Honkers

Martin Holden

Member
Trade
Location
Cheltenham
I wonder how many will misunderstand the title?!! Anyway what’s the consensus on China’s actions in Hong Kong? Seems the agreement that was made when it was handed back has been run through with “a coach and horses”. What does this say about China that we don’t already think we know? Isn’t it amazing that a communist state is so reliant on the capitalist western world. There’s a big irony in this. The more we continue to source from China so much the more the current tide will not alter IMHO.
 
I wonder how many will misunderstand the title?!! Anyway what’s the consensus on China’s actions in Hong Kong? Seems the agreement that was made when it was handed back has been run through with “a coach and horses”. What does this say about China that we don’t already think we know? Isn’t it amazing that a communist state is so reliant on the capitalist western world. There’s a big irony in this. The more we continue to source from China so much the more the current tide will not alter IMHO.
I was wondering if you should have been posting on one of Baldricks favorite pages? ;)
Its funny ,when I was a kid we had a sort of pound shop called Jack Wilkinsons in the town ,where the kids used to go . It had mostly stuff made in Hong Knog ,and it was nearly all tat / plastic ,and the school joke ,was always about how rubbish was -it was from Wilkos !!
Forward 50 odd years and the irony we rely so heavily on China to make stuff (and India for ag stuff too ) which includes Hong Kong !
Changing the tide isnt going to be easy I fear
 

Paddington

Member
Location
Soggy Shropshire
Tired of buying cr*ppy multimeters from Amazon, all made in China which only last a year, I decided to go upmarket and go for an Avometer. "Are your meters made in China ?" I asked, no they replied. So after a 2 month wait, compared to next day delivery from Amazon, I unpacked my new Avometer to find it's made in Taiwan, a moot point whether it is Chinese.
 

arcobob

Member
Location
Norfolk
Tired of buying cr*ppy multimeters from Amazon, all made in China which only last a year, I decided to go upmarket and go for an Avometer. "Are your meters made in China ?" I asked, no they replied. So after a 2 month wait, compared to next day delivery from Amazon, I unpacked my new Avometer to find it's made in Taiwan, a moot point whether it is Chinese.
Not yet but soon will be. :eek:
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Tired of buying cr*ppy multimeters from Amazon, all made in China which only last a year, I decided to go upmarket and go for an Avometer. "Are your meters made in China ?" I asked, no they replied. So after a 2 month wait, compared to next day delivery from Amazon, I unpacked my new Avometer to find it's made in Taiwan, a moot point whether it is Chinese.
The Taiwanese don't do cheap crappy stuff
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
For me the ever growing reliance on the Chinese from everything from rail construction to nuclear power is probably the biggest strategic mistake of the last 40 years, but what else would you expect from the outsourcing subcontracting accountancy kids that run the government.
I was myself involved in the transfer of power station technology to the Chinese. As engineers we questioned the wisdom of such a move as we were essentially hastening the end of our home industries but the edict came from on high and we were paid to do as we were told. The site where we worked, once a leading engineering and manufacturing establishment is now a shopping centre. With the right political will it could have been so much different but much is determined by the foibles of the governing class, not what’s good for the country.
 

Hindsight

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
Tired of buying cr*ppy multimeters from Amazon, all made in China which only last a year, I decided to go upmarket and go for an Avometer. "Are your meters made in China ?" I asked, no they replied. So after a 2 month wait, compared to next day delivery from Amazon, I unpacked my new Avometer to find it's made in Taiwan, a moot point whether it is Chinese.

Taiwan - surely we should be doing all we can to support the Taiwanese? So presuming the product you purchased was made in Taiwan, I would say that was a good purchase. Our worry is China as is the Taiwanese. I suspect being friends with our enemies enemy is possibly good! So I shall continue to support Taiwanese goods. Now the real question is, is that product totally made in that country or is a Chinese import - export. But as we see same can be said for many supplying countries around the world - and in that I include UK and other western Eurpoean countries.
 

Hindsight

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
Todays Parris article in The Times - says it all really..

There’s still time to escape China’s clutches

The West needs to rediscover its confidence, defend nations bullied by Beijing and unite in Biden’s free-world alliance
Matthew Parris

Saturday April 17 2021, 12.01am, The Times
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Is any sane Times reader under any illusion about the People’s Republic of China? Assuming not, I shall not labour the point that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the greatest threat the free world faces in the century ahead.

You know that. You know the CCP is treating China’s Uighur minority with hideous inhumanity, brutalising Hong Kong and breaking its word to Britain, and trying to seize control of the South China Sea; that at home China is becoming a surveillance state of Orwellian proportions, and abroad stealing our intellectual property and tilting the playing field against our exports; that the CCP tries to infiltrate our universities and intimidates great western commercial institutions such as HSBC into ashamed compliance.

You know, in short, that the CCP’s vision is of a rising China and a free world dwindling by degrees into impotent dependency. Thanks to so many passionately warning voices like those of the former governor of Hong Kong, (Lord) Chris Patten, experts in the field like the Royal United Services Institute’s Charles Parton, or brave television documentary-makers like Robin Barnwell, these truths should not be in doubt at your breakfast table this weekend.


But what are we to do? The risk is not of ignorance but despair: a terrible danger we slip from “too soon” into “too late” without an intervening moment of deliberation. That moment should be now, before it is too late.
And here this column changes key, because I have a new note to strike. If only we get our act together, the Chinese Communist Party is eminently beatable. It is not omnipotent and not very clever. Its system and ideology, though at present enriching much of China’s diligent, capable, resourceful population, is more fragile than may appear, and may prove dependent on domestic growth. Abroad, Beijing’s ambition to project power is tin-eared and clumsy. All we in the West need do is band together and decouple. The four watchwords as China took over Hong Kong — a promise Beijing has now broken — were “one country, two systems”. As we respond to Xi Jinping’s new 21st-century imperialism-with-Chinese-characteristics, the watchwords should be these: “one planet, two systems”.

But as we consider what we can do, we must be honest with ourselves about what we can’t. I part company with Chris Patten and others in only one respect. I doubt we can actually change China’s behaviour much at home or abroad by carrot or stick. With a dash of cynicism, I’m all for western protests about the Uighurs’ enslavement, the crushing of Tibet or the snuffing out of democracy in Hong Kong; and all for targeted sanctions and tit-for-tat visa bans — but mainly for the impact of the message this sends worldwide about repression and cruelty. Show Beijing in its true colours but don’t expect to change those colours. Be frank: we probably can’t help the Uighurs, but we can shout our lungs out about the kind of governing party that commits these atrocities. Muslims worldwide, take note. There’s plenty we can say, short of action.
But here are some of the things we can do: on our own account or with allies and multilateral bodies. Rip Beijing’s roots up from critical engagement with any of our IT systems, as we’re now doing with Huawei. Develop sensitive noses for any commercial or financial engagement that risks our vulnerability to CCP arm-twisting: the building of a nuclear power station in Britain is surely a case in point. Expose academics who play useful idiots to a potentially hostile power. Scrutinise China-sourced largesse towards university projects. Consider, along with allies, inhibiting the growth of China’s exports while it inhibits foreign penetration of its own markets. And resist Beijing’s playing-off of one western country against another.
The West should consider enlarging undertakings to underwrite Taiwan’s territorial integrity. This can only be done in concert, as should our circling of the ox wagons around allies who stand up to Beijing, like Australia. We should watch with interest the growth of domestic unease in developing countries, as their corrupt leaders saddle their citizens with stupid debts to a country ransacking their natural resources. Beijing should remember what happened to British ownership of the Suez canal. Are CCP gunboats ready for the next Nasser?
But on those many issues where we share China’s interests, like countering climate change, we must be ready to co-operate. Environmental pollution is a bigger problem for China than for much of the world.
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Through all this, however, we must remember that communism is an ideology with feet of clay. It is far too early to conclude (as is now fashionable) that the CCP has discovered a brilliant new alloy of capitalist economics with political repression. After ten minutes of rapid economic growth in China, have we so lightly lost our faith in the marriage of liberal democracy with a free-enterprise economy?
I’m old enough to remember how, in Cold War days, American and British democrats seemed able simultaneously to believe that Soviet communism was a wasteful, plodding, bone-headed way of running a country’s economy and that the commies were storming the world, winning the battle of ideas and might shortly bury us. Containment and disengagement while we waited for socialism to throttle itself in its own contradictions proved the answer. The Russian economy may never have had the potential to support a world power and China’s does: but has it a consent to governance that could outlast continuous, rapid growth?
In many ways Xi Jinping’s government is having a torrid time. He has trashed his country’s global image. The Covid-19 cover-up spoiled admiration for China’s success in stopping the pandemic. The Uighurs’ plight is proving a public relations catastrophe for Beijing. Brutal repression in Hong Kong has torpedoed what was probably Beijing’s best hope of bringing Taiwan back into the mainland’s fold. A decade ago it was possible for well-intentioned westerners to feel hopeful that China and the free world would draw closer together and ideologies converge. Now Beijing has lost most foreign advocates of engagement; those that remain being reduced to the mournful (or in the case of a few big corporations, sheepish) reminder that “China is not going away”.
Theirs is really a counsel of despair. I have set out grounds for confidence. But confidence depends on the rediscovery of an idea that has been languishing since my Cold War youth: the concept of “the free world”. It must be reshaped for a new, young age. And an old man, Joe Biden, begins to look capable of reshaping it. We British, modest but not insignificant players in all this, must swallow our pride and get behind him.



Asia
China
 

stewart

Member
Horticulture
Location
Bay of Plenty NZ
Tired of buying cr*ppy multimeters from Amazon, all made in China which only last a year, I decided to go upmarket and go for an Avometer. "Are your meters made in China ?" I asked, no they replied. So after a 2 month wait, compared to next day delivery from Amazon, I unpacked my new Avometer to find it's made in Taiwan, a moot point whether it is Chinese.
It’s not a moot point to the Taiwanese.
 

caveman

Member
Location
East Sussex.
Remember "Jamboree Bags"?
My Dad's pet hate to have a damn good moan when we came home with one of those, containing the accursed plastic toy "Made in Hong Kong", purchased with the few pennies alloted for sweets as a reward for walking the mile or more and back to fetch something from the village shop.
"From Jamboree Bags, mighty economies grow".
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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