The intelligence agency said many Dutch companies and institutions find it difficult to make a proper risk assessment of economic and scientific cooperation with China.
“The country often conceals that the Chinese government or the Chinese army may be involved in such cooperation in the background,” said the report. “The disadvantages of cooperation often only become apparent in the longer term.”
It also said that China targets Dutch high-tech companies and institutions through “corporate takeovers, academic cooperation, as well as illegitimate (digital) espionage, insiders, covert investments and illegal exports”.
As youth unemployment in China rises to a record high, college graduates are caught in a perfect storm — with some forced to take on low-paying jobs or settle for jobs below their skill levels.
Official data shows urban unemployment among the 16- – about four times the broader unemployment rate even as millions more college students are expected to graduate this year.
“This college bubble is finally bursting,” said Yao Lu, a professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York. “The expansion of college education in the late 1990s created this huge influx of college graduates, but there is a misalignment between demand and supply of high skilled workers. The economy hasn’t caught up.”
Political analysts see little chance of progress toward peace because neither side appears to be ready to stop fighting. But they say Xi’s government might be trying to deflect criticism of its friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and split European allies away from Washington.
Beijing released a proposed peace plan in February, but Ukraine’s allies largely dismissed it, insisting Putin’s forces must withdraw and face prosecution for war crimes.
其结果神奇地将您值得信赖的个人无线路由器变成一个功能齐全的代理，供ner-do-wells随心所欲地使用和滥用。那么，谁是注入这种恶意代码的幕后黑手呢？据Check Point Research的安全侦探称，这场特别活动可以追溯到他们称之为“Camaro Dragon”的中国国家赞助的团体。事实证明，这是高级持续威胁（APT），而不是某种盗版宝可梦。—阅读www.laptopmag.com/news/oh-look-youre-unwittingly-contributing-to-chinese-state-sponsored-cyber-warfare The result of which magically transforms your trusty personal wireless router into a fully functioning proxy for ner-do-wells to use and abuse as they please. So just who is behind the injection of this malicious code? According to the security sleuths at Check Point Research, this particular campaign can be traced back to the Chinese state-sponsored group they’ve labeled “Camaro Dragon.” Which, as it turns out is an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) and not some sort of bootleg Pokémon.
— Read on www.laptopmag.com/news/oh-look-youre-unwittingly-contributing-to-chinese-state-sponsored-cyber-warfare
中国是美国最大的芬太尼来源，其供应正在严重影响美国的年轻人。疾病控制和预防中心5月3日发布的数据显示，从2019年7月至12月到2021年7月至12月，涉及非法制造的芬太尼的过量死亡病例增长了182%。2021年，近7万名10-19岁的儿童死于芬太尼过量（有完整统计数据的最后一年），几乎是五年前的四倍。—在www.foxnews.com/opinion/china-coming-kids-these-dangerous-products上阅读 China is the United States’ largest source of fentanyl, and its supply is affecting America’s youth significantly. Data released on May 3 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrates that cases of overdose deaths involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl were up 182 percent from July-December 2019 to July-December 2021. Nearly 70,000 kids aged 10-19 died from fentanyl overdoses in 2021 (the last year for which complete statistics are available) – nearly four times the rate from five years ago.
— Read on www.foxnews.com/opinion/china-coming-kids-these-dangerous-products
中国芬太尼制造商是国营药品公司。
China fentanyl manufacturer is State-operated medicine company.
“We already have proof,” he said, adding that he would ask the Chinese government to help stop the shipments. US authorities say fentanyl is now the main driver of US drug overdose deaths. In March President López Obrador said he had written to Chinese President Xi Jinping requesting Chinese help in the anti-narcotics fight, after US politicians had urged him to do so. He told reporters on Friday that he would repeat that plea to Beijing: “In a very respectful manner, we are going to send this information to reiterate the request that they help us.”
we need to link stopping fentanyl to stopping cartels and stopping China. Mexico is the front line in ending the influx of fentanyl from China.
Tracking fentanyl’s deadly path from China to Mexico to ODs in America Like the opium trade of the past, fentanyl is manufactured in China and then trafficked through Mexico. It’s enriched China, empowered the cartels and destabilized Mexico. It’s also killed thousands of Mexicans and Americans for far too long.
Addressing it means disrupting the supply chain and the support network. The US-Colombia agreements offer a template that incentivizes Mexico as a full and equal partner in reversing fentanyl transmission while also justifying the use of American assets to reverse the fentanyl influx. We need to stop accepting failure and those who profit from it.
Both nations have the talent and interests to fix a set of problems that are solvable, self-evident and self-inflicted by both sides.
have imposed sanctions on Russia and sent military aid to Ukraine: the UK, US, Canada, Britain, Australia, South Korea, Japan and the EU — in other words, those countries that are directly under the US sphere of influence, which in many cases involves a significant US military presence.
Since the invasion, China has hugely increased its purchases of Russian oil, gas and coal, while exporting far more machinery, manufactured products and high-end electronics in the other direction; they have boosted their bilateral trade by more than 30%. The two countries have also committed to significant investment and infrastructure projects through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the world’s largest regional grouping in terms of geographic scope and population, which also includes India, Pakistan, Iran and all the major Central Asian republics.
Today, as Xi and Putin sit down to discuss the future of Ukraine, the implication of this is clear. China and Russia are not decoupling from the West; rather, the West is decoupling from the rest of the world.
Thai Authorities allege he used high-level Thai connections to operate a criminal ring that brought at least 4,000 Chinese nationals into Thailand to run spinoff businesses, including nightclubs where drugs were openly sold to Chinese customers. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and faces trial in the coming months.
The investigation opened a window into the world of the shadowy front companies used by Chinese nationals to establish illegal business empires in Thailand, as well as dubious visa services offered by Thai immigration police to people who then established “gray businesses” in the kingdom, according to the police.
As debt obligations mount, some local governments are pushing banks to extend maturities and cut interest rates, sources said. Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs) have 5.5 trillion yuan ($790 billion) worth of onshore bonds coming due this year, the highest since 2021, according to Fitch.
A sharp drop in income from mainstay land sales and fewer options for raising fresh funds have fuelled concerns about LGFVs’ ability to meet debt obligations and its impact on the broader banking sector and markets.
The head of ASML, the chip toolmaker that is Europe’s biggest tech company, said he was guarding against intellectual property theft more fiercely than “ever before”, as a geopolitical tussle forces China to bolster its homegrown semiconductor industry. 作为欧洲最大科技公司的芯片工具制造商 ASML 的负责人表示，他比“以往任何时候”都更加严厉地防范知识产权盗窃，因为地缘政治斗争迫使中国加强其本土半导体产业。
The Netherlands’ government on Wednesday said it plans new restrictions on exports of semiconductor technology to protect national security, joining the U.S. effort to curb chip exports to China. 荷兰政府周三表示，计划对半导体技术出口实施新的限制以保护国家安全，加入美国遏制对华芯片出口的行列。
Excluding 2020, when COVID-19 upended the global economy, last year’s economic growth rate was the lowest since 1976, the last year of Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution. Although China’s economy appears to be rebounding strongly from the pandemic — manufacturing activity in February, for example, smashed expectations, expanding at the fastest pace in more than a decade — Chinese officials have warned of risks ahead. While acknowledging China’s “vast potential and momentum for further growth,” Li pointed to the rise of “uncertainties in the external environment,” including high inflation, and “external attempts to suppress and contain China” — a thinly-veiled reference to the country’s heated geopolitical competition with the US. China’s economy faces serious long-term challenges domestically, too, including an enormous housing bubble and a shrinking working population due to a rock-bottom birth rate. Many economists believe that China’s high-growth era — characterised by decades of double-digit expansion each year — is now in the past.
The yuan had its worst year in 2022 since China unified market and official exchange rates in 1994, dropping nearly 8% as rising US interest rates diverged from falling Chinese ones, supporting dollar gains.
Now the prospect of Chinese tourists using foreign exchange for their trips abroad, fresh concerns that US interest rates might rise further, and geopolitical tensions keeping investment flows away from China are all weighing on the currency.
“It’s possible to see the yuan go past the 7-mark against the dollar in the near term given the escalating geopolitical tensions between China and the US,” said Tommy Wu, senior China economist at Commerzbank.
China will likely set one of the country’s lowest growth goals in decades at the annual National People’s Congress next week, experts told AFP, hit by long-running property woes, a sluggish global economy and geopolitical tensions.
Thousands of party delegates from across China will converge on Beijing for a rubber stamp conclave set to confirm key personnel appointments and make policy for the coming year.
Among the first declarations is expected to be a target for gross domestic product growth over the coming 12 months, announced by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang at Sunday’s opening ceremony.
Last year, the economy expanded just three percent, one of its weakest in decades on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns and a real estate crisis.
Many of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects are plagued with construction flaws, including a giant hydropower plant in Ecuador, adding more costs to a program criticized for leading countries deeper into debt
The Chinese-built Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower Project in Nosari, Pakistan, shown in 2017, has been shut down because officials said they detected cracks 中国于2017年在巴基斯坦努萨里兴建的尼勒姆-杰勒姆水电项目因官员称发现裂缝而被关闭
China’s infrastructure boom in recent decades has been dazzling yet costly in environmental, financial and social terms. In 2016, Oxford researchers concluded that “poorly managed infrastructure investments are a main explanation of surfacing economic and financial problems in China.” Those analysts concluded that “China’s infrastructure investment model is not one to follow for other countries but one to avoid.” 近几十年来，中国的基础设施繁荣令人眼花缭乱，但在环境、金融和社会方面却代价高昂。 2016年，牛津大学的研究人员得出结论说，”管理不善的基础设施投资是中国经济和金融问题出现的主要原因。 这些分析人士得出结论说:”中国的基础设施投资模式不是其他国家可以效仿的，而是应该避免的。”
https://lab.org.uk/the-amazon-be-dammed-ecuadors-china-connection/ A control panel inside the generation center of the CCS project. Photo by Max Nathanson
3 Gorges Dam | thousands of cracks found in China’s dam built in Ecuador 中国厄瓜多尔大坝发现数千处裂缝
https://youtu.be/w6cG2eoEZFg
Ecuadorean law enforcement officials say they are investigating whether Mr. Pólit and other officials were paid by the Chinese to overlook the problems. It was part of Mr. Pérez’s inquiry before his resignation, they say. Now, 7,648 cracks have developed in the dam’s machinery, according to the government, because of substandard steel and inadequate welding by Sinohydro. Sand and silt are also big concerns because they can damage vital equipment. On a recent visit, an engineer looked on nervously as readouts showed sand flowing into the dam. But workers say they’re sometimes confused because of shoddy translations. One sign in Chinese reads correctly: “Direct-Current (DC) Pumping Group.” 厄瓜多尔执法官员说，他们正在调查波利特和其他官员是否被中方付钱以忽略这些问题。 他们说，这是佩雷斯辞职前调查的一部分。根据政府的数据，目前大坝的机械有7648处出现裂缝，原因是钢材不合格，中水电的焊接不够。 沙子和淤泥也是人们关注的焦点，因为它们会损坏重要的设备。在最近的一次访问中，一位工程师紧张地注视着沙流入大坝的读数。 但工人们说，他们有时因为翻译不当而困惑不解。一个中文标记正确写着:”直流泵组”。
In 2011, Ecuador’s then-president Rafael Correa toured the Toachi Pilatón works. During the ten years of his government, the construction of eight hydroelectric plants was announced. (Image: Miguel Ángel Romero/Presidencia de la República)Ecuador’s Coca Codo Sinclair dam during construction. Photo by http://www.presidencia.gob.ec/ on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA
Ecuador’s power company CELEC has found new problems at its Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant that threaten water flow and electricity generation, the company’s chief executive said, the latest issue at the facility built by China’s Sinohydro Corp. The findings come after CELEC in May requested arbitration through the International Chamber of Commerce to settle a dispute over cracks in the 1,500-megawatt plant’s machinery that have prevented it from operating at full capacity since it was completed in 2016, after $2.2 billion in construction costs. During a shutdown of four of Coca Coda Sinclair’s eight turbines for planned maintenance, state-owned CELEC discovered missing bolts on some of its valves, CEO Gonzalo Uquillas said, adding that the problem could prevent valves from opening and closing to adequately regulate the flow of water. “Of the 96 bolts that secure the seals on these valves, some bolts are missing,” Uquillas said in an interview on July 16. “I don’t want to believe they weren’t installed, but they are missing.” 厄瓜多尔电力公司CELEC首席执行官说，该公司在可口可乐辛克莱水力发电厂发现了新的问题，这些问题威胁着水的流动和发电。今年5月，CELEC要求通过国际商会进行仲裁，以解决1500兆瓦电厂机器裂缝的纠纷，该工厂自2016年竣工以来一直无法满负荷运转，此前，该工厂耗资22亿美元。该公司首席执行官冈萨洛·乌奎利亚斯说，在可口可乐公司八台涡轮机中，有四台因计划维修而关闭时，国营的CELEC发现其阀门上缺少螺栓。 他补充说，这个问题可能妨碍阀门开闭，从而无法充分调节水流。Uquillas在7月16日的采访中说:”在这些阀门上固定密封件的96个螺栓中，有些螺栓不见了。” “我不想相信它们没有安装好，但是它们不见了。”
