China accused Canada of being an “accomplice” in a US push to bring down Huawei and other Chinese tech giants on Wednesday, after a Canadian court sided against key Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in an extradition battle. Judge Heather Holmes ruled that the fraud charges, not sanctions, were the key issue. Holmes also noted that, while Canada did not have economic sanctions against Iran when Meng was first detained, the US measures “were not fundamentally contrary to Canadian values.” What a “stunning” and “beyond imagination” argument! So Canada has made the decision to side with US in this new World War.
China’s 15-ton reusable liquid oxygen-methane engine JD-1 completed a key secondary start test on Wednesday. The completion of the test makes JD-1 the first engine of its kind to achieve a restart function and marks a key breakthrough in vertical landing rocket technology, according to a reply sent by the Beijing-based engine developer i-Space to the Global Times on Thursday. The vertical landing technology has high technical requirements for the rocket’s power system. A core technology allows for the second start of the engine, the engine’s ability to start and work normally in high altitude after its first normal shutdown. “The reusable rocket has a high demand on its engine, which has to kick off twice during the take-off and landing processes. The test is of huge significance to the development of reusable rockets,” “It is likely China will be the second country to acquire reusable launch technology after the US,” The engine is powered with liquid oxygen-methane, a low-cost and clean fuel, and is designed to be used up to 30 times, which can save more than 70 percent in rocket manufacturing costs, according to the developer. The engine will be assembled onboard the reusable liquid oxygen-methane carrier rocket Hyperbola-2, said a power system engineer with i-Space, noting that the test laid a solid foundation for the launch of the rocket. The rocket, with a take-off weight of 90 tons, is capable of sending 1.9-ton payloads into low-Earth orbit and is expected to be launched for the first time in 2021. The next technological breakthrough will be in precise guidance and control technology, and the selection and planning of landing sites.
A few days ago, a black man was kneeled by white U.S. police officers for more than 7 minutes and eventually died. The video caused a huge uproar, a local outbreak of mass protests. Protests escalated on Wednesday night (27th) as people in Minneapolis rushed into stores to loot goods and set them on fire, the protest also led to a local shooting that killed one person. The Minneapolis police chief confirmed late on the 27th that one person had been shot and killed and another detained at the time of the protest. Reports say the deceased participated in protests that night in the city and is suspected of robbing the store, while the gunman was the owner of the shop that was robbed. This claim has not been confirmed. The protests have now taken a “dramatic” turn. Multiple reports indicate that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has reached out to Governor Tim Walz for help in deploying a National Guard unit in the city.
“There are people who just want to live and are killed in cold blood, and it is unacceptable that the police are constantly brutalizing black people in this country,” said one member of the public who participated in the protest. Governor Waltz issued an appeal on the 27th for people to socially isolate and protest peacefully, while calling on police to exercise restraint during the protest.
As the President’s National Security Strategy says, it is time the United States “rethink the failed policies of the past two decades – policies based on the assumption that engagement with rivals and their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners.” The report illustrates how the policies and actions of the Chinese Communist Party have compelled the United States to adopt a competitive strategy, guided by a return to principled realism. Too late.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1264965252866641920 Amy’s dog has more rights than human. 5-26-20 She does not look like a racist but her behavior is, what a closet racist is normally. There are thousands of them, walk your street, say hi to you, but when the time is right, they reveal themselves.
China may accelerate the rollout of its state-run digital currency to counter potential US threats to Chinese financial institutions and the yuan’s international settlement, while facilitating the implementation and management of large-scale post-COVID-19 stimulus, said an industry insider.
“Although the US hasn’t put Chinese financial firms and institutions onto its Entity List, the US may still pose widespread threats to Chinese institutions and impact the yuan’s standing in international settlement. In this regard, China’s state-run digital currency may be rolled out sooner than expected to counter a possible US block, Cao Yin, a Beijing-based blockchain industry insider, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Yi Gang, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBC), said that internal pilot tests of the central bank’s digital currency are being carried out in four cities including Shenzhen in South China’s Guangdong Province and the Xiongan New Area, and will be carried out in scenarios for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, according to an article posted on the bank’s website on Tuesday.
“These tests are just routine work for the research and development (R&D) of the digital currency. No schedule for an official launch has been revealed, Yi said.
Any R&D progress of China’s state-run digital currency is widely reported, as the digital economy is increasingly becoming a momentum for global growth, especially amid the pandemic which forces social distancing.
To aid economic recovery, China aims to step up its fiscal policy by raising the deficit-to-GDP ratio to over 3.6 percent and further cut taxes and fees paid by corporations by 2.5 trillion yuan ($353 billion) in 2020. But concerns persist that numerous grassroots companies will not fully enjoy the favorable policy.
Cao said that the tracing characteristics of the blockchain-backed digital currency can help money flow into the real economy and toward firms in need.
The R&D and application of a fiat digital currency will efficiently meet the public’s needs for the currency so as to promote payment convenience and safety in retail, which will help boost the development of China’s digital economy, Yi said.
The PBC began R&D for a fiat digital currency relatively early. A special team was established in 2014 to carry out research on its framework, key technologies and international experience. At the end of 2017, the bank organized for some commercial banks and institutions to jointly conduct the R&D of China’s digital currency/electronic payment (DC/EP).
China imported 5.16 million tons of crude oil from Saudi Arabia in April, touching a record low from 2019 May. This is puzzling, with the low price, one would think China would import a lot of crude. What is happening? Perhaps this is one of the reasons? 100 million tons of oil reserves were detected in CNOOC-owned Kenli 6-1 oilfield. It is the first 100 million-ton oilfield in Bohai Bay area, guaranteeing China’s energy security and boosting the economy of regions around the sea.
Research and development for the first batch of key equipment for the world’s most powerful electron collider, the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), in China, has made solid progress. Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who is also a deputy to the National People’s Congress, made the comments. The overall development of the CEPC project is moving forward smoothly, with some of the first batch of equipment reaching design standards.
Klystron is among the first batch of key equipment for the super-sized collider, which scored a 60 percent efficiency in the prototype test earlier this year, reaching world advanced levels, up from below 50 percent, according to Wang. Wang’s team aims to produce an even better version of the klystron with 80 percent efficiency this year. The location for the CEPC has yet to be determined, Wang noted.
The CEPC project will reportedly cost 35 billion yuan ($5.05 billion) and will have a circumference of 100 kilometers, with center-mass energy of up to 240 giga electron-volts, both setting a world record. Chinese scientists are eyeing the completion for CEPC construction by 2030.
The conceptual design for the CEPC passed international inspections in September 2019. Scientists from the US, Europe and Japan have participated in designing the project, and will work on the building process and conduct research with the collider.
The Large Hadron Collider, the Swiss project near Geneva, is currently the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider and reportedly the largest machine in the world. In a bid to maximize the project’s service life, scientists are mulling upgrading the electron positron collider in around 2040 into a proton collider, Wang noted. By then, the center-mass energy for the CEPC will have reached about 100 tera electron-volts, seven times as powerful as the Switzerland’s project, Wang said.
The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has brought risks of suspension and delay in implementing procurement contracts for some equipment for large-scale projects due to adjustments in budgeting plans. Wang suggested that legal entities engaged in major project construction should be allowed to raise funds through multiple channels or borrow other funds to ensure that construction tasks are completed on schedule.
Wang revealed that another IHEP project, the cosmic ray observation station on an area equivalent to 200 soccer fields in the wilderness of Daocheng, Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, 4,400 meters above sea level, has been affected by budget cuts.
