timelets

The Greatest Negotiator of All Time

2026-05-18T01:34:06Z

The breakdown of total U.S. agricultural and related product exports to China over the last 10 years (2016–2025) reveals a distinct rollercoaster pattern: [1, 2]

2016: $20.8$ billion
2017: $19.6$ billion
2018: $9.1$ billion (Dipped sharply due to retaliatory tariffs and trade disputes)
2019: $13.8$ billion
2020: $26.4$ billion (Rebounded following the Phase One Trade Agreement)
2021: $33.0$ billion
2022: $36.4$ billion (All-time high for agricultural prices and resilient demand)
2023: $31.6$ billion
2024: $27.3$ billion (China heavily shifted sourcing toward South America)
2025: $\$8.3$ billion (Deteriorated as the trade dispute ratcheted back up) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Last year (because of Trump's trade war) US sales of ag products to China fell to the lowest level in more than a decade. Moreover, in 2024 when Biden was the president US sales for 2025 were projected at $25B. Then Trump came in and the actual number for the year was three times lower than the estimate.

Now, the Great Negotiator announced a major achievement of his visit: China promised to buy $17B worth of American ag products. In other words, during Trump's two years (2025-26) China is going to buy as much from the US as it would've bought in one year, had Trump not thrown the tariff tantrum in the first place. A whole year of sales is lost.

Art of the Deal in action!

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timelets @ 2026-02-27T10:54:00

2026-02-27T18:59:20Z

In 2020, China's initial efforts to contain COVID worked reasonably well, with no broad lockdowns in important cities like Shanghai. It all changed with the emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant. The system went berserk, including the use of drones:

An even more bewildering use of drones took place in the early days of the Shanghai lockdown. The city’s top mental health official introduced an unexpectedly sparky phrase in an otherwise drab press conference on the course of the virus, demanding that Shanghainese “repress your soul’s yearning for freedom.”

“One night in April, as the lockdown swung into high gear, a drone carrying a megaphone began blasting that message into apartments full of huddling residents: “Repress your soul’s yearning for freedom,” with a woman’s voice played on loop while a light blinked from the drone. “Do not open your windows to sing, which can spread the virus.”

-- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: Chinas Quest to Engineer the Future.”

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timelets @ 2026-02-19T21:50:00

2026-02-20T05:51:52Z

“a collection of essays called The Hall of Uselessness by the Belgian sinologist Simon Leys. In one of these essays, “The Chinese Attitude Towards the Past,” Leys considers the construction techniques of Chinese builders.

Builders everywhere have attempted to overcome the erosion of time. Ancient Egypt and medieval Europe built great pyramids and cathedrals out of stone. The approach in China, as Leys points out, is for builders to yield to the onrush of time by using eminently perishable, and indeed fragile, materials. By building temples out of wood with paneling sometimes made of paper, Chinese architecture has built-in obsolescence, demanding frequent renewal. “Eternity should not inhabit the building,” Leys writes. “It should inhabit the builder.” Rather than using the strongest materials, Chinese builders have embraced transience to ensure the eternity of spiritual designs.

--- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: Chinas Quest to Engineer the Future.”

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timelets @ 2026-02-19T21:20:00

2026-02-20T05:26:20Z

“[China] embraced a vision of technology radically different from Silicon Valley’s: the pursuit of physical and industrial technologies rather than virtual ones like social media or e-commerce platforms. In China, technology is not represented by shiny objects; rather, it is embodied by communities of engineering practice like Shenzhen, where technology lives inside the heads and in the hands of its workforce. ”
...
Chinese officials climbed over each other to host a Foxconn facility. They salivated at the number of jobs and amount of tax revenues the company could create for their jurisdiction, which could elevate them to higher office. Local officials promised to satisfy Foxconn’s extraordinary labor demands. In Chengdu, minor bureaucrats had to hit quotas on the number of workers to rustle up for factory work; those who failed might receive an order to work at assembly lines themselves.
...
A 2012 story in the New York Times reported that Apple needed to hire nearly nine thousand industrial engineers in the earlier days of iPhone production. The company’s analysts expected recruitment to last nine months to hire that many engineers in the United States. In China, they were able to do it in two weeks.

-- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: Chinas Quest to Engineer the Future.”

The difference in the vision reflects the nature of capital provenance: state and state affiliated banks vs venture. The Chinese state can take on risks and invest so much money into hardware and equipment that no VC can afford.

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timelets @ 2026-02-16T19:54:00

2026-02-17T03:58:11Z

“I came to realize the inadequacy of twentieth-century labels like capitalist, socialist, or, worst of all, neoliberal. They are no longer up to the task of helping us understand the world, if they ever were. Capitalist America intrudes upon the free market with a dense program of regulation and taxation while providing substantial (albeit imperfect) redistributive policies.

Socialist China detains union organizers, levies light taxes, and provides a threadbare social safety net. The greatest trick that the Communist Party ever pulled off is masquerading as leftist. While Xi Jinping and the rest of the Politburo mouth Marxist pieties, the state is enacting a right-wing agenda that Western conservatives would salivate over: administering limited welfare, erecting enormous barriers to immigration, and enforcing traditional gender roles—where men have to be macho and women have to bear their children.”

-- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: Chinas Quest to Engineer the Future.”

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timelets @ 2026-02-15T17:57:00

2026-02-16T02:09:31Z

It's difficult to predict the future of AI, but one thing is guaranteed to happen: we'll have ethical conflicts related to the technology, alignment being probably the easiest one to see on the horizon. What gives me a pause is that people responsible for AI development those who are likely to have a strong influence on AI evolution placed their political bets on Trump, who is one of the least ethical persons in today's politics. Will those people make ethical choices when the future conflicts arise? I really doubt they'd do it, unless significant social pressure is applied to them.

p.s. by the end of Trump's term we'll hit a white collar job crisis and his administration will be flailing like his previous administration did when the pandemic hit.

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TIL: Personal animosity matters

2026-01-26T01:53:36Z

In the early 2000s, Huawei survived Cisco's IP lawsuit because it partnered with 3Com, whose CEO Bruce Chaflin hated John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco.

“An alliance between 3Com and Huawei was attractive to both sides. Huawei would get the immediate legal protection of 3Com’s deep patent portfolio; 3Com would get Huawei’s lower production costs and its connections to the vast China market. Soon after the two announced their joint venture, called H3C, 3Com’s lawyers filed a motion to intervene in the Cisco case, calling 3Com an interested party.”

--- Eva Dou. “House of Huawei.”

Ultimately, both the 3Com alliance with Huawei and Cisco itself failed, while Huawei survived and prospered by copying technologies from the West and selling them to the rest of the world. But in the beginning, the Cisco lawsuit looked quite scary because it threatened Huawei's very existence.

“Ren told his trusted deputy, Guo Ping, who was now Huawei’s executive vice president, to get to the US as quickly as he could. Ren invoked the fable of ancient Chinese military general Han Xin*, who had accepted the humiliation of crawling between another man’s legs to prevent a deadly fight.”

* The fable of General Han Xin’s humiliation, known as "crawling between the legs" (胯下之辱), tells of a young, poor Han Xin being challenged by a bully in his hometown of Huaiyin to either kill him or crawl through his legs. Choosing to endure this shame rather than waste his life on a petty killing, Han Xin crawled through, later becoming a renowned military strategist and rewarding the man for testing his resolve.

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timelets @ 2026-01-20T18:59:00

2026-01-21T03:03:30Z

“Ren saw a Russia devastated by hyperinflation... Ren felt that the United States was partly to blame: Washington had coaxed the leader of the new Russia, Boris Yeltsin, to apply “shock therapy” to the economy with a rapid shift to capitalism, he wrote, but Washington did not follow through with the financial aid it had dangled. “They always give you some bait to get you to change some policies, but when you’ve made changes according to their demands, they raise further demands,” Ren wrote. “You still cannot get ‘sincere’ help from the United States.”

At the end of the day, the Russians remained wary about installing Chinese switches in their networks. “We are still unsure how much we know about Russia and if we can really open up the market,” Ren wrote to staff.

( Read more... )

-- Eva Dou. “House of Huawei.”

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timelets @ 2026-01-18T18:11:00

2026-01-19T02:16:39Z

“On January 28, 1996, Ren Zhengfei held Huawei’s first “mass-resignation ceremony.” Each head of a regional sales office was told to prepare two reports: a work summary and a written resignation. “I will only sign one of the reports,” Ren said.

Huawei had started out in rural markets, and many of its early sales managers were provincial in their experience and network of contacts. As Ren sought to go national and international, he decided to make the entire sales staff resign and reapply for their jobs. “The mountain goat must outrun the lion to not be eaten,” he had told them ahead of the event. “All departments and sections must optimize and eat the lazy goats, the goats that do not learn or progress, and the goats with no sense of responsibility.”

They were following the strategy that Mao had used to win the Chinese Civil War of “encircling the cities with the countryside.”[9] They’d won over villages and towns in the beginning, building their strength to take on the big cities.

Ren told his followers that demotions built character and that the demoted would only be stronger when they worked their way up again.... “Even Deng Xiaoping could go down and up three times. Why can’t you go down and up three times?”

-- Eva Dou. “House of Huawei.”

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timelets @ 2026-01-10T11:45:00

2026-01-10T20:00:11Z

“The school was in a sad state. Red Guards had trashed much of its equipment, which symbolized old ideas and old customs. Most of the desks and chairs had gone missing. Teachers had tried to hide cartloads of the school’s books, but these had been found and burned. Around half the teachers, some thirty instructors, had been denounced and persecuted. Two math teachers had been killed, and a history teacher had died of illness during forced labor.”

--- Eva Dou. “House of Huawei.”

That was back in 1979, right after Mao's death which resulted in the rise of Deng Xiaoping and the end of the Cultural Revolution.

upd:

“Deng held the nation’s first National Science Conference in March 1978...
In a rousing speech, Deng told the scientists that they were not part of the bourgeoisie, as they had been previously labeled, but part of the working class. “Everyone who works, whether with his hands or with his brain, is part of the working people in a socialist society,” Deng declared".

ibid.

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timelets @ 2024-05-15T22:56:00

2024-05-16T05:59:36Z

BEIJING—Microsoft is asking hundreds of employees in its China-based cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence operations to consider transferring outside the country, as tensions between Washington and Beijing mount around the critical technology.

...700 to 800 people, who are involved in machine learning and other work related to cloud computing, one of the people said.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/microsoft-asks-hundreds-of-china-based-ai-staff-to-relocate-amid-u-s-china-tensions-b626ff8c

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Stalin found alive!

2024-01-09T00:24:14Z

CHENNAI – Singapore companies will invest $5 billion in several areas, including infrastructure, technology, sustainability and data centres, in Tamil Nadu, expanding the Republic’s presence in the southern Indian state.

MTI noted that Tamil Nadu is “often the first port of call for Singapore companies looking at South India, given the cultural and historical familiarity between both states”.

The state, with a population of 72 million, is the second-largest contributor to India’s gross domestic product, behind Maharashtra, whose capital is Mumbai. Tamil Nadu’s ambition is to be a US$1 trillion (S$1.33 trillion) economy by 2030, and it has been aggressive in wooing foreign investors. Its chief minister, Mr M.K. Stalin, travelled to Singapore in May 2023 to attract investments from the South-east Asian nation.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/singapore-companies-to-invest-5-billion-in-india-s-tamil-nadu-state

A lot of it is prob laundered Indian grey money, but importantly they are not going to China any more.

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timelets @ 2023-10-30T21:22:00

2023-10-31T04:23:32Z

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timelets @ 2023-05-14T22:27:00

2023-05-15T05:31:21Z

Доля России в китайском экспорте как была, так и осталась на уровне 2%. Такая же доля, например, у Таиланда, экономика которого в четыре раза меньше российской.

https://re-russia.net/review/257/

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The variety of cultural experiences

2023-02-03T05:06:08Z

My former student from China is planning his visit to the US. On LI he asks me for a meeting and I agree. First, he replies "Thanks" (probably just pressed the default answer button). Then, he adds another message, "Thank you Sir." So funny.

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Protesters in Bejine sing the Internationale

2022-11-29T03:27:49Z

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TIL: 听其言而观其行

2022-10-09T09:00:59Z

"Listen to what he says and watch what he does."
via https://twitter.com/AlexGabuev/status/1578830173767888896

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timelets @ 2022-09-19T22:19:00

2022-09-20T05:28:35Z

Тем временем, китайцы реально удивлены глупостью Путина. Он почему-то думал, что Китай настолько хочет "дружить против Америки", что будет не против рецессии и инфляции в ЕС - основном торговом партнере Китая. Путинские стратеги оказались не в состоянии посчитать, что скидки на русскую нефть не компенсируют Китаю потери доходов на европейском рынке. Fucking idiots.

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timelets @ 2022-09-15T13:05:00

2022-09-15T20:08:14Z

“We highly value the balanced position of our Chinese friends when it comes to the Ukraine crisis,” Putin told Xi, according to a Kremlin transcript. “We understand your questions and concerns about this. During today’s meeting, we will of course explain our position, though we have also spoken about this before.”

https://www.ft.com/content/d1a1e185-0668-4f5f-b5a5-bd37a615e4eb

The key word that is prominently missing in this thank you note is "support." That is, China does not support Russia's war in Ukraine. Instead, they have questions and concerns.

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timelets @ 2022-06-17T20:27:00

2022-06-18T03:32:53Z

Here's a great example of long-term thinking:

The Chinese have a legend that a demon once offered to teach an alchemist how to turn base metal into gold. "But will it remain gold?" the alchemist asked.
"Will it not return to its original elements?" "Certainly," replied the demon, "but that need not trouble you, for no such change will take place until ten thousand ages have
passed." The alchemist refused the gift. "I should rather live in poverty," he said, "than bring a loss upon my fellow men, even after ten thousand ages have passed."

--- The world's story; a history of the world in story, song and art, ed. by Eva March Tappan. Published in 1914.
https://archive.org/stream/worldsstoryhisto01tapp/worldsstoryhisto01tapp_djvu.txt

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Putin delenda est

2022-05-29T19:44:48Z

Картинка с выставки китайского делового искусства:

Все российские самолеты Boeing не могут летать в воздушном пространстве Китая до последующего уведомления, говорится в письме для клиентов логистической компании Global Link, которое распространено по российским Telegram-каналам. В нем отмечается, что данное уведомление получено компанией от Администрации гражданской авиации КНР.
...
речь идет о закрытии Китаем неба «для российских эксплуатантов всех самолетов, в том числе Boeing и Airbus, с двойной регистрацией».

https://www.vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2022/05/27/924013-kitai-ogranicheniya-rossii

Отличный пример, как Китай делает озабоченное лицо по поводу ужасных западных санкций и отбирает бизнес у российских компаний.

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US direct investments in China 2000 to 2020

2022-05-05T21:28:52Z

https://www.statista.com/statistics/188629/united-states-direct-investments-in-china-since-2000/

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Who infected whom?

2021-09-24T01:54:17Z

China strikes back:

The result indicated that, for the 12 US states, the possible dates of the first infection, with a probability of 50 per cent, fall mostly between August and October 2019, while the earliest is April 26, 2019 on Rhode Island, and the latest is Nov 30, 2019 in Delaware.

All of the dates indicated by the data are earlier than Jan 20, 2020, the officially announced date of the first confirmed case in the United States, showing that the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States started to spread around September 2019 with a high confidence probability.

The result also showed that the date of the first Covid-19 case in Wuhan, with a probability of 50 percent, is Dec 20, 2019, and the date for Zhejiang is Dec 23, 2019. It infers that the Covid-19 in China is most likely to have started in late December 2019.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/covid-19-might-have-started-to-spread-in-sept-2019-in-the-us-chinese-study

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TIL

2020-10-18T21:05:47Z

The number of COVID-19 infections in mainland China is three orders of magnitude lower than in the US.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13841553

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timelets @ 2020-09-28T23:10:00

2020-09-29T06:14:29Z

1. LING, Duke of Wei, asked Confucius about the line of battle.
Confucius answered: “Of temple where I have learned: arms I have not studied.’
On the morrow he went his way.
...
39. The Master said: “Mingle not in projects with men whose ways are not thine.”
...
41. When the music-master Mien was presented, the Master, on coming to the steps, said: “Here are the steps.” On reaching the mat, the Master said: “Here is the mat.” When all were seated, the Master told him: “Such an one is here, and such an one is here.”
After the music-master had left, Tzu-chang said: “Is this the way to speak to a music-master?”
The Master said: “Surely it is the way to help a music-master.”

https://www.bartleby.com/44/1/15.html

The entire book 15 is quite good.

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