Day trip Pak Nai 4-7-21
Poverty Alleviation: China’s Experience and Contribution
China not interested in UK CC meeting
3-31-21 Ministers from around 35 countries are due to participate in today’s summit on climate and development.
But while the US, EU, India and others are taking part, China is notable by its absence.
The UK says that China was invited to the event but is not participating.
Foreign investment in China + 81 % in 2020
China last year attracted 520.6 billion US dollars of foreign investment.
Iran Rules Out Any Negotiations With U.S. Unless Sanctions Lifted
4-4-21 “We will not talk directly or indirectly with the United States in Vienna,” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on April 4, denying reports that indirect negotiations would take place between the two countries.
“Iran’s policy in this regard is clear and simple: the United States must return to the Vienna nuclear agreement, fulfil the deal in accordance with the treaty, and lift sanctions against Iran,” said Araqchi, who heads the Iranian delegation.
Diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and Iran will take part in the EU-brokered talks in Vienna on April 6. The six countries have remained in the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which bound Iran to nuclear restrictions in return for relief from U.S. and international sanctions.
4-7-21 China’s representative at Vienna meeting says US should remove illicit sanctions against Iran, and Iran ‘should resume full compliance on this basis’.
Will US take the order? Will it be an “impass” or it has no other choice?
Saudi Aramco to prioritise energy supply to China for 50 years
3-21-21 China’s energy security will remain the highest priority for state-controlled Saudi Aramco for the next half century at least. Aramco’s ambitions in China go beyond shipping crude and products. The company is looking for new opportunities for further investments in “integrated downstream projects to help meet China’s needs for heavy transport and chemicals, as well as lubricants and non-metallic materials”.
Day hike Nam Wai – Pak Shui Wun + Clear Water Bay 4-2-21
Sinocratisation of America
Biden will make a $2 trillion accelerated investment, with a plan to deploy those resources over his first term, setting us on an irreversible course to meet the ambitious climate progress that science demands.
Biden will make far-reaching investments in:
- Infrastructure: Create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure – from roads and bridges to green spaces and water systems to electricity grids and universal broadband – to lay a new foundation for sustainable growth, compete in the global economy, withstand the impacts of climate change, and improve public health, including access to clean air and clean water.
- Auto Industry: Create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry, domestic auto supply chains, and auto infrastructure, from parts to materials to electric vehicle charging stations, positioning American auto workers and manufacturers to win the 21st century; and invest in U.S. auto workers to ensure their jobs are good jobs with a choice to join a union.
- Transit: Provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options through flexible federal investments with strong labor protections that create good, union jobs and meet the needs of these cities – ranging from light rail networks to improving existing transit and bus lines to installing infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists.
- Power Sector: Move ambitiously to generate clean, American-made electricity to achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035. This will enable us to meet the existential threat of climate change while creating millions of jobs with a choice to join a union.
- Buildings: Upgrade 4 million buildings and weatherize 2 million homes over 4 years, creating at least 1 million good-paying jobs with a choice to join a union; and also spur the building retrofit and efficient-appliance manufacturing supply chain by funding direct cash rebates and low-cost financing to upgrade and electrify home appliances and install more efficient windows, which will cut residential energy bills.
- Housing: Spur the construction of 1.5 million sustainable homes and housing units.
- Innovation: Drive dramatic cost reductions in critical clean energy technologies, including battery storage, negative emissions technologies, the next generation of building materials, renewable hydrogen, and advanced nuclear – and rapidly commercialize them, ensuring that those new technologies are made in America.
- Agriculture and Conservation: Create jobs in climate-smart agriculture, resilience, and conservation, including 250,000 jobs plugging abandoned oil and natural gas wells and reclaiming abandoned coal, hardrock, and uranium mines – providing good work with a choice to join or continue membership in a union in hard hit communities, including rural communities, reducing leakage of toxics, and preventing local environmental damage.
- Environmental Justice: Ensure that environmental justice is a key consideration in where, how, and with whom we build – creating good, union, middle-class jobs in communities left behind, righting wrongs in communities that bear the brunt of pollution, and lifting up the best ideas from across our great nation – rural, urban, and tribal.