Understanding China

China doesn’t do anything about pollution or global warming,so why should we?
Well, China do a lot more than what is commonly believed in the west. here is but one example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKpYH5SYUeo
Solar Farms cooled by water produce more power per sq.m. than similar arrangement on dry land, especially in hot climes.

That doesn’t mean it is not worth it to produce solar power in other way. Visit Solar City:

Which is part of Solar Valley:

Is it time for the west to learn from China again??

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They’ve done quite a bit of learning from the West of late. It wasn’t that long ago when their greatest ideas included iron smelting in the household and grain collectivization. Even their most enthusiastic proponent must admit their current success is due to an abandonment of traditional ways.

Cosco on the rise again having swallowed OOCL

Meanwhile there is a real interesting discussion going on touching on China, Craig-Bennett is deputy general manager of the UK subsidiary of Chinese government-owned Cosco but stressed to Climate Home that he wrote the article in a personal capacity and not as a representative of his employers.

We have all come a long way from learning iron smelting, and later how to produce paper and gunpowder. (Both invented in China)

If you think that China today is copying (stealing?) western inventions only, you have a bit of learning to do.
Although USA is still in the lead in number of International patent application, two Chinese firms top the list for corporations (2016):
http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2017/article_0002.html

China is also a leader in educating Engineers, with many of the best Engineering Universities in the world being Chinese:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/engineering

In fact China produce twice as many graduates per year than US:

And the gap is growing:

China has also made great strides in Adult Literacy:

While USA appears to have stood still on that aspect:

So you can believe in American Exceptionalism, Technical Superiority and America # 1 as much as you want, but it is not going to slow down China (or S.E.Asia and India)

You completely missed the point of the post you replied to.

Who mentioned America? That’s right, you…

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Maybe I should have spelled out my sarcasm. At one time China decided that to produce more iron they would decentralize iron smelting. Citizens would smelt in their homes and villages with the products collected and passed on to the State. Epic failure. To meet State quotas the people were melting their farming and cooking equipment into worthless slag. This resulted in misery and starvation. Iron production fell. Failure.

Grain collectivization was another idea. Grain could be gathered up to feed everyone. The excess could be sold to the ‘wasteful’ to discourage waste. Millions starved to death.

And on and on and on. It wasn’t until China became closet capitalists that they stopped starving their own to death.

OK I missed that one. Maybe I wasn’t prepared for that depth of knowledge of China’s recent history.
Yes, things did change with Deng Xiaoping’s opening up of the economy, but whether he learnt that from the west, or from the events during the Cultural Revolution, the decline of the Soviet Union, breakup of Yugoslavia and events in other places under Communist rule, is not clear.

By the late 1980’s it had become evident that Communism as it had been practised would not work. His experiment in Shenzhen was bearing fruits and the Tiananmen Square incident probably convinced him and others that it was time for change.

PS> My first visit to China was during the Great Leap Forward (Shanghai, 1960), when people were still starving to death, even in the big cities. I was on a Wilhelmsen ship and we were loading frozen pork for Poland (among other cargo) I watched the Stevedores cut off slivers of raw pork and eat it right there.

Now producing their own, reverse engineered dredge equipment - formerly they were big customers of the Dutch yards.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/7863544f33597a6333566d54/share_p.html

http://www.ecns.cn/visual/hd/2017/11-03/145690.shtml#nextpage

The importance of understanding languages when you travel abroad cannot be emphasized enough:


How is your Mandarin??

China is playing the long game in Shipping:


What is not addressed here is that China is also playing the same game in the Offshore Oil & Gas Industry, both by direct investment in exploration and production and in the various service functions, like drilling, logistics and seismic though ownership of rigs and vessels operating worldwide:

Man I wish I wasn’t the designated house cleaner for Thanksgiving holidays or I’d spend more time on the gibberish articles you posted here.

In the first link it says China set a quota for imports and exports to be on Chinese hulls. It talks about the “taps being turned on” to keep the yards busy. These sound like all the tropes you employ to criticize a certain North American nation.

In the second link they seem to be presenting survey results (even for a multi-year survey) as something meaningful when I have to question what good it is at all. If you work for a state run company (by a state with a certain human rights challenges) are you incentivized to say all is rosy in your corner of the world? How many surveys have you responded to and did you think they were scientific or just opinion gathering? The study purports to be about the O&G sector but then says only 35% of the respondents work directly for operators. True enough looking at the service and supplier sections does give a rounded picture but where does the money come from? The 60% of those respondents or the 35% of the operators? Do their responses add anything meaningful?

What does this even mean?

Chinese respondents have a higher focus on standardization than their
global counterparts. More than eight in ten (82%) of respondents say
that operators will push standardization globally, compared to 61%
globally, while 75% expect their organization to achieve greater
standardization of tools and processes compared to 59% of global
respondents.

This is saying something without saying anything. This whole article is superficial. I tried to download the “complimentary copy” of the report but it just loops back to the article.

This “report” is based on 921 respondents from Oct / Nov 2015. The article was published Jan 2016. Why do you post it now?

Why do you post these links here? Why don’t you read the whole report and then post something insightful preferably including facts that may inform us or lead to a discussion.

Have you thought of asking Jon for a job as a news aggregator for the gCaptain front page?

For something a little more relevant about China pick up the New York Times from 11 November 2017. page A9. Interesting comparison of China and other nations with regard to the Paris Accords.

Yes I know the US pulled out BUT this information shows the Paris goals (and they were just self established goals) that while other nations pledged to decrease their co2 output (by the way which pledged amounts do NOT get us below limits to ensure less than 2 deg C temp rise) China and India too pledged to increase their dumping of co2 perhaps only finally peaking by 2030. I would only ask that the next time you feel you must praise the Chinese for their environmental performance I suggest you consider these facts as well.

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I don’t know if you noticed, but China are not setting a QUOTA but they are aiming for a certain % of import and export that should be carried on Chinese owned ships. (They may be operated by others)
They intend to do this by actually having the ships to carry the goods at competitive rates, not by setting unrealistic targets, or by protective means.

You may have noticed that the author of that article in Splash 24/7 is a finance man with long experience from Shipping, incl. from working in USA.

Yes the second article is based on a 2015 survey carried out by DNV-GL and dated Jan./2016, but I believe still relevant.
The question of standardization is a pet subject in the industry, not just in Norway but in China and the US as well. All it says here is that Chinese oil industry professionals feel that they are ahead of the curve in standardization and have a positive mindset to innovation and R&D in the industry.

As to China’s adherence to the Paris Accords and their role in the future we may have different opinions.
I couldn’t find the NYT article you alluded to, but I found this one:

I was interpreting quota or goal differently than you are. I’ll grant you this sounds like a goal only but in a totalitarian country if the central control establishes a goal do you not think that same government will meet it by whatever means necessary? By implicit preferences, subsidies etc.

There is not enough facts in the article to convince me this is innocent capitalism in action. Perhaps if people write about it more (any) depth.

Likewise the DNV-GL report story. Since I can’t read the report I can only say my impression of the article is that it is very shallow to the point of not really meaning anything. It seems to me to be one of these pieces written per a template perhaps even by a computer by cut and paste numbers from a survey to lend it some heft by pseudo science of a survey. How about a report less than 2 years old that is not based on respondents answers but based on spending, budgets, rigs on hire, leases purchased etc. I just don’t get it.

As to the NYT article here it is.

And by the way I am not saying the US is pursuing a logical path in all this. Only saying China is not the exemplar of environmental role model here.

While US and Europe pledged to reduce their CO2 output, China pledged to increase it at least until 2030. The graphs in the article make it clear. When you view the projections vs pledged it does not pain a nice picture for keeping below the 2 deg C rise although it appears Europe is more on track to meet their goal. So maybe they are the role model not China.

I don’t know if the so called “Communist” China has the ability to steer the Shipping industry better than the US. A large part of the fleet is now privately owned and some are managed from Hong Kong, Singapore and other highly capitalistic places,

PS>I don’t know if you have been in China lately, but you’ll be hard put to find anything that looks like Communism any more.

I don’t think DNV-GL is in the business of publishing meaningless or shallow reports. They are also not weiting propaganda on behalf of China.

It is just a fact that China is expanding their presents in the Oil & Gas Industry worldwide, both as explorers, operator and in the service industries. They are now also present in the GoM through CNOOC/Nexen:
https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/morning_call/2015/11/exclusive-chinese-national-oil-company-expands.html

Their Engineering arm COOCL has a JV with Fluor:
http://www.cooecfluor.com/about-us

Their Drilling and Marine division COSL, with a modern fleet of rigs and offshore vessels, are also growing worldwide. COSL. Europe is situated in Stavanger, Norway and has 4 MODUs and 2 Accommodation Units operating in the North Sea.:
http://www.cosl.com.cn/col/col20611/
PS> They have an office in Houston. (Not sure if they have any activity in the GoM though)

China’s Petrochemical giant SINOPEC is also present in the US:
http://www.sinopecthc.com/

No wonder I couldn’t find it, I looked in NYT to 11.Nov. only.
Yes China is the largest polluter and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. They also have a population 4x the US.
They are also doing the most to reduce both the local pollution and the greenhouse gas emission:

Quality information. China is so vast in terms of land and people that it sees itself as an enclosed universe onto itself.

China’s “Belt & Road” initiative is a massive undertaking, involving not just Chinese investment and interests. It can change the landscape of transport in the entire Eurasian area and even Africa.
Here is an article from Fairplay that try to put it in perspective:

On a more local level; what can it do for Finland and Scandinavia even in the short run:

How will this influence USA, or how can USA influence the BRI?
It depends very much on the way Trumpism plays out and how long it last, but here is the thoughs on the subject from a well known think tank, the Atlantic Council:

Very interesting…

Over 65 million, actually.

I don’t know where you got that figure from. Most estimates are in the region of 40 mill. deaths in the great famine caused by Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”.

Here is an article of fairly recent date that quote an eye witness that has dedicated his life to the study of the famine:

No matter what is the actual number it was a major catastrophe, never to be repeated.