Gang Chen, engineering professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT.edu]
Dear reader,
Mikaela Nhondo Erskog joined Eugene Puryear and Rania Khalek on their weekly The Freedom Side on BreakThrough News to discuss Africa-China trade politics in the light of this new US policy. Erskog and co-host Amadeus Musumali explore this topic in the latest episode of The Crane: An Africa China Podcast (listen in English on Spotify and Apple).
In his biweekly participation in the program Bom para Todos, Marco Fernandes talks to Talita Galli about how, for the first time, China has overtaken the US in the Fortune 500 companies’ revenues and in the quality of scientific papers published, as well as the latest on Taiwan. Watch it here (in Portuguese).
Tings Chak joined Brian Becker on “The Socialist Program to talk about the aftermath of the visits of Nancy Pelosi and a second US congressional delegation to Taiwan and the advances in China as it confronts a United States in decline (in English).
—Dongsheng editorial collective
Geopolitics
Gang Chen, a scientist who had been arrested in the US for alleged hidden connections to China, discovers the “world’s best semiconductor”
Chinese-born MIT professor led a team that discovered that cubic boron arsenide conducts heat 10 times better than silicon; despite being a naturalized US citizen, Chen was one of the victims of the US “China Initiative” that aimed to prosecute Chinese professors and scientists on suspicion of espionage, but dropped the charges for lack of evidence
Aiming to contain Chinese technological advances, Biden signs a CHIPS and Science Act into law, which will allocate US$52.7 billion to strengthen the US semiconductor industry
China is critical of the measure that prohibits subsidy recipients from expanding production to the country beyond 28nm chips and older tech; the US share of the sector has fallen from 37% in 1990 to 12% today, while China is expected to hold most of the global chip production capacity by 2030
National Politics
Another US congressional delegation visits Taiwan and Beijing sanctions Taiwanese linked to separatism
Local leader Tsai Ing-wen met with five Democratic representatives and one Republican following Nancy Pelosi’s visit; at the same time, the Chinese government bans separatists from entering Mainland China and their organizations from working or benefiting from their mainland connections
After thousands of customers stop paying mortgages on overdue housing projects, banks and state-owned companies start bailout to finish apartments
Central government directed interventions to stabilize the market and Zhengzhou City set up a fund (US$1.5 billion) to complete projects that give a return on investment and ensure people receive their homes; a new report revealed that 12.1% of China’s housing stock are unoccupied (50 million apartments)
Economy
To facilitate economic recovery, People’s Bank of China (PBOC) reduces key interest rate for the first time since January
After a year-on-year drop (-37%) in demand for new loans in July (US$100 billion), PBOC reduced one-year lending rate from 2.85% to 2.75% and injected US$59.3 billion into the financial system
People’s Bank of China Financial Statistics Report June 2022
After six-quarter sales slump, Huawei registers its first quarter of year-on-year revenue growth (+1.43%) reaching US$25.3 billion
First-half revenue still fell 5.9% year-on-year (US$44.7 billion), although the drop was smaller in relation to the previous semester; business diversification helped offset the impact of US sanctions against smartphones, with network equipment yielding US$20.9 billion (+4.24%)
Agriculture and Environment
Sinopec discovers 1.7 billion tonnes of oil reserves in Xinjiang, with the potential to meet around two years of domestic demand
The Tarim Basin, where the discovery took place, has abundant oil and natural gas reserves located at a depth of 6,000 to 10,000m, accounting for 83.2% and 63.9% of China’s total resources, respectively
Global investment in renewable energy hits a record US$226 billion in the first half of the year, with China accounting for 43% of the total
China doubled its spending on wind projects to US$58 billion, while US$41 billion went to large-scale solar projects, three-fold the budget the same period in 2021; the global energy crisis is stimulating demand for clean energy
People’s Life and Culture
China’s public libraries function as social spaces and safe havens but are still in short supply
China has 3,212 public libraries that provide book loans, reading rooms, free wifi, and training, and are used as a refuge from natural disasters or domestic violence; however, the population remains underserved with only one library for every 438,000 people and most concentrated in urbanized areas
New evidence of Japan’s bioweapons experiments in China during WWII revealed
Imperial Japanese Army Unit 516 conducted experiments on human beings during Japan’s invasion of China and provided poison gas to Unit 731, where at least 3,000 people experienced forced experimentation; more than 300,000 people were killed by Japan’s biological weapons throughout China
Sculpture at the Unit 731 sites in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province [Xinhua/Wang Kai]
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