Trung Quốc mua cảng Hambantota của Sri Lanka, cảng Piraeus của Hy Lạp, những trường hợp này có giúp Việt Nam lấy làm kinh nghiệm thực tế không ? Tôi nghĩ đó đều là những bài học kinh nghiệm hữu ích cho Việt Nam nếu Việt Nam thực sự muốn tham gia vào Sáng kiến này, cũng như vay những khoản vay của Trung Quốc. Thứ nhất, dự án đường sắt bờ biển phía đông của Malaysia chẳng hạn, chính quyền của ông Mahathir đã đàm phán lại và đã giảm được khoảng 1/3 tổng chi phí. Điều này cho thấy phía Trung Quốc đã kê giá lên rất cao. Đương nhiên, trong trường hợp của Malaysia, khoản vay bị đội lên cao như vậy còn do chính quyền của ông Najib, có thể có tình trạng tham nhũng, qua đó, các nhà thầu Trung Quốc hoặc chính phủ Trung Quốc có thể phải chi trả một số khoản không chính thức cho các quan chức Malaysia chẳng hạn. Đó là cáo buộc đối với chính phủ trước đây. Và điều này cũng có thể xảy ra ở những quốc gia nơi có tình trạng tham nhũng phổ biến, như ở Việt Nam. Tôi nghĩ rằng chỉ có sự minh bạch mới có thể giúp Việt Nam tham gia hiệu quả vào Sáng kiến này để giảm được tình trạng tham nhũng, cũng như là lãng phí trong các dự án để làm sao các khoản vay được đúng giá trị và không tạo ra những gánh nặng nợ nần cho thế hệ tương lai. Trường hợp cảng Hambantota cũng là một ví dụ điển hình cho thấy rằng Trung Quốc có thể sử dụng các khoản vay này để biến nó thành một “bẫy nợ”, thông qua các khoản vay đó, kiểm soát hoặc gây bất lợi cho chính phủ đi vay để mà biến các dự án đấy thành tài sản của Trung Quốc, thì tạo ra một tiền lệ với hệ lụy rất nghiêm trọng đối với các nước đi vay. Chính vì vậy, Việt Nam cũng cân nhắc, cần thận trọng để không rơi vào tình cảnh như chính phủ Sri Lanka thông qua dự án Hambantota. RFI tiếng Việt xin trân thành cảm ơn tiến sĩ Lê Hồng Hiệp từ Singapore.

Aarti Betigeri (@pomegranitaa) takes us from Australia to India and back again, touching on some new publications like Monocle magazine and geographies like Sri Lanka along the way. She also keeps it real about the struggles of working in a media landscape dominated by Murdoch and seeking more rights for Australian freelance journalists. We also talk about her experience through the Australian bushfires. Aarti discusses getting into broadcast journalism out of university and becoming a TV presenter (8:00), leaving that behind to move to India as a freelancer (12:07), working for Monocle magazine (21:04), moving back to Australia and the freelance scene there (28:53), Murdoch’s influence in Australia (34:48), the Australian bushfires (37:12), her "story that got away" about Maoist-controlled jungles of central India (40:25), writing about a Chinese-backed boondoggle of a port project in the boonies of Sri Lanka (50:28) and takes on the lightning round (57:00).   Here are links to some of the things we talked about: Aarti’s column on Covid, India and TV news - https://bit.ly/2VY9uQo Her story on an Indian coffee roaster - https://bit.ly/3faqNFz Centralia photo book on Maoist controlled central India - https://bit.ly/2WhFuOw Aarti’s story on Sri Lankan port Hambantota - https://bit.ly/3bZlLKa Her story about dealing with Australian bushfires - https://bit.ly/2xsd6AS Her site with story back catalogue - https://bit.ly/3bYoqnb Australian independent news site Crickey - https://bit.ly/2xrR5lG NYT's A Royal Instagram Mystery - https://nyti.ms/2YskqYc Taffy Brodesser-Akner's work - https://nyti.ms/3d8wIcr Ed O’Laughlin's Not Untrue and Not Unkind - https://amzn.to/2Ss6YzQ Tom Rachman's The Imperectionists - https://amzn.to/2xpM8d4   Follow us on Twitter @foreignpod or on Facebook at facebook.com/foreignpod Music: LoveChances (makaihbeats.net) by Makaih Beats From: freemusicarchive.org CC BY NC

Golfresepodden besöker fantastiskt vackra och spännande Sri Lanka eller Ceylon som engelsmännen kallar det. Vi besöker hela fyra banor där den äldsta är Royal Colombo från 1879 och kontrasten Shangri-La’s Hambantota som är från 2015. Det blir en hel del tempel med och utan Buddas hörntand, elefant som fnyser, teplantage och teänglar, talminska tigrar, curry, gullilulligt och arraksprit på lokal. Anders får även en träff av en fladdermus och Johan har med sig sin 80-årige far på resan.

China's critics, largely in the U.S., often hold up the Sri Lankan port in Hambantota as the cautionary tale of what purportedly can happen when a developing country fails to pay back its loans to Beijing. Because Sri Lanka fell behind in its payments, according to the story, China, in turn, took control of the port which is all part of a larger Chinese plan to acquire assets around the world from poor, highly indebted countries. While this narrative is widely believed among certain politicians, the so-called "debt-trap diplomacy" narrative has been debunked by a growing of scholars and analysts. There just isn't any evidence whatsoever to support the charge. This doesn't mean that politics don't motivate some of China's lending decisions, not at all, just that the way that the debt trap story's been told is not accurate. This week, Eric & Cobus speak with a pair of scholars who are joining a growing number of researchers who are attempting to change the discourse on Chinese lending practices in developing countries. Matt Ferchen, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing and Anarkalee Perera, a lecturer in international politics and economics at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, recently wrote a paper that delves into the Hambantota case and then goes on to explain why asset seizures, the foundation of the debt-trap theory, is not a factor in Chinese lending to developing countries. JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Twitter:  @eolander | @stadenesque | @MattFerchen | @anarkaleep Email: eric@chinaafricaproject.com | cobus@chinaafricaproject.com Sign up here if you would like to join our weekly email newsletter mailing list for a carefully curated selection of the week's top China-Africa news.  

On this week’s episode, Allan and Darren begin on the topic of geoeconomics, which is a core focus of Darren’s research. Allan first offers his practitioner’s perspective on the definition and context of the term, with Darren following with his academic view. Both recognise that nation-states have long been practicing geoeconomic activities, but that the increasing prominence of the term very much reflects the particular challenges of the present moment. A recent Wall Street Journal story on Myanmar’s successful renegotiation of infrastructure contracts with Chinese financiers becomes the focal point of a discussion of the strategic consequences of economic activity, which in turn sees Allan and Darren debate whether the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota and the Australian port of Darwin indeed harbour such strategic significance as to warrant the geoeconomic frame. The discussion rounds out with Darren asking Allan for his advice on how future Australian governments can integrate geoeconomic approaches into future policy. Finally, the very high-profile case of Julian Assange, as well as two other members of the Australian community (Hakeem al-Araibi and Yang Hengjun) shine a spotlight on the consular work of Australian diplomats. What is the decision-making calculus the government, and consular officials on the ground, take when deciding whether and how to make representations on behalf of Australians who somehow fall afoul of local authorities while abroad? As always, we invite our listeners to email us at this address: australia.world.pod@gmail.com We welcome feedback, requests and suggestions. You can also contact Darren on twitter @limdarrenj Our thanks go to AIIA intern Charlie Henshall for his help both with research and audio editing, and Rory Stenning for composing our theme music. Relevant links Wall Street Journal: “U.S. Goes on the Offensive Against China’s Empire-Building Funding Plan” : https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-goes-on-the-offensive-against-chinas-empire-building-megaplan-11554809402 Robert Kagan, “The strongmen strike back”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2019/03/14/feature/the-strongmen-strike-back/?utm_term=.38b19f87a8fa theringer.com “Talk the thrones” (Season 8, Ep 1 recap): https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thrones/2019/4/14/18308095/talk-the-thrones-game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-1 Vox.com “Who will win Game of Thrones, explained by political science”: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/4/15/18311189/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-1-recap-war

The Indian Ocean, long assumed by India to be its own "backyard", is now host to growing economic and military inroads by China. Asia watchers and political analysts Prof. Derek McDougall and Dr. Pradeep Taneja discuss China’s possible designs in the region and the geopolitical risk its mounting presence there may bring. Presented by Ali Moore. An Asia Institute podcastProduced by profactual.comMusic by audionautix.comImage from US Navy via Wikimedia Commons

In our third episode, I am excited to feature international development consultant Xiao'Ou Zhu. Before every newspaper was using the Hambantota Port as the fearful case of China using "debt diplomacy" Xiao'Ou was doing the on-the-ground fieldwork using China Harbour's Engineering Group's role in the creation of the port as a case showing how important Chinese State Owned Enterprises are in Belt and Road Countries and how many BRI projects are really a bottom-up phenomenon rather than the often reported top-down projects. Recommendations: Xiao'Ou Zhu: Read anything about the 1952 Rice-Rubber Agreement Erik: From Impediment to Adaptation: Chinese Investments in Myanmar's New Regulatory Environment" by Siusue Mark and Youyi Zhang in Journal of Current SE Asian Affairs 2/2017 71-100

Welcome to the 53rd installment of the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief, a weekly podcast that brings you the most important business stories of the week from China's top source for business and financial news. Produced by Kaiser Kuo of our Sinica Podcast, it features a business news roundup, plus conversations with Caixin reporters and editors. This week: We find out how, in a surprising reversal, smartphone maker Xiaomi said over the weekend there is no timetable for its mainland share offering, and that it will first complete its listing in Hong Kong. We learn that China's big three national wireless carriers are scrapping domestic data-roaming fees. We note that China's bike-sharing market is expected to shift into a slower lane this year. We explore JD.com's deal with Google under which the U.S. search giant will invest $550 million in China's second-largest ecommerce company, furthering both firms' international expansion ambitions. We discuss the debt-ridden Chinese financial conglomerate Anbang Insurance Group, previously controlled by once high-flying tycoon Wu Xiaohui 吴小晖, which is now nearly entirely owned by a state-run insurance bailout fund that injected almost $10 billion into the company earlier this year. We discover that China and Nepal have signed an agreement to develop a cross-border railway and the improvement of road links between the two countries. We hear that China has paid its final $580 million tranche to Sri Lanka as part of a deal that gives Beijing control over the strategic Hambantota deepwater port. We analyze how at least 25 senior officials overseeing China's prison system have fallen from grace over abuse of power linked to commutations. In addition, we talk with Jason Tan, a business reporter at Caixin Global, about the many recent developments with Chinese telecom giant Huawei. We also chat with Coco Feng, also a business reporter at Caixin Global, about sports lotteries in China. We'd love to hear your feedback on this product. Please send any comments and suggestions to sinica@supchina.com.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sponge-audiobook-mp3-player/id1355517192?ls=1&mt=8 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/china-withholds-hambantota-port-deals-final-tranche-to-sri-lanka/articleshow/64535503.cms

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sponge-audiobook-mp3-player/id1355517192?ls=1&mt=8 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/china-withholds-hambantota-port-deals-final-tranche-to-sri-lanka/articleshow/64535503.cms