You Don't Get It Right the First Time: China's Carriers

If there are any long-term readers out there, you'll recognize the title as one of my rules from early on.

Robert Farley has an interesting take on the new Chinese carrier.  (Full disclosure: I was a long timer naval war addict.  Ballantine paperbacks had a series of WWII books back in the 1950's.

Chinese Exchange Rate

 From Feb 2015 economist:

CHINESE officials tired of defending their exchange-rate policy can at least appreciate the irony in the latest charges levelled against them. For years foreigners [including Donald Trump in the debate on Monday] accused them of keeping the yuan artificially weak to boost exports. Now, domestic critics say, they are doing just the opposite: keeping the currency artificially strong and, in the process, wounding the economy. Some predict China will soon change course and engineer a devaluation. But just as the Chinese authorities did not resort to a big one-off appreciation when the yuan seemed too weak, they are unlikely to embark on a dramatic devaluation now that it is looking strong

China's Rural Areas and America's

FiveThirtyEight  has a post on Monroeville, AL, which has changed since the 1930's.   That reminded me of this NYTimes piece on China's rural areas.  President Xi visited a rural town:

The bucolic scenes, shown on Chinese state television, cast Mr. Xi as a paternal leader in the footsteps of Mao, at home with the rustic virtues that once made this mountainous region of southeast China a birthplace of the Communist Party’s rural revolution.

But those images conflict with contemporary reality here. Within days, this struggling community of 250 souls will be nearly empty.

Like an increasing number of villages across China, most of its people have left to find work or attend school elsewhere, returning to their ancestral home only for the New Year holidays. The rest of the year, only 50 or so people live here, most of them elderly, usually fending for themselves.

 My point?  China's social evolution is similar to the US one, except much faster.  In our case, the rural areas emptied out over decades; in theirs, just years.  (

Globalization--LED Lamps

Ordered two LED lamps from Amazon along with some other things.  Specified free delivery as we weren't in any hurry for any of the items.  All but the lamps have arrived so I just checked Amazon to see where they were.  They're in transit from China with a 3-5 week travel time.  That amazes me, just seeing globalization and automation working in practice.  (Why it's more amazing to see an order delivered directly from China than the same order delivered from a warehouse in the US which originally came from China, I don't know.)

Maintenance May Be China's Downfall Future Nightmare

Although China's economy has slowed a bit, it's still growing, after 35 years of impressive growth.  But it strikes me that China will face a big problem down the road.  Because their growth has been so rapid, much of their infrastructure is roughly the same age. That means it will be wearing out about the same time, requiring a lot of repairs or replacement.  China has profited by the ability to modernize their agriculture, freeing/driving workers to the cities.  Meanwhile the 1-child policy has meant fewer children to support, so the ratio of workers to dependents has been high, whereas in the future it will be low.

Rolling in His Grave: Mao Tse-tung

That's the only conclusion I can draw from this New Yorker piece, on a butler training school in Red China, of all places.

An excerpt:

Among China’s burgeoning population of new millionaires (their ranks have tripled since 2012, to more than 3.6 million) there is a peculiar appetite for the fusty trappings of European nobility. Chinese real-estate developments with names like Majesty Manor and Top Aristocrat package themselves as enclaves of Old World opulence, their properties complete with moats, replicas of Buckingham Palace gates, and mansions modelled after Versailles. Rolls Royce has begun offering Chinese customers chauffeur training with purchases from its seven-figure Phantom line, and Christie’s has opened a specialized agency to help Chinese buyers purchase wine estates abroad. For Chinese élites who are eager to adopt lifestyles commensurate with their massive wealth, such status symbols lend a recognizable veneer of Western-style aristocracy. (Many in the industry attribute the trend to the immense popularity of “Downton Abbey,” which has given millions of Chinese viewers a window into Edwardian upstairs-downstairs living.)

Who knew they liked Downton Abbey?

GMO Seeds and the Chinese Spies (?)

New Republic has a piece on Chinese espionage against US intellectual property, specifically genetically modified seeds.

Think about that: The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI now contend, in effect, that the theft of genetically modified corn technology is as credible a threat to national security as the spread to nation-states of the technology necessary to deliver and detonate nuclear warheads.

It's a long piece, rehearsing the development of hybrid corn and then GMOs, and touching on farm policy from the New Deal through Earl Butz.  Inevitably such a summary must be incomplete and contain errors, but I'm not up to nitpicking today. 

Food Movement and China

One advantage of community-supported agriculture is the idea that the customer knows the source of her food.  But this Times article on China shows there's another way for the customer to know the history of her food, by using technology.  Because China has a bigger problem with adulterated food (ie. the communist state is weaker in regulation than our free enterprise government is), there's a greater incentive to come up with innovative solutions to the problem--at least that's my take on the situation.

Mark Bittman, Farmers and Markets

The NYTimes is running a Food Conference, which means Mark Bittman is again writing on food.

He gets one thing half right:

The difference between you and the hungry is not production levels; it’s money. There are no hungry people with money; there isn’t a shortage of food, nor is there a distribution problem. There is an I-don’t-have-the-land-and-resources-to-produce-my-own-food, nor-can-I-afford-to-buy-food problem.

I agree it's a poverty problem, but he goes on to say that poverty often comes from people displacing traditional farmers. The rest is a mish-mash, mostly attacking "industrial model of food production".

IMHO China is simply the latest and most dramatic example of the truth.  Allow private possession of land and provide incentives to increase production  by having a market for agricultural products and to increase productivity by using modern "industrial" methods.  That correlates with agricultural labor moving to cities for higher wages/better living conditions, allowing greater returns to the farmers who remain.  In other words, the city workers get money and the non-traditional farmers get money; money means markets.  The traditional agriculture model has failed to provide people what they want, as shown by what they'll pay for and what they'll move for.

Now having said all that by definition the market doesn't handle bad externalities, it doesn't enforce standards (witness Chinese baby formula) and the structure of the market with multiple producers with no pricing power and few buyers with much power leads to boom and bust. So there's many problems with industrial agriculture, but producing enough food to feed the world is not one of them.

Chicoms Were Also Conspiracy Theorists

Apparently the Chinese thought the Vietnamese willingness to meet for peace talks led to the assassination of MLK:

From a Lawyer, Guns and Money post:

And this leads Communist leaders to say hurtful things to one another. The fascinating moving parts:

1. The apparent belief of Zhou Enlai that the MLK assassination was orchestrated by the U.S. government.
2. The notion that accepting the idea of peace talks gave the U.S. government the leeway it needed to carry out the assassination.
3. The notion that, even if this were true, Le Duan would care enough about MLK one way or the other to change policy.

Crop Insurance Abroad

A piece on crop insurance in other countries.  Apparently it's being adopted more and more.  In China:

"China’s comprehensive financial support for its farming sector was $156 billion for the year 2011, which included insurance premiums, disease and fire prevention resources and insurance licenses.  Insurance covers crops and livestock and is typically a combination of compensation offered by the central government, the provincial governments and even some city governments. "

Personally I'd question the dollar figure--it might well be the result of a purchasing power conversion.  However, what's the chances of our getting into an "arms race" on the farm front with the Chinese--i.e., "how can our poor farmers compete when our government only provides X dollars in support when the Chinese provides so much more?"  :-)

Segregation in All Things

It so happens that prostitutes were segregated in San Francisco.  The first map in this interesting post shows the distribution of Chinese and white houses of prostitution, as well as joss houses.

When China Was a Role Model

From the report of the Commissioner of Patents in 1843:

The wonderful skill of the Chinese in improving their soil not so good as most parts of our own naturally by which they are enabled as it is now well ascertained to support a population of more than 300,000,000 throughout their vast empire is owing to their wisdom and care in adapting their manures and modes of cultivation to the peculiarities required by the soil As they separate its enriching elements rejecting the parts that can have no effect they are not constantly exposed to a new growth of weeds and the seeds of which are sown among the loads of compost had other manures carried out into the field Hence a weed is a rare thing in their fields and as soon as it makes its appearance is easily seen and eradicated The time is not far distant when the ammonias silicate of potash phosphates &c which render a particular manure valuable will be prepared and used in the form of salts or in a liquid form sprinkled over the soil instead of whole loads being carted out from the barn yard and compost heap for this purpose

The Northern Sea Route and Global Warming

This article from Iceland reports the arrival of the Chinese icebreaker Xuelong which took the "Northern Sea Route" from China--i.e. going through the Arctic Ocean across the top of Russia.

Searching on "Northern Sea Route" gets this report: "Cargo shipping along the Northern Sea Route is expected to double this year. Nordic Bulk Carriers plan to transport 6-8 shipments of ore from Murmansk to China."

The Life of Chinese Workers

Via Ann Althouse, a series of photos of the walled city of Kowloon,

Helen Keller in China

My impression is that Helen Keller no longer plays the big role in our culture she used to.  But according to James Fallows, she's a big figure in China, being taught in the third grade.

A (Corn) Straw in the Wind

Des Moines Register reports China bought 50,000 tons of corn from Ukraine.  With corn prices high, we're going to bring a lot of land into the production picture; all it takes is the right land, the right climate, the right knowledge and the right infrastructure.  Over time the result will be a glut of corn on the market and depressed prices.  That's my geezer talking.

Smoking and Sex

I owe a hattip to Suzy Khimm at Ezra Klein's blog; here's a post on the economist with maps showing worldwide cigarette consumption, by sex.

About 800m men smoke cigarettes, compared with fewer than 200m women. More than 80% of these male smokers are in low- and middle-income countries. The problem is particularly acute in China, where 50% of men smoke (compared with just 2% of women), consuming one-third of the world's cigarettes in the process.

 I can remember when the local radical (she was a Democrat and she wore slacks) was also a smoker, a scandal for a woman in that small community. She was one of my mother's best friends, and suffered from emphysema in her latter years.

I wonder if the dynamics leading to male smoking in China are the same as in the U.S.

Being Flexible: Chinese Versus US Versions

The NY Times had a long article on why Apple manufactures in China, focusing on Steve Jobs demand for the iPhone to have a glass screen rather than plastic.

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Meanwhile, Google Operating System has a post on how the Gmail logo was designed, including this quote from a book:

Dennis Hwang spent the day before the launch coming up with ideas for a logo and trying to make it work in conjunction with the clown-colored Google brand. (...) Even after four years at Google, I found it astounding that one twenty-something guy was sitting alone at his desk, sipping tea and developing the main branding element for a product to be used by millions of people - the night before it was scheduled to launch.

This fits our long-time image: China excels in throwing masses at a project; America is the home of the individual doer.

"Shovel Ready" Projects

Last week's  NYTimes had a piece on Vermont's efforts to recover from the damages wrought by Irene.  Apparently they're almost done replacing and repairing the bridges, roads, etc. which were damaged, making repairs much faster and much cheaper than the governor had originally thought possible..

A couple other data points: there was the replacement of the Minneapolis bridge over the Mississippi and the repair in California of earthquake damage, IIRC, to a bridge.  In all three cases, construction went faster than people thought possible.

Compare this with Obama's complaint that the "shovel-ready" projects funded by his stimulus turned out not to be so shovel ready after all and the recurrent comparisons of the speed with which China is doing big construction jobs with our slowness.

Now the key to the fast work in VT, CA, MN was it was reconstructing something, not doing it for the first time, and the "something" was critical infrastructure. So on the one hand you had a vocal constituency for fast action; all the people whose commutes were disrupted or travel prevented by the lack of a workable bridge or highway would make their voices heard. I well remember from my working days how upset I could get if my commute was screwed up.

On the other hand, there's really no opposing force: the taxpayers recognize that damage due to natural disasters has to be repaired.  And there's no NIMY's at work--the neighbors, if any and there may not be many, have already been living with the bridge or highway and have adjusted their lives to it.  Anyone who was really hurt by the initial building has likely moved away, so the calculation of utility in this case shows everyone wins and no one loses.

Unfortunately this logic doesn't work for most projects.  Yes, there are a few straight reconstructions, but in most cases projects involve changes, replacing an old 2-lane bridge with a 4-lane, widening and straightening a highway, etc. Change means there's likely NIMBY's, who must be assuaged by a consultation and review process.  That's what democracy requires, unlike the command state of China.