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Osama bin Laden dead: hi-tech secret may end up in China
There are growing fears that top-secret stealth technology taken from the helicopter that crashed during the raid on the home of Osama bin Laden could be smuggled into China and cause a diplomatic row.
The American troops used thermite grenades to destroy the helicopter’s main body but its rear section was left intact and taken away by the Pakistani military soon after the night raid on Monday. It is feared that if Islamabad refuses a request from Washington for the return of the tail section that the issue could turn into a diplomatic rift Read more…
China unveils rival to International Space Station
Less than a decade ago, it fired its first human being into orbit. Now, Beijing is working on a multi-capsule outpost in space. But what is the political message of the Tiangong ‘heavenly palace’?
Visitors to the Airshow China exhibition look at a model of the Tiangong-1 space station. Photograph: Ranwen/Imaginechina
China laid out plans for its future in space yesterday, unveiling details of an ambitious new space station to be built in orbit within a decade.
The project, which one NASA adviser describes as a “potent political symbol”, is the latest phase in China’s rapidly developing space programme. It is less than a decade since China put a human into orbit for the first time, and three years since its first spacewalk.
The space station will weigh around 60 tonnes and consist of a core module with two laboratory units for experiments, according to the state news agency, Xinhua.
Officials have asked the public to suggest names and symbols for the unit and for a cargo spacecraft that will serve it.
Professor Jiang Guohua, from the China Astronaut Research and Training Centre, said the facility would be designed to Read more…
Chinese Know Real Value
The International Monetary Fund reported without fanfare recently its projection that the candidate who wins the 2012 U.S. presidential election will be the last U.S. President to lead the world’s richest super power.
The IMF prediction is based on its calculation that within the next five years China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.
The IMF forecast differs from that of most traditional forecasts, which put the date China’s economy outstrips the U.S. at least a decade or two into the future. However, those traditional forecasters are looking at value as calculated in currency—and as we at WealthCycles.com have reiterated many times, currency lies.
US, China to hold economy meeting in May
WASHINGTON — Top officials from the United States and China will meet in Washington early next month, the Treasury Department said Monday, as tensions between the two economic superpowers simmer.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will host Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo, amid continued tensions over debt, exports and the value of China’s currency.
The Treasury Department has delayed the publication of a report that could lead to sanctions against Beijing until after the meeting, despite US lawmakers complaining that China is still manipulating its currency for trade advantage.
The semi-annual report, which was due on April 15, has become a focal point for critics who accuse Beijing of unfairly keeping the yuan weak against the dollar to boost Chinese exports.
The US government said it would wait until a meeting of the Group of 20 finance chiefs, the IMF’s annual spring Read more…
IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end: China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
The Obama deficit tour
The Wall Street Journal editorial page’s Steve Moore critiques the president’s speeches attacking Republican budget plans.
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you Read more…
U.S. Worried by Potential Chinese CW Tech Sales to Iran
A leaked diplomatic cable indicates that the U.S. State Department believed in 2009 that a Chinese firm was providing Iran with equipment that could be used in producing chemical weapons agents, Haaretz reported on Thursday (see GSN, Feb. 3).
“We have new information indicating that Zibo Chemet transferred technology for the production of glass-lined reactor equipment to Iranian customers, significantly enhancing Iran’s ability to produce indigenously chemical equipment suitable for a chemical warfare program,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in a message to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
The Obama administration’s top diplomat requested that the embassy inform the Chinese government of the situation and press Beijing to put an end to the exports, according to the July 24, 2009, dispatch obtained by the transparency group WikiLeaks.
Zibo Chemet is suspected of providing sensitive technology to Iran, North Korea and Syria, and was sanctioned by Washington in 2007, according to the cable. Beijing subsequently took unspecified “limited punitive action” against the firm, it states.
Nonetheless, Zibo Chemet “recently transferred Australia Group-controlled technology to manufacture glass-lined chemical reactor vessels to the Iranian entity Shimi Azarjaam. This glass-lining plant is located in Shokoohieh Industrial Park, Qum,” Clinton stated.
Such reactor vessels are produced to withstand chemicals they hold, which can include precursors for nerve agents, according to Haaretz.
China is not a member of the Australia Group, a multinational organization that seeks to prevent exports of materials intended for use in biological or chemical weapons programs.
The United States and other nations have accused Tehran of developing chemical-warfare capabilities. Iran, whose troops and citizens were subjected to chemical weapons attacks during the nation’s 1980s war with Iraq, denies operating such a program (Yossi Melman, Haaretz, April 21).
Oil Crisis Just Got Real: Sinopec (Read China) Cuts Off Oil Exports
As if a dollar in freefall was not enough, surging oil is about to hit the turbo boost, decimating what is left of the US (and global) consumer. Xinhua, via Energy Daily, brings this stunner: ” Chinese oil giant Sinopec has stopped exporting oil products to maintain domestic supplies amid disruption concerns caused by Middle East unrest and Japan’s earthquake, a report said Wednesday. The state-run Xinhua news agency did not say how long the suspension would last but it reported that the firm had said it also would take steps to step up output “to maintain domestic market supplies of refined oil products”. Oh but don’t worry, those good Saudi folks are seeing a massive drop in demand… for their Kool aid perhaps. “Sinopec would ensure supplies met the “basic needs” of the southern Chinese special regions of Hong Kong and Macao, but they also should expect an unspecified drop in supply, Xinhua quoted an unnamed company official as saying.” Now… does anyone remember the 1970s? Read more…
Pictures of China’s new submarines, tanks, stealth planes and railgun development
Here is a picture that compares the Chinese J20, the US F22 and the Russian T50 stealth fighter planes from the side and from the top
PBOC’s Zhou Urges Cutting China’s $3 Trillion of Foreign-Exchange Reserves
Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
China needs to reduce its foreign- exchange reserves as they exceed the level the nation requires, central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said.
The management and diversification of the holdings, which topped $3 trillion at the end of March, should be improved, Zhou said after a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing late yesterday. The rapid accumulation is putting pressure on the sterilization operations of the People’s Bank of China, he said.
The nation’s foreign-exchange reserves climbed $197 billion in the first quarter, reflecting global imbalances that Group of 20 finance ministers agreed last week to address through deeper scrutiny of their economic policies. China’s surging holdings are fueling inflation that accelerated last month to the highest in 32 months, prompting the government to boost banks’ reserve requirements this week for the fourth time this year.
“Foreign-exchange reserves have exceeded the reasonable levels that we actually need,” Zhou said. “The rapid increase in reserves may have led to excessive liquidity and has exerted significant sterilization pressure. If the government doesn’t strike the right balance with its policies, the build-up could cause big risks,” he said, without elaborating.
The world’s second-biggest economy grew 9.7 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, faster than economists had forecast, and consumer prices climbed Read more…
BRICS demand global monetary shake-up, greater influence
(L-R) India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev, China's President Hu Jintao, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff and South African President Jacob Zuma attend a joint news conference at the BRICS Leaders Meeting in Sanya, Hainan province April 14, 2011. The development banks of the five BRICS nations agreed in principle on Thursday to establish mutual credit lines denominated in their local currencies, not in dollars. REUTERS/How Hwee Young/Pool
SANYA, China (Reuters) – The BRICS group of emerging-market powers kept up the pressure on Thursday for a revamped global monetary system that relies less on the dollar and for a louder voice in international financial institutions.
The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa also called for stronger regulation of commodity derivatives to dampen excessive volatility in food and energy prices, which they said posed new risks for the recovery of the world economy.
Meeting on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, they said the recent financial crisis had exposed the inadequacies of the current monetary order, which has the dollar as its linchpin.
What was needed, they said in a statement, was “a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty” — thinly veiled criticism of what the BRICS see as Washington’s neglect of its global monetary responsibilities.
The BRICS are worried that America’s large trade and budget deficits will eventually debase the dollar. They also begrudge the financial and political privileges that come with being the leading reserve currency.
“The world economy is undergoing profound and complex changes,” Chinese President Hu Jintao said. “The era demands that the BRICS countries strengthen dialogue and cooperation.”
In another dig at the dollar, the development banks of the five BRICS nations agreed to establish mutual credit lines denominated in their local currencies, not the U.S. currency.
The head of China Development Bank (CDB), Chen Yuan, said he was prepared to lend up to 10 billion yuan to fellow BRICS, and his Russian counterpart said he was looking to borrow the yuan equivalent of at least $500 million via CDB.
“We think this will undoubtedly broaden the opportunities for Russian companies to diversify their loans,” Vladimir Dmitriev, the chairman of VEB, Read more…
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