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China

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Artificial intelligence The China-US AI research gap has continued to widen, with Chinese institutions producing 4.5 times as many papers than American institutions since 2010, and significantly more than the US, India, UK, and Germany combined. Moreover, China is significantly leading in areas with implications for security and geopolitics, such as surveillance, autonomy,  scene understanding, and object detection. Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth, State of AI Report 2022, Key Themes © 2023 Kwiple.com
Artificial intelligence In Shenzhen facial recognition is used identify jaywalkers; names and pictures go up on a screen. In Beijing the municipality has started using the technology to catch thieves of toilet paper in public restrooms (its system also prevents people from taking more than 60 centimetres of paper within a nine-minute period). The Economist, September 9, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Bad news Apple, complying with what it said was a request from Chinese authorities, removed news apps created by The New York Times from its app store in China late last month. … The government began blocking The Times's websites in 2012, after a series of articles on the wealth amassed by the family of Wen Jiabao, who was then prime minister, but it had struggled in recent months to prevent readers from using the Chinese- language app. … Apple has not disclosed what laws the authorities said were violated, making it difficult for The Times and other publishers to file an appeal … citation New York Times, January 5, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Artificial intelligence The single greatest risk of AI is that China wins global AI dominance and we  — the United States and the West — do not. … To prevent the risk of China achieving  global AI dominance, we should use the full  power of our private sector, our scientific establishment, and our governments in concert to drive American and Western AI to absolute global dominance, including ultimately inside China itself. We win, they lose. Marc Andreesssen, tech bro and mega AI investor © 2023 Kwiple.com
Bad news China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act. citation Donald Trump [hours later, Trump re-tweeted the message to say China's act was “unprecedented”] © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers The most covetable trend in China is the most basic: education. China last year produced roughly nine times as many graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as the US. Financial Times, September 19, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Net change, in acres, in the world's forested land since 1990: −319,000,000 In China's: +126,500,000 Harper's Index, February 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Outdoor air pollution contributes to the deaths of an estimated 1.6 million people in China every year, or about 4,400 people a day … New York Times, August 14, 2015, based on a report by Berkeley Earth, a California-based research organization © 2015 Kwiple.com
By the numbers While China's income inequality is more severe than other large countries, wealth inequality is worse in the US. The wealthiest 1 per cent of US households owned 42 percent of all US wealth in 2012, according to researchy led by Emmanuel Saez, economist at University of California Berkeley. Financial Times, January 15, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Capitalism Here then is the transfer to Chinese soil lock, stock and barrel of the dual systems of management control that define contemporary American capitalism: the transfer of Business Process Reengineering, with its shaping of horizontal business processes in both manufacturing and services, and Corporate Panoptics, with its empowerment of top management with the electronic representations of the corporate organism in its entirety and in real time. Simon Head, Mindless © 2016 Kwiple.com
China All the tech competence China has now  is not the product of Chinese tech leadership drawing in Apple. It's the product of Apple going in there and building the tech competence. Kevin O’Marah, a supply chain technology researcher, Financial Times, January 17, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
China China has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for their sharehollders. No contest. Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage © 2020 Kwiple.com
China China will never realize its full potential — in a hyper-connected, digitized, deep,  dual-use, semiconductor-powered world — unless it understands that establishing and maintaining trust is now the single most important competitive advantage any country or company can have. And Beijing is failing in that endeavor. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, April 14, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
China I'd give them 48 hours to get out. And if they didn't get out, I'd charge them a 100% tariff on everything they sell to the United States, and they'd be gone within two days. They'd be gone within one hour. Donald Trump, foreign policy maven, when asked about a Chinese spy base in Cuba © 2023 Kwiple.com
China Our economic relationship with China, like our broader relationship with China, will be competitive where it should be, collaborative where it can be, and adversarial where it must be. Janet Yellen, April 5, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
China A research backwater when its economy took off in the 1980s, China has since spent heavily on r&d to obvious effect. A study published by Elsevier, a scientific publisher, and Nikkei, a news business, in 2019 found that China published more high-impact research papers than America did in 23 out of 30 “hot” research fields. The Economist, January 16, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
China There's no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet. Good luck! That’s sort of like trying to nail jello to the wall. Bill Clinton, 2000 speech on China Trade Bill urging Congress to admit China into the World Trade Organization © 2023 Kwiple.com
China To be in Washington is to sense a nation sliding into open-ended conflict against China with eerily little debate. Politicians who can be counted on to dispute the colour of the sky or the sum of two plus two are of a piece on the necessity of a superpower duel. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 15, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Cold War 2.0 A big difference between today’s cold war and the original one is that China is not exporting revolution.  From Cuba to Angola and Korea to Ethiopia, the Soviet Union underwrote leftwing insurgencies worldwide. Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 8, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Cold War 2.0 [L]oose talk of a US-China conflict is no longer far-fetched. Countries do not easily change their spots: China is the middle kingdom wanting  redress for the age of western humiliation; America is the dangerous nation seeking monsters to destroy. Both are playing to type. The question is whether global stability can survive either of them insisting that they must succeed. The likeliest alternative to today's US-China stand-off is not a kumbaya meeting-of-minds, but war. Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 8, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The cost of Covid can also be measured in damage to global psychology, including a form of diplomatic long Covid. The world's superpower and its rising great power are both now working from home and nourishing paranoia about each other. When we look back on Covid that may be its biggest cost. Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 1, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus  In the case of COVID-19, China's scientists and physicians acted decisively and respon- sibly to protect the health of the Chinese people within this historical context. They warned their government, their government warned WHO, and WHO warned the world. Western democracies failed to listen to those warnings. There are questions for both the Chinese government and WHO to answer. But to blame both China and WHO for this global pandemic is to rewrite the history of COVID-19 and to marginalise the failings the of Western nations. Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Catastrophe  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus as of late October 2020 Population ————— United States 328,000,000 China 1,393,000,000 (4.5×) Deaths from COVID-19 ————— China 4,380 United States 223,000 (50.9×) COVID-19 deaths as a % of population ————— China 0.000 003 144  United States 0.000 679 878  (216×) © 2020 Kwiple.com
Foreign relations c America is behaving like the Soviet Union, and China is behaving like the United States. Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won? © 2021 Kwiple.com
Foreign relations Americans and Chinese remind me of Israelis and Palestinians in one respect: They are both expert at aggravating the other's deepest insecurities. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, April 14, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Foreign relations c An unchallenged US is a divided US. It follows that America's best hope of retaining some cohesion in the coming decades is a mighty China. What is disastrous for its relative power in the world might turn out to be a godsend for its internal cohesion. Decline has its uses. … The US requires two things of an enemy: vast scale (to induce fear) and a different model of government (for a sense of otherness). The absence of the first is why al-Qaeda turned out to be such a fleeting adhesive after the September 11, 2001 atrocities. … As to the second condition, boom-era Japan, a fellow democracy, lacked it and so never crossed from daunting commercial rival to nation-binding enemy. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, 2021/02/16 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Foreign relations c The driving force behind the Hamiltonian renewal is the rising importance of the interdependence of corporate success and state power. … This connection operates most strongly at the most advanced levels of tech and production: the information-finance-business-government complex is increasingly necessary to the prosperity and security of the American state and people. …  Washington is going to worry more about whether its leading tech companies are strong enough and well resourced enough to stay ahead of their Chinese rivals than about whether U.S. tech companies are becoming too big. Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Hypocrites say I don't blame China. Donald Trump, standing beside Chinese President Xi Jinping to speak to China's leading businessmen, who, fully aware of Trump's repeated claims that they were raping America on trade, gasped and laughed out loud © 2017 Kwiple.com
Infrastructure … some 900 cities and towns in China are now served by high-speed rail, which makes travel to even remote communities incredibly cheap, easy and comfortable. In the last 23 years America has built exactly one sort-of-high-speed rail line, the Acela, serving 15 stops between Washington, D.C., and Boston. Think about that: 900 to 15. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, April 14, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Nukes We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races (January 22, 2022) [The signatories are China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. Currently, India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan also have nuclear weapons.] © 2022 Kwiple.com
Power By astronomical margins, would-be migrants would rather move to the US than to China. That hasn't stopped the one losing relative influence to the other over recent decades. Ultimately, if a country grows from 5 per cent of world output to 18 per cent, as China has since 1980, there is a limit to what the soft power of others can do to counteract it. That kind of economic weight buys too much military hardware. It spawns too many bilateral dependants in trade and investment. It demands an answer in material power. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, April 26, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say China must become more like us © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot  Trump is susceptible to such giveaways, not only because he is ignorant, but because he does not see himself as the president of the United States. He sees himself as the president of his base. And because that's the only support he has left, he feels the need to keep feeding his base by fulfilling crude, ill-conceived promises he threw out to them during the campaign. Donald Trump portrayed by Thomas Friedman, referring to Trump's having given China and Israel what they wanted most (scrapping TPP and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital) while getting nothing in return © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Mr Xi [Jinping] holds a telescope. Mr Trump stares at the mirror. Donald Trump portrayed by Edward Luce © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union  The crisis of the American mind these days is looking at a Chinese future and a British past, and feeling a sort of moral panic. Jed Esty © 2023 Kwiple.com
Tariffs While China has taken $16 billion “off the table” by stopping its purchases of American agriculture, [Trump] said, the United States has “taken in much, much more – many times that in tariffs.” But government figures show that the revenue the United States has collected from tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods is not enough to cover the cost of the president's bailout for farmers, let alone compensate the many other industries hurt by trade tensions. New York Times, July 15, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say The notion that tariffs are a tax on US consumers is a lie pushed by outsourcers and the Chinese Communist party. A “Republican spokesperson” quoted by Edward Luce, Financial Times, June 26, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I don't know if that's a real request or him just needling the press, knowing you guys were going to get outraged by it. Marco Rubio, responding to a reporter who asked, “Do you think it's okay for president Trump to ask China to launch an investigation of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden?” © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say xx Keep in mind where the coronavirus came from. It came from a country that Bernie Sanders wants to turn the United States into a mirror image of: Communist China. Rush Limbaugh © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got clean that back up while they’re messing ours up. Herschel Walker, July 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say You remember the North Korean leader promised “a Christmas present for America” back in December? Could it be they got together with China and this is that present? Jerry Falwell, Jr., March 13, 2020, hypothesizing about the origins of COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trust The new, new thing has a lot to do with the increasingly important role that trust, and its absence, plays in international relations, now that so many goods and services that the United States and China sell to one another are digital, and therefore dual use — meaning they can be both a weapon and a tool.  Just when trust has become more important than ever between the U.S. and China, it also has become scarcer than ever. Bad trend. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, April 14, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trust What America essentially told … rising Chinese high-tech firms, was this: “When Chinese companies were just selling us shallow goods [single-use products like “shoes, socks, shirts and solar panels”], we didn’t care if your political system was authoritarian, libertarian or vegetarian; we were just buying your shallow goods. But when you want to sell us ‘deep goods’— goods that are dual use and will go deep into our homes, bedrooms, industries, chatbots  and urban infrastructure — we don't have enough trust to buy them. So, we are going to ban Huawei and instead pay more to buy our 5G telecom systems from Scandinavian companies we do trust: Ericsson and Nokia.”  Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Apr. 14, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trust Whatever trust that China had built up with the West since the late 1970s  evaporated at the exact moment in history when trust, and shared values, became more important than ever in a world of deep, dual-use products driven by software, connectivity and microchips. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, April 14, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Ukraine The survey reveals that Vladimir Putin's war of outright aggression, and his military failures during the conflict, do not appear to  have caused people in non-Western countries to downgrade their opinion of Russia or to question its relative strength. Russia is either an “ally” or a “partner” for 79 per cent of people in China and 69 per cent in Turkiye. Moreover, around three-quarters in each of these two countries and in India believe that Russia is either stronger, or at least equally strong, compared to how they say they perceived it before the war.  Timothy Garton Ash, Ivan Krastev, Mark Leonard, "United West, divided from the rest," European Council on Foreign Relations © 2023 Kwiple.com
War Combat space is shrinking. War space is expanding. Chinese strategic doctrine © 2022 Kwiple.com
War The future use of military forces, driven by autonomous systems, weaponized algor-  ithms, and hypersonic weapons, highlights the potential for a more destructive form of warfare in the twenty-first century. However, as the Russians and Chinese have demonstrated over the past decade, if objectives can be achieved without violence, most actors will do so. New ways of using information operations, lawfare, and deniable military and para- military activities offer different pathways to achieve strategic outcomes for state and nonstate actors. Mick Ryan, War Transformed  [2022] © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the total number of billionaires around the world rose by 412 to a record of 3,228, [Shanghai-based] Hurun [Research Institute] said. China added 259 billionaires last year, more than the rest of the world combined, according to Hurun. Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
the West The west must accept its relative decline or engage in a grossly immoral and probably ruinous struggle to prevent that. That is the most important truth of our era. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, May 16, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com