Zhou Shen
Documentaries on Wuhan battling Covid-19
Yuen Long Park 9-16-20
Very few birds sighted. Waiting for the migration next month.
Region & Diaspora Serbia Opens Huawei Tech Center Days after Pledging to Ban ‘Untrusted Vendors’
China’s Huawei has opened its Innovations and Development Center in Belgrade on Monday.
The center was opened in the presence of Prime Minister Ana Brnabic and the Chinese ambassador to Belgrade. President Aleksandar Vucic, who signed the pledge in the Oval Office, was not present.
The center will focus on accelerating Serbia’s digital transformation, and help the economy grow.
Brnabic praised the collaboration with Huawei, and denied it violates Serbia’s pledge, made in Washington, not to buy 5G network equipment from unreliable vendors. She added that projects with Huawei will be more visible within a year in the country.
Serbia has projects worth hundreds of millions with Huawei. They include the 5G network, artificial intelligence, digitalization of education and smart cities, Brnabic said.
One of the items in pledges signed by Serbia and Kosovo was the following:
“Both parties will prohibit the use of 5G equipment supplied by untrusted vendors in their mobile communication networks. Where such equipment is already present, both parties commit to removal and other mediation efforts in a timely fashion.”
U.S. Violated Trade Rules With Tariffs on China, WTO Says
A panel of three WTO trade experts on Tuesday said the U.S. broke global regulations when it imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018. Washington has imposed levies on $400 billion in Chinese exports.
While the ruling bolsters Beijing’s claims, Washington can effectively veto the decision by lodging an appeal at any point in the next 60 days. That’s because the Trump administration has already paralyzed the WTO’s appellate body.
“Although the panel did not dispute the extensive evidence submitted by the United States of intellectual property theft by China, its decision shows that the WTO provides no remedy for such misconduct,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement.
Mission Accomplished but in danger of losing to the No.2
China launches second carrier rocket at sea
Compared to the first launch, developers have further optimized and streamlined its sea launch capabilities by deploying a new launch vessel and putting a new coastal spaceport into operation, laying a solid foundation for more frequent and regular sea missions in the future.
The launch mission from sea successfully sent a group of nine commercial remote sensing satellites, all belonging to the Jilin-1 03 family, into the 535-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).
Assam joke
Oracle has won a deal
Oracle has reportedly won a deal to manage TikTok’s US cloud operations. Oracle had been rumored to be part of the bidding process to acquire TikTok, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has been selected as a “trusted tech partner” instead. This is different from an outright sale, and appears to suggest Oracle will be helping run TikTok’s US operations with its own cloud technologies.
If Trump agrees to this, Tik Tok is poised to explode much bigger and it will open the door to more Chinese companies operating in the West. My guess is “not likely”.
- Hawley calls for US to reject Oracle’s TikTok deal. The deal is currently awaiting a recommendation from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but it has received praise from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who chairs the committee. In an open letter to Mnuchin, Hawley calls on the secretary to take a more skeptical look at the proposal.
- Rubio has sent a letter to the Trump Administration urging it to reject the proposed Oracle-TikTok deal, which would leave TikTok as an independent, US-based company, because ByteDance, TikTok’s parent, will retain a majority stake.
- Ted Cruz has joined Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley and others in opposing the deal, penning his own letter claiming that any deal that doesn’t 100% address national security concerns should be rejected.
Chinese bulbul (Pycnonotus sinensis) Yuen Long
Chinese bulbul (Pycnonotus sinensis) 白头鹎 9-14-20 Yuen Long