EU climate package + quantum leap in laser technology
CO2 border adjustment takes aim at China’s steel
Super laser: energy becomes matter
Economic growth amounts to 7.9 percent
Maas criticizes vaccination diplomacy
Xi-Biden meeting in preparation
Control of info on loopholes on the net
Corona vaccination of young people
Portrait: CSU European politician Monika Hohlmeier
Personal: Pharmaceutical guru dies
Dear reader,
when the European Union puts the CO2 limit compensation into effect, the consequences will consequently also be felt in the People’s Republic of China. Suppliers there may have to restructure their entire production to meet the requirements. The manoeuvre is a good example of how Europe can use its own strengths in the battle with its systemic rival. Namely, within the framework of standards and laws. Anyone who wants to make money from or in Europe simply has to abide by our rules. It is only up to us to draw up these rules consistently according to our interests. After all, the People’s Republic of China does the same the other way round. A touch of level playing field, so to speak.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics seem to be in a league of their own. The laser technology they have developed is said to be able to fire a beam that far outshines all other lasers in the world. Frank Sieren describes why this could also be of interest to ordinary mortals.
Meanwhile, sparrows are whistling from the rooftops that China’s leader Xi and US President Biden could meet in person for the first time in October , at least in this constellation of offices. Did you know that a preliminary meeting for a preliminary meeting for the main meeting is necessary before the gentlemen are allowed to shake hands? No wonder geopolitics is so damn complicated.
It has been a long time since the stage in the press room of the EU Commission in Brussels was so full and so high-calibre: six EU Commissioners and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen jointly presented the “Fit for 55” climate package on Wednesday. But there is also a lot at stake. The package of energy and climate laws aims to achieve the EU climate targets of 2030 (minus 55 percent emissions compared to 1990) and 2050 (climate neutrality). The package of twelve legislative initiatives also includes the reform of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) with an extension to shipping and the establishment of a CO2 border adjustment. The latter in particular could still cause resentment in international trade.
Because China’s dumping steel is now clearly in the firing line. Beijing had already signalled concern about the EU project in advance. And the concerns are shared at the highest levels of government: Xi Jinping already raised the matter in a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in April. Tackling climate change is a shared responsibility and should not become a geopolitical bargaining tool, state media quoted Xi as warning at the time from the conversation with Merkel and Macron. China’s representatives in Brussels stressed that the project still needed to be discussed.
This is what the controversial mechanism looks like: The EU Commission has now chosen a rather narrow approach of basic materials for the legislative proposal for CO2 border adjustment ( CBAM for short, after the abbreviation for “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism”) for the time being. In the first phase, only imports of cement, various iron, steel and aluminium goods, fertilisers and electricity will be affected. The mechanism will apply to all third countries except Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Commission also reserves the right to adapt the list of products concerned. The list of excluded third countries may also be amended if an emissions trading system based on the European model is introduced in the countries concerned, which can be linked to the European ETS. The CBAM is to take full effect from 2026.
CBMA flushes money into EU coffers
Whether China can make it onto the list of exempted third countries is highly questionable. According to media reports, the People’s Republic wants to give the starting signal for its national emissions trading scheme on Friday. According to the report, 2225 companies from the energy sector will initially take part in the programme. In the next three to five years, the market will then be expanded to seven other industries: Petrochemicals, chemicals, building materials, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, paper and domestic aviation. Whether Chinese and European emissions trading will be compatible has also not yet been clarified.
The CO2 border adjustment is a first, said EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs Paolo Gentiloni at the presentation. The EU climate package also requires global cooperation. Critics of the CBAM, however, countries such as China and Russia, see things differently. They see it as a “climate tariff” or a “CO2 import tax”. EU Commissioner Gentiloni reiterated: “CBAM is not a tax, it is an environmental measure.” One thing is clear: it will bring more money into the EU’s coffers.
The amount of the border levy is to be based on the average weekly price that European companies have to pay for the purchase of EU emission certificates. Companies from third countries can thereby claim CO2 costs incurred in their home country and then have to show correspondingly fewer “CBAM rights”. Free ETS allowances will then be phased out for sectors covered by CBAM. To this end, the EU Commission’s proposal provides for a ten-year transition phase starting in 2026, during which the free allocation of allowances will gradually decrease by ten percentage points per year. The phasing out of free pollution allowances is a prerequisite for the CBAM to be compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
While the European Parliament is strongly in favour of the cap-and-trade CO2 levy, calling for it to be introduced by 2023 at the latest, others are more cautious: the European aluminium industry has already spoken out against it, saying it would be better to keep the free ETS allowances instead. CBAM will not effectively stop the import of carbon-intensive products from China, wrote Gerd Götz, director-general of industry association European Aluminium, in a guest post on the Euractiv platform in early July. China will simply divert goods from low-carbon production to Europe while reselling the less environmentally friendly products in the rest of the world, Götz argues. In this way, he says, there is no reduction in global emissions. In the same vein, the Greek conglomerate Mytilineos warns in the Financial Times that CBAM will promote Chinese and Russian “resource mixing”.
Higher costs also for shipping companies
The EU Commission’s proposal has not yet clarified how European companies are to be placed on an equal footing with competitors outside the EU . The proposal does not provide for any kind of bonus payment for exporting from the EU.
The expansion of the ETS will also be important for international trade with China. This will be extended to shipping, including journeys from third countries – but only 50 percent of the emissions must be covered. A compromise with the international partners, as it was said in Brussels. For shipping companies like Cosco, this means higher costs in maritime transport. “The obligation to surrender allowances in maritime transport will be introduced gradually over the period 2023 to 2025,” the EU Commission’s legislative proposal states. The levy is then to take full effect from 2026. Ships that do not comply with it may ultimately be refused entry to EU ports.
But experts question whether the move will have the desired effect. The non-governmental organisation Transport & Environment (T&E) has looked at the latest data on ship emissions, which ship operators must report under EU monitoring rules. It found that the big pollution problem from shipping is not caused by the relatively short journeys between EU ports – but by the much longer journeys that start or end far from Europe.
A research team from Shanghai says it has achieved a quantum leap in laser technology. The breakthrough was achieved as part of the “Station of Extreme Light” (SEL) project led by the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics. According to the project, scientists have created the conditions for firing a shot with a laser in the near future thatcontains 10,000 times more energy than all the world’s power grids combined and is ten billion times more intense than sunlight, it says. The experiment will be carried out for the first time in the next two to four years.
The energy of the laser would, by all accounts, reach an insane 100 petawatts. One petawatt is equal to a thousand trillion watts. Thecurrent laser record is just ten petawatts and wasset only a few weeks ago by a European research team. The big difference to the power of the Shanghai laser can be explained by the fact that Europeans have so far failed to handle the enormous energy input without damaging the optical components of a laser such as crystals, lenses and mirrors.
To get around this problem, the Chinese scientists direct the input beam into a color spectrum. In each colored beam, the amount of energy is reduced enough that the hardware can withstand it. Afterwards, however, the spectral colors must be recombined into a single beam. Foryears, thiscompression has been the major obstacle that researchers from Europe, Russia and the US have cut their teethon.
Find simple solutions
“The compressor immediately starts to burn when so much energy comes in,” explained LiuJun, a scientist involved in the SEL project. In a 19-page research paper published in the US magazine Optics Express, the team now presents a new design forhigh-power lasers. The compression process is divided into different steps. In this way, it is possible to reduce the energy intensity to a level that is safe for the compressor.
Initially, the researchers had planned to use four laser beams. But with the new technology, a single beam is already sufficient to achieve the amount of energy. “The fewer the beams, the simpler the device is to build. And the simpler the device, the simpler it can be built and operated,” said researcher Liu. It would also significantly improve the quality and stability of the laser pulses. The cost of the research project is estimated at around 100-million-US dollars.
New insights into the universe
The SEL was launched in 2018 to provide insights into physical phenomena that have not yet been fully deciphered, such as the nature of space-time. The power of its new laser design should be sufficient to create matter and antimatter from a vacuum. The researchers hope that this will enable them to reconstruct in the laboratory precisely those physical processes that are responsible for the formation of the universe.
A vacuum is, contrary to the common assumption, not empty, but filled with pairs of electrons and positrons, particles of matter and antimatter. Normally, these particles collide with each other and destroy each other. With the help of the high-power laser, it could now be possible for the first time to separate the particles from each other before the collision and prevent their destruction. Matter and antimatter would be created virtually out of thin air, according to the researchers’ report. This process already has a name and is called“Breaking the Vacuum”At the same time, it would be impressive proof that matter and energy are interchangeable, just as Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 predicts.
The laser could also find a practical application in the field of nuclear fusion energy. The development of nuclear weapons has already shown that it is possible to convert matter into large amounts of heat and light. In contrast, converting heat and light into matter is much more difficult. If successful, a new branch of physics called nuclearphotonics could grow out of its infancy in a very short time, combining nuclear physics and the physics of high energy density in matter, exploiting the unique properties of new radiation sources basedon the use of high-power lasers for basic research and applications.
Looking around the corner
Whether in everyday applications, quantum technology or basic research, hardly anything works today without lasers. Depending on the energy and wavelength, the light waves oscillating in parallel at the same rate have great advantages. They can cool atoms or transmit data, but also perform measurements from the microcosm to gravitational waves.
Scientists from the People’s Republic are also making fundamental progress in other areas of laser technology. Back in March, a team of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China announced that they had developed a method foridentifying hidden objects at adistance of more thanone kilometer.
Known as non-line-of-sight(NLOS), the process involves scattering laser light from surrounding objects onto an occluded object, which allows it to be subsequently reconstructed as a 3D model. This makes it possible todetect objects outside the field of view, behind a corner or an obstacle. The Chinese scientists were able to spot a hidden mannequin at a distance of 1.43 km on a university campus in Shanghai in this way. Previously, it had only been possible to detect partially or completely hidden objects from a few meters away. This is because light travelling over longer distances is increasingly affected by scattered light from the surroundings and particles in the air, which in turn confuses the sensors. Theresearchers’ setup was also able to distinguish between different objects placedjust 9.4 cm apart or detect hidden objects in motion with two additional sensors.
Wu Cheng, one of the researchers involved, told the South China Morning Post that NLOS imaging could help self-driving cars detect vehicles and pedestrians behind buildings. The technology could also be used in police work, for example to locate hostages or criminals in a winding residential area.
Europe
Research
Technology
USA
News
Economy grows by 7.9 percent
Chinese GDP is coming down from the extreme growth of the post-Corona shock phase. In the quarter from April to June, growth was 7.9 percent. In the previous quarter, it was 18.3 percent, but this should be seen as an outlier. For the first half of the year, the year-on-year figure is 12.7 per cent. In its release Thursday, the National Bureau of Statistics called it a “steady recovery” from the pandemic conditions. Growth had slumped 9.8 percent in the first quarter of Corona’s 2020 year.
Many important indicators point to a continued strong development of the Chinese economy. Retail sales rose by 12.1 percent, industrial production by a good eight percent. Corona has long since receded into the background as a concern for Chinese economists. Instead, high commodity prices are seen as a drag on the economy (China.Table reported).
Experts now consider it likely that China will achieve growth of between six and eight percent in 2021 as a whole. The target is six percent. The World Bank estimates that China’s economy could even grow by 8.5 percent. However, domestic consumption still needs to recover further.
If you compare the growth to the last 2nd quarter before the Corona crisis, 2019, it’s still 1.7 percent higher in 2021. That’s a good sign. Industrial production rose 8.3 percent year-on-year in June. Still, Beijing’s central government is playing it safe. Last Friday already, the central bankcut the reserve requirement ratio by 50 basis points for the first time since April 2020 to get banks to lend more. This will pump an additional 154 billion US dollars into the market.
The cut in the minimum reserve rate was larger than expected. Analysts therefore consider it likely that the key interest rate will now remain the same until the end of the year – although growth is expected to cool further in the second half of the year. The key interest rate currently stands at a proud 3.85 percent. High interest rates by international standards are seen as a sign of a stable economy.
This means that Beijing is vigilant, but not very worried. This is also supported by the trend in provincial, city and municipal budget policies, which are financed through bonds. Data from the Ministry of Finance show that local governments issued about $90 billion in special bonds between January and May. That’s 16 percent of their annual quota over a five-month period, so they’ve drawn down nowhere near what they could have. This means that they have acted in a wait-and-see manner and can now increase their issuance significantly without exceeding their annual quota.
China’s exports also grew more strongly than expected in June. They rose by 32.2 percent. Analysts had expected only a good 20 percent. But even these figures are skewed, having to do with catching-up international demand now that the lockdowns in the West are slowly being lifted. fs/fin
Coronavirus
Economy
GDP
Growth
Maas: China is not primarily concerned with lives
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has been unusually harsh in his criticism of the political intentions behind Chinese and Russian vaccine diplomacy. On the sidelines of a US trip to the state of Michigan, where Maas visited a production facility of US pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer, the SPD politician said: “We notice that China in particular is using its stock of vaccine to make very clear political demands in various countries.” The way in which the People’s Republic, but also the Russian government, were using the vaccine was “only with the intention of increasing their own influence and not necessarily to save human lives in the first place”, Maas said.
In fact, the People’s Republic supplies many developing countries with vaccines from the Chinese manufacturers Sinovac and Sinopharm. On the African continent alone, Beijing supports almost 40 countries in immunising their populations. The government in Taiwan accuses its big neighbour of making the supply of vaccines conditional, among other things, on the further international isolation of Taipei. The People’s Republic claims the island as part of its national territory.
Maas appealed for other countries to create appropriate alternatives in countries in urgent need of aid. “These alternatives are the vaccines that we have available and that we obviously want to make available to as many countries as possible in as many regions as possible.” grz
Corona Vaccines
Health
Heiko Maas
Taiwan
Vaccine diplomacy
Harbingers of the Xi-Biden Summit
The eagerly awaited first meeting between Joe Biden in his role as US president and China’s leader Xi Jinping is on the horizon. US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will travel from Washington to the Chinese port city of Tianjin next week to meet her counterpart Xie Feng. This was reported by the South China Morning Post on Wednesday. The meeting is meant to prepare for a later meeting between the two foreign ministers, Antony Blinken and Wang Yi, which in turn is seen as a prerequisite for the summit between the two leaders. Under discussion is a meeting between the world’s two most powerful men at the G20 summit in Rome in October.
Biden met Xi in person when he was vice president under Barack Obama. At the time, Xi was freshly enthroned as head of state and party. Compared to then, relations between the largest economies are now severely strained. grz
Diplomacy
Joe Biden
USA
Wendy Sherman
Xi Jinping
Search for loopholes soon punishable by law
The Chinese government is tightening Internet regulations in the country. As of September, attempts to detect security vulnerabilities on the Internet, as well as the dissemination of knowledge about possible security vulnerabilities or even the sale of such knowledge, will be punishable by law. Two authorities are in charge of implementing the new legal framework. This was reported by Chinese state media.
Internet service providers will in future be given a two-day window to pass on knowledge of such loopholes to the Ministry of Information Technology. This is to minimize possible harm to users, it is said. Meanwhile, the Ministry of State Security will have the exclusive right to publicize the existence of the security loopholes.
In May, several students had been sentenced to prison terms of up to two and a half years. The group had discovered a loophole in the mobile phone application of the fast food chain KFC and obtained merchandise vouchers worth almost 300,000 euros. grz
Cybersecurity
Internet
MIIT
Technology
China begins Corona vaccination of teenagers
Several areas in China will begin Corona vaccination of teenagers soon. The southwestern region of Guangxi and the city of Jingmen in the central province of Hubei will start vaccinating 15- to 17-year-olds before the end of July, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing state officials. Vaccination of children aged 12 to 14 will then begin in August. The authorities’ goal, they said, is to have all teenagers aged 12 and older fully vaccinated by the end of October if they are medically fit to receive the drug. In the People’s Republic, the vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm are approved for the age group between three and 17 years. ari
Corona Vaccines
Coronavirus
Health
Pharma
Sinovac
Portrait
Monika Hohlmeier – MEP with many anecdotes from China
Monika Hohlmeier has a special memory of a German-Chinese conversation: in 1985, her father, then Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauß, met the then leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping. Officially, half an hour was planned for the conversation. “But the two of them had such a good time that the entire protocol was thrown out,” Hohlmeier recounts, laughing heartily. “After an hour everyone got restless, after two hours the éclat was perfect.” At the time, she was accompanying her politician father on his trip abroad. Today, the 59-year-old is herself a CSU MEP and a member of the China delegation.
Monika Hohlmeier was born in 1962, the youngest of three children of the CSU politician Strauß, who was Bavarian Prime Minister from 1978 to 1988. After the death of her mother in 1984, the trained hotel manager took on the role of Bavarian “First Lady” – and then began her own political career. For 18 years she was a member of the Bavarian State Parliament, and from 1998 to 2005 she was Bavarian Minister of Education. In 2009, she was elected to the European Parliament.
Most recently, Hohlmeier was criticized for a mask deal – that is, for sourcing a product that is mainly imported from China. According to reports, she put Andrea Tandler, daughter of long-time CSU politician Gerold Tandler, in touch with German Health Minister Jens Spahn. Andrea Tandler then received a large sum in commissions as a broker in the Swiss company Emix’s mask deals with the federal government. In Bavaria, Hohlmeier is also said to have established contact between Tandler and the health ministry – whereupon the ministry struck the “most expensive deal for FFP2 mouth protection” during the first Corona wave in 2020, Spiegel reported. Hohlmeier herself probably earned nothing from the deals. She did not know about the commissions for Tandler, she said through a lawyer.
The runway in Shandong marked with flares
Regardless of the Bavarian mask affair, she is considered to be an extremely well-informed expert on China. The meeting between her father and Deng Xiaoping was so fascinating for her because two people from societies with completely different values met – and yet got along so well. “Despite the differences, there were experiences, such as wars, that they had both lived through, over which they created a bond,” Hohlmeier said. These contrasts are also always exciting in her own work, she said: young people from China, for example, wonder how in Europe individual interests can be more important than those of the community. “When we then explain our approach, exciting discussions ensue,” Hohlmeier says. “You have to get into a conversation with each other to make each other understandable.”
Hohlmeier has all kinds of anecdotes from her trips to China. Many tell of the speed with which China has developed into a global world power: In 1985, she says, she also traveled with her father to the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, where bridges had collapsed and electricity had failed as a result of a typhoon. “We tried to find the airport with flashlights, and someone lit the runway with a torch,” she says. “When I compare that with the airport today, I think it represents an incredible development of China, its strength and its will.”
For relations between Europe and China, she would like to be able to discuss difficult topics such as human rights and forced labour openly and honestly. “If we are in competition with each other and still want to deal with each other in a respectful, friendly manner and in friendship, this also means that we can address issues that may be unpleasant for the Chinese government,” the CSU politician stresses. Leonie Düngefeld
Chinese Communist Party
EU
Personnel
Xu Jingren is dead. The founder of Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd died last Monday at the age of 77. For five decades, Xu led the company, which is one of the most successful in the industry in China but bucked the trend by never going public. Xu held the posts of chairman of the board, chief executive officer and party secretary all at the same time.
Dessert
Extravagant paint jobs for expensive sports cars are not uncommon in China. Whether they always look good is in the eye of the beholder. In any case, they offer an individual appearance. This sleek Lamborghini was presented last week at the 18th International Auto Expo in Changchun, northeast China.
Portrait: CSU European politician Monika Hohlmeier
Personal: Pharmaceutical guru dies
Dear reader,
when the European Union puts the CO2 limit compensation into effect, the consequences will consequently also be felt in the People’s Republic of China. Suppliers there may have to restructure their entire production to meet the requirements. The manoeuvre is a good example of how Europe can use its own strengths in the battle with its systemic rival. Namely, within the framework of standards and laws. Anyone who wants to make money from or in Europe simply has to abide by our rules. It is only up to us to draw up these rules consistently according to our interests. After all, the People’s Republic of China does the same the other way round. A touch of level playing field, so to speak.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics seem to be in a league of their own. The laser technology they have developed is said to be able to fire a beam that far outshines all other lasers in the world. Frank Sieren describes why this could also be of interest to ordinary mortals.
Meanwhile, sparrows are whistling from the rooftops that China’s leader Xi and US President Biden could meet in person for the first time in October , at least in this constellation of offices. Did you know that a preliminary meeting for a preliminary meeting for the main meeting is necessary before the gentlemen are allowed to shake hands? No wonder geopolitics is so damn complicated.
It has been a long time since the stage in the press room of the EU Commission in Brussels was so full and so high-calibre: six EU Commissioners and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen jointly presented the “Fit for 55” climate package on Wednesday. But there is also a lot at stake. The package of energy and climate laws aims to achieve the EU climate targets of 2030 (minus 55 percent emissions compared to 1990) and 2050 (climate neutrality). The package of twelve legislative initiatives also includes the reform of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) with an extension to shipping and the establishment of a CO2 border adjustment. The latter in particular could still cause resentment in international trade.
Because China’s dumping steel is now clearly in the firing line. Beijing had already signalled concern about the EU project in advance. And the concerns are shared at the highest levels of government: Xi Jinping already raised the matter in a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in April. Tackling climate change is a shared responsibility and should not become a geopolitical bargaining tool, state media quoted Xi as warning at the time from the conversation with Merkel and Macron. China’s representatives in Brussels stressed that the project still needed to be discussed.
This is what the controversial mechanism looks like: The EU Commission has now chosen a rather narrow approach of basic materials for the legislative proposal for CO2 border adjustment ( CBAM for short, after the abbreviation for “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism”) for the time being. In the first phase, only imports of cement, various iron, steel and aluminium goods, fertilisers and electricity will be affected. The mechanism will apply to all third countries except Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Commission also reserves the right to adapt the list of products concerned. The list of excluded third countries may also be amended if an emissions trading system based on the European model is introduced in the countries concerned, which can be linked to the European ETS. The CBAM is to take full effect from 2026.
CBMA flushes money into EU coffers
Whether China can make it onto the list of exempted third countries is highly questionable. According to media reports, the People’s Republic wants to give the starting signal for its national emissions trading scheme on Friday. According to the report, 2225 companies from the energy sector will initially take part in the programme. In the next three to five years, the market will then be expanded to seven other industries: Petrochemicals, chemicals, building materials, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, paper and domestic aviation. Whether Chinese and European emissions trading will be compatible has also not yet been clarified.
The CO2 border adjustment is a first, said EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs Paolo Gentiloni at the presentation. The EU climate package also requires global cooperation. Critics of the CBAM, however, countries such as China and Russia, see things differently. They see it as a “climate tariff” or a “CO2 import tax”. EU Commissioner Gentiloni reiterated: “CBAM is not a tax, it is an environmental measure.” One thing is clear: it will bring more money into the EU’s coffers.
The amount of the border levy is to be based on the average weekly price that European companies have to pay for the purchase of EU emission certificates. Companies from third countries can thereby claim CO2 costs incurred in their home country and then have to show correspondingly fewer “CBAM rights”. Free ETS allowances will then be phased out for sectors covered by CBAM. To this end, the EU Commission’s proposal provides for a ten-year transition phase starting in 2026, during which the free allocation of allowances will gradually decrease by ten percentage points per year. The phasing out of free pollution allowances is a prerequisite for the CBAM to be compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
While the European Parliament is strongly in favour of the cap-and-trade CO2 levy, calling for it to be introduced by 2023 at the latest, others are more cautious: the European aluminium industry has already spoken out against it, saying it would be better to keep the free ETS allowances instead. CBAM will not effectively stop the import of carbon-intensive products from China, wrote Gerd Götz, director-general of industry association European Aluminium, in a guest post on the Euractiv platform in early July. China will simply divert goods from low-carbon production to Europe while reselling the less environmentally friendly products in the rest of the world, Götz argues. In this way, he says, there is no reduction in global emissions. In the same vein, the Greek conglomerate Mytilineos warns in the Financial Times that CBAM will promote Chinese and Russian “resource mixing”.
Higher costs also for shipping companies
The EU Commission’s proposal has not yet clarified how European companies are to be placed on an equal footing with competitors outside the EU . The proposal does not provide for any kind of bonus payment for exporting from the EU.
The expansion of the ETS will also be important for international trade with China. This will be extended to shipping, including journeys from third countries – but only 50 percent of the emissions must be covered. A compromise with the international partners, as it was said in Brussels. For shipping companies like Cosco, this means higher costs in maritime transport. “The obligation to surrender allowances in maritime transport will be introduced gradually over the period 2023 to 2025,” the EU Commission’s legislative proposal states. The levy is then to take full effect from 2026. Ships that do not comply with it may ultimately be refused entry to EU ports.
But experts question whether the move will have the desired effect. The non-governmental organisation Transport & Environment (T&E) has looked at the latest data on ship emissions, which ship operators must report under EU monitoring rules. It found that the big pollution problem from shipping is not caused by the relatively short journeys between EU ports – but by the much longer journeys that start or end far from Europe.
A research team from Shanghai says it has achieved a quantum leap in laser technology. The breakthrough was achieved as part of the “Station of Extreme Light” (SEL) project led by the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics. According to the project, scientists have created the conditions for firing a shot with a laser in the near future thatcontains 10,000 times more energy than all the world’s power grids combined and is ten billion times more intense than sunlight, it says. The experiment will be carried out for the first time in the next two to four years.
The energy of the laser would, by all accounts, reach an insane 100 petawatts. One petawatt is equal to a thousand trillion watts. Thecurrent laser record is just ten petawatts and wasset only a few weeks ago by a European research team. The big difference to the power of the Shanghai laser can be explained by the fact that Europeans have so far failed to handle the enormous energy input without damaging the optical components of a laser such as crystals, lenses and mirrors.
To get around this problem, the Chinese scientists direct the input beam into a color spectrum. In each colored beam, the amount of energy is reduced enough that the hardware can withstand it. Afterwards, however, the spectral colors must be recombined into a single beam. Foryears, thiscompression has been the major obstacle that researchers from Europe, Russia and the US have cut their teethon.
Find simple solutions
“The compressor immediately starts to burn when so much energy comes in,” explained LiuJun, a scientist involved in the SEL project. In a 19-page research paper published in the US magazine Optics Express, the team now presents a new design forhigh-power lasers. The compression process is divided into different steps. In this way, it is possible to reduce the energy intensity to a level that is safe for the compressor.
Initially, the researchers had planned to use four laser beams. But with the new technology, a single beam is already sufficient to achieve the amount of energy. “The fewer the beams, the simpler the device is to build. And the simpler the device, the simpler it can be built and operated,” said researcher Liu. It would also significantly improve the quality and stability of the laser pulses. The cost of the research project is estimated at around 100-million-US dollars.
New insights into the universe
The SEL was launched in 2018 to provide insights into physical phenomena that have not yet been fully deciphered, such as the nature of space-time. The power of its new laser design should be sufficient to create matter and antimatter from a vacuum. The researchers hope that this will enable them to reconstruct in the laboratory precisely those physical processes that are responsible for the formation of the universe.
A vacuum is, contrary to the common assumption, not empty, but filled with pairs of electrons and positrons, particles of matter and antimatter. Normally, these particles collide with each other and destroy each other. With the help of the high-power laser, it could now be possible for the first time to separate the particles from each other before the collision and prevent their destruction. Matter and antimatter would be created virtually out of thin air, according to the researchers’ report. This process already has a name and is called“Breaking the Vacuum”At the same time, it would be impressive proof that matter and energy are interchangeable, just as Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 predicts.
The laser could also find a practical application in the field of nuclear fusion energy. The development of nuclear weapons has already shown that it is possible to convert matter into large amounts of heat and light. In contrast, converting heat and light into matter is much more difficult. If successful, a new branch of physics called nuclearphotonics could grow out of its infancy in a very short time, combining nuclear physics and the physics of high energy density in matter, exploiting the unique properties of new radiation sources basedon the use of high-power lasers for basic research and applications.
Looking around the corner
Whether in everyday applications, quantum technology or basic research, hardly anything works today without lasers. Depending on the energy and wavelength, the light waves oscillating in parallel at the same rate have great advantages. They can cool atoms or transmit data, but also perform measurements from the microcosm to gravitational waves.
Scientists from the People’s Republic are also making fundamental progress in other areas of laser technology. Back in March, a team of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China announced that they had developed a method foridentifying hidden objects at adistance of more thanone kilometer.
Known as non-line-of-sight(NLOS), the process involves scattering laser light from surrounding objects onto an occluded object, which allows it to be subsequently reconstructed as a 3D model. This makes it possible todetect objects outside the field of view, behind a corner or an obstacle. The Chinese scientists were able to spot a hidden mannequin at a distance of 1.43 km on a university campus in Shanghai in this way. Previously, it had only been possible to detect partially or completely hidden objects from a few meters away. This is because light travelling over longer distances is increasingly affected by scattered light from the surroundings and particles in the air, which in turn confuses the sensors. Theresearchers’ setup was also able to distinguish between different objects placedjust 9.4 cm apart or detect hidden objects in motion with two additional sensors.
Wu Cheng, one of the researchers involved, told the South China Morning Post that NLOS imaging could help self-driving cars detect vehicles and pedestrians behind buildings. The technology could also be used in police work, for example to locate hostages or criminals in a winding residential area.
Europe
Research
Technology
USA
News
Economy grows by 7.9 percent
Chinese GDP is coming down from the extreme growth of the post-Corona shock phase. In the quarter from April to June, growth was 7.9 percent. In the previous quarter, it was 18.3 percent, but this should be seen as an outlier. For the first half of the year, the year-on-year figure is 12.7 per cent. In its release Thursday, the National Bureau of Statistics called it a “steady recovery” from the pandemic conditions. Growth had slumped 9.8 percent in the first quarter of Corona’s 2020 year.
Many important indicators point to a continued strong development of the Chinese economy. Retail sales rose by 12.1 percent, industrial production by a good eight percent. Corona has long since receded into the background as a concern for Chinese economists. Instead, high commodity prices are seen as a drag on the economy (China.Table reported).
Experts now consider it likely that China will achieve growth of between six and eight percent in 2021 as a whole. The target is six percent. The World Bank estimates that China’s economy could even grow by 8.5 percent. However, domestic consumption still needs to recover further.
If you compare the growth to the last 2nd quarter before the Corona crisis, 2019, it’s still 1.7 percent higher in 2021. That’s a good sign. Industrial production rose 8.3 percent year-on-year in June. Still, Beijing’s central government is playing it safe. Last Friday already, the central bankcut the reserve requirement ratio by 50 basis points for the first time since April 2020 to get banks to lend more. This will pump an additional 154 billion US dollars into the market.
The cut in the minimum reserve rate was larger than expected. Analysts therefore consider it likely that the key interest rate will now remain the same until the end of the year – although growth is expected to cool further in the second half of the year. The key interest rate currently stands at a proud 3.85 percent. High interest rates by international standards are seen as a sign of a stable economy.
This means that Beijing is vigilant, but not very worried. This is also supported by the trend in provincial, city and municipal budget policies, which are financed through bonds. Data from the Ministry of Finance show that local governments issued about $90 billion in special bonds between January and May. That’s 16 percent of their annual quota over a five-month period, so they’ve drawn down nowhere near what they could have. This means that they have acted in a wait-and-see manner and can now increase their issuance significantly without exceeding their annual quota.
China’s exports also grew more strongly than expected in June. They rose by 32.2 percent. Analysts had expected only a good 20 percent. But even these figures are skewed, having to do with catching-up international demand now that the lockdowns in the West are slowly being lifted. fs/fin
Coronavirus
Economy
GDP
Growth
Maas: China is not primarily concerned with lives
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has been unusually harsh in his criticism of the political intentions behind Chinese and Russian vaccine diplomacy. On the sidelines of a US trip to the state of Michigan, where Maas visited a production facility of US pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer, the SPD politician said: “We notice that China in particular is using its stock of vaccine to make very clear political demands in various countries.” The way in which the People’s Republic, but also the Russian government, were using the vaccine was “only with the intention of increasing their own influence and not necessarily to save human lives in the first place”, Maas said.
In fact, the People’s Republic supplies many developing countries with vaccines from the Chinese manufacturers Sinovac and Sinopharm. On the African continent alone, Beijing supports almost 40 countries in immunising their populations. The government in Taiwan accuses its big neighbour of making the supply of vaccines conditional, among other things, on the further international isolation of Taipei. The People’s Republic claims the island as part of its national territory.
Maas appealed for other countries to create appropriate alternatives in countries in urgent need of aid. “These alternatives are the vaccines that we have available and that we obviously want to make available to as many countries as possible in as many regions as possible.” grz
Corona Vaccines
Health
Heiko Maas
Taiwan
Vaccine diplomacy
Harbingers of the Xi-Biden Summit
The eagerly awaited first meeting between Joe Biden in his role as US president and China’s leader Xi Jinping is on the horizon. US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will travel from Washington to the Chinese port city of Tianjin next week to meet her counterpart Xie Feng. This was reported by the South China Morning Post on Wednesday. The meeting is meant to prepare for a later meeting between the two foreign ministers, Antony Blinken and Wang Yi, which in turn is seen as a prerequisite for the summit between the two leaders. Under discussion is a meeting between the world’s two most powerful men at the G20 summit in Rome in October.
Biden met Xi in person when he was vice president under Barack Obama. At the time, Xi was freshly enthroned as head of state and party. Compared to then, relations between the largest economies are now severely strained. grz
Diplomacy
Joe Biden
USA
Wendy Sherman
Xi Jinping
Search for loopholes soon punishable by law
The Chinese government is tightening Internet regulations in the country. As of September, attempts to detect security vulnerabilities on the Internet, as well as the dissemination of knowledge about possible security vulnerabilities or even the sale of such knowledge, will be punishable by law. Two authorities are in charge of implementing the new legal framework. This was reported by Chinese state media.
Internet service providers will in future be given a two-day window to pass on knowledge of such loopholes to the Ministry of Information Technology. This is to minimize possible harm to users, it is said. Meanwhile, the Ministry of State Security will have the exclusive right to publicize the existence of the security loopholes.
In May, several students had been sentenced to prison terms of up to two and a half years. The group had discovered a loophole in the mobile phone application of the fast food chain KFC and obtained merchandise vouchers worth almost 300,000 euros. grz
Cybersecurity
Internet
MIIT
Technology
China begins Corona vaccination of teenagers
Several areas in China will begin Corona vaccination of teenagers soon. The southwestern region of Guangxi and the city of Jingmen in the central province of Hubei will start vaccinating 15- to 17-year-olds before the end of July, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing state officials. Vaccination of children aged 12 to 14 will then begin in August. The authorities’ goal, they said, is to have all teenagers aged 12 and older fully vaccinated by the end of October if they are medically fit to receive the drug. In the People’s Republic, the vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm are approved for the age group between three and 17 years. ari
Corona Vaccines
Coronavirus
Health
Pharma
Sinovac
Portrait
Monika Hohlmeier – MEP with many anecdotes from China
Monika Hohlmeier has a special memory of a German-Chinese conversation: in 1985, her father, then Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauß, met the then leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping. Officially, half an hour was planned for the conversation. “But the two of them had such a good time that the entire protocol was thrown out,” Hohlmeier recounts, laughing heartily. “After an hour everyone got restless, after two hours the éclat was perfect.” At the time, she was accompanying her politician father on his trip abroad. Today, the 59-year-old is herself a CSU MEP and a member of the China delegation.
Monika Hohlmeier was born in 1962, the youngest of three children of the CSU politician Strauß, who was Bavarian Prime Minister from 1978 to 1988. After the death of her mother in 1984, the trained hotel manager took on the role of Bavarian “First Lady” – and then began her own political career. For 18 years she was a member of the Bavarian State Parliament, and from 1998 to 2005 she was Bavarian Minister of Education. In 2009, she was elected to the European Parliament.
Most recently, Hohlmeier was criticized for a mask deal – that is, for sourcing a product that is mainly imported from China. According to reports, she put Andrea Tandler, daughter of long-time CSU politician Gerold Tandler, in touch with German Health Minister Jens Spahn. Andrea Tandler then received a large sum in commissions as a broker in the Swiss company Emix’s mask deals with the federal government. In Bavaria, Hohlmeier is also said to have established contact between Tandler and the health ministry – whereupon the ministry struck the “most expensive deal for FFP2 mouth protection” during the first Corona wave in 2020, Spiegel reported. Hohlmeier herself probably earned nothing from the deals. She did not know about the commissions for Tandler, she said through a lawyer.
The runway in Shandong marked with flares
Regardless of the Bavarian mask affair, she is considered to be an extremely well-informed expert on China. The meeting between her father and Deng Xiaoping was so fascinating for her because two people from societies with completely different values met – and yet got along so well. “Despite the differences, there were experiences, such as wars, that they had both lived through, over which they created a bond,” Hohlmeier said. These contrasts are also always exciting in her own work, she said: young people from China, for example, wonder how in Europe individual interests can be more important than those of the community. “When we then explain our approach, exciting discussions ensue,” Hohlmeier says. “You have to get into a conversation with each other to make each other understandable.”
Hohlmeier has all kinds of anecdotes from her trips to China. Many tell of the speed with which China has developed into a global world power: In 1985, she says, she also traveled with her father to the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, where bridges had collapsed and electricity had failed as a result of a typhoon. “We tried to find the airport with flashlights, and someone lit the runway with a torch,” she says. “When I compare that with the airport today, I think it represents an incredible development of China, its strength and its will.”
For relations between Europe and China, she would like to be able to discuss difficult topics such as human rights and forced labour openly and honestly. “If we are in competition with each other and still want to deal with each other in a respectful, friendly manner and in friendship, this also means that we can address issues that may be unpleasant for the Chinese government,” the CSU politician stresses. Leonie Düngefeld
Chinese Communist Party
EU
Personnel
Xu Jingren is dead. The founder of Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd died last Monday at the age of 77. For five decades, Xu led the company, which is one of the most successful in the industry in China but bucked the trend by never going public. Xu held the posts of chairman of the board, chief executive officer and party secretary all at the same time.
Dessert
Extravagant paint jobs for expensive sports cars are not uncommon in China. Whether they always look good is in the eye of the beholder. In any case, they offer an individual appearance. This sleek Lamborghini was presented last week at the 18th International Auto Expo in Changchun, northeast China.
