Work Safely In The Construction Industry: Fill & Download for Free

Warning; Super Long Answer: About 3300 words. Read only if interested and if you have the time and patience.Question: What influenced and inspired your choice of career.Answer:I can’t put my finger on what exactly it was.I did not plan anything initially. My career was guided by fate/luck/circumstances and my own tendency to allow myself to drift and trust my luck to carry me to the best destination.Here is a mini autobiography:I passed my matriculation exam in 1966 from a good English medium school with Distinction. My favourite subject was English. I loved writing and my essays in school were hand-picked by my English teacher and read out to the entire class. I toyed with the idea of doing BA (journalism) and joining Times of India, my favourite newspaper at the time but my mother's shocked looks and my friends ridiculing me made me drop the idea like a hot potato."Arts? Yuck! Those courses are for girls whiling away their time before getting married! Do you want to end up teaching English in the same school! Be a man! Blah blah blah"Under peer pressure and also parental guidance, I chose to do science at a fancied college (Elphinstone College in Mumbai) and spent an entire year postponing my career decision. I had several options open and was glad to simply bide my time.IIT was the buzz word then.Everyone was busy preparing for it. Coaching classes were having a field day. I did not attend any, but went for a crash one month course at the end just for getting that extra confidence.I believe that I had done well in the entrance exam but it was not good enough. I did not make it.My mom was determined to make me an engineer. Middle class families those days, never looked beyond CA/Medicine/Engineering. They of course preferred an IAS but they realized that the number of selected candidates was very few and the competition was from all over the country from students of all disciplines and felt that CA/Medicine/Engineering was a safer option to try.Having missed IIT, I tried for the "next best" option. I applied to a few regional engineering colleges (now called NITs) and also BITS Pilani.At REC Trichy I was offered Electrical Engineering and at BITS Pilani, where I just made it, I was offered the least fancied branch that is Civil Engineering.Tamil nadu was ablaze at that time The anti-Hindi agitation was in full swing. Stations were being burnt. Hindi signboards were being defaced. Colleges were closed. So I chose Bits Pilani.My mom and dad would have none of that. They wanted a 'Chemical Engineer' Son not a Civil engineer messing around with Sand and cement!I consoled them and told them (just to placate them and allow me to go to Pilani) that the course was of five years and the first two years was common to all and that I would do well and seek a change to a better branch in the third year when we would start our actual studies in the allotted branch of engineering)Reluctantly they let me go. I joined BITS Pilani in July 1967 after hearing a lot about the reputation of BITS and once I arrived there, I fell in love with the campus, hostel life and the facilities for extra curricular activities and the curriculum. One humanities subject was compulsory for all engineers each year and I chose to do courses in English and Advanced English, Indian history and culture, Public administration, Economics, and Industrial Psychology as electives in addition to my engineering subjects. This was a bold innovation by BITS Pilani at that time. No other college had this system in place.It was supposed to produce a "well rounded" personality and not a human automaton.My parents kept asking about my progress in getting a branch change. I kept stalling. I loved my life there at Pilani so much that I was becoming indifferent to what my major was. I then told them in my third year that I could not get my branch changed and I was liking my subject and would continue. They were disappointed but they left me in peace after that.I passed with distinction in Civil Engineering as my major, and also enjoyed a cosmopolitan Campus life, made many friends, improved my spoken Hindi, and got exposure to life in North India after 17 years of childhood and boyhood in Mumbai.In 1972, I came back to Mumbai and was offered two jobs. One was a poorly paid job as a sub editor for a technical magazine (Indian Concrete Journal) and another was for a Road Construction company as a supervisor. I rejected both. While waiting for better opportunities, I thought seriously about post-graduation. I had not had my fill of campus life. There was no Gate exam then and I was selected by University of Roorkee (now called IIT Roorkee) for a two year master's programme in Structures.I proceeded to Roorkee and was soon armed with a Master's degree in Structural engineering after another happy two- year stay in the Roorkee University campus. This time my morale was better. My scholarship (Rs 250 per month) enabled me not to depend on any remittances from parents. It was enough to meet my needs.What next? Everyone was appearing for all sorts of competitive entrance exams. Upsc, Hindusthan Steel Ltd and others, Services Selection Board etc. I appeared for the entrance exam conducted by HSL and passed with flying colours. They selected me for a company called MECON which was the new name for HSL's Central Engineering and Design Bureau and later launched as an independent company called Mecon, head quartered at Ranchi and reporting to the ministry of Steel and Mines. It was perhaps the largest consultancy organization in the country with about 2600 engineers of all disciplines and specialized in consultancy services for the Steel plant projects which were valued at several hundred crores of rupees.This happened on its own. I had no hand except to apply, pass the exam and wait. I simply accepted what came to me. Those days, jobs were scarce unlike today.They posted me at Bokaro Steel plant and my posting lasted 2 months. It was supposed to be an exposure to the steel plant structures. Mecon had opened a new office at Bangalore and after the training period, I was asked to march to Bangalore and report at this new office. This was in Oct 1974.So my arrival at Bangalore was not planned but simply fated.At Bangalore, without offering me any choice I was posted in the Structural section which dealt with total consultancy services for steel structures for Heavy Industrial Buildings. I joined at the junior-most Executive level as a Graduate Engineer Trainee and worked my way up and was involved in Analysis, Design, Drawings, Technical Specifications, Tender Scrutiny, Project Reports, Software development, Inspection and site supervision of Steel structures for Industrial Buildings, Commercial buildings and also Defense Establishments.I served for 28 long years and the last 6 years were as head of the same department that I had joined as a trainee in 1974.Those were the best years of my professional life. There was high job satisfaction and the kind of projects I was involved in were the envy of my friends. The pay was moderate but not bad. Considering that my wife worked in a bank, we had enough to lead a decent life. I could save well, educate my children well and also invest in a house in Bangalore and own a two wheeler and later a car. Life was smooth and incident free, job security was ensured. I got to tour extensively in India and was also sent on short postings to some places abroad including places like Korea and Finland.My lack of any planning for my career had in no way affected me.God had taken care of me till then.But….Nothing is permanent. In the late nineties, the company was facing bad times.Our core competence was no longer in demand. The steel Industry was going through a recession. We started accepting jobs from other sectors which paid a lot less and for which we were not suitable at all because our overheads were heavy.We started doing distasteful jobs at fees that were less than our expenditure simply to cut losses. To save money, perquisites were cut. Facilities taken for granted earlier like LTC, hotel and travel accommodation entitlements, loans for house building, cars medical and hospitalisation expense reimbursements, etc were all held in abeyance or reduced. I was no longer enjoying any job satisfaction. I had outgrown technical design work after being promoted to the position of Deputy General Manager and was saddled with administrative and non technical responsibilities.I was unhappy. After all these years, going to the office in the morning was a torture.From out of the blue the government introduced VRS . (Voluntary Retirement Scheme). I was the first to apply along with several colleagues. The company accepted the applications of many of them but sat on my application for a whole year and finally refused to release me but they would not put it in writing.The details are tedious to relate here but it finally ended in my submitting my resignation at the age of 50. I had 8 more years of productive service still left and had to forgo a lot of retirement benefits.Okay, till now, God planned for me.Now I had to plan for myself!During my service I had been receiving several offers from Head Hunters and HR consultants to leave my company and join the private sector. I had been spurning them.I now decided there was nothing to lose and accepted an offer from a new Management and software consultancy company, as the GM of a newly created division that was being set up to capitalize on a new business opportunity that had opened up in India consequent to the advent of the internet.This was Knowledge process outsourcing/ Business process outsourcing.The internet made it possible for many US companies to get many kinds of work done in India at low man-hour costs and delivered over the net. Medical transcription was among the earliest of these new businesses.Soon American Steel fabricators, Architects, and contractors found it expedient to off load their drawing preparation work, and other time consuming and laborious works to India where man hour cost was 1/7th of what it was in USA. After a few initial hiccups, the parent company in USA and the back end center in India would soon establish an equilibrium and the business flourished.I was taken on as GM and posted at Electronics City in Bangalore and I set up a team of 8 engineers and 22 draftsmen and headed this department and worked on this new business for 2 and half years and got a thorough exposure to this business, and its pitfalls, loopholes, sources for bagging assignments, quoting correct prices for executing assignments etc. how to chase payments, identify poor paymasters, good companies that pay on time, the tools, resources and software needed and the optimum manpower needed to run the business for a particular turnover and how to word a contract agreement fairly and safely, what kind of projects to avoid, however tempting the price, and what kind of projects to accept even if it meant compromising on our price, what kind of time schedule was feasible and which to turn down because it was not feasible.The work was of course not creative. That part was retained by the US Client. They offloaded only the grunt work, which took 90 percent of the time, to us, to keep their costs down. They paid us just half the price they would have to pay in America to get the job done there. We charged at least twice the price that we would have charged Indian customers for equivalent assignments in India. This was win-win situation for both. The time difference, around 12 hours made it possible to keep the project going on round the clock. We contacted each other on Yahoo/Microsoft messenger and later Skype in the mornings and evenings and there was heavy traffic in Emails, uploading and downloading of drawings and documents.They paid me twice of what I was getting in Mecon. But the working hours were long. I was constantly required to be online and in emergencies I would be asked to be available even at unearthly hours like 2:30 am!As I said before nothing is permanent. In this case too, the business soured after some time. Other companies too jumped in and the competition was so intense that our prices had to be reduced. Overhead costs rose, since this was an ISO company. Cost cutting, salary delays, extended working hours for the same salary contributed to mass resignations and I was left to find solutions. My requests for additional software licenses, better hardware, and new software that could greatly improve productivity were all turned down. After two and half years I realized that this business could not operate much longer with so much of overheads and restrictive procedures due to our being an ISO certified company.The time had come to plan my own career move. I believed I still had about 10 years of ability to work in me. I was in reasonably good health.I offered my resignation and decided that I would get into this business for myself, and not work for any one.This two and half year stint had given me an excellent exposure and I was brimming with confidence and simply raring to go.What was re-assuring was that I was at an age when all my debts were cleared. The house and car had been paid for. My daughter was married and settled in Usa. My son was in college with his career plans all chalked out and any funds he might need were kept safe and secure and reserved for him. My wife had opted for VRS from her bank and she offered to help me.I took the plunge.After all these years of contacts with American customers, I had a few who trusted me implicitly and they gave me small jobs initially and later larger and more ambitious assignments after I had convinced them that I was equipped with staff and software resources for handling them.Two trusted senior staff from the previous company I worked for did not want to continue there, after I left and resigned to throw in their lot with me. We recruited 12 new hands, fresh from college at salaries 10 percent more than what the open market was paying to freshers at that time. I initially rented office space close to my house while I modified my 2000 square feet house and demolished internal walls, and built an additional small hall on what was previously my terrace and soon set up an office in my own house and shifted my staff to my house. I moved my family to my newly purchased apartment a short distance away.At last! I was an entrepreneur! I gave jobs to others. I did not apply for jobs anymore! I was my own boss something I had not dreamt about a few years ago.The business ran well till 2008. I cleared all the loans I had taken for setting up the business and for buying hardware(19 personal computers, and two laptops) Software (8 Autocad licenses and 6 Tekla licenses) and two MS office licences and all the standard office furniture and fittings.Income had stabilized. I bought one more apartment as an investment and rented it out. I paid myself a decent salary starting with the salary I resigned on and soon drawing twice the salary. I enjoyed the luxury of having a driver and a live in maid at home and got my wife on board as a Co Director and paid her a salary and got all my non technical work done by her (like HR, recruitment, accounts, administration, supervising cleaning , purchase of office requirements and acting as counsellor for the employees most of whom were girls in their twenties. She also handled all contacts with my auditors and took care of paying all the taxes and handling payroll, leaving me free to concentrate on project execution, quality control and delivery on schedule and also training the newly recruited staff.My plans seemed to be working.My venture had stabilized. I was free from liabilities. I was feeling like a pilot who had finished the pre-flight formalities and had slowly piloted the plane till the end of the runway and had turned around was preparing for a take off and then soaring over the skies!Then Fate came back to taunt me!The 2008 sub-prime crisis in USA struck suddenly!My one fundamental mistake in marketing policy which was always haunting me at the back of my mind and which I had been ignoring finally caught up with me. This mistake was putting all my eggs in the American basket. I never pursued Indian Clients, or Australian clients. Indian clients paid far less but work during difficult times was assured. I did not pursue Australian clients since they paid far less than the Americans and they asked for more work and my team was less familiar with their codes of practice and were completely at home with the American specs and codes.The sub-prime crises in USA brought several projects to a halt. The Construction Industry in USA was seriously affected. My clients frantically called to cancel contracts. Some paid a token amount for work already done as compensation. Others did not pay at all and said they would pay if they were paid by their customer who pleaded that he would pay when the bank released the funds for the project. I was left dangling at the bottom of the food chain. I could not tell my staff that I would pay their salaries only if I got paid. I kept the boat sailing somehow by putting in some of my own emergency funds but I realized it was a losing battle. The crisis, I knew would last at least two years, may be even more, and I did not have the capability to rough it out unless I was willing to pledge all my immovable property assets. My wife firmly vetoed that idea.Then another personal disaster struck me for which I was totally unprepared. A sudden heart attack followed by angioplasty, then severe internal bleeding due to drugs taken post angioplasty which caused me to fall unconscious, and be rushed back to the ICU, followed by a severe attack of some strange kind of arthritis which kept me in bed for six months, totally unable to walk, all hit me in quick succession between 2010 and 2011 and I knew I was licked!A good Samaritan turned up in the nick of time. He was a big entrepreneur running a bigger business with a greater turnover in Andhra Pradesh. He sold his business and moved to Bangalore and wanted to do something smaller. He sought me out through mutual contacts and bought out my company at Par. I was glad to offer it to him. This happened in 2011 and fate has been kind to me after that!I am now leading a quiet retired life. I help my old organization when they invite me to conduct campus interviews for recruitment and for conducting orientation training of the new recruits. I divide my time between living in USA and Bangalore.Regards and best wishes to all Quorans and thank you for your patience in reading this long story.GV

How will the countries of the world respond to China becoming a superpower?Why China? And why Superpower?This will be a long article but suitable for those with an open mind and a sense of patience and willingness to learn about a country which will have some economic influence on the world in the coming decades. Rather than being afraid of China, it is more important to understand China. Rather than having an image of an ogre of a nation as painted by censored MSM with coloured lenses, it is perhaps better to visualise China to be something like Yoda of Star Wars, an elderly, wise, slow and deliberative entity but yet nifty and resourceful.A powerful nation is supposed to have some seven dimensions of a state which include geography, population, economy, resources, military, diplomacy and national identity. The USA has many factors in its favour currently and could well continue to be so for a good many decades to come provided it corrects some of present foibles. But then as contributor Michael Green has stated, in terms of economy, the Euro Union is also quite a heavy weight and China is starting to catch up. However in geopolitical terms, there are changes already in motion which is subtly changing the power balances between state actors. The traditional dominance of states as the focus of political authority is declining with the impact of globalization on the international system. Nowadays any state is not only unable to decide the exchange rate of its own currency in terms of economic power since the Bretton Woods closure but also unable to declare war as easily as previously in terms of political power unlike those days of gunboat diplomacy and it is directly or indirectly shaping the domestic politics, economic policies, and foreign relations of virtually every country.World affairs.We are probably at a point now where the trend is towards a multipolar world as described by authors such as Fareed Zakaria, Lee KwanYew and Kishore Mahbubani. Objectively, Europe is no longer dependent on the United States for any real security or defence needs and theoretically speaking, should really start to establish their primacy over the European Rim which has led neo-conservative advocates to be so critical of France's avowed goal of creating a multi-polar world, attributing it to France's superpower "envy." Viewed at the level of its key strategic relationships with Europe, Russia, China and Japan, the United States in each case needs them (EU) to achieve its foreign policy goals. Partly because the U.S. market will become less important to them — and in part because the United States' growing dependence on foreign capital will increase its international debt burden. Another factor is because of America’s military adventurism in the Middle East and Africa which has caused refugee exodus into Europe and its willingness to use the international banking system to further its own demands.China has neutralized U.S. power in a number of ways: by modernizing its nuclear and naval forces and by adopting a good neighbour policy in East Asia because even within ASEAN, there has not been any impediment to free trade flow across the South China Sea in spite of all the MSM press about China taking over control of some atolls. It has also done so by stepping up its diplomacy toward the resolution of the North Korea crisis and by becoming one of the largest suppliers of consumer goods to the United States and one of its biggest creditors. China has also become an increasing destination for Japanese goods and capital, including for Japanese companies relocating production abroad and also its largest trading partner at US $ 144 billion. And China has taken the lead in establishing a free trade zone with the countries of Southeast Asia. This has reduced Japan's trade dependence on the United States and another reason why Japan has joined the BRI in June 2017.China.To fully understand China and for other countries to know how to respond to its growing presence in the world, one needs to try and appreciate its history. And I will try and illustrate it with thoughts from one of my economics teachers, Mr Tan TengBoo and other sources. People know that China has a long history but quite apart from its continuously recorded annals, many do not recognise the progression of this civilisation from its ancient source to its present form, via its trials and tribulations and its achievements as well. Rather like how a great river starts from a tiny source up in the plateau which is the Tibetan Highlands. It has been a process of evolution, reformation and dramatically also of revolution.The three dynasties of Xia, Shang and Zhou already cover a total of 1,879 years, almost two millennia and a time when China had to undergo the Spring and Autumn period and the history of the Warring States, from which so many philosophies sprang which is often labelled as the ‘Hundred Schools of Thought’; a period when China’s intellectual tradition also flourished. Thinkers like Lao Zi, Kong Zi, Meng Zi, Xun Zi, Zhuang Zi, Han Fei Zi, Mo Zi and others; who would shape the character and thought of Chinese civilisation through Taoism, Confucianism and Legalism for the next two millennia and more. China’s feudal system came into being during the Zhou Dynasty, covering a landscape which was across the whole Yellow River plain, a very vast area from the Eastern sea board to around Szechuan.The first publication of written law in China was around 536 BCE and the Canon of Law was forged in 407 BCE, so legalism already existed in China for a very lengthy period. Legalists could be divided into three types. The first was concerned with shi 势, or the investment of the position of ruler with power (rather than the person) and the necessity of obtaining facts to rule well. The second was concerned with fa 法, or laws, regulations, and standards. This meant all were equal under the ruler, and the state was run by law, not a ruler. The third was the concept of shu 术, or tactics to keep the state safe. Legalism was generally in competition with Confucianism, which advocated a just and reciprocal relationship between the state and its subjects. Joseph Needham wrote “It is not that China had no law, no legislation but in fact, if you look at history, China had a greater corpus of legislation than the Western world”.The other philosophy such as Mohism also had important influence on Chinese culture. The most well-known concept under Mohism was “impartial care,” also known as “universal love.” This meant that people should care equally about other people, regardless of their true relationship to that person. This opposed the ideas of Confucianism, which said that love should be greater for close relationships. Mohism also stressed the ideas of self-restraint, reflection and authenticity, that all people should be equal in their material benefit and in their protection from harm. Society could be improved by having it function like an organism, with a uniform moral compass. Those who were qualified should receive jobs, and thus the ruler would be surrounded by people of talent and skill. An unrighteous ruler would result in seven disasters for the state, including neglect of military defence, repression, illusions about strength, distrust, famine, and more.When Qin Shi Huang Di united China in 221 BCE, he actually set in motion the modernisation of ancient China by standardising the written script of all the states under the supervision of a statesman called Li Si. It provided the cultural unity of China by standardising other things such as currency, weights, measurements and even the axle length of wagons and chariots. The environment was now ripe for growth and development in China to accelerate under the Han Dynasty, where technology, arts, institutions and economic progress under a mantle of Confucianism flourished. And the civil service became established under a system of scholarship. Long before any such system existed in other governments around the world, a state system of excellence in scholastic pursuit was present in the Han Dynasty and universities and colleges were established. Even during the Warring States period in 256 BCE excellent engineering principles were applied in the construction of the Dujiangyan Irrigation system in Szechuan under the Qin, a centuries old unique system still in use until today using the geomorphology and topology of the land by building embankments for water diversion without dams. During the Eastern Han Dynasty Hangzhou’s famous West Lake was built by Hua Xin (25 to 220 CE), a tourist attraction then and now.The success of China’s education system over more than 2000 years ago can be seen from the expansion in the number of TaiXue students: Emperor Wu (124 BCE) had 50 students. By Emperor Zhao’s time (87 to 74 BCE) it had risen to 100 students. By the end of Western Han (8 BCE) it had increased to 10,000 students and by Emperor Shun (126 CE) the enrolment had surged to 30,000 students. This system served to get talented scholars to be selected to help administer the country. Candidates were tested on Confucian classics and underlying philosophy of managing the country. Other schools taught astronomy, mathematics, law as well as philosophy including moral guidance and human rights concepts. Han Dynasty actually had progress in medicine and astronomy and geography and the early seismograph by Zhang Heng was invented in 132 CE in Luoyang. A Han Dynasty eunuch named Cai Lun invented paper making process in 105 CE, the widespread adoption of which enabled literature and literacy to flourish. Paper making spread to Korea, Vietnam and Japan in the centuries that followed but it was not until some Chinese paper makers were captured by Arabs in the Battle of Talas River in 751 CE that the technique spread to the west and revolutionise the Scholastic Age of Europe later on.The Nine Chapters in the Mathematical Art, a mathematics masterpiece was a textbook in the Tang and Song dynasties, and it had systems of linear equations in Chapter 8 equivalent to Gaussian Elimination described in the 19th century. Such things as solution of an indeterminate system of linear equations with 5 equations and 6 unknowns. So the Chinese do take scholarship quite seriously. Hua Tuo, a legendary figure in the Three Kingdoms period for example already used cannabis in his ‘Ma Fei San’ together with alcohol and other herbs to induce analgesia and anaesthesia before surgery, long before ether was used by William Morton in 1846. Market economy emerged during Han Dynasty giving birth to reforms and fiscal and monetary policies, and the infrastructure which accompanied it. The Silk Road was established with envoy Zhang Qian in 119 BCE who went to the Central Asian states for the second time, a conduit for culture, technology and even Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. Diplomat Zhang Qian's travels from 139 to 125 BC had established Chinese contacts with many surrounding civilizations in Central Asia. Zhang encountered Dayuan (Fergana), Kangju (Sogdiana), and Daxia (Bactria, formerly the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom); and he also gathered information on Shendu (Indus River valley of North India) and Anxi (the Parthian Empire). All of these countries eventually received Han embassies.So China some two millennia ago was already modern, open, inclusive and adaptive and multi-dimensional. By the Tang dynasty, great economic prosperity advanced Chinese art and literature and even influenced Japan ( Kyoto is patterned on Xi’an), Korea, Persia and Afghanistan. By this time and in the later Song Dynasty, the Civil Service Examination System ( keju 科举 ) was properly developed, giving the common people an avenue to serve based on meritocracy and able to climb up the social ladder. Music, architecture, fashion, plays, leisure activities started to bloom with industry and commerce, and public libraries kept encyclopedias and books. Yangzhou on the Grand Canal developed shipbuilding, textiles, leather industry and iron and bronze metallurgy and beautiful mansions for salt merchants. Guangzhou had foreign merchants trading at its port, and Chengdu had silkworm fairs. Safe deposit firms developed credit and banking services and ‘feiqian- flying cash - 飞钱’ was issued by state agencies.Progress in inventions include the Chinese Buddhist monk Yixing who invented the mechanical clock. Gas cylinders, air conditioners of the period, waterproofing, fireproofing, agriculture machines for planting, irrigation, harvesting were invented. Even diabetes and thyroid disease were described. Such that in the Song dynasty widespread urbanisation was a characteristic and the population was already 100 million by 1100 CE. Wang Anshi, an incredibly talented minister introduced now labelled ‘Shimomuran’ Economic principles to Song China by breaking up monopolies, by creation of credit services, meritocracy in the civil service, improving the Universities, building hospitals, stamping on corruption and advocating enlightened government including pensions for the old, and promoting trade guilds for different industries. With the result that coal and copper mining, iron metallurgy, alum making, salt industries, shipbuilding, printing and porcelain and tea and silk industry developed vigorously. Iron and steel production in the 11th century was an amazing 125,000 tonnes. The formula for gunpowder from the Wujing Zongyao 武经总要manuscript was compiled in 1044CE. In short, there was already a kind of modern society during the Song dynasty! In contrast to how Europe and Britain achieved their growth and development by colonising innocent countries, the Song Dynasty did not use force on other countries far afield.When the Ming Dynasty came along, considering that the Yuan dynasty was quite destructive towards their Han population, it did not take long for the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644 CE) to rise up, prosper and take to the oceans in their vast armada shortly after when the Yongle Emperor sent Zheng Ho on seven far-flung diplomatic voyages between 1405 & 1433 CE. What was even more impressive about these voyages was that they were done with hundreds of huge ships and tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers and craftsmen. Over sixty of the three hundred seventeen ships on the first voyage were enormous "Treasure Ships," sailing vessels over 400 hundred feet long, 160 feet wide, with several stories, nine masts and twelve sails, and luxurious staterooms complete with balconies and had water-tight chambers to reduce the chance of sinking. The likes of these ships had never before been seen in the world in that age. But they didn’t colonise other nations.There are many things in Europe that was influenced by China in the past centuries such as the practice of growing crops in rows and periodic weeding which started in China in 6th Century BCE, and Jethro Tull in 1731 promoted this in Europe. Trace Horse harnesses in China was developed around 400-201BCE and introduced to Europe by 700 CE. Winnowing grain using rotary winnowing fan discovered in China around 200 to 101 BCE was exported to Europe between 1700 to 1720 CE when the Swedes in Gothenburg adapted the design to European grain sizes. The wheelbarrow invented in South-Western China in the 1st Century BCE by Ko Yu was a veritable blessing especially on difficult terrain and was introduced to Europe in the 11th and 12th century. Even a toy found in the 4th century CE called the bamboo dragonfly was a helicopter top and Sir George Cayley, the father of modern aeronautics, studied this helicopter top in 1809. France and Britain established their civil service in the 18th century. Thomas Taylor Meadows who was in China published ‘Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China’ and urged the institution of Public Service Examinations for British subjects for the British Empire. A similar system in America followed in 1868CE when it was recommended by Thomas A Jenkes of Rhode Island to Congress. Even the art of bonsai in japan was inspired by the Chinese practice of ‘pun-sai’ dwarf trees in containers common in 7th Century CE.China is complex with multiple dimensions to its civilisation. Western journalists often carelessly attribute the name “China” as “Middle Kingdom” with a chauvinistic bent when in fact all it means is “Zhongguo” refers to the ‘Central States’ in Chinese history. During Zhou Dynasty era for example, no one polity out of dozens (some states even as large as modern European nations) ever succeeded in conquering all its neighbours. How many countries has ever had as many capitals as China has had? And China has the longest land border of any country (22,117km) with international borders to 14 sovereign states and if you included Hong Kong and Macau, 16 up till 1997. Yet within a span of some 4000 to 5000 years, how many of its neighbours has it invaded compared to some other more modern states? How many faraway nations has it conquered? If you wish to compare, perhaps it is good to read this. The US Has Invaded 70 Nations Since 1776 written by an Australian lecturer. And a Great Wall was built for what purpose? To defend itself against rampaging neighbours! Why would they do it when they had advanced technologies, and a vast population and good military strategists. Because they knew the suffering that war brings. Even their martial arts philosophy emphasises self-defence and improving one’s health, not aggression but to uphold justice and truth and integrity.To be sure, there are some important differences between the Western and the Eastern traditions in culture and attitude. The Chinese for example eat around round tables, sharing food in a central distribution whilst the West prefer to use square or rectangular tables and eat from their own individual plates. Roads in the west tend to be named after individuals whereas those in the east tend not to be so and even the banks are hardly ever named after individuals. To a certain extent, Western society is all about the singular individual self against the world, whilst the Eastern emphasis is generally about sharing and the collective good, about we, not I. For the Chinese people in general, democratic common wealth is the aim, not the Commonwealth which returns most of the wealth to the aristocratic one percent.Socialism.We can exemplify this communist and socialist spirit by describing the founding fathers of modern China, the most well-known being Mao Zidong, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De because when they died in 1976, none of them had a house, a farm or a factory or business establishment. And what did they do with their bank accounts? Zhu De had 20,000 Yuan when he died and he donated the lot to the Communist Party, and did not leave it to his wife or grandchild! Zhou Enlai did not even have a bank account but he had wage credit from the party bureaucracy from his pay of some 5709.80 Yuan which the party gave to his widow Deng Yingchau, who in turn donated it to the party eventually when she died in 1992 with her own savings both totalling 11146.95 Yuan. Mao had even less money. He had only 500 Yuan in his bank account when he died. So we can see how all these pioneers of modern China had real socialism in their bones. There was this young lady who exclaimed that Zhou Enlai was responsible for great corruption in China in a comment in Facebook some years ago, and I gave her a bit of a dressing down lesson in history because what you read in the media is not necessarily the truth.So where is China now?To understand China of today, you have to study again its history of the past hundred years when it threw off the yoke of feudalism starting with the Republican Revolution of 1911, the founding of the Communist Party in 1921, the Civil War ending in 1949 with the setting up of the People’s Republic of China; wherein it lay the foundation for the emergence of ‘Advanced China’. This entity will have elements of the past together with ingredients from the future and an economy which combines socialism with Chinese characteristics, drawing on a continuous tradition of Chinese civilisation and inherent creativity whilst incorporating modern science and technology and building upon learning from a pragmatic and open viewpoint. Such as in banking.Traditional Chinese culture retains a powerful hold on China today. Confucian emphasis on the duty of the state to provide for a harmonious and orderly society, on the interests of the collective over the individual, and on “rule of men” over “rule of law” imbue the values and structures of Chinese political economic institutions, including banks. This cultural context in which Chinese banks are embedded contrasts sharply with the American cultural context in which American market capitalist banks are embedded. China’s search for the right combination of modern methods and traditional cultural essence to return “wealth and power” to the country has influenced the development of China’s banking system to become what it is today.The next few years will test the resilience of the post-transformation Chinese banking system. Banks must cope with the transition to the “New Normal” and decelerating growth as the economy moves to a more balanced and sustainable model. This will cause a rise in NPLs, but as long as government policy eases the economy into a “soft landing,” NPLs will not rise to crisis levels. The transformation has succeeded in producing a banking system that is stable, that is reasonably efficient, and that provides broad financial access. The challenge for the West will be to understand China’s banking system on its own terms, not through a “Western lens.” The banking system is a microcosm of China’s political economy as a whole, so understanding of how it works will assist in understanding how China’s economic and political systems work successfully. Understanding requires dropping a doctrinaire Western analytical framework.China's Banking Transformation: The Untold Story James Stent.What about the economy.Over the last 20 years the People's Republic of China has increased its output of goods and services faster than any other country on this planet. The rate of growth of output of goods and services (the productivity of the economy, if you like) [for China] in 2005 was 11%. In 2017 it was 15%. In 2010 it was 12% and it has slowed down since then. Over the last year it was a mere 6.4%. If you wanted to average it out it was probably in the neighbourhood of 10-11% over the last 10, 15, 20 years. By comparison, let me give you the numbers for the United States of America. Its average growth rate in the 1950s and 60s was 4%. In the 70s and 80s it fell to 3% and in the last 10 years it has averaged 2%. In the latest year it was 3.2%; half of what it was in China, but for most of the last 20 years the rate of growth of China has been 2 to 3 to 4 times that of the United States. It explains why we're reading and hearing so much about China; because they have become the second most important economy in the world by achieving these extraordinary rates of economic growth. It will help you understand something else about the people of China: they are not about to be pushed around, neither by Mr. Trump nor anybody else because they have the economic strength to resist. If you're the government of the People's Republic of China (and that is a government in which the Communist Party of China is dominant) you are hardly about to change the way you organize your economy given how well it has been doing.Over the last 40 to 45 years Americans who have worked harder than ever, who have been more productive than they ever were across that time, have not shared in their greater productivity. Their real income, their real wages have not gone up. The real hourly wage in the United States is lower today than it was in 1973 and that is something to think about. Over the same period of time, the last 20-25 years, real wages in the People's Republic of China have quadrupled. The basket of goods and services that an average worker gets in China for an average hour of his or her work is four times greater today than it was 25 years ago. Yes, Chinese wages remain below the average in the United States because they were and they still are a poor country when you divide their total economy by the enormous number of people that live in that country. But if you want to understand why the people of China support their government here's a clue: their real wages went up four times over the last 25 years in a society led by a government in which the Communist Party is the dominant political force. This is not about whether you like these numbers or don't, this is not about whether you're critical of many aspects of Chinese society or you're not. This is socialism in action.Economic Update: China's Economic Record & StrategyAnd what about the leadersThe simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remould the people and reshape the land–history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin–no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung’s scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension. – John King Fairbank, The United States and China. The Mao Era saw an immense advance for ordinary people. Nearly four decades of semi-Westernised stagnation and warlord infighting after the 1911/12 Revolution ended, and the economy tripled during Mao’s quarter-century. The population also doubled, so there was not an enormous advance in individual consumption but one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. “When he stepped down in 1974 the invaders, bandits and warlords were gone, the population had doubled, literacy was 84 percent, wealth disparity had disappeared, electricity reached poor areas, infrastructure was restored, the economy had grown 500 percent, drug addiction was a memory, women were liberated, girls were educated, crime was rare, everyone had food and shelter, life expectancy was sixty-seven and, by several key social and demographic indicators, China compared favourably with middle income countries whose per capita GDP was five times greater.” Mao ReconsideredClaims for tens of millions of deaths ‘caused by Mao’ are based on a statistical trick. The worst of the ‘Three Bad Years’ saw a death rate of maybe 25 per thousand, which was an entirely normal death-rate in poor Asian countries in the 1950s. In a population of 600 million, that would be 15 million per year, while getting the rate down to 10 per thousand would be 9 million lives saved per year. China by a series of radical changes did get the death rate that low, and lower. But if you ignore the success in getting the rate down way below the poor-country norm and just measure the difference between twenty-three years of dramatic progress and three years of setback, you can give the appearance of mass murder.About Mao and ChinaDespite a brutal U.S. blockade on food, finance and technology, and without incurring debt, Mao grew China’s economy by an average of 7.3 percent annually, compared to America’s postwar boom years’ 3.7 percent. When he died, China was manufacturing jet planes, heavy tractors, ocean-going ships, nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. As economist Y. Y. Kueh observed: “This sharp rise in industry’s share of China’s national income is a rare historical phenomenon. For example, during the first four or five decades of their drive to modern industrialization, the industrial share rose by only 11 percent in Britain (1801-41) and 22 percent in Japan”.doubled China’s population from 542 million to 956 milliondoubled life expectancydoubled caloric intakequintupled GDPquadrupled literacyincreased grain production three hundred percentincreased gross industrial output forty-foldincreased heavy industry ninety-fold.increased rail lineage 266 percentincreased passenger train traffic from 102,970,000 passengers to 814,910,000.increased rail freight tonnage two thousand percentincreased the road network one thousand percent.increased steel production from zero to thirty-five MMT/yearIncreased industry’s contribution to China’s net material product from twenty-three percent to fifty-four percent.Post-Mao China is a hybrid – Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. It has retained public ownership of all agricultural land ever since the civil war over a vast class of small landlords who were exploiters of the people who actually worked the land; has kept its currency largely unconvertible for much of its economic ascent, retains a vast state sector of SOEs for the public good and keeps the larger private enterprises under strong political control. In the 1930s, Keynes' fundamental conclusion was that investment played the determining role in the economy and a somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment. Keynes envisaged an economy in which a private sector existed but in which the state sector was sufficiently dominant to set overall investment levels. His incisive analysis was never implemented in the society he lived in simply because the capitalists deemed that it was ‘ultra vires’ for the government to decide on the most basic investment decisions rather than private capitalists in a capitalist society. But China under the pragmatic Deng did not labour under such false assumptions, having remembered lessons from the past. His dictum: "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." – it just means as long as the economy works, it is a good economy and he implemented the best ideas from both the East and the West. Perhaps it is time for ‘closed-minded’ Western leaders to discard their “I am holier than thou” attitude and hubris and find that they can learn from both Eastern and Western traditions.Deng Xiaoping said: “Planning and market forces are not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity.” “We must firmly grasp management. Just making things isn’t enough. We need to raise the quality.”Deng Xiaoping's own post-1978 formulation is almost word for word Marx's: "A Communist society is one in which… there is great material abundance, and the principle of from each according to their ability, to each according to his needs, is applied. It is impossible to apply that principle without overwhelming material wealth. But in the present period in China, before the accumulation of such wealth, the principle was to each according to their labor/work: ‘We must adhere to this socialist principle which calls for distribution according to the quantity and quality of an individual's work." Deng's fundamental characterization was: "China is in the primary stage of socialism. Socialism itself is the first stage of communism, and here in China we are still in the primary stage of socialism – that is, the underdeveloped stage. In everything we do we must proceed from this reality, and all planning must be consistent with it." As the Wall Street Journal summarized: "Most economies can pull two levers to bolster growth – fiscal and monetary. China has a third option … accelerate the flow of investment projects." An economic structure envisaged only in theory by Keynes was realized in practice by Deng Xiaoping.Deng Xiaoping's economic structure simultaneously solved the problem of diverting resources from heavy industry and creating an abundant supply of consumer products. As the state owned heavy industry, prices in this sector could be controlled, while simultaneously those in agriculture and light consumer industry were liberalized. Relative prices therefore rose in agriculture and consumer industries, resources flowed into these sectors and their output soared. Simultaneously the urban population was protected against initial negative pressures on living standards by these price rises by subsidies financed by reducing China's armaments expenditure. The extraordinarily rapid growth this structure produced created large scale savings which, in a virtuous circle, could then finance the building of heavy industry on a new basis. Simultaneously with reintroducing small scale "non-socialized" production, China's economy pursued international "opening up," allowing it to participate in the largest scale production of all – for the global market. Therefore, far from Deng Xiaoping's economic policies being purely pragmatic, they flowed in an integrated fashion from underlying theoretical principles through to the solving of eminently practical issues. It was this which produced by far the greatest economic growth and social advancement seen in any country in world history. This integrated character of Deng Xiaoping's economic system also explains why any diversion from it necessarily leads to economic problems. Any return to an administered economy leads to inability to take advantage of small-scale production and to integrate with, and take advantage of, a world economic market. Any system in which private enterprise is dominant loses the ability of the state to set the investment level, and thereby recreates the crises which both Keynes and Deng Xiaoping had successfully solved how to tackle. In short, no other figure in history has ever combined such deep economic thinking with such practically successful economic policy as Deng Xiaoping.Deng Xiaoping - the world's greatest economistXi JinpingThroughout the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese complained endlessly about arbitrary payments and profiteering;, and Xi realises that the biggest threat to China is within the Party’s corrupt leadership, hence he has waged a ruthless war on corruption, punishing more than a million corrupt officials at all levels. "We must do what we must, and punish those who deserve it. If we didn't dare offend hundreds of thousands of corrupt officials, we would have offended 1.3 billion people.” Xi Jinping. Xi’s new “Cultural Revolution” is a mixture of Mao and Deng. It emphasizes moral character and observers think that his anti-corruption campaign will continue and he will try to institutionalise and entrench this movement, so that it becomes a habit of the Chinese people to be abhorrent of corrupt practices, much like what LKY in Singapore did.Too much corruption would cause the whole system to collapse. Too little corruption or rather the lack of incentives would make people reluctant to do things quickly. So you have to master the art of balancing corruption, risk, incentive and efficiency as a top leader.Xi put a priority on ending poverty to boost stability and great progress has been made. In 1956, per capita disposable income was a measly RMB 98 with per capita consumption at RMB 88, but 70 years since 1949 it is now RMB 28,228 and RMB 19,583 respectively. At the end of 1978, China had a poverty rate especially in rural areas of some 97.5% with some 770 million in toto, but now as at end 2018, the remaining population in poverty is 16.6 million, with a poverty rate of 1.7%, and some 60% of the population is in urban areas, filling up all those supposedly ghost cities without any urban slums. Xi’s development agenda places emphasis on high quality rather than high speed growth, and this means a better environment, less corruption, sustainable economic growth, poverty reduction, better income and wealth distribution and ultimately reforms as well.When I was in Beijing in 1989, it was a city of bicycles but now China is the world’s largest automobile market with sales of 28 million per annum. In 1949, highways were only 81,000 km but by 2018, it is around 5 million km. The Chinese are great builders, and railways in 1949 was only 22,000 km but now it is 131,000 km including 29,000 km of high speed railway. By air, civil aviation routes was 11,400km in 1950 but multiplied 735X to 8.4 million km by 2018. Broadband network has optical fibre length of 43.6 million km. Other public infrastructure facilities are shown in the table below.So how did China achieve this kind of progress? Did they cheat their way to become the largest trading nation in the world for example by manipulating their currency as some US politicians like to accuse China of doing whenever there is an election coming? Look at the chart below. Lo and behold, the IMF comes right out to declare that China is not the villain in the global trading system, the exact opposite of what Trump likes to tweet. Its current account balance is hardly excessive unlike Japan (around 3.5 to 4% of GDP) and Germany ( 7 to 8%) for example, and its REER (Real Effective Exchange Rate) in relation to all its major trading partners has remained relatively consistent and broadly in line with fundamentals. When it becomes the largest consumer market in the world, imports will rise and the surplus in goods will even fall further. There is only so much shit you can throw around before it hits the fan and falls back on you, something that politicians should bear in mind.So what else does China do?It invests in its most important asset- her people. To Chinese, education is far and above one of the most important in emphasis on attainment for a gentleman. The Six Arts (六 艺) liu yi was already a staple of the Zhou Dynasty as criteria for the perfect gentleman. And teachers in China are the most revered amongst countries of the world, with probably only Finland in the west as a close cousin. The Chinese have a proverb known as 一日為師，終身為父 (yī rì wéi shī, zhōng shēn wèi fù). Literally, these words mean 一日 (yī rì, a day) 為 (wéi, as) 師 (shī, teacher)，終身 (zhōng shēn, a lifetime) 為 (wèi, as) 父 (fù, father). Once a teacher, always respected as a father. A day as a teacher, a lifetime held in esteem as a father.Mathematics development was already well developed some three millennia ago in 11th Century to 2nd Century BCE, such as in Jiuzhang Suanshu, 九章算术 . (The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art). “Mathematics teachers in China usually believe in the maxim that mathematics is the gymnastics of thinking”, from the book How do Chinese learn mathematics-Perspectives from insiders—by Zhang Dianzhou, Li Shiqi and Tang Ruifen. The Chinese have five learning virtues 1. Resolve (发奋 ) fa fen- determination, desire to stay the course. 2. Diligence (勤 ) qin - much time spent on learning. 3 . Endurance of hardship (刻 苦 ) ke ku 4. Perseverance (恒心 ) heng xin and 5. Concentration (转心 ) zhuan xin - study with consistent focus.When you begin to understand that Chinese culture, philosophy, education and mathematics are all intertwined and form a sort of matrix, then you can appreciate why the Chinese can excel. The Chinese do not need to steal their way to economic excellence contrary to what Christopher Wray (FBI) says. Chinese have always placed emphasis on performance, from the ordinary street merchant to the emperor. Emperor after emperor in China are often typically well educated in the arts but how many US presidents are there who are well known for being well versed with the arts.To Open Minds: Chinese clues to the dilemma of contemporary education - by Prof Howard Gardner (Harvard Graduate School of Education).Why is it that Asian students are knocking at the doors of prestigious Ivy League Universities when they outperform? Why is it that more and more Western universities such as Cambridge, New York University, University of Sydney and University of New Hampshire for example are recognising gaokao for admission purposes? Why is it that the United States would send researchers to China to find out how to teach mathematics in USA to achieve higher performances? If you listen to politicians and their ilk about China having to steal their way to fortune, it would not make any sense.What makes math instruction in China more effective?By the end of 2018, China has built 518,800 educational institutions, enrolled 276 million students, with 16.73 million full-time teachers. There are 266,700 kindergartens with 2.58 million kindergarten teachers, at an enrolment rate of 81.7% of some 46.56 million children and there are 161,800 primary schools having 18.67 million enrolment, virtually a 99.95% rate. At junior high school level, some 52,000 including 11 vocational schools have 16 million students nationwide, a rate which is above100%. Around 14.24 million children of migrant workers moved to cities with their parents and 10.48 million are in primary schools and 3.76 million in junior high. There are 2,152 special schools with 58,700 teachers and 666,000 students with disabilities in these schools. Senior High Schools number 24,300 with 13.5 million students, at 88.8 % enrolment rate. Next comes Higher Education at 3,755 institutions comprising 2,663 general higher education institutions, 277 adult higher education institutions and 815 postgraduate schools. These schools have 38.33 million students – a rate of 48.1% gross enrolment rate. China has 183,500 private education centres accounting for 35.36% of all institutions. So you can see how China maximises its most important asset—the people of its future.The ABCs of Chinese educationResearch and Development in Science and Technology.There is incredible emphasis in China with great attention paid to Science and Technology, and much financial resources are devoted to it. Over time, it will pay dividends and this is illustrated by facts on the ground. When China re-opened up to the world in the late 1970s, she was a backward country and could only manufacture low tech and low value-added products but today, she has become a leading high-tech country. The World Intellectual Property Organisation reports that China only filed one patent application in 1993, but last year filed 53,345 applications, second only to the USA based filings at 56,142. Shenzhen University and South China University of Technology were even able to surpass Harvard University in 2018 in terms of the number of patent applications.Patents filed under the international Patent Cooperation Treaty. China has made dramatic progress, filing just 10.1 % of the rate of the USA in 2008 and in 10 years, it had closed the gap to 80.9%, an increase of 7.2 times. Chinese patents grew fastest in control systems (61 times); optics (22 times); IT methods of management (20 times); computers (19 times); measurement (15 times); and microstructural and nanotechnology (14 times). Out of 35 total patent categories, the number of U.S. patents filed declined in over half of them (18), such as telecommunications (down 35 percent), surface coatings (down 25 percent), and organic fine chemistry (down 20 percent). In no category did Chinese patents fall; in fact, the slowest rate of growth was 290 percent!Research in astrophysics, nuclear physics, atomic and molecular spectroscopy, solid state physics, new materials, nanotechnology, crystallography, chemistry, biotechnology, information theory , electronic engineering , quantum physics and quantum computing are all vigorously pursued. China spent 1.75 trillion Yuan - USD 280 billion in 2017 on research, some 2.12% of its GDP and on track to reach 2.5 % in 2019, while Chinese enterprises spent 1.37 trillion yuan on R & D in 2017. Some 5.3% of total spending was put into fundamental research and they reported a total of 5.35 million people working in R & D as at end of 2015. China broke into the world's top 20 most-innovative countries (at 17th place) on the Global Innovation Index for the first time last year. The USA still has three times the researcher density of China, so it is still the front runner.Chinese scientists and engineers have chalked up some outstanding achievements since 2011. For instance, Chang’e 3 became the first spacecraft, in December 2013, to land on the Moon since the Soviet Union’s craft in 1976. In January this year, Chang’e 4 clocked up a world first by landing successfully on the dark side of the Moon. China has also made breakthroughs in other areas, such as deep-ground drilling and supercomputing. Its first large passenger aircraft, the ARJ21-700 with a capacity for 95 passengers, was certified by the national Civil Aviation Administration in December 2014. In 2017, a team of physicists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences held a half hour video call with their counterparts in Vienna using quantum encryption, a technology which makes it impossible to hack or overhear communications, using a secure encryption key generated in a quantum device mounted in a Chinese satellite; and the Chinese are researching quantum radar and quantum computing at probably much the same speed as at US institutions.Reality: China can and does innovate.Supercomputers require cutting-edge technology and capabilities to produce and long ago the USA has stopped all supercomputer related exports and restricted technological access to this sector. Ten years ago in 2008, only 12 of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers were built in China, while the United States produced 258. And the United States’ dominance was even greater when taking into consideration the advanced processing power of U.S.-made computers. USA maintained a majority of the global top 500 until 2014, when China produced one-third as many supercomputers. Since then, Chinese production has grown dramatically, producing 227 of the world’s top supercomputers, compared with 109 for the United States in November 2018. However, Chinese supercomputers still tend to be less powerful, with only 82 percent as much collective performance capacity as U.S. systems.Information Technology and Innovation foundation.“We have less to fear from China stealing our technology than from Chinese invention of new technology. … Without offering better technology, we can’t hold China back. We may not even be able to delay it. America is in the uncharacteristic position of attempting to use our influence to prevent the rival from doing something that we do not propose to do our self. That’s a strategy [that …] has never succeeded at any time at any place in recorded history. … Now, federal funding of research and development is about half [than] what it was when we [fought] the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and lots of it is fluff like climate change research.” David Paul Goldman at The Heritage Foundation.China has so far managed to avoid Soviet errors, passing on power from one effective leadership team to the next. The Western elite seem to keep hoping that it will go wrong, but China keeps on disappointing them and presently they try to spread fear of China, but China is not in fact a threat to the West. Some leaders in the west are themselves their own worst enemy because they do not even realise that they may be making the wrong assumptions because all that the Chinese truly want from America and the West, be it on trade or non-trade issues is just some respect and trust but instead their political establishment is just spreading anti-Chinese propaganda out of fear that they may have a hard time explaining to their own population why they have not done as much to improve the lot of the average Joe. Perhaps it is time that political leaders in the West come to realise that you cannot use a broad brush to tar about a quarter of humanity as thieves and crooks even as they are trying very hard to improve their lives in this next decade or two, and will they do the same to the Indians when India has developed into a huge economy by 2050 or to the Africans when the Africa Union starts to assert itself on the world stage by 2070 to 2080. World progress need not be a zero sum game.Peace and Respect.Thanks for A2A.

Environmental activists push wind and solar as so called green energy in a campaign based on shoddy science to end reliance of fossil fuel energy. This is a false choice obvious when you look at the manufacture and infrastructure of wind and solar Green energy is as much if not more energy from carbon based fossil fuels as from failing wind and solar made of steel and glass that cause terrible energy poverty. Green energy is not a do good movement, but rather it is a scam because it will never replace fossil fuels and it causes serious increase in electricity prices hitting the poorest with energy poverty.Wind and solar are unreliable sources of energy and become very expensive requiring back up of fossil fuels.This photo shows the back up fossil fuels helping wind turbines .Fareed Zacharia demolishes any hope of wind and solar replacing fossil fuels because of the lack of battery storage capacity.Fareed's Take: Bernie Sanders' magical thinking on climate ...CNN - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos › videos › 2020/02/15 › exp-gps-0216-fareeds-take5 days ago - CNN's Fareed Zakaria gives his take on why Bernie Sanders has an unrealistic approach to achieving deep cuts in carbon emissions.Fareed's Take: Bernie Sanders' magical thinking on climate - CNN VideoFOSSIL FUELS ARE FORMED FROM PLANTS MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO SO THEY ARE A GREEN SOURCE OF ENERGYExplainer: Where fossil fuels come fromSpoiler alert: It’s not from dinosaursThe liquid fuels that power most vehicles have been millions of years in the making.BUNYARIT/ISTOCKPHOTOBy Sarah ZielinskiSeptember 20, 2018 at 5:35 amOne of the most widespread beliefs about fossil fuels — oil, natural gas and coal — is that these substances started out as dinosaurs. There’s even an oil company, Sinclair, that uses an Apatosaurus as its icon. That dino-source story is, however, a myth. What is true: These fuels got their start long, long ago — at a time when those “terrible lizards” still walked the Earth.Fossil fuels store energy in the bonds between the atoms that make up their molecules. Burning the fuels breaks apart those bonds. This releases the energy that originally came from the sun. Green plants had locked up that solar energy within their leaves using photosynthesis, millions of years ago. Animals ate some of those plants, moving that energy up the food web. Others plants just died and decayed.Any of these organisms, when they die, can be turned into fossil fuels, notes Azra Tutuncu. She’s a geoscientist and petroleum engineer at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. But it takes the right conditions, including an oxygen-free (anoxic) environment. And time. A whole lot of time.The coal we burn today got its start some 300 million years ago. Back then, dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But they didn’t get incorporated into coal. Instead, plants in bogs and swamps died. As this greenery sunk to the bottom of those wet areas, it partially decayed and turned into peat. Those wetlands dried out. Other materials then settled down and covered the peat. With heat, pressure and time, that peat transformed into coal. To extract coal, people now have to dig deeply into the earth.Petroleum — oil and natural gas — comes from a process that started in ancient seas. Small organisms called plankton lived, died and sank to the bottom of those oceans. As debris settled down through the water, it covered the dead plankton. Microbes dined on some of the dead. Chemical reactions further transformed these buried materials. Eventually, two substances formed: waxy kerogen and a black tar called bitumen (one of the ingredients of petroleum).Explainer: All crude oil is not alikeThe kerogen can undergo further changes. As debris buries it deeper and deeper, the chemical becomes ever hotter and subjected to more pressure. If conditions become just right, the kerogen transforms into the hydrocarbons (molecules formed from hydrogen and carbon) that we know as crude oil. If temperatures become hotter still, kerogen becomes the even smaller hydrocarbons that we know as natural gas.The hydrocarbons in oil and gas are less dense than the rock and water in Earth’s crust. That prompts them to migrate upward, at least until they get trapped by some ground layer that they can’t move past. When that happens, they gradually build up. This forms a reservoir of them. And they will stay in it until people drill down to release them.Explainer: Where fossil fuels come from | Science News for StudentsGREEN Energy Is The Perfect ScamPosted: November 15, 2018 | Author: Jamie Spry | Filed under: Climatism, Energy Poverty, Failed Green Schemes, Government Grants/Funding, Green Agenda, Green Energy, Renewables, RET, Solar, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: Climate Change Scam, Climatism, Global Warming, Global Warming Scam, Government Subsidies, Grants, Green Energy, Green Energy Failure, green energy scam, Renewable energy, RET, Scam, Solar panels, Solar PV, unreliables, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power‘Green’ Energy Is The Perfect Scam“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett***WESTERN climate-theory-obsessed politicians continue their ruinous obsession with wind and solar ‘energy’. Unreliables that fail dismally wherever installed.ENERGY poverty, blackouts, sky rocketing power bills, grid instability and the destruction of pristine landscapes, flora and fauna among the many costs of low energy-density, weather dependent windmills and solar panels.THIS article out of American Thinker brutally exposes the vast scam that allows these symbolic gestures to the folly of green madness to thrive and somehow survive.*Green Energy is the Perfect ScamBy Norman RogersNovember 12, 2018Green energy is an incredible money-making scam. The promoters of green energy make billions of dollars promoting dumb energy schemes that are completely useless.What makes the scam extremely clever is that the scammers have convinced the public that the purpose of their scam is to improve the environment. The scammers pretend to be earnest environmental advocates.Any really good scam needs endorsements from authoritative-sounding sources. In the case of green energy, the authoritative sources are in on the scam. The beneficiaries of the green energy scam go way beyond the wind and solar industries.Non-profit environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, need to be seen as fighting against an urgent looming catastrophe. If they don’t have something dreadful to fight against, no one is going to join their organizations or give them money.Global warming, allegedly caused by carbon dioxide, is the looming catastrophe and green energy is the solution. When the globe failed to warm they renamed the looming catastrophic climate change in place of global warming.Now they blame every instance of bad weather on climate change created by burning coal and oil. What were formerly acts of God are now the fault of the oil and coal companies.Scientists are a special interest group largely financed by the federal government. Global warming is a magnificent gift to the science industry.The industry has been corrupted by pathological science that is primarily intended to increase the flow of money from Washington. Science directed toward discovering the truth is out of fashion.The many scientists that are global warming skeptics don’t exist as far as the science industry is concerned.Government agencies, and the politicians that give the agencies money, have embraced the threat of climate change.It gives them something to do that is more noble, even romantic than highways and making the trains run on time. The government spends billions on subsidizing wind and solar energy.Ironically, electric utility companies love wind and solar green energy. They know perfectly well that wind and solar are useless because wind and solar generate electricity erratically and have to be backed up by reliable conventional electric generating plants.The only economic benefit is the fuel saved in the backup plants when wind or solar is actually generating electricity. But the cost of the wind or solar electricity is much higher than the benefit of fuel saved.Thus, the more wind or solar that you have, the more money you lose. But, electric utilities are regulated by public utility commissions. The amount of profit they are allowed is calculated as a fraction of the utilities’ capital investment.So, the utilities want to make capital investments, even if those investments are wind and solar plants that waste money on a grand scale. The electricity consumers bear the cost and the utilities are allowed a larger profit.In some parts of the country rooftop solar is fashionable. Homeowners who install rooftop solar often save money because the reduction in the cost of electricity from the utility is greater than the cost of solar electricity.These homeowners brag to their friends about how clever they are, and the purveyors of rooftop solar place advertisements claiming that rooftop solar is cheaper than buying electricity from the electric company.This is part of the scam. Rooftop solar is profitable because it is heavily subsidized and because the electric utility is forced, by the governmental authorities, to provide a connection to back up the solar without compensating remuneration.The real cost of rooftop solar electricity, exclusive of subsidies, is around 30-cents per kilowatt-hour and the real benefit is around two cents per kilowatt hour from fuel saved in the utility’s backup plants.The subsidy, financed by taxpayers and electricity consumers, is greater than ninety percent.Hundreds of thousands of homeowners, under the delusion that they have discovered cheaper electricity, are walking and talking advertisements for solar energy.The biggest victim of the green energy scam is the public in general. Everybody pays more taxes and pays more for energy as a consequence of the scam.But the waste of billions of dollars may not be noticeable when spread over the 320 million Americans.The public has been exposed to relentless propaganda promoting green energy as beneficial and less expensive.The public is the greatest victim, but most people don’t know that they are being victimized, so there is little incentive to organize against the scam.There are certain other victims such as the coal industry and coal miners. But these groups mostly don’t understand that they are victimized by a scam.Due to the propaganda, they may actually believe that burning coal is undesirable and dangerous. Thus, they lack a clear mandate to organize against the scam. (Modern coal generating plants are environmentally clean.)The manufacturers of fossil fuel generating plants are beneficiaries, not victims. Wind and solar don’t reduce the demand for fossil fuel plants because wind and solar have to be backed up by traditional plants.A campaign against coal, by the Sierra Club, has resulted in the closing of many coal plants. The closed plants are typically replaced by new natural gas plants.Due to the strain imposed on the electric grid by erratic wind and solar, there are many commercial opportunities for upgrading the traditional components of the electricity grid.Rather than hurting the manufacturers of fossil fuel generating equipment, the green energy movement actually helps them.The green energy scam is the perfect scam because the beneficiaries include many influential individuals and institutions, while the victims are dispersed among large numbers of unorganized people.The few concentrated groups of victims, like coal miners, are psychologically handicapped by propaganda that has convinced them that they, rather than the scammers, are at fault.Wind and solar are truly useless, like having a 6thtoe or an appendix. A detailed exposition on the uselessness of wind and solar is given in my book – Dumb Energy: A Critique of Wind and Solar Energy.Green energy is often justified on the grounds that it reduces carbon dioxide emissions and thus prevents global warming. Of course, global warming, now called climate change, is itself a scam.The science on which the predictions of global warming doom are based is incredibly weak. But, the weak science is presented as if it is reliable by self-interested parties.In any case, wind and solar are very expensive methods of reducing CO2 emissions. Other, far more practical, strategies for reducing CO2 emissions are available.Anyone who criticizes the green energy scam is ruthlessly attacked. Critics are often accused of being in the pay of fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel companies are too timid to risk the wrath of the green movement, so they hardly ever give money to the critics of the green movement.A favorite line of attack is to accuse the critics of using tobacco company tactics to cover up the danger from using fossil fuels.Critics are often depicted as being mental cases, as when Al Gore said that critics of his global warming promotions were like people who think the moon landing was filmed in a Hollywood studio or think that the Earth is flat.James Hansen, often considered that father of the global warming movement suggested that executives of fossil fuel companies should be sent to jail for crimes against humanity.Green energy is the perfect scam because it is disguised as a do-good movement and the victims are dispersed, unorganized and disarmed by propaganda.Green energy is endorsed by government agencies, environmental non-profits, and scientific groups.These are people that are often seen as sources of reliable information but that, in reality, work to promote their own parochial interests. This is a scam that needs to be exposed.Norman Rogers is the author of the book Dumb Energy and writes often about political and environmental issues.Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on FacebookGreen Energy is the Perfect Scam | American ThinkerINTERMITTENCY IS THE STUMBLING BLOCK FOR RENEWABLESThe heart of the matter is the intermittency of wind and solar when the wind does not blow and sun does not shine at the most inopportune times. The hope was for new battery storage technology to cover the gap. This is not happening. Sadly, I have personal experience working as a director with two truly innovative new battery technology start ups. Both have struggled for 5 years and counting and no light at the end of the tunnel. See the reason -The Battery Cycle – Setting the Record StraightBy Anthony Milewski, Chairman, Cobalt 27March 7, 2019in Technology Metals Edition InsightHow long does it take from a scientific breakthrough to commercial battery production? From discovery of a new material to inclusion into a chemistry to wide spread commercial use can take between 10 and 20 years. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research has come up with a matrix for thinking about the actual time it takes for this process:·Scientific discovery of a new material(s) or process. There is no time frame for this.·New class of material synthesized. Scientists may spend one to two years on this step.·Prove performance of the half cell. Between two to five years.·Proven performance of lab scale fuel cells. Between two to five years.·Material scale-up, cell testing, and scaling up to pack. Between five to ten years.The implications of this matrix are profound for the batteries that power EVs and should be considered by investors.The Battery Cycle – Setting the Record Straight - Anthony Milewski, Cobalt 27Flat Broke & Busted: German Wind Turbine Maker Senvion’s Spectacular Financial CollapseApril 14, 2019 by stopthesethings 4 CommentsCut the subsidies and the wind industry would disappear in a heartbeat. The business model (read ‘colossal government mandated scam’) has all the hallmarks of an enormous Ponzi scheme – the wind industry’s demise is a matter of when, not if. The withdrawal of subsidies across Europe has taken its toll, as the number of new turbines erected plummets. Twelve countries in the European Union (EU) failed to install “a single wind turbine” last year.Saddled with debt and peddling the world’s worst wind turbines hasn’t helped German turbine maker Senvion, either.Its parent, the Indian outfit Suzlon suffered India’s biggest convertible-bond default in 2012 – was seriously struggling then and isn’t in any better shape now – even a name change to “Senvion” didn’t help.In 2015, a debt-ridden Suzlon and struggling Senvion parted company, with a US firm, Centerbridge Partners throwing €1 billion at the wreckage in the hope some of it could be salvaged.Four years on and it’s clear that Senvion was terminal.Here’s a couple of pieces from Germany on only the latest renewable energy outfit to face total collapse. And the, oh so tragic ‘disaster’, has a run of serious knock-on consequences for wind farms and RE rent seekers here in Australia, as we’ll detail below.Ailing Wind Turbine Maker Senvion Takes Step Toward InsolvencyGreentechmediaJason Deign10 April 2019The German manufacturer is on the ropes amid intense industry competition, and refinancing talks have so far come up short.Shares in Senvion were in free fall Wednesday after the embattled German wind turbine maker announced it was entering a process called self-administration in a last-ditch turnaround attempt.The Hamburg-based manufacturer said the move was to safeguard an ongoing transformation program “after refinancing discussions with lenders have so far not come to a positive conclusion.”According to financial sources cited by Reuters, Senvion needs at least 100 million euros ($112 million) to remain afloat in the short term.Germany’s self-administration law encourages financially stricken companies to declare insolvency early on, and thus increase the chances of a recovery, by allowing leadership teams to retain control of the business with oversight from a supervisor acting on behalf of creditors.Senvion said it is initiating self-administration proceedings at both its main business and its German trading arm.In a press statement, CEO Yves Rannou said: “We aim to use the self-administration proceedings to focus on restoring a profitable and sustainable business for our group [more rapidly]. We are in the process of discussing financing options.”Investors fleeShares tanked on the news, dropping 49 percent in 24 hours to less than €0.50 a share ($0.56). Senvion’s share price has fallen more than 95 percent in the last 12 months.Senvion began a restructuring program in January, and Rannou said this week that the company still has “a fundamentally sound and strong business model.”The company said it had appointed two insolvency administration advisers with “significant experience in successfully delivering self-administered restructuring programs” to work alongside the management team.Senvion also said management has the support of creditors including major shareholder Centerbridge, the U.S.-based private-equity firm, which has pumped €82 million ($92 million) into the turbine business over the last nine months.The company said it would continue with production, services, maintenance and customer support while refocusing operations and initiatives on particular markets, streamlining its product portfolio and looking for efficiency gains.“Industry tension”Aris Karcanias, co-lead of FTI Consulting’s Global Clean Energy Practice, said that while some of the issues facing the turbine maker were company-specific, it was also having to adapt to a “new normal” for wind’s original equipment manufacturers.Industry competition has intensified over the past five years through the introduction of auctions, the consolidation of large manufacturers, the expansion of Chinese players internationally and challenges from solar and other generation technologies, he said.“There is a genuine industry tension,” Karcanias commented. “Market access, really knowing your customers, and being able to continuously reinvent your technological portfolio whilst driving new service revenues [have] become critical to survival.”GreentechmediaGerman wind turbine maker Senvion files for insolvencyReutersAlexander Hübner, Michelle Martin10 April 2019FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A German court on Tuesday approved an application for insolvency from wind turbine manufacturer Senvion, although the company said it was also continuing to look at new funding options and various potential investors had shown interest.The Hamburg-based company, which has more than a billion euros of debt, said it had applied for preliminary self-administration proceedings because refinancing discussions with lenders had not yet been successful.Shares in Senvion were down 40.5 percent at 1519 GMT, having fallen as much as 55 percent earlier in the day.Senvion has faced delays and penalties related to big projects, while the wind industry as a whole has seen falling prices and increased competition as it moves away from governments guaranteeing generous fixed subsidized tariffs for power toward an auction-based system that favors the lowest bidders.Market leaders Siemens Gamesa and Vestas have more pricing power, putting smaller suppliers under pressure.Financial sources had told Reuters Senvion needed at least 100 million euros ($112 million) in the short term to keep operating.“Lenders and major bond holders are currently continuing intensive discussions around a financing offer to secure the continuation of operations which may allow the company to successfully exit this process,” Senvion said in a statement.Two financial sources said hedge funds Anchorage and Davidson Kempner were prepared to put up the 100 million euros in loans that CEO Yves Rannou – who took the helm in January – needs to continue restructuring and clear the backlog of orders that has recently cost the company revenues and profit.The sources said majority shareholder Centerbridge was prepared to accept that but the banks – notably Deutsche Bank and BayernLB – would still need to agree. The banks have lent Senvion a total of 950 million euros.BayernLB and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.Senvion also has 400 million euros in bonds bought by hedge funds including Anchorage and Davidson Kempner.Senvion said its management board would remain in office under the initiated procedure and business operations would carry on, with both existing service and maintenance contracts continuing.The company said the preliminary self-administration proceedings affected Senvion GmbH and a subsidiary called Senvion Deutschland GmbH. It said Senvion S.A., Senvion Topco GmbH and Senvion Holding GmbH were expected to file for insolvency later this week.Senvion’s website says it has around 4,000 employees globally.ReutersNow to the Australian fallout, with this lament from the team over at ruin-economy.Australian wind project owners worried as Senvion faces insolvencyReneweconomySophie Vorrath12 April 2019German wind turbine maker Senvion has entered what it describes as “self-administration proceedings” as the company struggles with debt, delays to projects and increased market competition from its major rivals.The situation has raised concerns for projects and workers in Australia using Senvion technology, or where it is the contractor, including the 212MW Lincoln Gap wind project near Port Augusta in South Australia and the huge Murra Warra development in Victoria.In Australia, Senvion has installed more than 470MW of wind energy generation, with a further 430MW under construction as at September 2018.For its completed projects, Senvion also has full-service agreements for all of these wind farms. A spokeswoman said in a statement: “Senvion Australia is working closely with wind farm owners and contractors to ensure that we can continue to safely deliver and operate wind farms in Australia.”The Hamburg-based company says it had come to the decision to take the action after refinancing discussions with lenders had “so far not come to a positive conclusion.”The company said the move was supported by the company’s main shareholders, lenders and major bond holders, and day-to-day business operations would continue as normal, with the goal of full recovery.“Although we could not yet win some breathing space through a financial restructuring, Senvion has a fundamentally sound and strong business model. Together with all our teams, the management and I are implementing measures to return the company to economic stability,” said CEO Yves Rannou.“By entering the preliminary proceedings under self-administration, we aim to gain the flexibility and speed required to press ahead with the initiated transformation program. We are in the process of discussing financing options. If successful, we may be able to exit the initiated process successfully.”According to Reuters, financial sources say the company needs at €100 million ($A158 million) in the short term to keep operating.ReneweconomyLincoln Gap: Senvion collapse brings project to a halt.Lincoln Gap (just to the west of Port Augusta in SA) is touted as the latest thing in wind farms, with claims that it will have a bigger-than-Ben-Hur battery to account for the weather – ie the fact they can only ever deliver power around 30% of the time and at crazy, random intervals. The project was meant to comprise 59 turbines. However, at last count there are only about 8 or 10 that look anything like complete. With Senvion’s sudden and monumental collapse the chances of completing the balance of the project now, look pretty thin.Adding to our sense of delicious schadenfreude is the fact that the key backer of Nexif (the firm that owns the part finished project) is the one and only Alex Turnbull. Alex is the son of Malcolm, the Liberal PM dumped by his party for his renewable energy obsession.Alex’s relationship with the embattled wind power outfit, Infigen is the stuff of legend: Born Lucky: Stars Align Perfectly for PM’s Son with Mammoth Bet on Wind Power Outfit InfigenAs to the Singapore based Nexif and its stalled Lincoln Gap project, STT understands that Turnbull & Son went to great lengths to secure a power purchase agreement with Snowy Hydro to finance the project, along with a pile of cash from the Federal government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Another case of it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.Well, it seems that this is one that Daddy can’t fix in a hurry. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.https://stopthesethings.com/2019/04/14/flat-broke-busted-german-wind-turbine-maker-senvions-spectacular-financial-collapse/