POPULARITY
9 episodes with Ningbo
10 episodes with Ningbo
5 episodes with Ningbo
5 episodes with Ningbo
4 episodes with Ningbo
4 episodes with Ningbo
5 episodes with Ningbo
4 episodes with Ningbo
3 episodes with Ningbo
5 episodes with Ningbo
3 episodes with Ningbo
2 episodes with Ningbo
3 episodes with Ningbo
3 episodes with Ningbo
3 episodes with Ningbo
2 episodes with Ningbo
5 episodes with Ningbo
5 episodes with Ningbo
The mystery of the disappearing autumn has people living in northern China baffled. Only days ago, they were happily wearing T-shirts and skirts; but now, thick coats and down jackets are out in force. Fall was just a fleeting feeling, and indications are that this weather pattern could become the norm in the future.中国北方“秋日消失”的现象让当地民众感到困惑。就在几天前，人们还身着T恤短裙，如今却已纷纷穿上厚外套与羽绒服。秋天仿佛成了转瞬即逝的感觉，且有迹象表明，这种天气模式未来可能成为常态。According to available meteorological data, the transitional period between summer and winter is shrinking in China, with autumn arriving later than usual and ending sooner.现有气象数据显示，我国夏冬两季之间的过渡时段正不断缩短，秋季不仅来得更晚，结束得也更早。Delayed autumn秋季推迟While southwestern cities such as Guiyang in Guizhou province, Chengdu in Sichuan province, and Chongqing still enjoy around 70 to 80 days of cool autumn weather — with Guiyang topping the list at 79 days — people living in the north barely experience 50 days of autumn, said Weather China, a website under the China Meteorological Administration.中国气象局旗下“中国天气网”指出，贵阳（贵州）、成都（四川）、重庆等西南城市仍能享受70至80天左右的凉爽秋季（其中贵阳以79天位居榜首），而北方民众的秋季体验时长却不足50天。An analysis of long-term weather data from the website reveals that since 1991, autumn has been delayed across much of the country. Cities such as Zhengzhou in Henan province, Ningbo in Zhejiang province, and Shenzhen in Guangdong province now see autumn arrive more than 10 days late on average, while Nanjing in Jiangsu province, Fuzhou in Fujian province, and other places have recorded delays of five to nine days.该网站对长期气象数据的分析显示，1991年以来，我国多地秋季均出现推迟现象。河南郑州、浙江宁波、广东深圳等城市的秋季平均推迟超过10天，江苏南京、福建福州等地则推迟了5至9天。Studies show that across China, the duration of winter, spring and autumn is shrinking, and these shifts are more prominent in northern and eastern regions, the website said.中国天气网表示，研究发现我国冬季、春季、秋季的时长均在缩短，且这种变化在北方和东部地区更为显著。"Maybe there will be only three seasons in the future," a netizen said on social media platform Sina Weibo. "A trench coat feels like the most impractical outfit in Beijing, "another said, indicating the sharp transition from cool to cold weather in the capital.“未来或许只剩三个季节了。”一名网友在社交平台新浪微博上留言。另一名网友则调侃道：“风衣在北京成了最不实用的衣服”，暗指北京天气从凉爽到寒冷的急剧转变。Wang Weiyue, a meteorologist at Weather China, said that given global climate change, rising temperatures across various regions have become an indisputable fact, and this delays the onset of autumn, affecting agricultural production and people's daily lives.中国天气网气象专家王伟跃表示，在全球气候变化背景下，各地气温升高已成为不争的事实，这不仅导致秋季来临时间推迟，还对农业生产和民众日常生活产生了影响。Sudden chill寒潮突至This year's northern chill has arrived abruptly.今年北方的寒潮来得格外突然。Li Duo, a senior engineer at the National Climate Center, said that since October, several regions, including parts of Heilongjiang province, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Hebei province, and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, were 1 C to 2 C colder than usual.国家气候中心高级工程师李多介绍，10月以来，黑龙江部分地区、内蒙古自治区、河北省、新疆维吾尔自治区等多地气温较常年偏低1至2摄氏度。The recent temperature drop in northern China was mainly due to two major cold-air events between Oct 9 and 10 and Oct 18 and 19, Li said.李多指出，近期我国北方降温主要受10月9日至10日、10月18日至19日两次强冷空气过程影响。The China Meteorological Administration forecasts that much of northern China will remain colder than average through Friday, while southern regions will also see temperatures drop by up to 5 C by the end of the month.中国气象局预报显示，截至周五，我国北方大部地区气温将持续低于常年同期；月底前，南方地区气温也将下降，降幅最高可达5摄氏度。Experts advised residents to dress warmly, stay alert to weather changes, and ventilate indoor spaces when using heating to avoid carbon monoxide-related risks.专家提醒，民众需注意添衣保暖，密切关注天气变化；使用取暖设备时，要注意室内通风，防范一氧化碳中毒风险。fleeting/ˈfliːtɪŋ/adj.短暂的；转瞬即逝的transitional/trænˈzɪʃənl/adj.过渡的；转变的indisputable/ˌɪndɪˈspjuːtəbl/adj.无可争辩的；不容置疑的
Daniil Medvedev is back in the winner's circle after almost 900 days since his last title. Felix Auger-Aliassime continued his hot play by winning the Brussels title which helps his chances for making the year end finals in Turin. Elena Rybakina captured her 10th career title in Ningbo, coming back from a set down to beat Alexandrova. Can she keep it up and make the WTA finals in Riyadh in a couple weeks? Jimmy and Brett discuss the 6 Kings Slam, plus much more on a brand new Advantage Connors podcast. *Sponsor-ExpressVPN-find out how you can get up to four extra months FREE. Follow us on - Twitter - @AdvConnors @JimmyConnors @Brett_Connors Instagram - @AdvConnors @Bretterz @GolddoodIsabella Facebook - Jimmy Connors official Facebook page Leave your questions/topics/or links to stories you want us to talk about next week on Jimmy's official Facebook page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AGENDA: IntroResultados de los torneos del fin:Leylah Fernandez campeona del WTA 250 de Osaka vs Valentova. (5to título de su carrera)Elena Rybakina campeona del WTA 500 de Ningbo vs Ekaterina Alexandrova. (10mo título de su carrera)Daniil Medvedev campeón del ATP 250 de Almaty vs Corentin Moutet (Título #21 de su carrera y primero desde mayo 2023). Casper Ruud campeón del ATP 250 de Estocolmo vs Ugo Humbert. (Título #14 de su carrera)Felix Auger-Aliassime campeón del ATP 250 de Bruselas vs Jiri Lehecka (8vo título de su carrera)Jannik Sinner gana el Six Kings Slam por 2do año consecutivo vs Carlos Alcaraz.ATP 250 AlmatyDebate de la discrepancia del calendario y del tour enfocándonos en la lesión de Holger Rune (ruptura del tendón de áquiles en el torneo de Estocolmo). Torneos esta semanaATP 500 ViennaATP 500 BaselWTA 500 TokioWTA 250 GuangzhouRenata Zarazua gana W100 Macon.Y más ...Instagram: @TennisPiochasTwitter: @TennisPiochasTikTok: @tennis.piochas Distribuido por Genuina Media Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This is episode 181 of Beyond Top 10 Tennis as we come LIVE to you from AM8 International with the latest Rankings & Results on the WTA and ATP tours with [NEW] insights shared. From Top 10 Rankings to the Results of the past 3 Week's, Dr Berge reviews all key matches and key players from the last 3 Week's on the WTA tour: China Open (China), Wuhan Open (China), Ningbo Open (China) & Japan Open (Japan); followed by this week's tournament on the WTA tour (still in-action): Guangzhou Open (China) & Pan Pacific Open (Japan); PLUS the last 3 Week's on the ATP tour: China Open (China), Shanghai Masters (China), Almaty Open (Kazakhstan), European Open (Belgium) & Nordic Open (Sweden); followed by this week's tournament on the ATP tour (still in-action): Vienna Open (Austria) & Swiss Indoors (Switzerland).This week's episode covers the last 3 Week hiatus, shares ‘why' and what has been going on behind the scenes! Dr Berge also shares ‘why' some Top 10 players have come to a halt — no longer at their peak, and why others have the ‘fire power' to keep going. The WTA Tour highlights the depth of player progressions v the ATP Tour that's slightly behind, but how your WORK BOOK + BLACK BOOK shared this would be the case & how you can learn to avoid this pitfall. Dr Berge also discusses the WTA Finals & ATP Finals, how the 8% and the 8 Keys shape a player's trajectory, and again — how you can learn to take these steps to edge closer towards a Top 10 ranking.The Video for episode 181 is available on both Spotify & YouTube whilst remaining available wherever you enjoy listening. Key Players these last 3 Week's include: Anisimova (W), Noskova (R/u), Gauff (W), Pegula (R/u), Rybakina (W), Alexandrova (R/u), Fernandez (W), Valentova (R/u), Sinner (W), Tien (R/u), Vacherot (W), Rinderkneck (R/u), Medvedev (W), Moutet (R/u), Auger-Aliassime (W), Lehecka (R/u), Ruud (W) & Humbert (R/u) – Congratulations to all!To order Dr Berge's NEW RELEASE “My [Tennis] Work Book” (March, 2025), head here, or to order “My [Tennis] Black Book: Federer, Nadal, Serena, Djokovic” (December, 2024) simply head here.For something different, head on over to Pink Octopus Books (.com) for Dr Berge's fictional release. To get in touch with Dr Berge directly: @drb on Topicthread (.com). You'll need to wait up to 24hrs for approval and also, to sign in twice sometimes (we promise it isn't broken). We get quite a bit of spam to bots and it's a simple trick up our sleeves to keep it cleaner and safer for all.To access our Blog, head to AM8International.com/blogTo interact with some random polls, head to Sprooke.com You can find Dr Berge here:Substack: @drbergeYouTube: @drberge_tennisInstagram: @drberge_tennisX: @drberge_tennisThank you so much for listening, please consider following us and/or rating us – that would be exceptionally awesome! Plus, any feedback would be absolutely wonderful and Dr Berge can look at including it in future episodes and/or blog posts.Thank you for listening, we appreciate your support immensely!Until next time,Enjoy!
Il racconto dell'ultima settimana di tennis giocato e non: Jannik Sinner salterà le finali di Coppa Davis a Bologna, Lorenzo Musetti insegue un posto alle ATP Finals, mentre Jasmine si qualifica per le WTA Finals grazie alla semifinale di Ningbo
Catherine, David and Matt catch up on all the latest tour results as the races for the year-end finals heat up. Part one - WTA Results. We start with Elena Rybakina's title run in Ningbo, including her impressive turnaround in the final against Ekaterina Alexandrova and where that leaves the Race to Riyadh. Jasmine Paolini has qualified, but why is Mirra Andreeva not playing this week? There's also chat about Leylah Fernandez's victory in Osaka over Czech rising star Tereza Valentova. Part two - ATP Results (24:30). We cover Daniil Medvedev's first title in 29 months in Almaty, Felix Auger-Aliassime making a late charge for Turin, Holger Rune's horrific injury, Casper Ruud's awesome form in Stockholm, and the meaninglessness of the Six Kings Slam. Part three - The week ahead including our trip to Wrexham! (01:05:30) As mentioned in this episode, The Athletic's Monday Tennis Briefing is always worth a read. Tickets are now on General Sale for The Tennis Podcast - Live in Wrexham on Wednesday October 22nd! Buy here.Become a Friend of The Tennis PodcastCheck out our new merch shop! Talk tennis with Friends on The Barge! Sign up to receive our free Newsletter (daily at Slams and weekly the rest of the year, featuring Matt's Stat, mascot photos, Fantasy League updates, and more)Follow us on Instagram (@thetennispodcast)Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Check out our website... https://www.talking-tennis.com/ Subscribe to our podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43f2LvpQA7rxGbaRXqRMxH Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/talking-tennis/id1652349752 Amazon Music: https://podcasters.amazon.com/podcasts/1e8c717a-0be6-4145-adf5-aee32501a1ae Follow us on... Twitter: https://x.com/talkingtennis22 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@talkingtennis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/talkingtennistt/ Talking Tennis merchandise: https://my-store-d73955.creator-spring.com/ COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use and no copyright infringement is intended. #tennis #live #livestream #free #commentary #watchalong #talkingtennis #LiveTennis2024 #LiveTennis #LiveCommentary #TennisLive #sports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Willkommen zur neuen Ausgabe von Chip & Charge mit den Turnieren aus Ningbo, Osaka, Brüssel, Almaty und Stockholm. Während die Spitze bei den Herren in Schaukämpfen involviert war und die absoluten Topspielerinnen eine kurze Pause vor den WTA Finals nahm, wurde gutes Tennis auf der regulären Tour geboten. Der Titel in Ningbo ging an Elena Rybakina. Ein wichtiger Sieg für sie, der das Tor zum Jahresendturnier weit geöffnet hat. Auch so zeigte Rybakina mit ihr bestes Tennis der Saison. Im Finale gewann sie gegen Ekaterina Alexandrova, die damit auch die Top 10 für das Jahr sicherte. Die Halbfinalistin Jasmine Paolini kann ...Dieser Podcast wird vermarktet von der Podcastbude.www.podcastbu.de - Full-Service-Podcast-Agentur - Konzeption, Produktion, Vermarktung, Distribution und Hosting.Du möchtest deinen Podcast auch kostenlos hosten und damit Geld verdienen?Dann schaue auf www.kostenlos-hosten.de und informiere dich.Dort erhältst du alle Informationen zu unseren kostenlosen Podcast-Hosting-Angeboten. kostenlos-hosten.de ist ein Produkt der Podcastbude.
durée : 00:58:47 - Cultures Monde - par : Julie Gacon, Mélanie Chalandon - Illustration de la modernisation et de la transition écologique en Chine, les barrages permettent aussi un contrôle du territoire par le Parti. Les projets unissent autant qu'ils divisent les populations locales, pouvant provoquer des mécontentements. - réalisation : Vivian Lecuivre - invités : Florence Padovani sociologue et géographe, maîtresse de conférences en études chinoises à l'université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, chercheuse au Centre d'Études Français sur la Chine contemporaine (CEFC) de Hong Kong et spécialiste du barrage des Trois-gorges et des migrations en Chine ; David Juilien enseignant chercheur à l'université d'Angers et de Ningbo en Chine, spécialiste de l'aménagement du territoire en Chine; Katia Buffetrille Ethnologue, chercheuse au Centre de documentation sur l'aire tibétaine (CDAT – EPHE).
This is another celebratory episode in response to Coco Gauff's incredible run to the Wuhan title. “Big Coco, never the little one” won all of her matches in straight sets at the WTA 1000. It's the American's second crown of the year following her French Open triumph earlier this season. The 21-year-old world No 3 now has 11 singles titles to her name, including two majors and three WTA 1000s (and don't forget the year-end Finals title last year). Jasmine Paolini also did herself proud in Wuhan with a 6-1, 6-2 statement-victory over Iga Swiatek – a player she had never beaten before – in the quarter-finals. Paolini was beaten by eventual champion Gauff in a competitive semi-final. The Italian is now in Ningbo looking to secure a WTA Finals singles spot. To close we share our thoughts on the family affair in Shanghai – shout out to champion Valentin Vacherot and his runner-up cousin Arthur Rinderknech. We also ask why it's proving so difficult for guys to step up in the absence of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner.” Don't forget to rate, review and share on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Audioboom. For daily tennis updates: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackspinglobal Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlackSpinGlobal TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@blackspinglobal GET OUR MERCH HERE: https://blackspinglobal.com/collections
It's been a historic week on the ATP and WTA Tours! Join Joel and Kim on Tennis Weekly as they unpack all the headlines, starting with Valentine Vacherot's fairytale victory in Shanghai — the Monaco native becoming the lowest-ranked Masters 1000 champion in history after defeating his cousin Arthur Rinderknech in an all-family final. The team debate whether this incredible underdog story is a great advert for tennis or a reflection of a congested ATP schedule.On the WTA side, Coco Gauff continues her hard-court dominance, powering past Jessica Pegula to win the Wuhan Open without dropping a set — extending her flawless 9–0 record in hard-court finals. There's also excitement ahead of the Million Dollar Point Slam launching at the Australian Open, as well as buzz around Carlos Alcaraz's new Nike logo, set to debut at the ATP Finals. Plus: Roger Federer reveals his five tennis GOATs (with a cheeky Djokovic nod), Joel's take on the Impossible Shot Challenge, and we preview Stockholm, Ningbo, and the blockbuster Six Kings Slam in Saudi Arabia featuring Alcaraz, Djokovic, and Sinner.SOCIALSFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, plus email the show tennisweeklypod@gmail.com.MERCHPurchase Tennis Weekly Merch through our Etsy store including limited edition designs by Krippa Design where all proceeds go towards the podcast so we can keep doing what we do!REVIEWS***Please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your pods. It really means a lot to us at HQ and helps make it easier for new listeners to discover us. Thanks!*** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Coco Gauff caps off a brilliant week in Wuhan, taking down Jessica Pegula to claim the title! On this episode of WTA Weekly, we break down Gauff's win, what it means for the Race to Riyadh, and who's peaking at the right time. Plus, full previews of the upcoming events in Ningbo and Tokyo — the storylines, matchups, and players to watch as the WTA season enters its decisive stretch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Only seven 250 level or higher tournaments remain for 2025 and only three spots remaining for the WTA Finals. Rory Jiwani and Nigel Seeley look that this week's competitions in Ningbo and Osaka.
Hey guys, what you are about to listen to is an extremely graphic episode that will contain many scenes of gore, rape, human experimentation, honestly it will run the gambit. If you got a weak stomach, this episode might not be for you. You have been warned. I just want to take a chance to say a big thanks to all of you guys who decided to join the patreon, you guys are awesome! Please leave a comment on this episode to let me know what more you want to hear about in the future. With all of that said and done lets jump right into it. Where to begin with this one? Let start off with one of the major figures of Unit 731, Shiro Ishii. Born June 25th, 1892 in the village of Chiyoda Mura in Kamo District of Chiba Prefecture, Ishii was the product of his era. He came from a landowning class, had a very privileged childhood. His primary and secondary schoolmates described him to be brash, abrasive and arrogant. He was a teacher's pet, extremely intelligent, known to have excellent memory. He grew up during Japans ultra militarism/nationalism age, thus like any of his schoolmates was drawn towards the military. Less than a month after graduating from the Medical department of Kyoto Imperial University at the age of 28, he began military training as a probation officer in the 3rd regiment of the Imperial Guards division. Within 6 months he became a surgeon 1st Lt. During his postgraduate studies at Kyoto Imperial university he networked successfully to climb the career ladder. As a researcher he was sent out to help cure an epidemic that broke out in Japan. It was then he invented a water filter that could be carried alongside the troops. He eventually came across a report of the Geneva Protocol and conference reports of Harada Toyoji as well as other military doctors. He became impressed with the potential of chemical and biological warfare. During WW1 chemical warfare had been highly explored, leading 44 nations to pass the Geneva Protocol or more specifically “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare”. Representatives from Japan were present at this conference and were involving in the drafting and signing of the Geneva Protocol, but it was not ratified in Japan at the time. Ishii's university mentor, Kiyano Kenji suggested he travel western countries and he did so for 2 years. Many nations were secretive about their research, but some places such as MIT were quite open. After his visit Ishii came to believe Japan was far behind everyone else in biological warfare research. After returning to Japan Ishii became an instructor at the Imperial Japanese Army Medical School. Japan of course lacked significant natural resources, thus it was a perfect nation to pursue biological weapons research. Ishii began lobbying the IJA, proposing to establish a military agency to develop biological weapons. One of his most compelling arguments was “that biological warfare must possess distinct possibilities, otherwise, it would not have been outlawed by the League of Nations.” Ishii networked his way into good favor with the Minister of Health, Koizumi Chikahiko who lended his support in August of 1932 to allow Ishii to head an Epidemic Prevention Laboratory. Ishii secured a 1795 square meter complex at the Army Medical College. Yet this did not satisfy Ishii, it simply was not the type of work he wanted to do. The location of Tokyo allowed too many eyes on his work, he could not perform human experimentation. For what he wanted to do, he had to leave Japan, and in the 1930's Japan had a few colonies or sphere's of influence, the most appetizing one being Manchuria. In 1932 alongside his childhood friend Masuda Tomosada, Ishii took a tour of Harbin and he fell in love with the location. During the 1930's Harbin was quite a cosmopolitan city, it was a major trading port and diverse in ethnicities and religions. Here there were Mongols, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, various other western groups in lesser numbers. Just about every religion was represented, it was a researcher's paradise for subjects. Ishii sought human experimentation and needed to find somewhere covert with maximum secrecy. He chose a place in the Nan Gang District of Beiyinhe village, roughly 70 kms southeast of Harbin. It was here and then he began human experimentation. One day in 1932, Ishii and the IJA entered the village and evacuated an entire block where Xuan Hua and Wu Miao intersected. They began occupying a multi-use structure that had been supporting 100 Chinese vendors who sold clothes and food to the locals. They then began drafting Chinese laborers to construct the Zhong Ma complex to house the “Togo Unit” named after the legendary admiral, Togo Heihachiro. The Chinese laborers were underpaid and under constant watch from Japanese guards, limiting their movement and preventing them from understanding what they were building, or what was occurring within the complex. The complex was built in under a year, it held 100 rooms, 3 meter high brick walls and had an electric fence surrounding the perimeter. One thousand captives at any given time could be imprisoned within the complex. To ensure absolute secrecy, security guards patrolled the complex 24/7. Saburo Endo, director of Operations for the Kwantung Army once inspected the Togo Unit and described it in his book “The Fifteen Years' Sino-Japanese War and Me”, as such: [It was] converted from a rather large soy sauce workshop, surrounded by high rammed earth wall. All the attending military doctors had pseudonyms, and they were strictly regulated and were not allowed to communicate with the outsiders. The name of the unit was “Tōgō Unit.” One by one, the subjects of the experiments were imprisoned in a sturdy iron lattice and inoculated with various pathogenic bacteria to observe changes in their conditions. They used prisoners on death row in the prisons of Harbin for these experiments. It was said that it was for national defense purposes, but the experiments were performed with appalling brutality.The dead were burned in high-voltage electric furnaces, leaving no trace. A local from the region added this about the complex “We heard rumors of people having blood drawn in there but we never went near the place. We were too afraid. When the construction started, there were about forty houses in our village, and a lot of people were driven out. About one person from each home was taken to work on the construction. People were gathered from villages from all around here, maybe about a thousand people in all. The only things we worked on were the surrounding wall and the earthen walls. The Chinese that worked on the buildings were brought in from somewhere, but we didn't know where. After everything was finished, those people were killed.” Despite all the secrecy, it was soon discovered prisoners were being taken, primarily from the CCP and bandits who were being subjected to tests. One such test was to gradually drain a victim of blood to see at what point they would die. The unit drew 500 cc of blood from each prisoner every 3-5 days. As their bodies drew weaker, they were dissected for further research, the average prisoner lasted a maximum of a month. Due to the climate of Manchuria, it was soon established that finding methods to treat frostbite would benefit the Kwantung army. Ishii's team gathered human subjects and began freezing and unfreezing them. Sometimes these experiments included observing test subjects whose limbs had been frozen and severed. The Togo team reported to General Okamura Yasuji, the deputy commander in chief of the Kwantung army from 1933-1934 that the best way to treat frostbite was to soak a limb in 37 degree water. According to the testimony of a witness named Furuichi at trial done in Khabarovsk , “Experiments in freezing human beings were performed every year in the detachment, in the coldest months of the year—November, December, January and February. The experimental technique was as follows: the test subjects were taken out into the frost at about 11 o'clock at night, compelled to dip their hands into a barrel of cold water and forced to stand with wet hands in the frost for a long time. Alternatively, some were taken out dressed, but with bare feet and compelled to stand at night in the frost during the coldest period of the year. When frostbite had developed, the subjects were taken to a room and forced to put their feet in water of 5 degrees Celsius, after which the temperature was gradually increased.” Sergeant Major Kurakazu who was with Unit 731 later on in 1940 and taken prisoner by the Soviets in 1945 stated during the Khabarovsk trial , “I saw experiments performed on living people for the first time in December 1940. I was shown these experiments by researcher Yoshimura, a member of the 1st Division. These experiments were performed in the prison laboratory. When I walked into the prison laboratory, ve Chinese experimentees were sitting there; two of these Chinese had no fingers at all, their hands were black; in those of three others the bones were visible. They had fingers, but they were only bones. Yoshimura told me that this was the result of freezing experiments.” According to Major Karasawa during the same trial Ishii became curious about using plague as a weapon of war and captured plague infected mice to test on subjects in the Zhong Ma Complex “Ishii told me that he had experimented with cholera and plague on the mounted bandits of Manchuria during 1933-1934 and discovered that the plague was effective.” According to Lt General Endo Saburo's diary entry on November 16th of 1933, at the Zhong Ma complex “The second squad which was responsible for poison gas, liquid poison; and the First Squad which was responsible for electrical experiments. Two bandits were used by each squad for the experiments. Phosgene gas—5-minute injection of gas into a brick-lined room; the subject was still alive one day aer inhalation of gas; critically ill with pneumonia. Potassium cyanide—the subject was injected with 15 mg.; subject lost consciousness approximately 20 minutes later. 20,000 volts—several jolts were not enough to kill the subject; injection of poison required to kill the subject. 5000 volts—several jolts were not enough; aer several minutes of continuous current, subject was burned to death.” The Togo Unit established a strict security system to keep its research highly confidential. Yet in 1934, 16 Chinese prisoners escaped, compromising the Zhong Ma location. One of the guards had gotten drunk and a prisoner named Li smashed a bottle over his head and stole his keys. He freed 15 other prisoners and of them 4 died of cold, hunger and other ailments incurred by the Togo unit. 12 managed to flee to the 3rd route army of the Northeast Anti Japanese united Army. Upon hearing the horrifying report, the 3rd route army attacked the Togo unit at Beiyinhe and within a year, the Zhong Ma complex was exploded. After the destruction of the Zhong Ma complex, Ishii needed a better structure. The Togo unit had impressed their superior and received a large budget. Then on May 30th of 1936 Emperor Hirohito authorized the creation of Unit 731. Thus Ishii and his colleagues were no longer part of the Epidemic Prevention Institute of the Army Medical School, now they were officially under the Kwantung Army as the Central Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. Their new HQ was located in Pingfan, closer to Harbin. Their initial budget was 3 million yen for the personnel, 200-300 thousand yen per autonomous unit and 6 million yen for experimentation and research. Thus their new annual budget was over 10 million yen. Pingfan was evacuated by the Kwantung army. Hundreds of families were forced to move out and sell their land at cheap prices. To increase security this time, people required a special pass to enter Pingfan. Then the airspace over the area became off-limits, excluding IJA aircraft, all violators would be shot down. The new Pingfan complex was within a walled city with more than 70 buildings over a 6 km tract of land. The complex's huge size drew some international attention, and when asked what the structure was, the scientists replied it was a lumber mill. Rather grotesquely, prisoners would be referred to as “maruta” or “logs” to keep up the charade. Suzuki, a Japanese construction company back then, worked day and night to construct the complex. Now many of you probably know a bit about Unit 731, but did you know it's one of countless units? The Army's Noborito Laboratory was established (1937) The Central Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the North China Army/ Unit 1855 was established (1938) The Central Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of Central China/ Unit 1644 (1939) Thee Guangzhou Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of South China Army/ Unit 8604 (1942) The Central Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Southern Expeditionary Army/ Unit 9620 (1942). There were countless others, detachments included Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou, and later Unit 9420 in Singapore. All of these units comprised Ishii's network, which, at its height in 1939, oversaw over 10,000 personnel. Victims were normally brought to Pingfan during the dead of night within crammed freight cars with number logs on top. They were brought into the building via a secret tunnel. According to a witness named Fang Shen Yu, technicians in white lab coats handled the victims who were tied in bags. The victims included anyone charge with a crime, could be anti-japanese activity, opium smoking, espionage, being a communist, homelessness, being mentally handicap, etc. Victims included chinese, Mongolians, Koreans, White Russians, Harbin's jewish population and any Europeans accused of espionage. During the Khabarovsk trial, Major Iijima Yoshia admitted to personally subjecting 40 Soviet citizens to human experimentation. Harbin's diversity provided great research data. Each prisoner was assigned a number starting with 101 and ending at 1500. Onec 1500 was reached, they began again at 101, making it nearly impossible to estimate the total number of victims. Since the complex had been labeled a lumber mill to the locals, most did not worry about it or were too afraid to do so. The prison's warden was Ishii's brother Mitsuo who made sure to keep it all a secret. Ethics did not exist within Ishii's network of horrors. Everything was done efficiently in the name of science. Pingfang was equipped for disposing the evidence of their work in 3 large incinerators. As a former member who worked with the incinerators recalled “the bodies always burned up fast because all the organ were gone; the bodies were empty”. Human experimentation allowed the researchers their first chance to actually examine the organs of a living person at will to see the progress of a disease. Yeah you heard me right, living person, a lot of the vivisections were done on live people. As one former researcher explained "the results of the effects of infection cannot be obtained accurately once the person dies because putrefactive bacteria set in. Putrefactive bacteria are stronger than plague germs. So, for obtaining accurate results, it is important whether the subject is alive or not." Another former researcher said this “"As soon as the symptoms were observed, the prisoner was taken from his cell and into the dissection room. He was stripped and placed on the table, screaming, trying to fight back. He was strapped down, still screaming frightfully. One of the doctors stuffed a towel into his mouth, then with one quick slice of the scalpel he was opened up." Witnesses of some of these vivisections reported that victims usually let out a horrible scream when the initial cuts were made, but that the voice stops soon after. The researchers often removed the organ of interest, leaving others in the body and the victims usually died of blood loss or because of the removed organ. There are accounts of experiments benign carried out on mothers and children, because yes children were in fact born in the facilities. Many human specimens were placed in jars to be viewed by Tokyo's army medical college. Sometimes these jars were filled with limbs or organs but some giant ones had entire bodies. Vivisection was conducted on human beings to observe how disease affected each organ once a human dies. According to testimony given by a technician named Ogawa Fukumatsu “I participated in vivisections. I did them every day. I cannot remember the amount of people dissected. At first, I refused to do it. But then, they would not allow me to eat because it was an order; gradually I changed.” Another technician Masakuni Kuri testified “I did vivisection at the time. Experiments were conducted on a Chinese woman with syphilis. Because she was alive, the blood poured out like water from a tap.” A report done by Shozo Kondo studied the effects of bubonic plague on humans. The number of subjects was 57 with age ranging from toddlers to 80 years old with mixed gender. The study used fleas carrying plague that were dispersed upon the local population in June of 1940 at Changchun. 7 plague victims were Japanese residents. The report stated the plague spread because of lack of immunity by the townspeople. Subjects' survival time ranged from 2-5 days, with only 3 surviving 12, 18 and 21 days. The subjects were infected with Glandular, Cutaneous or Septicemic plague, but most had the Glandular variety. In addition to the central units of Pingfang were others set up in Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Singapore. The total number of personnel was 20,000. These satellite facilities all had their own unique horror stories. One was located in Anda, 100km from Pingfang where outdoor tests for plague, cholera and other pathogens were down. They would expose human subjects to biological bombs, typically by putting 10-40 people in the path of a biological bomb. A lot of the research was done to see the effective radius of the bombs, so victims were placed at different distances. At Xinjing was Unit 100 and its research was done against domesticated animals, horses particularly. Unit 100 was a bacteria factory producing glanders, anthrax and other pathogens. They often ran tests by mixing poisons with food and studied its effects on animals, but they also researched chemical warfare against crops. At Guangzhou was unit 8604 with its HQ at Zhongshan medical university. It is believed starvation tests ran there, such as the water test I mentioned. They also performed typhoid tests and bred rats to spread plague. Witness testimony from a Chinese volunteer states they often dissolved the bodies of victims in acid. In Beijing was Unit 1855 which was a combination of a prison and experiment center. They ran plague, cholera and typhus tests. Prisoners were forced to ingest mixtures of germs and some were vaccinated against the ailments. In Singapore after its capture in February of 1942 there was a secret laboratory. One Mr. Othman Wok gave testimony in the 1990s that when he was 17 years old he was employed to work at this secret lab. He states 7 Chinese, Indian and Malay boys worked in the lab, picking fleas from rats and placing them in containers. Some 40 rat catchers, would haul rats to the lab for the boys to do their work. The containers with fleas went to Japanese researchers and Othman says he saw rats being injected with plague pathogens. The fleas were transferred to kerosene cans which contained dried horse blood and an unidentified chemical left to breed for weeks. Once they had plague infected fleas in large quantity Othman said "A driver who drove the trucks which transported the fleas to the railway station said that these bottles of fleas were sent off to Thailand." If this is true, it gives evidence to claims Unit 731 had a branch in Thailand as well. Othman stated he never understood or knew what was really going on at the lab, but when he read in 1944 about biological attacks on Chongqing using fleas, he decided to leave the lab. Othman states the unit was called Unit 9240. As you can imagine rats and insects played a large role in all of this. They harvested Manchuria rat population and enlisted schoolchildren to raise them. In the 1990s the Asahi Broadcasting company made a documentary titled “the mystery of the rats that went to the continent”. It involved a small group of high school children in Saitama prefecture asked local farmers if they knew anything about rat farming during the war years. Many stated everybody back then was raising rats, it was a major source of income. One family said they had rat cages piled up in a shed, each cage built to carry 6 rat, but they had no idea what the rats were being used for. Now hear this, after the war, the US military kept these same families in business. The US army unit 406 which was established in Tokyo to research viruses wink wink, would often drive out to these farms in their american jeeps collecting rats. Getting fleas was a much tricker task. One method was taking older Chinese prisoners and quarantining them with clothes carrying flea or flea eggs and allowing them to live in isolated rooms to cultivate more fleas. These poor guys had to live in filth and not shave for weeks to produce around 100 fleas a day. Now Unit 731 dealt with numerous diseases such as Cholera. Some experiments used dogs to spread cholera to villages. They would steal dogs from villages, feed them pork laced with cholera germs and return them to the villages. When the disease finished incubating the dogs would vomit and other dogs would come and eat the vomit spread it more and more. The dogs were also stricken with diarrhea and the feces spread it to other dogs as well. 20% of the people in villages hit by this died of the disease. Former army captain Kojima Takeo was a unit member involved in a Cholera campaign and added this testimony "We were told that we were going out on a cholera campaign, and we were all given inoculations against cholera ten days before starting out. Our objective was to infect all the people in the area. The disease had already developed before we got there, and as we moved into the village everyone scattered. The only ones left were those who were too sick to move. The number of people coming down with the disease kept increasing. Cholera produces a face like a skeleton, vomiting, and diarrhea. And the vomiting and defecating of the people lying sick brought flies swarming around. One after the other, people died." I've mentioned it a lot, Plague was a staple of Unit 731. The IJA wanted a disease that was fast and fatal, Cholera for instance took about 20 days, plague on the other hand starts killing in 3 days. Plague also has a very long history of use going back to the medieval times. It was one of the very first diseases Ishii focused on. In october of 1940 a plague attack was conducted against the Kaimingjie area in the port city of Ningbo. This was a joint operation with Unit 731 and the Nanjing based Unit 1644. During this operation plague germs were mixed with wheat, corn, cloth scraps and cotton and dropped from the air. More than 100 people died within a few days of the attack and the affected area was sealed off from the public until the 1960s. Another horrifying test was the frostbite experiments. Army Engineer Hisato Yoshimura conducted these types of experiments by taking prisoners outside, dipping various appendages into water of varying temperatures and allowing the limbs to freeze. Once frozen, Yoshimura would strike their affected limbs with a short stick and in his words “they would emit a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck”. Ice was then chipping away with the affected area being subjected to various treatments, such as being doused in water, exposed to heat and so on. I have to mentioned here, that to my shock there is film of these specific frostbite experiments and one of our animators at Kings and Generals found it, I have seen a lot of things in my day, but seeing this was absolute nightmare fuel. If you have seen the movie or series Snowpiercer, they pretty much nail what it looked like. Members of Unit 731 referred to Yoshimura as a “scientific devil” and a “cold blooded animal” because he would conduct his work with strictness. Naoji Uezono another member of Unit 731, described in a 1980s interview a disgusting scene where Yoshimura had "two naked men put in an area 40–50 degrees below zero and researchers filmed the whole process until [the subjects] died. [The subjects] suffered such agony they were digging their nails into each other's flesh". Yoshimuras lack of any remorse was evident in an article he wrote for the Journal of Japanese Physiology in 1950 where he admitted to using 20 children and 3 day old infant in experiments which exposed them to zero degree celsius ice and salt water. The article drew criticism and no shit, but Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the Mainichi Shimbun. Yoshimura developed a “resistance index of frostbite” based on the mean temperature of 5 - 30 minutes after immersion in freezing water, the temperature of the first rise after immersion and the time until the temperature first rises after immersion. In a number of separate experiments he determined how these parameters depended on the time of day a victim's body part was immersed in freezing water, the surrounding temperature and humidity during immersion, how the victim had been treated before the immersion ("after keeping awake for a night", "after hunger for 24 hours", "after hunger for 48 hours", "immediately after heavy meal", "immediately after hot meal", "immediately after muscular exercise", "immediately after cold bath", "immediately after hot bath"), what type of food the victim had been fed over the five days preceding the immersions with regard to dietary nutrient intake ("high protein (of animal nature)", "high protein (of vegetable nature)", "low protein intake", and "standard diet"), and salt intake. Members of Unit 731 also worked with Syphilis, where they orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and noninfected prisoners to transmit the disease. One testimony given by a prisoner guard was as follows “Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, rest covered, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot.” After victims were infected, they would be vivisected at differing stages of infection so that the internal and external organs could be observed as the disease progressed. Testimony from multiple guards blamed the female victims as being hosts of the diseases, even as they were forcibly infected. Genitals of female prisoners were infected with syphilis and the guards would call them “jam filled buns”. Even some children were born or grew up in the walls of Unit 731, infected with syphilis. One researcher recalled “one was a Chinese women holding an infant, one was a white russian woman with a daughter of 4 or 5 years of age, and the last was a white russian women with a boy of about 6 or 7”. The children of these women were tested in ways similar to the adults. There was also of course rape and forced pregnancies as you could guess. Female prisoners were forced to become pregnant for use in experiments. The hypothetical possibility of transmission from mother to child of diseases, particularly syphilis was the rationale for the experiments. Fetal survival and damage to the womans reproductive organs were objects of interest. A large number of babies were born in captivity and there had been no accounts of any survivor of Unit 731, children included. It is suspected that the children of the female prisoners were killed after birth or aborted. One guard gave a testimony “One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work.” In a testimony given on December 28 by witness Furuichi during the Khabarovsk Trial, he described how “a Russian woman was infected with syphilis to allow the scientists to and out how to prevent the spread of the disease. Many babies were born to women who had been captured and become experimental subjects. Some women were kidnapped while pregnant; others became pregnant aer forced sex acts in the prisons, enabling researchers to study the transmission of venereal disease Initially Unit 731 and Unit 100 were going to support Japan's Kantokuen plan. The Kantokuen plan an operation plan to be carried out by the Kwantung army to invade the USSR far east, capitalizing on the success of operation barbarossa. Unit 731 and 100 were to prepare bacteriological weapons to help the invasion. The plan was created by the IJA general staff and approved by Emperor Hirohito. It would have involved three-steps to isolate and destroy the Soviet Army and occupy the eastern soviet cities over the course of 6 months. It would have involved heavy use of chemical and biological weapons. The Japanese planned to spread disease using three methods; direct spraying from aircraft, bacteria bombs and saboteurs on the ground. This would have included plague, cholera, typhus and other diseases against troops, civilian populations, livestocks, crops and water supplies. The main targets were Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, Voroshilov, and Chita. If successful the Soviet Far East would be incorporated into Japan's greater east asia co-prosperity sphere. Within Kantokuen documents, Emperor Hirohtio instructed Ishii to increase production rate at the units, for those not convinced Hirohito was deeply involved in some of the worst actions of the war. Yet in the end both Emperor Hirohito and Hideki Tojo pulled their support for the invasion of the USSR and opted for the Nanshin-ron strategy instead. On August 9th of 1945 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. In response, the Japanese government ordered all research facilities in Manchuria to be destroyed and to erase all incriminating materials. A skeleton crew began the liquidation of unit 731 on August 9th or 10th, while the rest of the unit evacuated. All test subjects were killed and cremated so no remains would be found. The design of the facilities however, made them hard to destroy via bombing, several parts of the buildings left standing when the Soviets arrived. While most of the unit's staff managed to escape, including Ishii, some were captured by the soviets. Some of these prisoners told the Soviets about the atrocities committed at Pingfang and Changchun. At first the claims seemed so outrageous, the Soviets sent their own Biological Weapons specialists to examine the ruins of Ping Fang. After a thorough investigation, the Soviet experts confirmed the experiments had been done there. The real soviet investigation into the secrets of Unit 731 and 100 began in early 1946, thus information was not readily available during the Tokyo Tribunal. Both the Americans and SOviets had collected evidence during the war that indicated the Japanese were in possession of bacteriological weapons though. Amongst the 600,000 Japanese prisoners of war in the USSR, Major General Kiyoshi Kawashima and Major Tomoio Karasawa would become essential to uncovering the Japanese bacteriological warfare secrets and opening the path to hold the Khabarovsk trial. The Soviets and Americans spent quite a few years performing investigations, many of which led to no arrests. The major reason for this was similar to Operation Paperclip. For those unaware, paperclip was a American secret intelligence program where 1600 German scientists were taken after the war and employed, many of whom were nazi party officials. The most famous of course was Wernher von Braun. When the Americans looked into the Japanese bacteriological work, they were surprised to find the Japanese were ahead of them in some specific areas, notably ones involving human experimentation. General Charles Willoughby of G-2 american intelligence called to attention that all the data extracted from live human testing was out of the reach of the USA. By the end of 1947, with the CCP looking like they might defeat Chiang Kai-Shek and the Soviet Union proving to be their new enemy, the US sought to form an alliance with Japan, and this included their Bacteriological specialists. From October to December, Drs Edwin Hill and Joseph Victor from Camp Detrick were sent to Tokyo to gather information from Ishii and his colleagues. Their final conclusion laid out the importance of continuing to learn from the Japanese teams, and grant them immunity. The British were also receiving some reports from the Americans about the Japanese Bacteriological research and human experimentation. The British agreed with the Americans that the information was invaluable due to the live human beings used in the tests. The UK and US formed some arrangements to retain the information and keep it secret. By late 1948 the Tokyo War Crimes Trial was coming to an end as the cold war tension was heating up in Korea, pushing the US more and more to want to retain the information and keep it all under wraps. With formal acceptance, final steps were undertaken, much of which was overseen by General Douglas MacArthur. On May 6, 1947, Douglas MacArthur wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence.” Ishii and his colleagues received full immunity from the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Ishii was hired by the US government to lecture American officers at Fort Detrick on bioweapons and the findings made by Unit 731. During the Korean War Ishii reportedly traveled to Korea to take part in alleged American biological warfare activities. On February 22nd of 1952, Ishiiwas explicitly named in a statement made by the North Korean FOreign Minister, claiming he along with other "Japanese bacteriological war criminals had been involved in systematically spreading large quantities of bacteria-carrying insects by aircraft in order to disseminate contagious diseases over our frontline positions and our rear". Ishii would eventually return to Japan, where he opened a clinic, performing examinations and treatments for free. He would die from laryngeal cancer in 1959 and according to his daughter became a Roman Catholic shortly before his death. According to an investigation by The Guardian, after the war, former members of Unit 731 conducted human experiments on Japanese prisoners, babies, and mental patients under the guise of vaccine development, with covert funding from the U.S. government. Masami Kitaoka, a graduate of Unit 1644, continued performing experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956 while working at Japan's National Institute of Health Sciences. He infected prisoners with rickettsia and mentally ill patients with typhus. Shiro Ishii, the chief of the unit, was granted immunity from prosecution for war crimes by American occupation authorities in exchange for providing them with human experimentation research materials. From 1948 to 1958, less than five percent of these documents were transferred to microfilm and stored in the U.S. National Archives before being shipped back to Japan.
Zhou Ming war einer der klügsten Köpfe der amerikanischen Luftfahrt. Jetzt verlässt er die USA und geht zurück nach China. Es ist mehr als ein Jobwechsel. Es ist ein Signal in einem globalen Wettkampf um Talente, Einfluss und technologische Vorherrschaft.Diese Reportage führt von Michigan nach Ningbo, von Silicon Valley nach Shenzhen, von den Designstudios deutscher Autobauer bis in die KI-Labore asiatischer Tech-Konzerne. Sie erzählt von Menschen, deren Entscheidungen ganze Branchen verschieben. Von Regierungen, die Milliarden investieren, um die Besten der Besten anzulocken. Und von der Frage, ob am Ende einzelne Stars den Unterschied machen oder die Systeme, die sie hervorbringen.Was steckt hinter den Wechseln prominenter Köpfe wie Andrew Ng oder Kai Langer? Welche Strategien verfolgen China, die USA und Europa im Kampf um die Talente der Zukunft? Und wer schafft es, nicht nur Wissen anzuziehen, sondern es auch zu halten?Hier geht es zu unseren LinkedIn-Accounts:Damian & ThomasMade in China PodcastO-Töne:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsPCqcWXePc&t=69shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ0C_N6Z5BM&t=29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AJ5wxYQytY&t=3s Quellen:Shanghai Ranking (2025) – Academic Ranking of World UniversitiesWIPO (2024) – World Intellectual Property Indicators, Patents HighlightsOur World in Data (2024) – China as largest contributor to global patent applicationsWIRED (2023) – Mark Zuckerberg's Meta offer to top AI talentUniversity of California Irvine (2025) – Seminar on topology optimization and industrial impactElectrive (2025) – Xiaomi recruits former BMW designerNew Mobility News (2025) – BMW designer Kai Langer joins XiaomiMarketWatch (2023) – Meta freezes AI hiring spreeBMW Blog (2025) – Xiaomi recruits former BMW design bossBrookings Institution (2023) – Brain circulation and high-skill immigrationAir University / Wild Blue Yonder (2023) – China's Thousand Talents ProgramUSCIS (2024) – H-1B Specialty OccupationsJobbatical (2025) – Engpassberufe in Deutschland und EU Blue CardGIZ (2023) – Strategien gegen den Fachkräftemangel in der ITEuropäische Kommission (laufend) – European Chips ActIMD (2024/2025) – Bosch's investment in employee retraining amid the AI revolutionSend us a textasiabits hier abonnieren: asiabits.com Damians Team kontaktieren: www.genuine-asia.com Moderatoren & Hosts: Damian Maib & Thomas Derksen Schnitt & Produktion: Eva Trotno
Get episodes without adverts + bonus episodes at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Support. Your support is appreciated! Spicy bullfrog, fights with policemen and getting locked out... my first two weeks in China have certainly been eventful! Find out all about my move to Ningbo in today's episode. Go to EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/China2 for the full transcript. Vocabulary: Bureaucracy, Ultrasound, Bedside manner, SIM card, Apartment complex, Congee, Adzuki bean, Bullfrog, Red bayberry, 'Mad dogs and Englishmen', Sweat, Cicada, Pale, 'A fish out of water', Scavenger hunt 0:00 Intro 01:56 The flight 05:07 The fastest train in the world 06:33 Assaulting a policeman 07:48 Making friends with the locals 10:00 The joys of bureaucracy 15:46 My home away from home 17:46 Finally, I'm rich! 19:32 Get your chopsticks out 25:49 It's too darn hot! 27:50 Comfortable and livable 29:15 Security 32:10 Locked out of the system 34:06 My new job 37:23 The hardest thing you can do 40:35 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
China's foreign trade will remain resilient in the second half of 2025, fueled by strong growth in high-tech exports, vibrant private sector activity and closer ties with emerging markets, government officials and exporters said on Thursday. 上周四，政府官员和出口商表示，在高科技产品出口强劲增长、私营部门活力十足以及与新兴市场联系日益紧密的推动下，2025 年下半年中国外贸将保持韧性。 They noted that China's steady export performance, particularly driven by private companies, underscores robust global demand for the country's high-tech mechanical and electrical products, and facilitates its deeper integration into regional and global industrial chains. 他们指出，中国出口表现稳健，尤其是在私营企业的推动下，这凸显了全球对中国高科技机电产品的强劲需求，并促进了中国更深入地融入区域和全球产业链。 China's foreign trade grew 3.5 percent year-on-year to 25.7 trillion yuan ($3.6 trillion) in the first seven months of 2025, while its exports rose 7.3 percent year-on-year to 15.31 trillion yuan, data released on Thursday by the General Administration of Customs shows. In July alone, the country's trade value grew 6.7 percent to 3.91 trillion yuan. 海关总署周四发布的数据显示，2025 年 1-7 月，中国外贸进出口总值 25.7 万亿元人民币（约合 3.6 万亿美元），同比增长 3.5%；出口 15.31 万亿元，同比增长 7.3%。仅 7 月当月，中国外贸进出口总值就增长 6.7%，达 3.91 万亿元。 Lyu Daliang, director of the GAC's department of statistics and analysis, said that amid a complex external environment, China's foreign trade has maintained steady growth momentum, while its trade structure has continued to optimize, with high-tech products playing an increasingly key role in supporting overall expansion. 海关总署统计分析司司长吕大良表示，在复杂的外部环境下，中国外贸保持了稳定增长态势，贸易结构持续优化，高科技产品在支撑整体增长中的作用日益关键。 China's trade of high-tech products, including high-end machine tools and electric vehicles, reached 5.1 trillion yuan from January to July, up 8.4 percent year-on-year, contributing 45.4 percent to the overall growth of foreign trade during this period.1-7 月，中国包括高端机床、电动汽车在内的高科技产品贸易额达 5.1 万亿元，同比增长 8.4%，对同期外贸整体增长的贡献率为 45.4%。 "Since the beginning of the year, private businesses have actively responded to changes and continued to serve as a stabilizing force in China's foreign trade," Lyu said. 吕大良称：“今年以来，民营企业积极应对变化，持续发挥中国外贸‘稳定器'作用。” Specifically, the foreign trade value of China's private companies amounted to 14.68 trillion yuan over the past seven months, up 7.4 percent year-on-year, accounting for 57.1 percent of the nation's total foreign trade value, an increase of 2.1 percentage points compared with the same period last year. 具体来看，过去 7 个月，中国民营企业外贸进出口总值达 14.68 万亿元，同比增长 7.4%，占全国外贸总值的 57.1%，较去年同期提升 2.1 个百分点。 Chen Bin, deputy director of the expert committee of the Beijing-based China Machinery Industry Federation, said these trends "have not only laid a solid foundation for China's foreign trade to continue on a stable growth trajectory in the second half, but also reflect a deeper structural realignment". 北京中国机械工业联合会专家委员会副主任陈斌表示，这些趋势 “不仅为下半年中国外贸继续保持稳定增长态势奠定了坚实基础，也反映出更深层次的结构调整”。 Driven by industrial upgrading and the rapid growth of the digital economy, new opportunities are emerging in sectors such as energy storage, industrial robotics and artificial intelligence-enabled manufacturing tools, Chen said, adding that these sectors are fast emerging as new engines of trade growth. 陈斌指出，在产业升级和数字经济快速发展的推动下，储能、工业机器人、人工智能制造工具等领域正涌现新机遇，这些领域正迅速成为贸易增长的新引擎。 Zhou Mi, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, said that on the demand side, China's strong global product presence and long-standing commitment to free trade are key factors supporting the competitiveness of its foreign trade. 北京中国国际贸易经济合作研究院研究员周密表示，从需求端看，中国产品在全球的强大存在感以及对自由贸易的长期坚持，是支撑中国外贸竞争力的关键因素。 Ahmed bin Sulayem, executive chairman of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre in the United Arab Emirates, said the steady growth of the Chinese economy will encourage economic and trade cooperation with Arab nations and other countries of the world in the long run. 阿联酋迪拜多种商品交易中心执行主席艾哈迈德・本・苏莱耶姆表示，从长远来看，中国经济的稳定增长将促进与阿拉伯国家及世界其他国家的经贸合作。 Zhao Ping, head of the academy of the Beijing-based China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said the projected robust growth in foreign trade during the second half of the year will provide vital support for China's broader economic stability and expansion, reinforcing its resilience amid global uncertainties. 北京中国国际贸易促进委员会研究院院长赵萍表示，预计下半年外贸的强劲增长将为中国整体经济的稳定和扩张提供重要支撑，增强中国在全球不确定性中的韧性。 Also on Thursday, the Ministry of Finance said the government will explore and adjust policy tools to ensure the Chinese economy maintains a stable and positive trajectory, thereby contributing to global economic development. 同样在周四，财政部表示，政府将探索和调整政策工具，确保中国经济保持稳定向好态势，为全球经济发展作出贡献。 The ministry's statement followed S&P Global Ratings' affirmation of its unsolicited 'A+' long-term and 'A-1' short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on China, with a stable outlook for the long-term rating. 此前，标普全球评级确认对中国的长期外币和本币主权信用评级为 “A +”，短期评级为 “A - 1”，长期评级展望为稳定，财政部随后发表了上述声明。 Zhang Yuxian, director of the department of economic forecasting at the State Information Center, warned that China-United States economic and trade frictions will continue to test the resilience of Chinese exports and the adaptability of Chinese exporters in the second half. 国家信息中心经济预测部主任张宇贤警告称，下半年中美经贸摩擦将继续考验中国出口的韧性和出口商的适应能力。 Despite these challenges, China retains substantial potential for optimizing its product mix and enhancing policy support, Zhang said. The country's imports are also expected to become more diversified, providing consumers with a broader range of choices, he added. 张宇贤表示，尽管面临这些挑战，中国在优化产品结构和加强政策支持方面仍有巨大潜力。他补充说，中国的进口预计也将更加多元化，为消费者提供更广泛的选择。 At the company level, Chinese exporters have already taken proactive steps to adapt to external challenges. 在企业层面，中国出口商已采取积极措施应对外部挑战。 Wang Lilong, president of Ningbo Winner Electric Appliances Co, a garden tools manufacturer based in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, said his company has enhanced product adaptability and upgraded noise-reduction solutions this year to help offset the impact of the US tariff pressures. 浙江省宁波市园林工具制造商宁波万泓电器有限公司总裁王利龙表示，为抵消美国关税压力的影响，公司今年提高了产品适应性，并升级了降噪解决方案。 Data from Ningbo Customs shows that in addition to expanding business presence in emerging markets this year, the company saw the export of its products to the US, including lawn mowers and branch shredders, reach 32 million yuan between January and July, surging more than 90 percent year-on-year. 宁波海关数据显示，今年除了在新兴市场扩大业务外，该公司 1-7 月对美出口割草机、树枝粉碎机等产品达 3200 万元，同比激增逾 90%。 With many emerging economies accelerating their industrialization, green and digitally driven modernization, Jiangsu Shangshang Cable Group, a cable manufacturer based in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, exported products worth 420 million yuan during the January-July period, a year-on-year increase of 13.2 percent, according to Nanjing Customs. 南京海关数据显示，随着许多新兴经济体加速工业化、绿色化和数字化驱动的现代化进程，江苏省常州市电缆制造商江苏上上电缆集团 1-7 月出口额达 4.2 亿元，同比增长 13.2%。 Liu Cunyong, head of the company's foreign trade unit, said the robust growth was mainly driven by rising demand in overseas infrastructure projects, especially in economies participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. 该公司外贸部门负责人刘存勇表示，出口的强劲增长主要得益于海外基础设施项目需求上升，尤其是 “一带一路” 沿线经济体的需求。 "We have been refining our product offerings to better align with the technical and regulatory frameworks of key markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa," Liu said. 刘存勇称：“我们一直在优化产品供应，以更好地适应东南亚、中东和非洲重点市场的技术和监管框架。” Resilient /rɪˈzɪliənt/ 有韧性的；适应力强的 Trajectory /trəˈdʒektəri/ 轨迹；发展路径 Sovereign /ˈsɒvrɪn/ 主权的；独立的 Diversified /daɪˈvɜːsɪfaɪd/ 多样化的；多元化的
Turniej finałowy Ligi Narodów 2025 siatkarzy wygrany przez Polaków bez straty choćby jednego seta. Czy wyniki odzwierciedlają rzeczywisty układ sił względem zbliżającego się mundialu? Podsumowujemy minioną część sezonu reprezentacyjnego - jakie odpowiedzi mógł dostać Nikola Grbić? A naszym gościem jest Michał Mieszko Gogol, który był obecny na turnieju w Ningbo - jak to wyglądało od środka?
Polscy siatkarze pokonali w finale Ligi Narodów Włochów 3:0 i zostali mistrzami tegorocznych rozgrywek. Podopieczni Nikoli Grbicia w kluczowych spotkaniach zaprezentowali się kapitalnie. W ćwierćfinale pokonali Japonię 3:0, w półfinale takim samym wynikiem odprawili Brazylię, a w finale zdemolowali Włochów. To, co działo się w chińskim Ningbo podsumuje Edyta Kowalczyk.
W Lidze Narodów 2025 w chińskim Ningbo siatkarze reprezentacji Polski bez straty seta przeszli pierwszą przeszkodę, pomimo nieudanego meczu Wilfredo Leona, który dotąd z Japonią nigdy nie zawodził - co zadecydowało o zwycięstwie? W półfinale czeka Brazylia, która niespodziewanie straciła seta z Chinami - co ten mecz mówi o ich formie, jak ich pokonać i na ile oceniamy szanse awansu Biało-Czerwonych do finału VNL 2025? Włosi zgodnie z planem ograli Kubę, a Francja pożegnała się z turniejem przegrywając ze Słowenią!
Liga Narodów siatkarzy 2025 na finiszu, medale rozdane zostaną już w niedzielę w chińskim Ningbo. Czy reprezentacja Polski znów stanie na podium? Zaplanowane nieobecności po igrzyskach w Paryżu, ale i niestety nawarstwiające się inne absencje komplikują w tym roku poczynania kadry Nikoli Grbicia, jakie zatem powinniśmy mieć oczekiwania wobec naszych siatkarzy w imprezie poprzedzającej mundial? Ćwierćfinałowym rywalem Polaków będzie Japonia, a kto awansuje w pozostałych parach ćwierćfinałowych? Kto wygra cały turniej?
Polskie siatkarki pierwszy raz od 16 lat zdobył medal przed własną publicznością. W Łodzi, trzeci raz z rzędu, zdobyły brąz Ligi Narodów. Siatkarze natomiast o medal walczyć będą już w przyszły weekend w chińskim Ningbo. Podopieczni Nikoli Grbicia w ćwierćfinale zmierzą się z Japonią. I o tym Edyta Kowalczyk i Łukasz Kadziewicz porozmawiają w Misji Siatka.
China will remain a vital innovation hub and manufacturing base for foreign corporations despite global economic uncertainty, said government officials and business leaders.政府官员和商界领袖表示，尽管全球经济形势充满不确定性，但中国仍将作为外国企业的关键创新中心和制造基地而继续发挥重要作用。They noted that foreign firms are maintaining deep engagement with the Chinese market, capitalizing on their technological expertise alongside China's well-developed industrial and supply chains — a synergy that enhances operational efficiency, fosters innovation and strengthens supply chain resilience.他们指出，外国企业正持续深入参与中国市场，充分利用自身的技术专长以及中国完善的工业和供应链体系——这种协同效应能够提高运营效率、促进创新并增强供应链的韧性。Foreign-invested companies in China saw their export and import value grow by 2.4 percent year-on-year to 6.32 trillion yuan ($881.2 billion) in the first half, marking growth for the fifth consecutive quarter, statistics from the General Administration of Customs showed.据海关总署的数据，今年上半年，在华外资企业的出口和进口总额同比增长2.4%，达到6.32万亿元人民币（约合8812亿美元），这是连续第五个季度实现增长。The number of foreign-invested businesses in the country with actual import and export activities amounted to 75,000 in the first six months, the highest level for the same period since 2021, said the administration.该部门表示，上半年在该国开展实际进出口业务的外资企业数量达到75,000家，这是自2021年以来同期的最高水平。China's evolving industrial ecosystem — combining cost, quality and speed with advanced infrastructure — is transforming into a collaborative innovation hub where multinationals co-develop and expand alongside local partners, said Mohamed Kande, global chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd, a London-based global accounting company.普华永道国际有限公司（一家总部位于伦敦的全球性会计师事务所）的全球主席穆罕默德·坎德表示，中国不断发展的工业生态系统——将成本、质量和速度与先进的基础设施相结合——正在转变为一个协同创新的中心，跨国公司与当地合作伙伴共同开发并扩大业务规模。Reflecting on this shift, Lyu Daliang, director of the GAC's department of statistics and analysis, said that among the major manufacturing categories involved in foreign company exports, industries such as specialized equipment, electrical machinery and electronic devices all posted robust growth between January and June.对于这一变化，广汽集团统计分析部门负责人吕大良表示，在外资企业出口所涉及的主要制造业类别中，诸如专用设备、电气机械和电子设备等行业在1月至6月期间均实现了强劲增长。One such company — Global Electric Appliance (Nantong) Co Ltd, a manufacturer of household appliances in Nantong, Jiangsu province and a subsidiary of a Singapore-based industrial group — reported a 31.9 percent year-on-year increase in exports, reaching 343 million yuan in the first half, said Nanjing Customs.其中一家这样的企业——位于江苏省南通市的家用电器制造商“环球电器（南通）有限公司”，该公司隶属于一家总部位于新加坡的工业集团，其出口额同比增长了31.9%，上半年达到3.43亿元，此数据由南京海关公布。Chen Jinxin, head of the company's foreign trade unit, said the company has shipped its products, including vacuum and steam cleaners, to over 90 overseas markets, backed by China's innovative solutions and a highly integrated supply chain that enables rapid product development and efficient global distribution.该公司外贸部门负责人陈金鑫表示，公司已将包括真空吸尘器和蒸汽清洁器在内的产品销往全球90多个市场。这得益于中国的创新解决方案以及高度整合的供应链，该供应链能够实现产品快速开发和高效的全球配送。Apart from investing 3 billion yuan in its Hangzhou plant in Zhejiang province over the past decade, Italian chocolate and confectionery maker Ferrero Group said that the factory now supplies 53 percent of its products to the Chinese market, with the remaining 47 percent exported to more than 20 countries and regions across the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and North America.在过去十年里，意大利巧克力及糖果制造商费列罗集团在浙江省的杭州工厂投入了30亿元资金。该集团表示，目前该工厂生产的53%的产品供应给中国市场，其余47%的产品则出口到亚太地区、中东和北美地区的20多个国家和地区。Yang Lianjun, general manager of Ferrero's Hangzhou plant, said the Chinese market offers significant opportunities, and the company may introduce additional premium product categories in the future, such as ice cream.费罗尔杭州工厂的总经理杨练军表示，中国市场蕴含着巨大的机遇，公司未来可能会推出更多高端产品类别，比如冰淇淋。To bolster its local research and development capabilities, Ferrero established a food innovation center within its Hangzhou facility last year. The center focuses on developing chocolate, confectionery and bakery products tailored to regional preferences and shortening time-to-market cycles.为了增强其本地的研发能力，费列罗公司去年在其杭州工厂内设立了食品创新中心。该中心致力于开发符合当地消费者口味的巧克力、糖果和烘焙产品，并缩短产品上市周期。The Ministry of Commerce said foreign direct investment in China's manufacturing sector reached 109.06 billion yuan in the first half, while high-tech industries attracted 127.87 billion yuan. FDI inflows from Switzerland, Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany rose by 68.6 percent, 59.1 percent, 37.6 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively.商务部表示，上半年中国制造业领域的外国直接投资达到1090.6亿元，而高科技产业吸引了1278.7亿元的投资。来自瑞士、日本、英国和德国的外资流入分别增长了68.6%、59.1%、37.6%和6.3%。Amid a turbulent and uncertain global trade landscape, the stability of China's policy environment and the long-term orientation of its planning have grown increasingly valuable, said Li Xingqian, vice-chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.中国国际贸易促进委员会副会长李兴乾表示，在全球贸易环境动荡且充满不确定性的背景下，中国政策环境的稳定性以及其规划的长期导向性变得愈发重要。Neutrik Technology (Ningbo) Co Ltd, a Ningbo, Zhejiang province-based manufacturer of electronic connectors and a subsidiary of the European company Neutrik AG, reported a 19 percent year-on-year rise in first-half sales to 68.45 million yuan, covering both domestic sales and exports, said Ningbo Customs.位于浙江省宁波市的纽崔克科技（宁波）有限公司是一家电子连接器制造商，隶属于欧洲的纽崔克公司。该公司称，其上半年销售额同比增长19%，达到6845万元人民币，其中包括国内销售额和出口额。此数据由宁波海关提供。Dong Lanju, the company's president, said that China's well-integrated industrial ecosystem and pro-business environment will continue to empower foreign manufacturers to expand production, boost operational efficiency and better capture opportunities in global markets.该公司总裁董兰菊表示，中国完善的工业生态系统以及积极的商业环境将继续助力外国制造商扩大生产规模、提高运营效率，并更好地把握全球市场的机遇。peace talksn.和平谈判/piːs tɔːks/Ukraine crisisn.乌克兰危机/juːˈkreɪnˈkraɪsɪs/
Spoilers for all of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure------------------------------------------------------Is this gonna be when Ningbo dies? ... AGAIN?____________________________________Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/jokakakaSend us a Letter: jokakakapodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/jokakakapodcastFollow Jokakaka on Twitter:Jokakaka- https://twitter.com/JokakakaPodcastJim- https://twitter.com/kingprotusSam- https://twitter.com/Gokaikun
Die Parks: Fantawild Glorious Orient Ningbo Oriental Heritage Ningbo Die Bahnen: Fighter Jet Sky Track Frontline Charge Stress Express Jungle Trailblazer Night Rescue
Spoilers for all of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure------------------------------------------------------Is this gonna be when Ningbo dies?____________________________________Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/jokakakaSend us a Letter: jokakakapodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/jokakakapodcastFollow Jokakaka on Twitter:Jokakaka- https://twitter.com/JokakakaPodcastJim- https://twitter.com/kingprotusSam- https://twitter.com/Gokaikun
Chinese exporters' accelerated shift toward higher-value manufacturing and their sustained focus on innovation will continue to anchor China's foreign trade growth this year, government officials, manufacturers and experts said on Monday.政府官员、制造商和专家周一表示，，中国出口企业加快向高附加值制造业转型，并持续聚焦创新，这将继续支撑今年中国外贸增长。As China works to consolidate its position in global industrial chains amid rising geopolitical tensions, Chinese companies' large-scale production capabilities, innovation strength, industrial upgrades and market diversification moves will keep driving export growth in the second half of the year, they said.他们表示，在地缘政治紧张局势加剧的背景下，中国正努力巩固其在全球产业链中的地位，中国企业的大规模生产能力、创新实力、产业升级和市场多元化举措将继续推动下半年出口增长。Liang Ming, director of the Institute of International Trade at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said that China's robust industrial ecosystem, characterized by tight intersector partnerships and operational efficiencies, provides enormous stability for the nation's foreign trade supply networks.商务部国际贸易经济合作研究院对外贸易研究所所长梁明表示，中国外贸供应网络的稳定性源于其强大的工业生态体系，特点是行业间合作紧密、运行效率高。Data from the General Administration of Customs shows that China's foreign trade grew 2.5 percent year-on-year to reach 17.94 trillion yuan ($2.5 trillion) in the first five months of 2025.海关总署数据显示，2025年前5个月，中国对外贸易进出口总值17.94万亿元人民币（约合2.5万亿美元），同比增长2.5%。Lyu Daliang, director of the administration's department of statistics and analysis, said the Chinese economy has continued to recover steadily since the beginning of the year, with the trade in goods demonstrating strong resilience despite external pressures.海关总署统计分析司司长吕大良表示，今年以来，中国经济持续稳步复苏，货物贸易尽管面临外部压力，但仍展现出强劲韧性。China's imports and exports maintained a steady growth momentum last month, with a notable acceleration following high-level economic and trade talks between China and the United States in Geneva, Switzerland, in mid-May, Lyu said.吕大良表示，上月中国进出口保持平稳增长势头，尤其是在5月中旬中美在瑞士日内瓦举行高级别经贸会谈后，进出口增速明显加快。According to the GAC, China's total value of goods trade reached 3.81 trillion yuan last month, up 2.7 percent year-on-year.据海关总署统计，上月中国货物贸易进出口总值3.81万亿元人民币，同比增长2.7%。Xiao Lu, deputy director of the department of foreign trade at the Ministry of Commerce, said that amid global supply chain restructuring and de-risking trends, Chinese manufacturers have ramped up high-tech innovation, fostering innovation chains alongside industrial clusters.商务部对外贸易司副司长肖露表示，在全球供应链重构和去风险化趋势的背景下，中国制造企业正加大高技术创新投入，推动创新链与产业集群协同发展。Wang Qian, a researcher specializing in international trade at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, said that China's export growth has been primarily driven by mechanical and electrical product exports in recent years.上海对外经贸大学国际贸易研究员王倩（音译）表示，近年来，机电产品出口是中国出口增长的主要动力。"A growing range of products is fueling export growth through increasingly innovative activities and integrated supply chain collaboration," Wang said.“通过不断增强的创新活动和一体化的供应链协作，越来越多的产品种类正在推动出口增长。”王倩说道。Latest data from the GAC shows that China's mechanical and electrical product exports increased 9.3 percent year-on-year to 6.4 trillion yuan between January and May, accounting for 60 percent of the country's total exports.海关总署最新数据显示，今年1月到5月，中国机电产品出口同比增长9.3%，达到6.4万亿元人民币，占全国出口总额的60%。Since the beginning of the year, leading contributors to export expansion have included integrated circuits, computers, electric vehicles and energy-efficient container ships.今年以来，集成电路、计算机、电动汽车和节能集装箱船等产品成为出口增长的主要推动力。Ningbo Healthmate Science and Technology Development, a fitness equipment manufacturer in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, saw its export value surge 23.85 percent year-on-year to 135 million yuan in the first five months, thanks to the soaring demand in the Middle East for its latest smart running machines, according to Ningbo Customs.宁波海关称，浙江省宁波市健身器材制造商宁波海斯曼科技发展有限公司前五个月出口额同比增长23.85%，达1.35亿元人民币，这得益于中东地区对其最新智能跑步机的需求激增。"Our innovative product combines smart connectivity, social fitness features and sleek design in a compact, versatile machine for homes and offices, offering both running and walking modes," said Wu Fengjie, the company's president.该公司总裁吴凤杰（音译）表示：“我们的创新产品将智能连接、社交健身功能和时尚设计融为一体，是一款紧凑、多功能的家用和办公设备，提供跑步和步行两种模式。”Hong Zhi, president of Dasqua Technology, a precision measuring equipment manufacturer in Chengdu, Sichuan province, said that since mid-May, the company's clients in the US states of California, New York and Michigan have been seeking expedited shipments.四川省成都精密测量设备制造商达时科技总裁洪治表示，自5月中旬以来，该公司在美国加利福尼亚州、纽约州和密歇根州的客户一直在寻求加急发货。The fastest batch has already been dispatched from Shanghai, with new orders increasing by around 10 percent last month, Hong said.洪治表示，发货速度最快的一批产品已经从上海发货，上个月新订单增长了约10%。From January to May, Dasqua exported measuring tools worth $4.5 million, up 10 percent year-on-year, with demands surging in emerging markets, according to Chengdu Customs.据成都海关统计，今年1至5月，达时科出口测量工具达450万美元，同比增长10%，其中新兴市场需求明显增长。anchor/ˈæŋkər/v.稳固；支撑；作为支柱resilience/rɪˈzɪliəns/n.韧性；适应力强的能力ecosystem/ˈiːkoʊˌsɪstəm/n.生态系统；产业生态diversification/daɪˌvɜːrsɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/n.多元化；多样化发展
The United States' repeated and unpredictable policy shifts have not only enhanced the risk of deepening its economic and trade frictions with China, but have also weakened its credibility in the international market, analysts and exporters said on Monday.分析人士和出口商周一表示，美国反复无常、不可预测的政策变化，不仅增加了加深其与中国经贸摩擦的风险，也削弱了其在国际市场上的信誉。These policy shifts are undermining the confidence of global businesses and investors in US policies, market conditions and assets, they added.他们补充道，这些政策变化正在削弱全球企业和投资者对美国政策、市场状况及资产的信心。Their remarks came after the Ministry of Commerce urged the US to promptly rectify its wrongful actions. In a statement issued on Monday, the ministry said the US has seriously undermined the consensus reached during the China-US economic and trade talks on May 12 in Geneva, Switzerland, by repeatedly imposing discriminatory and restrictive measures on China.他们的言论是在中国商务部敦促美国立即纠正错误做法之后发表的。商务部在周一发表的声明中表示，美国一再对中国实施歧视性和限制性措施，严重损害了5月12日在瑞士日内瓦举行的中美经贸会谈中达成的共识。The measures include issuing export control guidance for artificial intelligence chips, halting sales of chip design software to China, and announcing the revocation of visas for Chinese students.这些措施包括发布人工智能芯片出口管制指引、停止向中国出售芯片设计软件，以及宣布撤销中国学生签证。The ministry warned that if the US continues to undermine China's interests, China will adopt effective measures to defend its legitimate rights and interests.商务部警告称，如果美方继续损害中方利益，中方将采取有效措施维护自身合法权益。Describing the outcomes of the Geneva talks as "hard-won", the ministry said the US has unilaterally and repeatedly triggered frictions, exacerbating uncertainty and instability in bilateral economic and trade relations.中国商务部将日内瓦会谈的成果描述为“来之不易”，并表示美方单方面、反复挑起摩擦，加剧了双边经贸关系的不确定性和不稳定性。Based on the consensus reached during the talks, China has temporarily canceled or suspended relevant tariff and nontariff countermeasures against the US' "reciprocal tariffs", the ministry said.商务部表示，基于会谈期间达成的共识，中方已暂时取消或暂停针对美方“对等关税”实施的相关关税和非关税反制措施。Wan Zhe, a professor of international trade at Beijing Normal University, said the US tariffs are essentially a radical attempt to politicize and instrumentalize trade issues.北京师范大学国际贸易教授万喆表示，美国的关税本质上是将贸易问题政治化和工具化的激进尝试。"The erratic and unpredictable nature of these tariff and economic measures has damaged the US' credibility in the global economy and dented global investors' confidence in the US market," Wan said, adding that the consequences will come at a steep cost for both its economy and international standing.万喆说：“这些关税和经济措施反复无常、不可预测的性质，损害了美国在全球经济中的信誉，削弱了全球投资者对美国市场的信心。”她补充说，其后果将给美国经济和国际地位带来高昂代价。Zak Stambor, an analyst at eMarketer Inc, a market research company based in New York City, said the US' "ever-shifting trade policies" mean "navigating an increasingly unpredictable landscape", making life and any attempts at financial planning harder for both manufacturers and consumers.纽约市场研究公司eMarketer的分析师扎克·斯坦博表示，美国“不断变化的贸易政策”意味着要“在一个日益不可预测的环境中航行”，这使得制造商和消费者的生活以及任何进行财务规划的尝试都变得更加困难。"The policies in place today may well shift tomorrow, making medium-term planning challenging and long-term planning nearly impossible," he said. "No wonder so many US companies are pulling their guidance altogether."他说：“今天的政策明天就可能改变，这使得中期规划充满挑战，长期规划几乎不可能。难怪这么多美国公司干脆撤回了业绩指引。”The frustration is not limited to US companies.叫苦不迭的不仅仅是美国公司。On Saturday, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said, "We strongly regret the announced increase of US tariffs on steel imports from 25 percent to 50 percent."周六，欧盟执行机构欧盟委员会表示：“我们对美国宣布将钢铁进口关税从25%提高到50%深表遗憾。”The US' announcement "adds further uncertainty to the global economy and increases costs for consumers and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic", the commission said, adding that the plan also undermines efforts to bring an end to the wider tariff standoff.欧盟委员会表示，美国的公告“给全球经济增添了更多不确定性，并增加了大西洋两岸消费者和企业的成本”，并补充说该计划还破坏了结束更广泛关税僵局的努力。Gao Lingyun, a researcher specializing in international trade at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said the US' broader goals of reshoring manufacturing and maintaining economic hegemony cannot be addressed simply by imposing tariffs and other trade remedy measures on its trading partners.中国社会科学院（北京）国际贸易研究员高凌云表示，美国通过将制造业回流本土和维持经济霸权等更广泛的目标，不可能仅仅通过对其贸易伙伴加征关税和实施其他贸易救济措施就得以解决。In addition to the tariffs, the US has also been resorting to technological blockades and investment restrictions in its bid to contain China. Such multifaceted frictions are likely to be long-term, Gao said.高凌云说，除了关税之外，美国还一直在诉诸技术封锁和投资限制以遏制中国。这种多方面摩擦很可能是长期性的。Diversifying markets市场多元化Ningbo Lemeijia Electric Equipment Technology, a home appliance manufacturer based in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, and long-term supplier to the US market, said the company has actively communicated with its US partners and explored opportunities to bag more orders after the Geneva talks.总部位于浙江省宁波市的家电制造商、美国市场的长期供应商宁波乐美佳电器科技有限公司表示，在日内瓦会谈后，公司已积极与美国合作伙伴沟通，并探索拿到更多订单的机会。Even though the company's exports to the US surged 16.9 percent year-on-year to 220 million yuan ($31 million) last year, Luo Lujin, president of Ningbo Lemeijia, said the company has deployed more resources and manpower this year to cultivate emerging markets, especially those in Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, in order to mitigate the risks brought by unilateralism and geopolitical tensions.尽管该公司去年对美出口额同比增长16.9%，达到2.2亿元人民币（3100万美元），但宁波乐美佳总裁罗鲁津表示，今年公司已投入更多资源和人力来开拓新兴市场，特别是东南亚、拉丁美洲和中东的市场，以减轻单边主义和地缘政治紧张带来的风险。"Global trade flows are being seriously hampered by supply chain breakdowns, high tariff rates and other challenges. This makes diversification not just an option, but an essential strategy for survival," Luo said.罗鲁津说：“全球贸易流动正受到供应链中断、高关税和其他挑战的严重阻碍。这使得多元化不仅是一种选择，更是一种生存必需之策。”trade friction贸易摩擦countermeasures/ˈkaʊntəˌmɛʒəz/n.对策;对抗措施emerging markets新兴市场trade flows贸易流通tariff standoff关税僵局
Last time we spoke about the Xi'an Incident. In December 1936, tensions in China erupted as Nationalist General Chiang Kai-shek faced a revolt led by his commanders, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng. Disillusioned by Chiang's focus on battling communists instead of the Japanese invaders, the generals swiftly captured him in a coup. Confined in Xi'an, Chiang initially resisted their demands for a united front against Japan but eventually engaged in negotiation with Zhang and the Chinese Communist Party. As public sentiment shifted against him, Chiang's predicament led to urgent discussions, culminating in an unexpected alliance with the communists. This pact aimed to consolidate Chinese resistance against Japanese aggression, marking a critical turning point in the Second Sino-Japanese War. By December 26, Chiang was released, and this uneasy collaboration set the stage for a more unified front against a common enemy, though underlying tensions remained between the factions. #152 China Prepares for War Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Before we jump into the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, which I honestly have no idea how long will take us, I thought it would be a good idea to dedicate two episodes to how both China and Japan prepared themselves for war. Going all the way back to the 1910s, Chinese intellectuals began to view an outright conflict between Japan and China was inevitable. In the discussions about China's strategic options, Jiang Fangzhen pioneered a strategy of protracted warfare, a concept that would later shape China's approach during the Sino-Japanese War. Having studied in Japan during his youth, Jiang developed a keen understanding of the Japanese government and military. As early as 1917, he predicted that China and Japan would become embroiled in a long-term conflict, with the battleground likely to be west of the Peiping–Wuhan and Guangzhou–Wuhan railways. In his work titled "Guofang Lun" or “On National Defense”, Jiang reiterated the importance of protracted warfare as a means to thwart Japan's aspirations for a swift victory. He argued that China should leverage its vast population and extensive territory to extend the conflict, gradually wearing down Japanese strength and turning the situation to its advantage. Jiang recommended that China not focus on defending its coastal regions but instead confront the enemy west of the Peking–Wuhan Railway. Chiang Kai-shek would eventually come to share Jiang's belief that “the longer the war drags on, the more advantageous it will be for China.” Despite significant public criticism, both the Nationalist government and General Zhang Xueliang, decided against military resistance when Japan invaded Manchuria in September 1931 and attacked Shanghai in 1932. Chiang was particularly hesitant to engage Japan directly, as he was also dealing with a Communist insurgency in central China. He feared that Chinese forces would suffer quick defeat, predicting that Japan would capture key coastal areas and critical infrastructure within just three days, crippling China by dismantling its military and economic lifelines. Following the invasion of North China Chiang was forced to adopt a firmer stance. The Nationalist government proposed a dual strategy of pursuing peace and security while simultaneously preparing for war. If peace proved impossible, China would mobilize its resources for ultimate victory through prolonged conflict. This approach was formalized in the National Defense Plan, which China adopted by prioritizing protracted warfare as its core strategy. After the Sino-Japanese clash in Shanghai on January 28, 1932, the Military Affairs Commission devised a plan that divided China into four defense areas along with a preparation area. While some troops were assigned local security, commanders were directed to concentrate their remaining forces for potential confrontations with Japan. That year, the Military Affairs Commission issued General Defense Guidelines that outlined two strategic responses to a potential Japanese invasion. The first, conservative approach focused on maintaining key positions and utilizing protracted warfare to impede the enemy. The second strategy advocated for decisive battles in key regions to thwart Japan's ambitions and protect China's territorial integrity, prioritizing disengagement from Japanese forces along the Yangtze River and coastline. In August 1935, German military adviser General Alexander von Falkenhausen provided recommendations to Chiang Kai-shek based on his predictions of Japanese advance routes into China. He identified three main routes: one from northern Hebei to Zhengzhou, the second from Shandong toward Xuzhou, and the third crossing the Yangtze River to Nanjing and onwards to Wuhan. He suggested treating the Yangtze River as the primary combat zone and highlighted Sichuan as a possible retreat area. Taking all of this into consideration. in 1936, a draft of a new National Defense Plan divided the country into four zones: a war zone, a defense zone, an internal security zone, and a preparation area. The war zone encompassed ten provinces and established strategies for retreating to predetermined defensive positions when necessary, with Sichuan designated as the main base for the war. In January 1937, the Chinese General Staff Department introduced its annual War Plan, outlining three possible military conflict regions between China and Japan. It proposed two main strategies: Proposal A emphasized sustained combat and retreat to fortified positions if the situation became unfavorable, aiming to eventually go on the offensive against Japan. Proposal B focused on repelling Japanese invasions along the coast and from the north, prioritizing counter offensives against Japanese units stationed near key locations. To prepare, the NRA completed several critical projects outlined in its plans, establishing military supply depots in Nanjing, Bengbu, Xinyang, Huayin, Nanchang, and Wuchang to manage logistics for supplies across various strategic railways. These depots were equipped to sustain the military, with ample ammunition and provisions, including 60 million rounds of small-arms ammunition and food for hundreds of thousands. Despite these preparations, not all projects were completed by the time war broke out in July 1937. In contrast to the Japanese military's tactics, Chinese forces prioritized defensive strategies. For example, at the Mount Lushan Military Officer Training Camp in July 1934, Chiang Kai-shek outlined four possible approaches against Japan, favoring a defense-as-offense strategy. Other options included building fortifications, tenaciously defending key positions, and employing guerrilla warfare through irregular forces to constrain enemy advances. Chiang stressed the importance of national mobilization for the war effort. There was a significant disparity in equipment between the Japanese and Chinese armies. To give you an idea, each Japanese division included a mechanized group featuring thirty-nine light military vehicles and 21 light armored cars, supplemented by 6,000–7,000 horses, 200–300 automobiles, and specialized troops such as poison gas teams. In contrast, Nationalist divisions lacked any of these capabilities, a typical nationalist division theoretically had an armored regiment, but this unit was equipped with fewer than 72 armored vehicles. Another major weakness of the Nationalist forces was their insufficient artillery. In 1936, a division was officially assigned one artillery battalion, which was divided into three batteries totaling twelve guns. It also included a mechanized cannon company with four direct-fire weapons. By comparison, a Japanese division boasted four infantry regiments and one mountain artillery or field artillery regiment, with each artillery regiment comprising three field artillery battalions and one howitzer battalion. The infantry regiment itself included a mountain artillery section with four mountain guns, while the infantry battalion had one Type 70 mountain gun section with two guns. In total, a Japanese division possessed sixty-four artillery pieces of various calibers, four times the number of a Chinese division and of significantly higher quality. In reality, in 1936, twelve of the twenty elite Chinese “reformed divisions” still lacked artillery battalions. The ordnance available in the “reformed divisions” mostly consisted of the outdated Type 60 mountain gun. Nationwide, very few of the 200 divisions were equipped with any artillery, and those that did often used obsolete field artillery pieces or mountain artillery provided to local forces. Some units even relied on trench mortars as a makeshift solution. The artillery weapons came from various countries, but they frequently lacked necessary observation and signal components, and were often low on ammunition. The majority of mountain guns and field artillery were of the Type 75, which, while capable of providing fire support, had limited range and inflicted minimal damage. To give you an idea of the striking inadequacy of the Chinese artillery, during the Shanghai fighting in 1937, the mountain artillery of the Guangxi 21st Army Group could only reach targets within 1,200 yards, while Japanese field artillery had an effective range of 8,000 yards. Chinese-made mountain artillery suffered due to inferior steel-making technology; the gun shields were constructed from low-quality steel, and the barrels often overheated after firing just a few rounds, increasing the risk of explosions. Additionally, the equipment of local forces varied greatly in quality. In fact, some local units had superior equipment compared to Nationalist units. For example, before the Sino-Japanese War, troops from Yunnan were equipped with French antitank guns and heavy machine guns, which were better than the German water-cooled machine guns used by the Nationalist forces. However, the majority of local troops relied on inferior equipment; the 122nd Division under Wang Mingzhang from Sichuan, noted for its brave defense of Tengxian County during the Xuzhou Battle, was armed with locally produced light and heavy machine guns that frequently malfunctioned, and their Type 79 rifles, also made in Sichuan, were often outdated, with some dating back to the Qing Dynasty. These weapons had limited range and sometimes malfunctioned after fewer than one hundred rounds. Now before the war, both Nationalist and local forces acquired weaponry from diverse foreign and domestic sources. Even domestically produced weapons lacked standardization, with those made in Hanyang and Manchuria differing in design and specifications. Arms manufactured in Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and Italy were similarly inconsistent. Consequently, even within a single unit, the lack of uniformity created significant logistical challenges, undermining combat effectiveness, particularly in the early stages of the war. Despite Nationalist ordnance factories producing over three million rounds of small-arms ammunition daily, the incompatibility of ammunition and weapons diminished the usable quantity of ammunition. Chinese communications infrastructure was inadequate. In the Nationalist army, signal units were integrated into engineering units, leading to low-quality radio communications. In emergencies, telegrams could remain undelivered for days, and orders often had to be dispatched via postal services. By 1937, the entire country boasted only 3,000 military vehicles, necessitating heavy reliance on horses and mules for transport. To effectively equip twenty Nationalist divisions, 10,647 horses and 20,688 mules were needed, but by the end of 1935, only 6,206 horses and 4,351 mules were available. A statistic from 1936 indicated a 5 percent mortality rate among military horses, with some units experiencing a rate as high as 10 percent. The distribution of weaponry led to disputes during army reorganization efforts following the Northern Expedition. Although Chiang Kai-shek's forces were part of the regular army, the quality of their equipment varied significantly. Domestic production of weapons was limited, and imports could not close the gap. Priority was given to small arms; through army reorganization, Chiang aimed to diminish the influence of forces less loyal to him. Nationalist army staff officers observed that troops loyal to Chiang received the best weapons. Northwest and Northeast forces, having cultivated good relations with the KMT, were similarly better equipped, while Shanxi troops received inferior supplies. Troops associated with the Guangxi Clique were given even poorer quality weapons due to their leaders' stronger political ambitions. Troops regarded as “bandit forces,” such as those led by Shi Yousan, Li Hongchang, and Sun Dianying, were naturally assigned the least effective weaponry. This unequal distribution of arms increased some local forces' inclination to align with the KMT while alienating others, which inadvertently led to additional turmoil in the aftermath of the Northern Expedition. Logistical accounting within the Nationalist military was severely lacking. Military expenditures accounted for a significant portion of government spending, roughly 65.48 % in 1937, with personnel costs being the largest component. However, military units prioritized boosting their own resources over accurate accounting. Surpluses were not returned but rather utilized to reward military officers and soldiers for merits in battle, care for the wounded, or to create a reserve. Conversely, if deficits arose, troops would resort to “living off vacancies,” a practice in which they would fail to report desertions promptly and would falsely claim new soldiers had arrived. Military leaders typically appointed their most trusted subordinates to serve as accountants and logistic officers. As the war commenced, these issues became readily apparent. During the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, frontline soldiers sometimes went days without food and went months without pay. Wounded soldiers and civilians had to search tirelessly for medical treatment, and when main forces relocated, they often abandoned grain, ammunition, weapons, and petroleum along the way. General Chen Cheng, the commander in chief during the Battle of Shanghai, noted, “This phenomenon clearly revealed our inability to supply frontline troops, indicating that China remains a backward country with poor management.” Many logistical shortcomings severely impacted troop morale and combat effectiveness. In a 1933 speech, Chiang Kai-shek acknowledged that poor food, inadequate clothing, and ineffective logistics contributed to widespread desertion. Soldiers were further demoralized by reduced or embezzled salaries. A lack of professional medical staff and equipment hampered healthcare efforts, leading to high disease and mortality rates. According to official statistics from 1936, approximately 10 percent of soldiers fell ill annually, with a mortality rate as high as 5 percent. Japanese military authorities reported that one in three wounded Japanese soldiers died, while a Dutch military officer present during the early stages of the Sino-Japanese War observed that one in every two wounded Nationalist soldiers perished. Due to inadequate equipment and limited transport options, Nationalist forces were compelled to recruit farmers and rent vehicles, as they lacked essential facilities such as tents. This reliance on local resources inevitably led to frequent conflicts between military personnel and civilians. China is clearly a vast nation with an extensive coastline, requiring the construction of several significant fortresses during the modern era. These included Wusong, Jiangyin, Zhenjiang, Jiangning, and Wuhan along the Yangtze River, as well as Zhenhai, Humen, and Changzhou along the seacoast. Except for the Wuhan fortress, built in 1929-1930, all other fortifications were established during the late Qing Dynasty and featured uncovered cannon batteries. These fortresses suffered from inadequate maintenance, and many of their components had become outdated and irreplaceable, rendering them militarily negligible. Following the January 1932 Shanghai Incident, the Japanese military destroyed the Wusong forts, leaving the entrance to the Yangtze River completely unfortified. Consequently, there were no defenses along the coastline from Jiangsu to Shandong, allowing the Japanese to land freely. In December 1932, the Military Affairs Commission established a fortress group tasked with constructing fortresses and defensive installations, seeking assistance from German military advisers. After the North China Incident in 1935, the Nationalist government accelerated the construction of defensive structures in line with national war planning, focusing particularly on Nanjing. The Nationalists prioritized building fortifications along the seacoast and the Yellow River, followed by key regions north of the Yellow River. The government also ordered a significant quantity of heavy artillery from Germany. This included several dozen pieces of flat-fire antiaircraft and dual-purpose heavy artillery, which were installed at fortifications in Jiangyin, Zhenjiang, Nanjing, and Wuhan. By the summer of 1937, the construction of nine fortified positions was complete: Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Jiangyin, Ningbo, Humen, Mawei, Xiamen , Nantong, and Lianyungang. In total, China had established 41 forts and equipped them with 273 fortress cannons. Some defensive installations were poorly managed, with many units assigned to their perimeters lacking training and access to proper maps. The barbette positions in the fortresses were not well concealed and could hardly store sufficient ammunition. Troops stationed at these fortresses received little training. Despite these shortcomings, the fortresses and fortifications were not entirely ineffective. They bolstered Chinese positions along the defense line stretching from Cangxian County to Baoding and from Dexian County to Shijiazhuang, as well as in southern Shandong. Before the war, China's political and economic center was situated along the seacoast and the Yangtze River. As Japanese influence expanded, the Nationalist government was compelled to establish bases in China's inner regions, very similar to how the USSR pulled back its industry further west after Operation barbarossa.The Japanese attack on Shanghai in 1932 prompted the Nationalists to relocate their capital to Luoyang. On March 5, during the Second Plenary Session of the KMT's Fourth Congress, the Western Capital Preparation Committee was formed to plan for the potential relocation of all governmental bodies to Xi'an in the event of full-scale war. In February 1933, the Central Political Conference approved the Northwest Development Bill, and in February 1934, the National Economic Commission set up a northwestern branch to oversee development projects in the region. On October 18, 1934, Chiang Kai-shek traveled to Lanzhou, recording in his diary that “Northwest China has abundant resources. Japan and Russia are poised to bully us. Yet, if we strengthen ourselves and develop northwest China to the fullest extent, we can turn it into a base for China's revival.” Interestingly, it was Sichuan, rather than the northwest, that became China's rear base during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. In October 1934, the Communist army evacuated its Soviet base in southern China, initiating the Long March that would ultimately end in the northwest. By this time, Chiang Kai-shek had decided to designate Sichuan as the last stronghold for China. In January 1935, the Nanchang Field Headquarters of the Military Affairs Commission, responsible for combatting the Communists and serving as the supreme military and political authority over most provinces along the Yangtze River and central China, dispatched a special advisory group to Chongqing. Following this, the Nationalist army advanced into Sichuan. On February 10, the Nationalists appointed a new provincial government in Sichuan, effectively ending the province's long-standing regionalism. On March 2, Chiang traveled to Chongqing, where he delivered a speech underscoring that “Sichuan should serve as the base for China's revival.” He stated that he was in Sichuan to oversee efforts against the Communist army and to unify the provincial administration. After the Xinhai revolution, the Republic of China was still suing the Qing Dynasty's conscription system. However, once in power, the Nationalist government sought to establish a national military service program. In 1933, it enacted a military service law, which began implementation in 1936. This law categorized military service into two branches: service in the Nationalist army and in territorial citizen army units. Men aged eighteen to forty-five were expected to serve in the territorial units if they did not enlist in the Nationalist army. The territorial service was structured into three phases: active service lasting two to three years, first reserves for six years, and second reserves until the age of forty-five. The Ministry of Military Affairs divided China into sixty divisional conscription headquarters, initially establishing these headquarters in the six provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, and Hubei. By December 1936, approximately 50,000 new soldiers had been drafted. The military service law disproportionately favored the middle and upper classes. Government personnel were exempt from enlistment, allowing privileged families to register their children with government agencies. Similarly, students in middle and higher education were excused from service, while youth from poorer backgrounds often felt compelled to enlist due to financial constraints that limited their educational opportunities. Village and town leaders were responsible for executing the recruitment process and frequently conspired with army recruiters. Recruitment principles often favored wealthier families, with guidelines stating that one son should be drafted for every three sons, two for five sons, but no drafts if there was only one son. Wealthy families could secure exemptions for all their male children, while poor families might see their only son conscripted if they were unable to provide the requisite bribe. Town and village heads wielded significant power in recruitment. This new recruitment system also created numerous money-making opportunities. Military personnel assigned to escort draftees to their units would often allow draftees to escape for a fee. Additionally, draftees could monetize their service by agreeing to serve as substitutes for others. For some, being drafted became an occupation. For example, in 1936, 600 individuals were drafted in the Wuhu area of Anhui province, and accounts from regional administrators indicated that every draftee had either been traded, replaced, or seized. Beginning in 1929, the Nationalist government also instituted military training for high school students and older individuals. Students were required to participate in one theoretical class and one practical class each week, totaling three hours. Starting in 1934, students had to complete a three-month military training program before graduating. Graduates of military academies were employed as military instructors. By the end of 1936, over 237,000 high school students had undergone military training. This student military training was overseen by the Society for the Implementation of the Three People's Principles of Sun Yat-sen, which also provided political education and sometimes gathered information on students' political beliefs. Although the Nationalists made significant efforts to improve the military training of both officers and troops, they inherited deep-seated challenges that they were unable to completely overcome. A lack of facilities, outdated training manuals, low regard for military instructors, and the ongoing influence of regionalism and warlordism hindered progress. The Japanese would also later exploit these shortcomings of the Nationalist army. The Central Military Academy, which evolved from the Whampoa Military Academy established in 1923 in Guangzhou to train officers for the Northern Expedition, became the primary training institution for junior military officers. The academy offered a basic course, lasting eighteen months, which included general education, specialized training in various subjects, and field practice. This was followed by a two-year cadet training program focused on developing the skills necessary for junior military officers. Seventeen classes were admitted before the outbreak of war. Admission to the academy was highly competitive, with military officers receiving attractive salaries. For instance, in 1935, the academy received 10,000 applications for the twelfth class, but only 7% were accepted. Upon graduation, cadets were typically assigned to divisions within the Nationalist army loyal to Chiang Kai-shek. Their training, influenced by German advisors, resulted in a high-quality cadre. In modern China, most sergeants were veterans. While some units provided training for sergeants, a lack of formal education led to their diminished status. Truly qualified sergeants were rare. During his tenure as Minister of Military Training, General Bai Chongxi proposed establishing a sergeant school and creating a professional noncommissioned officer system; however, the Ministry of Military Affairs opposed this on financial grounds. While commanding officers enjoyed rapid promotions, military instructors did not. Furthermore, there was no system for transferring instructors to field commands or assigning commanders to military academies for extended periods. Despite minor updates to cover modern warfare concepts such as tank warfare and machine guns, Qing Dynasty military manuals were still in use at the Central Military Academy at the start of the war. Yeah, 1937 they were still rocking the old Qing books. Following the establishment of the Ministry of Military Training, a bureau for military translation was set up to evaluate existing course materials and translate military manuals, but its contributions were limited. Another significant shortcoming of military instruction focused on theory at the expense of practical application. To enhance the quality of military officers, the Nationalist army instituted specialized schools for artillery, infantry, transport, engineering, and signals starting in 1931. These institutions were considered to have high-quality administrators and facilities. The Nationalists adopted German military training models, replacing the previously used Japanese models. They appointed German advisors to oversee instructor training at military academies and established three instructional divisions. By the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, 15,000 students had graduated from programs with a German military influence, resulting in the creation of about fifty combat divisions from these instructional units. However, the progress of other Nationalist army units was limited because their training was not aligned with contemporary battlefield realities. Before World War I, troops operated in close formations due to limited firepower. The widespread introduction of machine guns after World War I necessitated a shift to dispersed formations. Although a new drill manual issued by the Ministry of Military Training in 1935 introduced small-group tactics, few units adopted these methods. General Chen Cheng highlighted another underlying issue in 1938, commenting on the outmoded focus on parade ground drills and formal military manners. He noted, “We have paid too much attention to stereotypical formality and procedures of no practical use. Sometimes, even though soldiers could not get a haircut or take a bath for several months, their camps had to be in order. They underwent intensive training in close-order drill but learned little about gun handling, marksmanship, or maneuvering. This was inappropriate in peacetime, yet we continued this practice even after the Sino-Japanese War started, even using it on highly educated youth.” In contrast, the Communist army simplified training, emphasizing two essential skills: live-fire exercises and physical endurance, which significantly enhanced troop effectiveness in the challenging terrain characteristic of the Sino-Japanese War. Ultimately, the Nationalist army's training did not reach all soldiers. Only about half of all combat soldiers received adequate training, while the rest were neglected. According to statistics from the time, there were approximately five million military personnel during the Sino-Japanese War, with three million serving in logistics. Most of these logistics personnel had received little training, leading to disastrous consequences for overall combat effectiveness. As warfare has become more complex, the role of highly trained staff officers has become increasingly important. Napoleon developed operational plans close to the front and communicated orders via courier. During World War I, military commanders collected information at their headquarters and utilized telephones and automobiles to relay orders to the front lines. In World War II, with the battlefield expanding to include land, sea, and air, senior commanders often made decisions from headquarters far from the action, relying on a significant number of staff officers with specialized skills to keep them informed. In China, however, the staff officer system was underdeveloped. By 1937, only about 2,000 commanders and staff officers had received training. Prior to the Sino-Japanese War, most commanders managed staff work themselves, with staff officers serving primarily as military secretaries who drafted orders, reports, and maps. Many staff officers had no formal military training, and as a whole, the branch lacked respect, causing the most talented officers to avoid serving in it. The situation was even more dire for staff officer departments within local forces. For example, in March 1937, Liu Ziqing, a graduate of the Whampoa Military Academy, was appointed as the director of political instruction in the Forty-fourth Army, a unit under Sichuan warlord Liu Xiang. Liu Ziqing's account illustrates the dysfunction within the ranks: “The commander in chief was not supposed to manage the army and even did not know its whereabouts... But he could appoint relatives and former subordinates—who were officials and businessmen as well—to the army. Each month they would receive a small stipend. At headquarters, there was a long table and two rows of chairs. Around ten o'clock in the morning, senior officers signed in to indicate their presence. Those with other business would leave, while the remaining officers sat down to leisurely discuss star actresses, fortune-telling, business projects, mah-jongg, and opium. Occasionally they would touch on national affairs, chat about news articles, or share local gossip. In the afternoons, they primarily played mah-jongg, held banquets, and visited madams. Most mornings, the commander usually presided over these activities, and at first, I reported for duty as well. But I soon realized it was a waste of time and came very rarely. At headquarters, most staff members wore long gowns or Western-style suits, while military uniforms were a rare sight.” Most senior military personnel were trained at the Baoding Military Academy during the early republic. 2/3rds of commanders in chief, 37 %of army commanders, and 20 % of division commanders were Baoding graduates. Higher-ranking officers were more likely to have launched their careers there. In contrast, only 10 % of division commanders and a few army commanders were graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy. Additionally, commanders trained in local military schools and those with combat experience accounted for 1/3rd of all commanders. While the prevalence of civil war provided opportunities for rapid promotion, it also hindered officers' ability to update their training or gain experience in different military branches. German advisors expressed their concerns to Chiang Kai-shek, emphasizing that officers should first serve in junior roles before taking command. During one battle in 1938, Chiang noted, “Our commanders in chief are equivalent only to our enemy's regiment commanders, and our army and division commanders are only as competent as our enemy's battalion and company commanders.” Despite not viewing high-ranking Japanese officers as great strategists, Nationalist officers respected them as highly competent, diligent, and professional commanders who rarely made critical errors. The infantry was the primary component of the Nationalist army, with middle and junior infantry officers constituting over 80 %of all army officers. A 1936 registry of military officers listed 1,105 colonels and 2,159 lieutenant colonels within the infantry, demonstrating a significant outnumbering of Baoding graduates at ranks below lieutenant colonel. However, the quality of middle and junior infantry officers declined during the Sino-Japanese War; by 1944, only 27.3 % of these officers were from formal military academies, while those promoted from the ranks increased to 28.1 %. In 1937, 80 % of officers in an ordinary infantry battalion were military academy graduates, but this percentage dropped to 20 % during the war. Its hard to tell how educated soldiers were before the war, but it is generally believed that most were illiterate. In 1929, sociologist Tao Menghe surveyed 946 soldiers from a Shanxi garrison brigade and found that only 13 percent could compose a letter independently, while the rest had either never learned to read or were unable to write. In contrast, in August 1938, General Feng Yuxiang found that 80 percent of a regiment in Hunan were literate. Regardless, during the Sino-Japanese War, the quality of recruits steadily declined. More than 90 percent of soldiers were illiterate, and few possessed any basic scientific knowledge, which hindered their ability to master their weapons. On the battlefield, they heavily relied on middle and junior officers for guidance. In autumn 1933, General Hans von Seeckt, the architect of the post World War I German army, visited China at the personal invitation of Chiang Kai-shek. In his recommendations for military reform, he identified China's greatest problem as its excessively large forces drawn from diverse backgrounds. He stated, “At present, the most pressing goal is to... establish a small, well-equipped army with high morale and combat effectiveness to replace the numerous poorly armed and trained forces.” He suggested forming an army of sixty divisions and recommended the establishment of a training regiment for military officers to equip them with the skills needed for modern warfare. Chiang Kai-shek accepted von Seeckt's proposals, and on January 26, 1935, he convened a National Military Reorganization Conference in Nanjing. On March 1, the Army Reorganization Bureau was established in Wuchang, under the leadership of General Chen Cheng. In the same month, General Alexander von Falkenhausen took charge of the German Military Advisors Group. Before war broke out, around nineteen divisions, roughly 300,000 troops received training from German advisors and were equipped with German-style weapons. At the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, the forces stemming from the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army and the Whampoa cadets, who had fought in the Northern Expedition, held the highest reputation and were referred to as the “core central forces” by the Japanese. Other notable forces included the Guangxi Army, Northwestern Army, Northeastern Army, some Uyghur units, the Guangdong Army, and the Shanxi Army. In contrast, provincial forces such as the Yunnan Army and Sichuan Army were viewed less favorably. Nationalist forces were generally far inferior to those of the Japanese enemy. In 1937, General He Yingqin noted that Nationalist forces had failed to prevail in 1932 and 1933, even when outnumbering the Japanese by 4-1. In November 1937, during a national defense conference, Chiang Kai-shek stated, "In recent years we have worked hard, prepared actively, and achieved national unification. By the time of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, we were in a better domestic situation and had improved military preparedness compared to before. Since 1935, our strength has doubled. It increased by more than two to three times since January 1932 or September 1931 [when Japan attacked Shanghai and Mukden]. If peace had been achievable, we should have delayed the war for two or three years. Given an additional three years, our defensive capabilities would have been drastically different... Now, if we merely compare the military strength of China and Japan, we are certainly inferior." However, such assessments were overly optimistic, as Chiang failed to recognize that Japan's military capabilities would not have stagnated. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek certainly was dealt a difficult hand of cards for the upcoming poker match he was to play. Yet the Chinese were resilient and they had to be for the absolute horror that would be inflicted upon them from 1937-1945. Until this point, their enemies had been far more lenient, the Empire of Japan would show no mercy.
This dark dark dark ride "puts you in a smoke- filled battlefield, where you can follow the railway guerrillas to seize trains and blow up bridges, returning to the war years when people were passionate about serving their country". If that isn't enough reason to visit the Fantawild parks in Ningbo, maybe their state-of-the art Vekoma Top Gun launch coaster is.
I discuss my upcoming move to Ningbo, China, as well as full moon drumming circles and shamanistic journeying. It's a travel around the world, both physically and spiritually! Go to EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/China for the full transcript. Get episodes without adverts + bonus episodes at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Support. Your support is appreciated! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This episode we will discuss various embassies to and from Yamato during the reign of Takara Hime, with a particular focus on the embassy of 659, which occured at a particularly eventful time and happened to be extremely well-recorded fro the period by Iki no Hakatoko, who was apparently on the mission to the Tang court itself. For more, check out our blog post at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-123 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 123: Embassy Interrupted. Iki no Hakatoko sat in his room, gazing out at the city. It was truly an amazing place, filled with all kinds of people from around the world. And yet, still, after 9 months of confinement, the place felt small. Sure, there he hadwere visits from ranking nobles and dignitaries, but even the most lenient of house arrests was still house arrest. But that didn't mean that he had nothing to do. There were books and more that he had access to—many that had not yet made it to the archipelago, and some of which he no doubt hoped he could bring back with him. And of course, there was paper, brush, and ink. And then there were the experiences he and others had acquired on this mission to the Great Tang. From the very beginning the missionit washad been plagued with disaster when they lost half of their ships and company mission to rogue winds on the open seas. Now they were trapped because the Emperor himself wouldn't let them return home. They had experienced and seen so much, and that provided ample material for one to catalogue. As the seasons changed, and rumors arrived that perhaps his situation would also something would change soon, Iki no Hakatoko spread out the paper on the desk in front of him, dipped his brush in the ink, and began to write. He wrote down notes about his experiences, and what had befallen him and the others. He had no idea who It is unclear whom he thought might read it, and if he was intending this to be an official or personal record, but he wrote it down anyway. Hakatoko He couldn't have known then that his words would eventually be captured in a much larger work, chronicling the entire history of Yamato from its very creation, nor that his would be one of the oldest such personal accounts records to be handed down. His Itwords wwould only survive in fragments—or perhaps his writing was simply that terse—but his words they would be preserved, in a format that was still being read over a thousand years later. Last episode we finished up the story of Xuanzang and his Journey to the West—which is to say the Western Regions -- , and thence on to India, or Tianzhu, where he walked in the footsteps of the historical Buddha, studied the scriptures at the feet of venerable teachers, such as Silabadhra at the Great Monastery of Nalanda, and eventually wound up bringingbrought back hundreds of manuscripts to Chang'an to , which he and others be translated and disseminated, impacting Buddhist thought across East Asia. HisXuanzang's travels lasted from around 629 to 645, and he was still teaching in Chang'an in the 650s when various student-monks from Yamato arrived to study and learn from him, eventually bringing back his teachings to the archipelago as part of the Faxiang, or Hossou, school of Buddhism. Before that we talked about the visitors from “Tukhara” and “Sha'e” recorded in the Chronicles. As we noted, these peopley were morest likely from the Ryukyuan islands, and the names may have been conflated with distant lands overseas – but regardless, . Whether or not it was a mistake, this it does seem to indicated that Yamato had at least an inkling of the wider world, introduced through the continental literature that they had been importing, if not the direct interactions with individuals from the Korean peninsula and the Tang court. This episode, we're going to talk about some of the relations between Yamato and the continent, including the various embassies sent back and forth, as well as one especially detailed embassy from Yamato to the Tang Court that found itself in a bit of a pickle. After all, what did you do, back in those days, when you were and ambassador, and your country suddenly went to war? We'll talk about that and what happened. To reorient ourselves in time, we're in the reign of Takara Hime, called aka Kyogoku Tennou during her first reign, who had reascended to the throne in 655, following the death of her brother, Prince Karu. The Chroniclers would dub her Saimei Tennou in her second run on the throne. From the very beginning of her second reign, Takara Hime was entertaining foreign envoys. In 654, the Three Han of the Korean Peninsula—Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla—all sent ambassadors to express their condolence on the death of her brother, and presumably to witness her ascension. And in the 8th month of her reign, Kawabe no Maro no Omi, along with others, returned from Chang'an. He Kawabe no Maro no Omi had been the Chief Ambassador to the Tang on an embassy sent , traveling there in the 2nd month of the previous year. Originally he had been He was under the command of the controlling envoy, Takamuku no Obito no Kuromaro, but Kuromaro who unfortunately died in Chang'an and so Kawabe no Mari no Omi took over his role. That same year, 655, we know that there were about 100 persons recorded in Yamato from Baekje, along with envoys of Goguryeo and Silla. These are likely the same ones we mentioned back in episode 117 when 150 Baekje envoys were present at court along with multiple members of the Emishi. Silla, for their part, had sent to Yamato a special hostage , whom we know as something like “Mimu”, along with skilled workmen. Unfortunately, we are told that Mimu fell ill and died. The Chronicles are pretty sparse on what this meant, but I can't imagine it was great. After all, the whole idea of sending a hostage to another nation was as a pledge of good behavior – the idea being that the hostage was the idea that they werewas valuable enough that the sending nation wouldn't do anything too rash. The flip side of that is if the hostage died, Of course, if they perished, the hosting country lost any leverage—and presumably the sending nation would be none too pleased. That said, people getting sick and passing away was hardly a hostile action, and likely just considered an unfortunate situation. The following year, in 656, we see that Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla again all sent ambassadords were all sent to offer “tribute”. The Chronicles mention that dark purple curtains were drawn around the palace site to entertain the ambassadors—likely referring to the new palace site at Asuka no Wokamoto, which probably was not yet fully built out, yet. We are given the name of the Goguryeo ambassador, Talsa, and associate ambassador, Ilchi, in the 8th month, Talsa and Ilichi, with 81 total members in the Goguryeo retinueof the embassy. In seeming response, Yamato sent an embassy was sent to Goguryeo with the likes of Kashiwade no Omi no Hatsumi as the Chief Ambassador and Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwasuki as the Associate Ambassador. Other names mentioned include We also see the likes of Inugami no Shiromaro, Kawachi no Fumi no Obito—no personal name is given—and Ohokura no Maro. We also see thea note in the Chronicles that Yamato ambassadors to the quote-unquote “Western Sea”—which seems to refer to the Tang court, but could possibly refer to anything from the Korean Peninsula west—returned in that same year. The two are named as Saheki no Muraji no Takunaha and Oyamashita no Naniha no Kishi no Kunikatsu. These are both families that were clearly involved in cross-strait relations , based on how they are frequently referenced in the Chronicles as being associated with various overseas missions. but However, we don't seem to have clear evidence of them when these particular individualsy leavingft on this mission. “Kunikatsu” mightay refer to an earlier ambassador to Baekje, but the names are different, so that is largely just speculation. In any case, Uupon their return, they are said to have brought with them a parrot. This wasn't the first parrot the court had seen—that feathery traveler had arrived in 647, or at least that is the first parrotinstance we have in the written record -- . Aand that one came from Silla as part of that embassy's gifts. Continuing on, in 657, The following year there was another group of ambassadors returned coming from the “Western Seas”, in this case coming back from—or through—Baekje. Thisese wasere Adzumi no Muraji no Tsuratari and Tsu no Omi no Kutsuma. The presents they brought back were, of all things: one camel and two donkeys. And can you imagine bringing a camel back across the sea at this point? Even if they were using the larger ships based on continental designs, it still must have been something else to put up with a camel and donkeys onboard, animals that are not exactly known for their easy-going and compliant nature. Speaking of boats, we should probably touch on what we *think* they were usinghas been going on here. I say *think* because we only get glimpses of the various boats being used in the archipelago, whether from mentions in or around Yamato, archaeology, or artistic depictions, many of which came from later periods., and wSo while it is generally assumed that they the Yamato were using Tang style vessels by the 8th and 9th century, there does not appear to be clear evidence of exactly what kind of boats were being used during the early earlier periods of contact. A quick note on boat technology and navigation: while travel between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula, and up the Yellow Sea, wasn't safe, it would have been possible with the vessels of the time. Japan sits on the continental shelf, meaning that to the east where the shelf gives way to the Pacific Ocean with the Phillippine Sea to the south, the waters are much, much deeper than they are to the west. In deep waters, waves are not necessarily affected by the ocean floor, meaning they can build up much more energy and require different kinds of technology to sail. In shallower areas, such as the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea or the Korean Straits to the west of the archipelago, there's more drag that dampens out the wave effect – it's not that these areas are uniformly shallow and calm, but they are calmer and easier to navigate in general. Our oldest example of boats in the archipelago of any kind are dugout canoes, . These are logs that are hollowed out and shaped. , and tThese appear to be what Jomon era populations used to cross to the archipelago and travel between the various islands. Though they may be considered primitive, without many of the later innovations that would increase stability and seaworthiness—something I'll touch on more a bit later—, they were clearly effective enough to populate the islands of the Ryukyuan chain and even get people and livestock, in the form of pigs, down to the Hachijo islands south of modern Tokyo. So they weren't ineffective. Deep waters mean that the waves are not necessarily affected by the ocean floor. Once it hits shallower water, there is more drag that affects larger waves. This means that there can be more energy in these ocean waves. That usually means that shallower areas tend to be more calm and easier to navigate—though there are other things that can affect that as well. We probably should note, however, that Japan sits on the edge of the continental shelf. To the west, the seas are deep, but not nearly as deep as they are to the east, where continental shelf gives way to the Pacific ocean, with the Philippine Sea to the south. These are much deeper waters than those of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, or the Korean Straits. The Sea of Japan does have some depth to it, but even then it doesn't compare in both size and depth. Deep waters mean that the waves are not necessarily affected by the ocean floor. Once it hits shallower water, there is more drag that affects larger waves. This means that there can be more energy in these ocean waves. That usually means that shallower areas tend to be more calm and easier to navigate—though there are other things that can affect that as well. All this to say that travel between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula, and up the Yellow Sea, were all things that were likely much easier to navigate with the vessels available at the time, but that doesn't mean that it was safe. Later, we see a different type of vessel appear: . This is a built vessel, made of multiple hewn pieces of wood. The examples that we see show a rather square front and back that rise up, sometimes dramatically, . There are with various protrusions on either side. We see examples of this shape , and we've seen examples in haniwa from about the 6th century, and we have some corresponding wooden pieces found around the Korean peninsula that pretty closely match the haniwa boat shapesuggest similar boats were in use there as well, . Nnot surprising given the cultural connections. These boats do not show examples of sails, and were likely crewed by rowers. Descriptions of some suggest that they might be adorned with branches, jewels, mirrors, and other such things for formal occasions to identify some boats as special -- , and we even have one record of the rowers in ceremonial garb with deer antlers. But none of this suggests more than one basic boat typevery different types of boats. In the areas of the Yellow and Yangzi rivers, area of modern China, particularly in the modern PRC, the boats we see are a little different. They tend to be flat bottomed boats, possible evolved from which appear to have been designed from rafts or similar . These vessels would have evolved out of those used to transport goods and people up and down the Yellow and Yangzi rivers and their tributaries. These boats y had developed sails, but still the boats wwere n'ot necessarily the most stable on the open ocean. Larger boats could perhaps make their way through some of the waves, and were no doubt used throughout the Yellow Sea and similar regions. However, for going farther abroad, we are told thatcourt chronicles note that there were other boats that were preferred: . These are sometimes called the Kun'lun-po, or Boats of the Kunlun, or the Boats of the Dark-skinned people. A quick dive here into how this name came to be. Originally, “Kunlun” appears to refer to a mythical mountain range, the Kunlun-shan, which may have originated in the Shan-hai-jing, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and so may not have referred to anything specific terrestrial mountain range, ally. Italthough the term would later attach be used to describe to the mountain chain that forms the northern edge of the Tibetan plateau, on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin. However, at some point, it seems that “Kunlun” came to refer to people -- . Sspecifically, it came to refer to people of dark complexion, with curly hair. There are Tang era depictions of such people, but their origin is not exactly known: it might . It is thought that it may have have equally referred to dark-skinned individuals of African descent, or possibly referring to some of the dark-skinned people who lived in the southern seas—people like the Andamanese living on the islands west of modern Thailand or some of the people of the Malay peninsula, for example. It is these latter groups that likely were the origin, then, of the “Kun'lun-po”, referring to the ships of the south, such as those of Malay and AsutronesianAustronesian origin. We know that from the period of at least the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and even into the early Tang, these foreign ships often , which were often plyingied the waters from trade port to trade port, and were the preferred sailing vessels for voyages to the south, where the waters could be more treacherous. Indeed, the Malay language eventually gives us the term of their vessels as “Djong”, a term that eventually made its way into Portuguese as “Junco” and thus into English as “junk”, though this terms has since been rather broadly applied to different “Asian” style sailing vessels. So that leaves us with three ship types that the Yamato court could have been using to send these embassies back and forth to the continent: . Were they still using their own style of native boat as seen on haniwa,, or were they adopting continental boats to their needs? If so, were they using the flat-bottomed boats of the Tang dynasty, or the more seaworthy vessels of the foreign merchants?. Which were they using? The general thinking is that IMost depictions I have seen of the kentoushi, the Japanese embassies to the Tang court, depict them as t is generally thought that they were probably using the more continental-style flat-bottomed, riverine vessels. After all, they were copying so much of what the Sui and Tang courts were doing, why would they not consider these ships to likewise be superior to their own? At least for diplomatic purposes. I suspect that local fishermen did their own were keeping their own counsel as far as ships are concernedthing, and I also have to wonder about what got used they were using from a military standpoint for military purposes. Certainly we see the Tang style boats used in later centuries, suggesting that these had been adopted at some earlier point, possibly by the 650s or earlier. Whatever they used, and while long-distance sailing vessels could Sailing vessels could be larger than short-distance riverine craft, this was not a luxury cruise. , but conditions on board were not necessarily a luxury cruise. From later accounts we know that they would really pack people into these shipspeople could be packed in. It should be noted that individual beds and bedrooms were a luxury in much of the world, and many people probably had little more than a mat to sleep on. Furthermore, people could be packed in tight. Think of the size of some of these embassies, which are said to be 80 to 150 people in size. A long, overseas journey likely meant getting quite cozy with your neighbors on the voyage. So how much more so with a camel and two donkeys on board a vessel that was likely never meant to carry them? Not exactly the most pleasant experience, I imagine – and this is not really any different than European sailing vessels during the later age of exploration.. So, from the records for just the first few years of Takara-hime's second reign, we see that there are lots of people going back and forth, and we have a sense of how they might be getting to and from the continent and peninsula. Let's dive into Next, we are going to talk about one of the most heavily documented embassies to the Tang court, which set out in the 7th month of the year 659. Not only do we get a pretty detailed account of this embassy, but we even know who wrote the account: as in our imagined intro, , as this is one of the accounts by the famous Iki no Muraji no Hakatoko, transcribed by Aston as “Yuki” no Muraji. Iki no Hakatoko's name first appears in an entry for 654, where he is quoted as giving information about the status of some of the previous embassies to the Tang court. Thereafter, various entries are labeled as “Iki no Muraji no Hakatoko says:”, which This would seem to indicate that these particular entries came are taken directly from another work written by Iki no Hakatoko and referred to as the “Iki Hakatoko Sho”. Based on the quoted fragments found in the Nihon Shoki, itthis appears to be one of ourthis oldest Japanese travelogues. It , and spends considerable time on the mission of 659, of which it would appear that Iki no Hakatoko was himself a member, though not a ranking one. Later, Iki no Hakatoko would find himself mentioned in the Nihon Shoki directly, and he would even be an ambassador, himself. The embassy of 659 itself, as we shall see, was rather momentous. Although it started easily enough, the embassy would be caught up in some of the most impactful events that would take place between the Tang, Yamato, and the states of the Korean peninsula. This embassy was formally under the command of Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwashiki and Tsumori no Muraji no Kiza. It's possible In the first instance it is not clear to me if this isthat he is the same person as the previously mentioned associate envoy, Sakahibe no Iwasuki—but the kanji are different enough, and there is another Sakahibe no Kusuri who shows up between the two in the record. However, they are both listed as envoys during the reign of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tennou, and as we've abundantly seen, and it wouldn't be the first time that scribal error crept in. has taken place, especially if the Chroniclers were pulling from different sources. The ambassadors took a retinue with them, including members of the northern Emishi, whom they were bringing along with them to show to the Tang court. TheThey also embassy ttook two ships—perhaps because of the size of the retinue, but I suspect that this was also because if anything happened to the one, you still had the other. A kind of backup plan due to the likelihood something went wrong. And wouldn't you know it, something did go wrong. You see, things started out fine, departing Mitsu Bay, in Naniwa, on the 3rd day of the 7th month. They sailed through the Seto Inland Sea and stopped at Tsukushi, likely for one last resupply and to check in with the Dazai, located near modern Fukuoka, who would have been in charge of overseeing ships coming and going to the archipelago. They departed from Ohotsu bay in Tsukushi on the 11th day of the 8th month. A quick note: Sspeedboats these were not. Today, one can cross from Fukuoka to Busan, on the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula, in less than a day. The envoys, however, were taking their time. They may have even stopped at the islands of Iki and Tsushima on their way. By the 13th day of the 9th month—over a month from leaving Kyushu behind -- , the ships finally came to an island along the southern border of Yamato's ally, Baekje. Hakatoko does not recall the name of the island, but o On the following morning, around 4 AM, so just before sunrise, the two ships put out to sea together to cross the ocean, heading south, towards the mouth of the Yangzi river. Unfortunately, the following day, the ship Iwashiki was on met with a contrary wind, and was driven away from the other ship – with nothing known of its fate until some time afterwards. Meanwhile, the other ship, under the command of Tsumori no Muraji no Kiza, continued on and by midnight on the 16th day, it arrived at Mt. Xuan near Kuaiji Commandary in the Yue district, in modern Zhejiang. Suddenly a violent northeast wind blew up, and p. Tthey were saileding another 7 days before they finally arrived at Yuyao. Today, this is part of the city of Ningbo, at the mouth of the Qiantang river, south of Shanghai and considered a part of the Yangzi Delta Region. This area has been inhabited since at least 6300 years ago, and it has long been a trade port, especially with the creation of the Grand Canal connecting between the Yangzi and the Yellow River, which would have allowed transshipment of goods to both regions. The now half-size Yamato contingenty left their ship at Yuyao and disembarked, and made their way to Yuezhou, the capital of the Kuaiji Commandary. This took them a bit of time—a little over a month. Presumably this was because of paperwork and logistics: they probably because they had to send word ahead, and I suspect they had to inventory everything they brought and negotiate carts and transportationfigure out transportation., since Tthey didn't exactly have bags of holding to stuff it all in, so they probably needed to negotiate carts and transportation. The finally made it to Yuezhou on the first day of the 11th intercalary month. An “intercalary” month refers to an extra month in a year. It was determined by various calculations and was added to keep the lunar and solar years in relative synch. From Yuezhou, things went a bit more quickly, as they were placed on post-horses up to the Eastern Capital, or Luoyang, where the Emperor Tang Gaozong was in residence. The Tang kept a capital at Luoyang and another to the west, in Chang'an. The trip to Luoyang was long—over 1,000 kilometers, or 1 megameter, as it were. The trip first took them through the Southern Capital, meaning the area of modern Nanjing, which they entered on the 15th day of the month. They then continued onwards, reaching Luoyang on the 29th day of the 11th month. The following day, on the 30th day of the 11th intercalary month of the year 659, the Yamato envoys were granted an audience with Emperor Tang Gaozong. As was proper, he inquired about the health of their sovereign, Takara Hime, and the envoys reported that she was doing well. He asked other questions about how the officials were doing and whether there was peace in Yamato. The envoys all responded affirmatively, assuring him that Yamato was at peace. Tang Gaozong also asked about the Emishi they had brought with them. We mentioned this event previously, back in Episode XXX117 , how the Emishi had been shown to the Tang Emperor, and how they had described them for him. This is actually one of the earliest accounts that we have describing the Emishi from the Yamato point of view, rather than just naming them—presumably because everyone in Yamato already knew who they were. From a diplomatic perspective, of course, this was no doubt Yamato demonstrating how they were, in many ways, an Empire, similar to the Tang, with their own subordinate ethnicities and “barbarians”. After answering all of the emperor's questions, the audience was concluded. The following day, however, was something of its own. This was the first day of the regular 11th lunar month, and it also was the celebration of the Winter Solstice—so though it was the 11th month, it may have been about 22 December according to our modern western calendars. The envoys once again met with the emperor, and they were treated as distinguished guests—at least according to their own records of it. Unfortunately, during the festivities, it seems that a fire broke out, creating some confusion, and . Tthe matters of the diplomatic mission were put on hold while all of that went on. We don't know exactly what happened in the ensuing month. Presumably the envoys took in the sites of the city, may have visited various monasteries, and likely got to know the movers and shakers in the court, who likely would have wined and dined them, inviting them to various gatherings, as since they brought their own exotic culture and experiences to the Tang court. Unfortunately, things apparently turned sour. First off, it seems clear that the members of this embassyy weren't the only Japanese in the court. There may have been various merchants, of course, but and we definitely know that there were students who had come on other missions and were still there likely still studying, such as those who had been learning from studying with Master Xuanzang, whose journeys we mentioned in the last several episodes. But Wwe are given a very specific name of a troublemaker, however: Kawachi no Aya no Ohomaro, and we are told that he was aa servant of Han Chihung, who . Han Chihung, himself, is thought to have possiblymay have been of mixed ethnicity—both Japanese and ethnic Han, and may . Hhe may have traveled to the Tang court on or around 653. , based on some of the records, but it isn't entirely clear. For whatever reason, on the 3rd day of the 12th month of the year 659, Kawachi no Aya no Ohomaro slandered the envoys, and although . Wwe don't know exactly what he said, but the Tang court caught wind of the accusations and found the envoys guilty. They were condemned to banishment, until the author of our tale, none other than Iki no Hakatoko himself, stepped up, . He made representation to the Emperor, pleading against the slander. , and tThe punishment was remitted, . Sso they were no longer banished. However, they were also then told that they could no't return home. You see, the Tang court was in the middle of some sensitive military operations in the lands east of the sea—in other words they were working with Silla to and invadeing the Kingdom of Baekje. Since Yamato was an ally of Baekje, it would be inconvenient if the envoys were to return home and rally Yamato to Baekje's defense. And so the entire Yamato embassy was moved to the Western Capital, Chang'an, where they were placed under individual house arrest. They no doubt were treated well, but they were not allowed to leave, and . Tthey ended up spending the next year in this state. of house arrest. Unfortunately, we don't have a record of just how they passed their time in Chang'an. They likely studied, and were probably visited by nobles and others. They weren't allowed to leave, but they weren't exactly thrown in jail, either. After all, they were foreign emissaries, and though the Tang might be at war with their ally, there was no formal declaration of war with Yamato, as far as I can make out. And so the embassy just sat there, for about 9 months. Finally, in the 7th month of 660, the records tell us we are told thatthat tThe Tang and Silla forces had been successful: . Baekje was destroyed.. The Tang and Silla forces had been successful. News must have reached Chang'an a month later, as Iki Hakatoko writes that this occurred in the 8th month of the year 660. With the Tang special military operation on the Korean peninsula concluded, they released the envoys and allowed them to return to their own countries. They envoys began their preparations as of the 12th day of the 9th month, no doubt eager to return home, and left were leaving Chang'an a week later, on the 19th day of the 9th month. From there, it took them almost a month to reach Luoyang, arriving on the 16th day of the 10th month, and here they were greeted with more good news, for here it was that they met up once again with those members of their delegation who had been blown off course. As you may remember, the ship carrying Iwashiki was blown off-course on the 15th day of the 9th month in the year 659, shortly after setting out from the Korean peninsula. The two ships had lost contact and Tsumori no Muraji no Kiza and his ship had been the one that had continued on. Iwashiki and those with him, however, found themselves at the mercy of the contrary winds and eventually came ashore at an island in the Southern Sea, which Aston translates as “Erh-kia-wei”. There appears to be at least some suggestion that this was an island in the Ryukyuan chain, possibly the island of Kikai. There, local islanders, none too happy about these foreigners crashing into their beach, destroyed the ship, and presumably attacked the embassy. Several members, including Yamato no Aya no Wosa no Atahe no Arima (yeah, that *is* a mouthful), Sakahibe no Muraji no Inadzumi (perhaps a relative of Iwashiki) and others all stole a local ship and made their way off the island. They eventually made landfall at a Kuazhou, southeast of Lishui City in modern Zhejiang province, where they met with local officials of the Tang government, who then sent them under escort to the capital at Luoyang. Once there, they were probably held in a similar state of house arrest, due to the invasion of Baekje, but they met back up with Kiza and Hakatoko's party. The envoys, now reunited, hung out in Luoyang for a bit longer, and thus . Thus it was on the first day of the 11th month of 660 that they witnessed war captives being brought to the capital. This included 13 royal persons of Baekje, from the King on down to the Crown Prince and various nobles, including the PRimiePrime Minister, as well as 37 other persons of lower rank—50 people all told. TheThese captives y were delivered up to the Tang government and led before the emperor. Of course, with the war concluded, and Baekje no longer a functioning state, while he could have had them executed, Tang Gaozong instead released them, demonstrating a certain amount of magnanimity. The Yamato envoys remained in Luoyang for most of the month. On the 19th, they had another audience with the emperor, who bestowed on them various gifts and presents, and then five days later they departed the Luoyang, and began the trek back to the archipelago in earnest. By the 25th day of the first month of 661, the envoys arrived back at Yuezhou, head of the Kuaiji Commandery. They stayed there for another couple of months, possibly waiting for the right time, as crossing the sea at in the wrong season could be disastrous. They finally departed east from Yuezhou on the first day of the fourth month, coming to . They came to Mt. Cheng-an 6 days later, on the 7th, and set out to sea first thing in the morning on the 8th. They had a southwest wind initially in their favor, but they lost their way in the open ocean, an all too commonall-too-common problem without modern navigational aids. Fortunately, the favorable winds had carried them far enough that only a day later they made landfall on the island of Tamna, aka Jeju island. Jeju island was, at this point, its own independent kingdom, situated off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula. Dr. Alexander Vovin suggested that the name “Tamna” may have been a corruption of a Japonic or proto-Japonic name: Tanimura. The island was apparently quite strange to the Yamato embassy, and they met with various residents natives of Jeju island. They, even convincinged Prince Aphaki and eight other men of the island to come with them to be presented at the Yamato court. The rest of their journey took a little over a month. They finally arrived back in Yamato on the 23rd day of the fifth month of 661. They had been gone for approximately two years, and a lot had changed, especially with the destruction of Baekje. The Yamato court had already learned of what had happened and was in the process of drawing up plans for an expedition back to the Korean peninsula to restore the Baekje kingdom, and pPrince Naka no Oe himself was set to lead the troops. The icing on the cake was: Tthe reception that the envoys received upon their return was rather cold. Apparently they were had been slandered to the Yamato court by another follower of Han Chihung—Yamato no Aya no Atahe no Tarushima—and so they weren't met with any fanfare. We still don't know what it was that Tarsuhima was saying—possibly he had gotten letters from Chihung or Ohomaro and was simply repeating what they had said. Either way, the envoys were sick of it. They had traveled all the way to the Tang capitals, they had been placed under house arrest for a year, and now they had returned. They not only had gifts from the Tang emperor, but they were also bringing the first ever embassy from the Kingdom of Tamna along with them. The slander would not stand. And so they did what anyone would do at the time: They apparently appealed to the Kami. We are told that their anger reached to the Gods of the High Heaven, which is to say the kami of Takamanohara, who killed Tarushima with a thunderbolt. Which I guess was one way to shut him up. From what we can tell, the embassy was eventually considered a success. Iki no Hakatoko's star would rise—and fall—and rise again in the court circles. As I noted, his account of this embassy is really one of the best and most in depth that we have from this time. It lets us see the relative route that the envoys were taking—the Chronicles in particular note that they traveled to the Great Tang of Wu, and, sure enough, they had set out along the southern route to the old Wu capital, rather than trying to cross the Bohai Sea and make landfall by the Shandong peninsula or at the mouth of the Yellow River. From there they traveled through Nanjing—the southern “capital” likely referring, in this instance, to the old Wu capital—and then to Luoyang. Though they stayed there much longer than they had anticipated, they ended up living there through some of the most impactful events that occurred during this point in Northeast Asia. they And that is something we will touch on next episode. Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com. Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now. Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan
Continuous innovation, global expansion and industrial upgrade will empower Chinese companies to counter rising protectionism and geopolitical tensions this year, driving foreign trade growth and reinforcing China's global competitiveness, said market observers and exporters.市场观察人士和出口商表示，持续创新、全球扩张和产业升级将使中国企业在今年能够应对日益加剧的保护主义和地缘政治紧张局势，推动外贸增长，增强中国的全球竞争力。Despite challenges, China's foreign trade remains resilient, adapting to an increasingly complex global landscape shaped by the United States' new tariff policies, supply chain disruptions, and regulatory uncertainties in certain countries, they added.他们补充道，尽管面临挑战，中国外贸依然保持韧性，不断适应日益复杂的全球格局。这一格局是由美国新关税政策、供应链中断以及某些国家监管不确定性等因素导致的。Zhang Xiaotao, dean of the School of International Trade and Economics at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, said that as a major player in global trade, China has accumulated extensive experience in navigating international political and economic shifts over the past decade.北京中央财经大学国际贸易与经济学院院长张晓涛表示，过去十年里，中国作为全球贸易的主要参与者，在应对国际政治和经济变迁中积累了丰富经验。"Foreign trade companies have already seen positive results from their strategic adjustments to tackle headwinds, including building new factories and overseas warehouses in countries such as Thailand, Hungary, the US and Brazil, as well as increasing investment in research and development," Zhang said.张晓涛说：“外贸企业已通过战略调整来应对逆风，并取得了积极成果，包括在泰国、匈牙利、美国、巴西等国建设新工厂和海外仓库，以及加大对研发的投入。”Denis Depoux, global managing director at German management consultancy Roland Berger, said that China is now increasingly recognized for its high-value, technologically advanced products, including electric vehicles, solar cells and liquefied natural gas carriers, as it moves up the value chain to drive export growth.德国管理咨询公司罗兰贝格全球董事总经理丹尼斯·德普克斯表示，随着中国在价值链上攀升以推动出口增长，其高价值、高技术产品正越来越受到认可，包括电动汽车、太阳能电池、液化天然气运输船等。Chinese companies exporting high-value products include Narwal, a manufacturer of household robots based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The company saw the number of its export markets expand from less than 10 in 2023 to over 30 last year, covering multiple regions and countries including North America, Europe, Australia and Japan.广东省深圳市家用机器人制造商云鲸是出口高价值产品的中国企业之一。该公司产品出口市场从2023年不到10个扩展到2024年的30多个，覆盖北美、欧洲、澳大利亚、日本等多个地区和国家。"We will continue to invest in multiple fields such as 3D perception, artificial intelligence solutions, binocular vision technologies and big data applications to win more orders," said Zhang Junbin, the company's founder.公司创始人张峻彬说：“我们将继续在三维感知、人工智能解决方案、双目视觉技术、大数据应用等多个领域进行投资，以赢得更多订单。”Li Lizhong, sales director at Zhejiang Yueli Electrical Co, a home appliances manufacturer based in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, said the company's personal care products, such as hair dryers and curling irons, previously targeted the US and Western Europe markets.浙江省宁波市家电制造商浙江月立电器有限公司销售总监李立中表示，该公司的个人护理产品（如吹风机和卷发棒）此前主要销往美国和西欧市场。"However, our exports to these traditional markets have been impacted by the US tariff hike and the Russia-Ukraine conflict in recent years," he said, adding that the company has launched more intelligent, eco-friendly home appliances to expand into markets in Central and Eastern Europe, and economies participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.他说：“但近年来，我们面向这些传统市场的出口受到了美国关税上调和俄乌冲突的影响。”他补充道，公司已推出更多智能、环保的家电产品，以拓展中东欧市场以及参与“一带一路”倡议的经济体市场。Data from Ningbo Customs showed that Zhejiang Yueli's hair dryer exports reached 602 million yuan ($82.4 million) in 2024, marking a 6.3 percent year-on-year increase, while the company's exports in this category to Central and Eastern Europe totaled 45.46 million yuan, up 39.2 percent compared with 2023.据宁波海关数据显示，2024年，浙江月立公司的吹风机出口额达6.02亿元人民币（8240万美元），同比增长6.3%，其中面向中东欧市场的出口额为4546万元人民币，较2023年增长39.2%。Li said the increasing penetration of the internet in Central and Eastern Europe has allowed e-commerce to expand at a remarkable pace in countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania. The company's cross-border e-commerce exports emerged as a key growth driver after it deployed resources in this business segment in the region, he added.李立中表示，由于中东欧地区互联网日益普及，波兰、捷克、罗马尼亚等国的电子商务迅速扩张。他补充道，月立公司在该地区部署资源后，跨境电商出口已成为其关键的增长动力。As China continued to enhance its high-value export portfolio and deepen its market presence in emerging economies, the nation's foreign trade rose 5 percent year-on-year to reach a record high of 43.85 trillion yuan in 2024, according to the General Administration of Customs.据海关总署数据，中国不断优化高价值出口产品的结构，巩固在新兴市场的地位，2024年中国外贸总值达到43.85万亿元人民币，同比增长5%，规模再创历史新高。Meanwhile, China's mechanical and electrical product exports grew 8.7 percent year-on-year, accounting for 59.4 percent of the country's total exports. Last year, the country's EV exports rose 13.1 percent compared with 2023, while its 3D printer exports increased 32.8 percent and industrial robot exports surged 45.2 percent.同时，中国机电产品出口同比增长8.7%，占中国出口总值的59.4%。2024年，中国电动汽车出口同比增长13.1%，3D打印机出口增长32.8%，工业机器人出口增长45.2%。Lan Qingxin, a professor at the School of International Trade and Economics of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said the restructuring of global supply chains and protectionist moves in certain countries have pushed Chinese companies to adapt and leverage their strong manufacturing and technological capabilities.北京对外经济贸易大学国际经济贸易学院教授蓝庆新表示，全球供应链重组、某些国家的保护主义举措,促使中国企业调整并利用自身强大的制造能力和技术能力。By responding innovatively to these changes, the companies can meet market needs in other emerging economies, thereby enhancing their competitiveness and expanding their global presence, said Lan.蓝庆新说，企业通过不断创新来应对这些变化，可以满足其他新兴市场的需求，从而提升竞争力并扩大全球影响力。A Chinese business delegation, organized by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, departed on Monday for Kazakhstan to explore new opportunities for economic and trade exchanges.2月10日，由中国国际贸易促进委员会组织的中国经贸代表团赴哈萨克斯坦，探索经贸交流新机遇。During the four-day trip, the delegation, comprising representatives of more than 30 Chinese companies across industries such as petrochemicals and machinery manufacturing, hopes to sign several cooperation agreements and foster mutually beneficial outcomes.本次代表团由来自石油化工、机械制造等领域的30多家中国企业代表组成，开展为期四天的交流活动，希望签署多项合作协议，实现互利共赢。warehousen.货仓，仓库hiken.（价格或费用的大幅）提高，增加
In this episode, we're giving you the best Amazon and Walmart strategy clips of 2024 so that you can start off 2025 with a leg up on your competition. ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Welcome to this special annual recap episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, where we bring you the most impactful strategies from the past year to give your e-commerce business a competitive edge in 2025. Join us as we explore the essentials of selecting verified manufacturers and the importance of third-party verification in ensuring accurate information. We'll discuss the advantages of trade assurance for payment protection and the significance of management certifications like BSCI and ISO, which indicate high-quality factory standards and social compliance. Additionally, we touch on regional manufacturing specializations, exemplified by the production of egg dispensers, and the importance of measuring the halo impact of ad strategies on total sales and rankings using metrics like TACoS and cost per customer acquisition. Listen in as we discuss strategies for international Amazon success, highlighting a thriving American brand's expansion into Amazon Japan. We'll explore the strategic benefits of entering the Japanese market, such as lower PPC costs and favorable tax conditions, which contribute to higher profit margins. Patience, quality products, and strong supplier relationships are emphasized as key differentiators from competitors. We also explore optimizing Amazon PPC campaigns with lifecycle-based rules and the power of using index images with numbered benefits to effectively communicate value in product listings. Discover effective strategies for online marketplaces as we recount past challenges and successes in sourcing and selling products in the U.S. market. Learn about creative approaches to finding less visible suppliers and the importance of clear communication and relationship-building. We also highlight the effectiveness of Target's marketplace and the strategic advantages of being indexed on Google to enhance Amazon rankings. Finally, we'll cover the critical importance of using correct HTS codes to avoid costly import tariff mistakes, sharing a personal experience that led to significant cost savings. Tune in and equip yourself with these valuable insights to kick off 2025 strong. In episode 628 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, we discuss: 00:00 - SSP Top 20 Strategies of 2024 02:02 - Selecting Verified Manufacturers for Trust 09:53 - Keyword Analysis and Visibility Tracking 12:25 - Strategies for International Amazon Success 19:36 - Effective Strategies for Online Marketplaces 20:06 - Leveraging Google for Business Growth 23:43 - Optimizing Amazon Listings for Google Images 25:40 - Optimizing Amazon Listings for Sales 32:12 - Enhancing Amazon Listings With COSMO 33:29 - Avoiding Costly Import Tariff Mistakes Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we're giving you the best strategy clips of the year so that you can start off 2025 with a leg up on your competition. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And, like we do every year and we have been doing this since we started in what was it 2018, 2019? we do a recap episode where I handpick some of the best strategies of the entire year. Every year, we go through about 100 episodes a year, not including the weekly buzz, where we have a lot of guests and everybody has great strategies. It's really hard to pick some of the top ones, but what I did is me and the team got together and pulled out some of the top strategies that you guys had talked about in social media and such that you liked, and we put it together so that you could get a leg up on the competition now that we're at the beginning here of 2025. Bradley Sutton: And so these are strategies that are not out of date. They're still valid. There are some that already, within a few months, became out of date. They're still valid. There are some that already, within a few months, became out of date. We're not including them here. So, guys, I hope you enjoy this episode. Get your pen and paper out. I want each and every one of you to make it your homework to pick five, at least five of these that we're about to get. I think we're doing about 20 here, but do five that most apply to you and your business. Not everything applies to everybody equally. Pick five out of these and implement it this month in your business, or at least make a plan for it. All right, so let's go ahead and see the top strategies of the year. Kian Golzari: So the first thing you did was you selected verified manufacturers. And what's that for? It means any information that they provide on their listing, whether it be number of years in business, how many staff they have, what certificates they have, what patents they have, what products they have, what does their production line look like, the images and videos in the factory. That's all been verified by a third party, meaning InterTech, SGS, TUV. One of these very reputable companies have gone in and verified all the information is true, whereas if we didn't work with verified suppliers, then whatever information they want to put there, we just have to sort of take their word for it. So verified is the most important thing to search for first. Then, on the left-hand side of the page, you'll see trade assurance right, I would always click that as well and trade assurance just means that your payment is protected. So if you've ordered an egg dispenser which holds, you know, 20 eggs and you do the production and you receive one which only holds 10 eggs, then the trade assurance will protect you and it will refund your order because you've selected that right. That's just a little bit of a safety net important for, like you know, new sellers, right. And then, as you scroll down on the left-hand side of the page, you'll see something that says management certification, right. And if you scroll down a little bit more, yeah. So you see like BSCI and you see Zedek, you see ISO. I always like to select BSCI and ISO. So BSCI is your business social compliance initiative and ISO is just a really high-quality standard and this just basically means these are factory certificates that they have. So, uh, BSCI will go in and they'll check, like you know, um how many years you've been in business. Do you have, like, fire extinguishers? Do you have adequate lighting? Do you have safety exits? Like we've checked the dormitories, we've checked like the canteen where the workers eat. So it's kind of like gives you confidence that you're working for a very, very good factory, right. So now, if we go back to the top of the list, right, we've. Now we've searched by manufacturers, we've got verified manufacturers, we've got trade assurance and we've got factories which have, you know, BSCI and ISO certification. So now, as I'm scrolling down the list, like if you zoom in on the company names, like the first word in the company name is always the city or the province in which that factory is located. Kian Golzari: So sometimes, like the factories, like electronics are made in Shenzhen, backpacks are normally made in like Shenzhou. Like furniture, like steel tubing for furniture, chairs is made like Yongkang. So I'm just trying to get familiar. Is there an area which specializes in egg dispensers? Maybe not because it's such a niche product, right, that maybe you could make it, make it anywhere. But as I scroll down, I'm trying to see, like, is there one name that pops up more frequent than others and in that area which specializes in that product? But I see Ningbo has probably popped up a few times, right? So, but anyway, it doesn't matter. If Ningbo had popped out like eight out of nine times, I would say, right, well, that's the region we need to be ordering from. Bradley Sutton: Interesting. Gefen Laredo: You know ACOS is great, but obviously this is TACoS Tuesday and TACoS is the metric of your total sales. Carrie Miller: Yes. Gefen Laredo: And so when we're looking at total sales something that we brought in and I know it's a little vague, but we really looked at the halo impact of ad strategies and how they impacted ranking and total sales, right. And so when we focused our ad strategy, maybe on a cost per customer acquisition model, maybe on a TACoS model, and we look to really prioritize, hey, where are we showing up, right? So, if, if, if we're driving all this traffic and we have a 20 percent conversion rate, let's say, on this keyword, are we tracking using, using uh, using a Helium 10, of course, um, are we tracking that ranking properly? To say, hey, we started running these ads aggressively on August 1st and if we have been tracking ranking on that keyword for the last two months since going aggressive on that term, where are we ranking now and how have sales changed? and are there broader KPIs that we're measuring outside of just direct ad revenue? And that worked really well for us because we centered that around tentpole events and this is a really big strategy of ours. That is incredibly complex, it takes a whole village to actually execute. But when we focus our customer acquisition and ranking models around major times in the year so think Prime Day, think Fall, Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, holiday and then, of course, if you're a one-off brand, if you I don't know are ski related, then obviously your season is January to March. You know like there are differences, but really peak seasons. If you're able to focus your growth model around the times that are going to give you the most reward, then that worked really well for us last year and we expect to see a lot more of that this year, especially as we all expect people are going to be more deal oriented. It's a constant battle for margins, so the better rank you are, the more organic sales you drive, the better your TACoS is. Ben Webber: Several years ago we were about to stock out of as you know, we sell a lot of fourth quarter products and kind of joke toy products and we're about to stock out of one that we sold between 800 and 1000 units a day of which is a fairly substantial issue. So we actually loaded up a cargo van and drove the cargo van to Amazon, talked our way through the front gates to deliver it and they took it, and so we did that once, then we did it again and we got through again. The third time they're like no, you can't do this, and so like okay, but somehow, like no, you, you can't do this, and so like okay, but somehow, we have to be able to do this. So we looked into carrier central and figure out how we could become a last mile rider, which is incredibly easy it takes about 15 minutes to fill out a form and then you have to show that you can back in and out of a parking spot incredibly, incredibly easy. But so in that January we bought a truck and the rest is history from there. But it came about because we were about to stock out and panicked and we're like, well, what's the worst that can happen? Silas Moestrup Pedersen: And one of the things that I recommend to every time that we have a new client or meet someone is to narrow in on fewer skills. It sounds quite simple, right, but what we do every time is that if you have a big catalog A, B, C and D products and then A products they get a special treatment compared to B, C and D. It could even be, if your catalog is massive, you only focus your ad spend on A products. Same thing from a content perspective. Those are the ones that get the most love in terms of title, bullet point, backend attributes, et cetera, descriptions. So it's just having that focus on fewer products, I think, is number one. Then, if you can automate your reporting, we have that in Looker automated so that you don't have to necessarily sit and look at the data and pull Excel spreadsheets et cetera it just saves you so much time. If you're capable of doing it and spending time on it, then I think. Thirdly, we talked a little bit about it, but I think taking the time to do super solid keyword research from the get-go Like get into Magnet, get into Amazon's data sources, get into Cerebro, look for all your competitors' keywords et cetera understand what those A keywords are, and those A keywords are the only thing that you focus on in the start. Those are the ones that go into your rank campaigns, that they go into your manual campaigns, et cetera, and that those are the ones that just like where you track everything through Like a little hack could be for your A products. Every week you use a repro. Every other week you put in your A product and then you export all the data for that. You take a spreadsheet. In column A you say this is the date when I pulled the. This is the date of either. I pulled the data, this is the ASIN you put in the ASIN that you pulled the data for. Then you make a formula. Silas Moestrup Pedersen: You can just ask ChatGPT where, based on the paid and organic rank, you say whether you classified the keyword as being on page one, two, three or four, and then you pull this data in this way every single week for maybe two months when you're running a new test or something like that. You take all the data, you put it into a pivot table and boom, then you would have an overview and a graph of how many like your all your page one, two, three, four positions across your entire catalog and you could even put a filter on up in the top and then you can sort by ASIN and then you basically have your own visibility tool where you can see your paid on your organic visibility on a weekly level at an Asian level. And you can use that to take all those keywords If you're ranking let's say page three or two or something like that put them into a rank campaign. If you feel like they're good, you can take all the keywords where you're on page two, maybe put them in the title, et cetera. So, like building those systems, that allows you to scale something consistently. Bradley Sutton: What was your gross sales yesterday, last week, last year? More importantly, what are your profits after all your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the Helium 10 tool Profits. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash profits. Cara Sayer: So one of the biggest things was the fact that I do think a lot of Amazon sellers don't really have a brand. They just have a name for a business or a name for something that they use and they don't really have a what I'd call a true brand. And they don't always. I think sometimes also, existing only on Amazon makes you lose perspective on you know how normal businesses work, like businesses that aren't based on Amazon, and so you know a lot of businesses. I mean, I think throughout life, people buy from people and I think that's so important to remember that, even on Amazon, one of the reasons why Amazon focuses so heavily on A plus listings and now they're bringing in the premium A plus and all the rest of it because Amazon knows right. You know me quite a few years now and I've always banged on about brand. I've always banged on about having a story. Tell your story. It doesn't have to be your story necessarily, it could be the product story, but you need to have something that differentiates you. And even then, I was chatting to someone at the conference earlier on and I was saying the thing is that sometimes it's not even the fact that you're selling different products, it's the way that you curate them right. So it's the collection of products that you've chosen to sell under your brand name says something. Nick Katz: So one of our clients is an international brand. They're an American registered company and they last year they cleared seven figures and we're definitely looking to do a lot more this year. That's in two years. They're doing very, very well in America, they sell in Europe and they sell in Canada. But the Japanese sales are now almost comparable to the to the us sales, but the profit margins are a lot higher. Bradley Sutton: That was about my second question. Nick Katz: Yeah, because you know things like the PPC is a hell of a lot cheaper. The ACOS for the account is about uh, I think it's about eight, nine percent now. The TACoS is about three or four percent. It's the kind of figures you can't really get in the US. So actually in theory you could sell a lot less in Japan and still end up with the same kind of profit as you could in the US. But obviously if you're getting sales close to the US you're probably going to have much, much higher margins. Japan generally is cheaper. It's cheaper tax as well if you are off the threshold to pay tax. But if you're under 10 million yen, which is probably about 60,000, 70,000 US, if you're under that in sales, you don't have to pay consumption tax. There is no tax. So anybody like me selling in Europe who gets absolutely lost by the tax authorities there, paying 19, 20, 21, 23% in some of the regions in Europe, you could be selling 50, 60,000 US in Japan and not have to pay any consumption tax whatsoever. So there are definite advantages to selling in Japan. Bradley Sutton: What are some of the things that set you apart from maybe the 10 other matcha people who maybe have started and gone out of business, you know, because they didn't have your strategy? What do you think set you apart from others? Sam: Well, I think a handful of things. The first one is okay, so I think you can use. You can rely on Amazon PPC. You can look at your search term impression share reports, you can look at your keyword ranking and all that kind of stuff and that will help you in the short run. But honestly, the thing that really helped us the most was patience and making sure that your product is on a sensory level it's actually good and people like it. Once you have those two things covered, then you just need to get people to try it, get them to tell their friends, and then their friends who are interested in Marchable buy. Then they are buying again and then this whole thing kind of grows by itself. Your PPC and all of these other tools that you have are really just like fuel that you add to this engine. Singchuen: And on the other side of things is, obviously you kind of need to make sure that you treat your suppliers well as well. Make sure that they understand what you're going through and make sure that you try to understand what they're going through. If language is a barrier, hire an interpreter, right, it's not too difficult. Decency goes both ways. So you may be pressed, but you've got to recognize that the factories themselves, they are pressed as well. So working together for a compromise, understanding each other and not throwing too much Just to be a little bit more understanding towards each other, goes a long way. A bit more understanding towards each other goes a long way. I think what tends to happen is that if you're not patient, as Sam has mentioned, you may cut off communications with factories that may help you in the future, and you don't want to do that. Destaney Wishon: I think the biggest things that we look at is we create rules for the different outcomes we want. If we're launching a brand-new product, then we're creating rules that are based off sales. So we're going to be taking a deep dive into, hey, what is the conversion rate and what is the sales? And we're going to build rules for maximizing that increased bid when I have a certain conversion rate. On the flip side, if our goal is profitability, we're going to work backwards from our ACOS or RoAS goal. We're going to say, hey, let's build rules that are based on lowering bids when our ACOS is too high, and maybe layering in our conversion rates also low, let's go even lower, right. So those are the two simplest ones that we look at, but it really needs to be strategic. You can create rules that are based off the phase your product's in, whether it's launch, consistency, profitability, organic rank. You can create rules based off your overall business outcomes. Which is always an important one is what is that key RoAS that you're going to optimize for all of your campaigns, but just making sure not to overcomplicate it in the beginning, right. Once you start to understand the correlation between CPC and RoAS, then you can start building in a little bit more customization around lifecycle and things like that. Kevin King: This is how you been converting like crazy with what? what do you call an index image? This he calls it the uh, it's the image in your listing that will be the top reasons why your product is the best. This is not your main photo. This is not your photo number one. This is what he calls this photo number two and it's an index of of your products is why I think it's why he calls it the index image, and what he says is you need to number the benefits. A lot of of people are using call-outs, they use infographics, but they don't number them. So you want to actually have numbers like this. So this should be something like this should be your second image the five reasons you love, or the seven reasons or the three reasons. Odd numbers are always better than even numbers. Three, five or seven or nine always work the best. But here he's got the five and look, there's big, there's numbers. That's important. He just doesn't list them. People like order and when they see numbers, their mind can sort it and they can read it quickly and it makes sense to them. So the numbering system here is critical, not just the fact that he put the main point, the main benefit and capital, and then explained it in. I mean in bold and a little bit larger than explained everything else below it in light blue, but he's got these numbers. That's the critical thing is numbering it. Bradley Sutton: Maybe this is a little bit of the sexy side of patents, but you've talked before about how patents doing patent searches can actually be a form of product research and finding a product to sell on Amazon. How in the world is that possible? Rich Goldstein: Yeah, absolutely it's true, because the way that the patent system works, once a patent expires, it's fair game for anyone to use it. So a utility patent lasts for 20 years and a design patent lasts for 15. But once that patent expires, anyone can make that product and, at the same time, keep in mind that a lot of people have an idea for a product, they get it patented, but they never do the research, they never learn about the process enough to actually get that product launched, and so there are a lot of great ideas that have been patented that are just in the patent archives and they've never actually been put on the market. There are some lousy ideas, but there are also some great ideas, and so if you know how and you search the patent record for expired patents, you can find ideas for really great potential products. Tom - Honest FBA: We dabbled with the US a few times in the past and Thomas Net is really popular. You see, it's spoken about quite a lot as a place, as a resource. Honestly, we never had any success there. There was a time when we were the MOQs are always insanely high and there was a product previously that we agreed to the MOQ. It was something like 10 or 20,000 units. It was pretty high. And there was a product previously that we agreed to the MOQ. It was something like 10 or 20,000 units. It was pretty big. And we were like, okay, we'll go for it, but can you just repackage them into a different kind of mix? And they just said, nah, nah, don't fancy it. And we were like, right, okay. So we kind of banged our head against the wall. So now a little-known site called Google is honestly the best bet, so like, but I'm not talking page one at Google. You've got to dig. So put on a VPN. If you're somewhere like we are, like in Spain, put on a US VPN and then get down to like pages five, six, seven, eight, get in there. And then I just hammer a lot of emails out, but a lot of the websites that you find down in those stages or those pages. They're not good at SEO, they're generally kind of old sites, but you're finding older, established businesses so and often you'll find a phone number. So one of the best lessons I say is like get on the phone and just ring them up and you can save months of time, like the guy who ended up. Tom - Honest FBA: One of the guys who ended up working with had a phone call with him on the first day. I found it and we ended up. We're now doing two products with him already. We've got another three lined up and he had nothing to do with the niche we're in. He was in so we're in pets. He was in humans. He was in food. I just gave him a call, explained the brand vision, what we're trying to do. He got really excited. He's now helping us source new ingredients. He's coming to me with product ideas. He's now going to do a whole range of products for us. So that was one of the beauties is like having that communication line and being able to really explain yourself has been massive. We are still sourcing in China, by the way. We still think it's a really viable option, but having this US option as well, there's so many benefits to it. Grace Kopplin: In terms of Walmart, that's always been a strategy for us. Transparently, Walmart just hasn't been a volume driver for us. It's been steady but it hasn't really been a place that's warranted a ton of focus for us. But another marketplace that has been great for us is actually Target's marketplace, target Plus and that's been a key, key piece of our success, especially with working with brands who are looking for store placement at Target. For example, we've had a few items that we've listed on Target's marketplace that have done really well, that have gotten the attention of a buyer and actually got store placement, which is really exciting. And, at the end of the day, getting an item placed on shelves most of the time can drive more volume than a mid-tier listing on Amazon. So we tend to try to use that strategy. Bradley Sutton: How do you get on target these days? Wasn't it invite only back in the day or now that Target is adding that 360 or some kind of like yeah. Grace Kopplin: I think it might still be invite only, but I know they've been actively adding a lot of sellers. I know that their backend is still quite archaic compared to what Amazon is. It's probably what Walmart was like four years ago. But I think it is still invite only, but definitely something to reach out to your connections and see if you can get a connect with a Walmart e-comm buyer. Leo Sgovio: So there are a few reasons why you want to be indexed on Google, and for the most, let's start from the most advanced ones, right? Advanced sellers they normally try to send traffic to Amazon, especially during the launch period, using external traffic, right? So Google, we know, is a good referral that tends to help your rankings, and so Amazon tends to reward you if they see traffic coming from Google. So if you're not indexed, you lose a chance to show Amazon that you are getting traffic from Google. Now, I have a theory that paid traffic has a little bit more weight than organic, but the reason why you want to be indexed and the reason why you might want to be indexed for certain keywords is so that when you drive traffic through the URL to Amazon, you can actually give attribution to that keyword. That's number one, right? So you can actually use these URLs as your two-step. Leo Sgovio: Number two if you do a good job with your indexation and your listing is optimized, you actually also appear in the images, right? And so if people are looking for specific products, sometimes I search on Google using images because I'm looking for specific products that might be hard to find on Amazon. But if I look through the Google images and I find the product, then I go to Amazon and so if you're not indexed, you're also not going to be able to be found there, and Google images actually gets a ton of traffic. So here are some of the reasons why, two of the reasons why. I can think of many more, but the most important are these ones. Google is still one of the largest search engine, and so missing out on that opportunity search engine and so missing out on that opportunity, I'm afraid it causes a lot of missed visibility for an Amazon seller at a listing level. Carrie Miller: I think one of the things that sets us apart is that when I've created our listings, or whenever I create our photos, I think about what are the main benefits of the product, the main selling points of it, and I realized this isn't something that everyone can easily do, and so the way I kind of have been teaching it is that you can take your competitor's listing, download their reviews, download their best reviews, their five-star reviews, and say ask ChatGPT, like, what do people like most about this product? What are the benefits of this product according to reviews? What do people like? Basically, ask a bunch of questions to ChatGPT and you'll get a bunch of kind of selling points and you'll kind of see a trend of like the top selling points or top benefits of your product. And that's what you want to focus on is like what's in it for the customer? You've got to kind of appeal to their emotions. How is it going to make their life better, easier, are easier, are they going to be more beautiful? Are they going to you know what? What is it, what's in it for them? Carrie Miller: And I think that that is going to be the key that sets you apart, and I know it's. It sounds pretty basic, but I've actually been doing some looking at different listings. People have been asking me hey, can you take a look at my listing? And when I look at the listing, I'm like, well, these aren't, these are not actually selling points or benefits. Like, these are features of the product. Right, you can always put the features in right later on, but how are you appealing to the person when you were? If you're telling somebody about your product, are you being like oh hey, the dimensions are 14 by 14. Like that's, that's like an afterthought, right? You, you want to. However, you would even just sell to a person, like talking face to face. That's how you're going to do that. Your first image shouldn't be a dimension photo. It should be a selling point, your main, like best selling point, main benefit in that first image. So I think that's a huge thing that a lot of people are kind of missing. Bradley Sutton: What would you say is the most actionable things from search career performance? That kind of closes out like, hey, this is actually something that is not just, oh, it's good to know, but hey, I'm actually going to take action, uh, on this. Mansour Norouzi: Taking action. I would say, even when I look at my own brand one is that for the main keywords, what I actually I do this on a weekly basis I have a list of the main keywords which is for my, for one of my aces are like 10 uh, 10 uh keywords and actually I go into the detail of week over week what is happening to my click share for those keywords, because they are very important for me and I want to be on the top and like top five for these turns. I want to be aware of what is going on with my competitors and what's my need. So if I see I have a track of my click share for the keywords, if I see it is going down, right away I'll figure out what's going on and maybe push with my advertising, for that for me would be our main keywords and what's going happening for my click share rate, conversion rate and click share just on my top keywords. Honestly, I will go, I think, by myself going with all for all the keywords, just like top five to 10 keywords, what they are, and I'll keep it very close overview and monitor them to see exactly what's going on, because you see that search volume going up or down, but I want my click share and my conversion share that I have I'm generating. Either they are consistent or going up. So if I see this trend is down, right away I start doing maybe I run coupon code or I push with my advertising to make sure I'm getting them back into track. Bradley Sutton: What is your favorite? Helium 10 tool Ksenia or function of a tool. Kseniia Reidel: Probably the audience. That's the one that I use all the time. Is it called audience? Bradley Sutton: Yeah, the split where you ask the questions to the people and say, how are you using that Like for your images, or just for product ideas, or what are you using that? Kseniia Reidel: Honestly for everything. For both for the product ideas, for your images, or just for product ideas or what are you using that? Honestly for everything. But both for the product ideas, for the images, because I just think it's so easy. You know, when you're thinking about like the product we find, then I usually do um, like the drawing and uh, 3d, you know the 3d image of the product that doesn't exist yet. Then usually all my products are like, really designed differently, that's what's on the market right now, and I just upload the image there and I see what people say and ask them would you buy this product? And if you wouldn't buy this product, why, why not? Or what would you change in this product? And sometimes I see the things that I didn't even you know, I didn't even think about that. Bradley Sutton: So you're launching just the 3d rendering and just asking a question on that image, or you're launching it like, or you're launching it, you're putting it in a poll next to like existing products and asking them, or which one are you doing? Kseniia Reidel: I'm doing both. Actually, the first, I just do the rendering and ask them would you buy this product? And if you would not buy this product, what would you change Like? How would you make it better for you? And then sometimes I also compare it to the other products that are on the market and ask them which one would they buy? Bradley Sutton: Interesting. Kseniia Reidel: And a lot of times I do the changes on the product based on what the people say. Bradley Sutton: What was the results of those search, find, buy in order to send those relevancy signals? Again, not for rank, but to send those relevancy signals to Amazon. Take a look at this when I ran in Cerebro on June 19th, just three days after they did that relevancy single, you know, push those three coworkers here at Helium 10,. Take a look now at the Amazon recommended rank. Remember how it was only showing two keywords for Amazon recommended rank. Now it was showing multiple ones and it put that keyword that I sent the relevancy signal for egg holder countertop. It had Amazon recommended rank number three, which basically means that that was the third most important keyword according to Amazon for this product. Now do you remember what I was getting for impressions in PPC? Like 200 total impressions over three days. What did sending those relevancy signals to Amazon do for my PPC impressions? Take a look at this. To amazon, do for my PPC impressions. Take a look at this. The next three day period from June 19th when my relevancy got fixed to June 21st instead of 200 impressions, 5 000 impressions, 4 000 of that. How? What keyword was it for? Egg holder countertop, that one that I sent those relevancy signals to Amazon for? This works, guys. Ryan King: So Walmart has the equivalent would be brand portal, and I would absolutely recommend, if you're the seller, if you're the brand, to register through brand portal, and the main reasons are there are certain advertising opportunities that are only available to brand registered brands, so sponsored brand videos, sponsored brand ads that go across as banner displays. Another major one would be brand shops, brand shelves we can talk about later as well and then IP protection, and so the advantage of being registered in Brand Portal is that you can file IP infringement claims, and in this case, the most successful one to do is to file claims against those alternate listings for using your copyrighted imagery, and so we see success of getting those pulled down within 48 hours, typically when that happens. Now you can still file that IP claim even if you're not registered through Brand Portal. There's a link to file that claim, but you can't track its progress, you can't see the history, all those kinds of things. So it just gives you greater credibility in those and greater ability to look back at the progress. And the last one I'd say is if you're a registered brand, it's going to give you the highest content ranking for your listing. So even if there are other sellers that have tried to change that listing content. You're going to outrank them as the registered brand and chances are you're not going to have to deal with things changing on your listing in that regard. Kevin Dolan: Cosmo is a specific tool and I think that the function that it performs is valuable to enhancing Amazon's understanding of a listing. So I certainly would not be surprised to see Amazon implementing this in a production capacity on a large swath of searches. That would not be surprising to me, but it's not as massive as the shift that we've seen into semantic-focused search. Cosmo in particular discusses essentially a mechanism for enhancing Amazon's understanding of a product by taking into consideration things that aren't expressed in the query and things that aren't expressed in the listing. The example that they use in the paper, the canonical example, is if you're looking for shoes for pregnant women, a listing might not literally say shoes for pregnant women. It might produce a specific type of open toed shoe that has good support, good comfort. That might not literally be listed as a keyword in the listing, but it might be something that the system can infer based on its knowledge of the universe, about what it's like to be a pregnant woman and the types of products that they might benefit from. Norm Farrar: Out of everybody that we've looked at, it was up to 80. But 70% of Amazon sellers do not have the proper HTS code. They let their Chinese seller set an HS code and it's wrong. So when they get in here and guess what, nobody, nobody is calculating that as a part of your cost of goods. So they're going out, they're sourcing in China, they're not calculating, and this could be as high as 400%. Now, I've never seen it that, but it can be. So you know you're 25, 40% of your cost of goods. Is that not something that should be calculated? And like for me, I was doing natural soaps and I was paying 17%. So we were taking a look at it and Afolabi says can you consider this Castile soap? And I said yeah, it's olive based. And he goes well, how about I give you some good news. Pay zero. I just stuffed 17% back in my pocket. So out of the 70% of people that are missing the boat, they don't have the proper tariff code and the average person that gets the proper tariff code on an order the average that we've been able to calculate has been $7,800.
AGENDA: IntroTorneos del fin ATPJannik Sinner campeón del Six Kings Slam vs Carlos Alcaraz (6-7, 6-3, 6-3) Hablando un poco del prize money, del torneo de exhibición como tal, del evento, etc. Roberto Bautista Agut campeón del ATP 250 de Antwerp vs Jiri Lehecka (7-5, 6-1) y su título #12.Tommy Paul campeón del ATP 250 de Estocolmo vs Grigor Dimitrov (6-4, 6-3) y su título #4Karen Khachanov campeón del ATP 250 de Almaty vs Gabriel Diallo (6-2, 5-7, 6-3) y su título #7.WTADaria Kasatkina campeona del WTA 500 de Ningbo vs Mirra Andreeva (6-0, 4-6, 6-4) y su título #8.Suzan Lamens campeona del WTA 250 de Osaka vs Kimberly Barrel (6-0, 6-4) y el 1er título de su carrera. Torneos esta semana en la ATP y la WTA.ATP 500 de Basilea ATP 500 de Vienna El retiro de Dominic Thiem. (Platica sobre el austriaco)WTA 500 de Tokio WTA 250 de GuangzhouNovak Djokovic se bajó del ATP Masters 1000 de París. Aryna Sabalenka ya es #1Top 10's Y mucho más ...Instagram: @TennisPiochasTwitter: @TennisPiochas Distribuido por Genuina Media
Yes, Rennae talks about the New York Liberty again, but it's the last week (for the next year, anyway, let's hope). We shout out the great Ningbo final moments, the weird Six Kings event, as well as tackle... you guessed it, reader questions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Catherine, David and Matt convene to discuss the latest results and news. Part 1: A review of last week's tour events, including a title for Daria Kasatkina in Ningbo and Tommy Paul in Stockholm.Part 2 (from 25 minutes): Six Kings Slam. Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and friends made millions in Saudi Arabia, but with precious little mention of the spectre of sportswashing. We discuss the subject in depth. Part 3 (from 52 minutes): News - Danielle Collins announces she's not retiring yet, Iga Swiatek hires Wim Fissette as her new coach, and the rankings quirk which means Aryna Sabalenka is World No1. again. Join The Barge!Become a Friend of the Tennis Podcast to also help us to produce the show year-round, receive exclusive access to bonus podcasts throughout 2024, including Tennis Re-Lived and Grand Slam review shows, read Hannah's Column and watch monthly live shows on YouTube. Sign up to receive our free Newsletter (daily at Slams and weekly the rest of the year, featuring Matt's Stat, mascot photos, predictions, and more)Follow us on Instagram (@thetennispodcast)Subscribe to our YouTube channel.Check out our ShopFollow us on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hugo Gaston brille à Anvers ! Le Français a décroché sa place en demi-finale grâce à une victoire de prestige contre Alex De Minaur, 9e mondial. C'est son premier top 10 en carrière. Cette victoire peut-elle être fondatrice pour la suite ? L'équipe revient sur cette performance tricolore sans oublier les autres résultats de la journée. Dans la 2e partie de l'émission l'équipe place aux pronostics à Anvers, Almaty, Stockholm et Ningbo. Les favoris tiendront-ils leur rang ?
Novak Djokovic et Rafael Nadal vont s'affronter dans un match pour la 3e place de l'exhibition saoudienne « Six Kings Slam ». Une dernière danse symbolique entre les deux légendes du tennis à un peu plus d'un mois de la retraite programmée de Nadal, qui interviendra lors des phases finales de la Coupe Davis à Malaga. Cette dernière danse est l'occasion pour Sans Filet de revenir sur les plus grands Djokovic vs Nadal de l'histoire. Dans la 2e partie de l'émission l'équipe fait le debrief des tournois en cours sans oublier les pronostics à Anvers, Almaty, Stockholm et Ningbo.
Nick Kyrgios a officiellement annoncé son retour sur le circuit ATP dans une émission australienne avec un premier match d'exhibition à Abu Dhabi en décembre avant de tenter sa chance à l'Open d'Australie en janvier 2025. L'Australien, ancien N°13 mondial, est-il capable de revenir et gagner un tournoi du Grand Chelem ? Dans la 2e partie de l'émission l'équipe fait le debrief des tournois en cours sans oublier les pronostics à Anvers, Almaty, Stockholm et Ningbo.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Send us a Text Message.Welcome to the Invent With Me Podcast!
On Episode 746 of WHAT THE TRUCK?!?, Dooner is talking to OOIDA's Jay Grimes about his organization's pushback against AI and autonomous trucks. OOIDA has urged DOT to develop AV standards that are based on documented research and testing data. We'll find out all about their concerns. How do hotshot loads work? We're getting a crash course in Hotshot Trucking 101 from Diligent Delivery Systems' Richard Sharp. Sharp also shares his top tips for peak and hurricane season preparedness. Need equipment, parking, warehouse space, talent or 3PL services? Sourcifi's Tim Perkins talks about the power of building an interconnected network of providers. Plus, Ningbo port explosion hits trans-Pacific trade; freight in the Inc. 5000; Mountain Dew wheel covers; delivering a load of tourists to bears; and more. Watch on YouTube Check out the WTT merch store Visit our sponsor Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On Episode 746 of WHAT THE TRUCK?!?, Dooner is talking to OOIDA's Jay Grimes about his organization's pushback against AI and autonomous trucks. OOIDA has urged DOT to develop AV standards that are based on documented research and testing data. We'll find out all about their concerns. How do hotshot loads work? We're getting a crash course in Hotshot Trucking 101 from Diligent Delivery Systems' Richard Sharp. Sharp also shares his top tips for peak and hurricane season preparedness. Need equipment, parking, warehouse space, talent or 3PL services? Sourcifi's Tim Perkins talks about the power of building an interconnected network of providers. Plus, Ningbo port explosion hits trans-Pacific trade; freight in the Inc. 5000; Mountain Dew wheel covers; delivering a load of tourists to bears; and more. Watch on YouTube Check out the WTT merch store Visit our sponsor Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On episode 744 of WHAT THE TRUCK?!? Dooner is talking about an explosion in Ningbo aboard Yang Ming's YM Mobility. Are lithium ion batteries to blame again? Korber's Rik Schrader talks about their big deal for MercuryGate. WeatherOptics' Scott Pecoriello looks at fallout from Hurricane Debby and looks ahead to how the rest of the storm season could impact freight. Verified Carrier's Andrey Drotenko talks about the $700 million-a-year cargo theft problem this industry faces and how Verified Carrier is fighting back. Plus, June sets import record; freight recession has drivers taking on strange side hustles; trucking in the ‘70s; and more. Watch on YouTube Check out the WTT merch store Visit our sponsor Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On episode 744 of WHAT THE TRUCK?!? Dooner is talking about an explosion in Ningbo aboard Yang Ming's YM Mobility. Are lithium ion batteries to blame again? Korber's Rik Schrader talks about their big deal for MercuryGate. WeatherOptics' Scott Pecoriello looks at fallout from Hurricane Debby and looks ahead to how the rest of the storm season could impact freight. Verified Carrier's Andrey Drotenko talks about the $700 million-a-year cargo theft problem this industry faces and how Verified Carrier is fighting back. Plus, June sets import record; freight recession has drivers taking on strange side hustles; trucking in the ‘70s; and more. Watch on YouTube Check out the WTT merch store Visit our sponsor Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode of The Radio Vagabond, my daughter and I visit four big cities in China: Hong Kong, Ningbo, Shanghai and Beijing. See pictures and read blog post here: www.theradiovagabond.com/037-china/
PRC: Still no way out of the real estate crater. Anne Stevenson-Yang, author of the upcoming Wild Ride: China's Short-Lived Experiment in Capitalism, @GordonGChang, Gatestone, Newsweek, The Hill https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/19/chinas-fiscal-stimulus-is-losing-its-effectiveness-sp-says.html 1920 Ningbo
#PRC: The windowless abandoned mansions of China. Anne Stevenson-Yang, author of the upcoming Wild Ride: China's Short-Lived Experiment in Capitalism, @GordonGChang, Gatestone, Newsweek, The Hill https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-property-foreclosures-surge-growth-095915227.html https://amp.scmp.com/business/article/3252970/chinas-home-prices-fall-slower-pace-beijing-steps-resuscitate-property-sector 1920 Ningbo
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
