Latest News Clips 2018.04.30
1. U.S. and China Play Chicken on Trade, and
Neither Swerves
China
wants to create a commercial aircraft maker to rival Boeing or
Airbus.CreditCarlos Lemos/Reuters
The New York Times
April
6, 2018
SHANGHAI
— At the heart of the intensifying trade dispute between the United States and
China is a fundamental question: Which country is more willing to endure
short-term pain for the long-term gain of playing a leading role in high-tech
industries.
China
has embarked on an aggressive and expensive plan to retool its economy for the
future as it moves to dominate in robotics, aerospace, artificial intelligence
and more. President Trump has said China’s approach relies on unfair and
predatory practices, and on stolen American technology. And even as Chinese
leaders say they want to avoid a trade war, they are staunchly defending their
plans and showing little sign of backing down.
Mr.
Trump’s threat to sharply escalate the administration’s tariffs on Chinese
imports — a threat he reiterated on Friday — shows that neither side has yet
gone far enough to persuade the other to compromise. Bigger and broader tariffs
may be necessary to get China’s attention.
“The
administration, if it’s serious, better be prepared for much more,” said Derek
Scissors, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
China’s $300 billion
plan for government assistance, Made in China 2025, calls for
helping cutting-edge industries by providing low-interest loans from
state-controlled banks, guaranteeing large market shares in China and offering
extensive research subsidies. The goal is to help Chinese firms acquire Western
competitors, develop advanced technology and construct immense factories with
considerable economies of scale.
China
wants to dominate cutting-edge industries like electric cars.CreditGary
Cameron/Reuters
It
is an agenda that China would probably go to great lengths to protect. “We will
not start a war — however, if someone starts a war, we will definitely fight
back,” Gao Feng, the commerce ministry spokesman, said at a news conference in
Beijing on Friday. “No options will be ruled out.”
For
the United States, victory in such a war would be difficult to verify, much
less achieve.
China
could say it plans to ease back on government support. But that could be
difficult to quantify because of the country’s opaque political system and the
state’s control of information.
China
could back off from rules that favor local competitors and require American
companies to share technology if they want access to the Chinese market. For example,
foreign automakers face pressure to transfer electric-car technology to their
local partners, and foreign technology companies are increasingly required to
submit to security reviews. Foreign businesses have long complained that many
of the rules they must follow are unwritten.
China’s
government-financed campaign is already paying off in some ways. Drive into
downtown Shanghai from Pudong International Airport and you pass a seemingly
endless series of huge hangars and vast, glass-walled design centers, all part
of the country’s effort to create a
commercial aircraft manufacturing giant to rival Boeing or Airbus.
Travel to factory districts in Shanghai and on the outskirts of many other
Chinese cities and you see enormous, newly built factories ready to churn out
electric cars, the batteries they use and other components.
Proving
that the Chinese government unfairly supports the effort could be difficult,
however.
2. North
and South Korean leaders promise 'lasting peace' for peninsula
Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in pledge denuclearisation and end to decades
of hostility after summit
The Guardian 27 Apr 2018
The
leaders of North and South Korea have promised after a landmark
summit to bring “lasting peace” to the peninsula with a commitment to
denuclearisation and to ending decades of hostilities.
Speaking
at the end of an extraordinary day that began with a lingering handshake across the
demarcation line separating their countries, the North Korean leader, Kim
Jong-un, and the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, issued a joint statement
that was short on detail but offered cause for optimism as the world looks
ahead to a summit between Kim and Donald Trump.
The
US president, in his first comments on the declaration, tweeted: “Good things
are happening, but only time will tell!” He later added: “KOREAN WAR TO END!”
Speaking
at the White House, Trump warned that the US was “not going to be played”
by North Korea, later the US president said he was
getting close to choosing a venue for talks with Kim. “We’re setting up
meetings now,” he said. “We’re down to two countries... and we’ll let you know
what that site is.”
At
a joint press conference with Angela Merkel, Trump said: “Maximum pressure will
continue until denuclearisation occurs. I look forward to our meeting, which
will be quite something.”
The
Panmunjom declaration, named after the truce village that hosted the talkson Friday, committed the
two Koreas to seek the “complete denuclearisation” of the peninsula.
“South
and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realising, through complete
denuclearisation, a nuclear-free Korean peninsula,” it said. “South and North
Korea shared the view that the measures being initiated by North Korea are very
meaningful and crucial for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, and
agreed to carry out their respective roles and responsibilities in this
regard.”
The
statement did not specify what Pyongyang expected in return for abandoning its nuclear weapons – the regime’s best
deterrent against what it regards as a hostile
Speaking
outside the peace house on the southern side of the border that has divided the
Korean peninsula for 65 years, the leaders also pledged to push for talks with
the US, and possibly China, to formally end the 1950-53 Korean warwith a peace treaty to
replace the uneasy truce that stopped hostilities.
Noting
that more than a decade had passed since the countries’ leaders last met, Kim
and Moon agreed to talk regularly by phone and meet more often, starting with a
summit in Pyongyang in autumn.
They
vowed to work more closely on a host of bilateral issues, including reuniting
families divided by the Korean war and improving cross-border transport links.
Months
after relations between the two countries sank to their lowest levelfollowing North Korean
missile launches and its sixth nuclear test, Moon said he and Kim
were aware that the hopes of 80 million North and South Koreans rested on their
shoulders.
“We
were able to stand together today and agree that we should denuclearise the
Korean peninsula,” Moon said, according to a translation provided by South
Korea’s Arirang TV.
With
Kim standing nearby behind a separate podium, he said. “To completely
denuclearise, we declare that we will cooperate to bring about an everlasting
peace on the peninsula.”
The
North Korean first lady, Ri Sol-ju, clinks glasses with Kim and Moon during a
reception dinner. Photograph: EPA
Moon
applauded Kim’s “courage and determination” and vowed that “there will be no
going back” to an era of tension and provocation that has occasionally brought
the neighbours to the brink of conflict. “We are giving a great
present to the citizens of the two Koreas,” he said.
The
goodwill measures would begin with a halt to “all forms of hostility” on land,
at sea and in the air, the declaration said. The demilitarised zone – the
heavily armed border separating the two countries – and the western maritime
border will be turned into “peace zones”.
3.
Reinventing wheels Autonomous vehicles are
just around the corner
Driverless vehicles will change the world, just as cars did before them.
What went wrong last time round holds valuable lessons for getting it right
this time, says Tom Standage
The Economist Mar 1st 2018
EVERY
DAY AROUND 10m people take an Uber. The company has made ride-hailing
commonplace in more than 600 cities in 82 countries. But the Volvo XC90 picking
its way through traffic on a wintry morning in Pittsburgh is no ordinary Uber.
Climb into the back, and you will see a screen mounted between the front seats,
showing a digital representation of the world around the car, with other
vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists highlighted as clusters of blue dots. Tap
the screen to say you are ready to leave, and the car starts to move. But no
one is driving it. This Uber is an autonomous vehicle (AV)—a car that can drive
itself.
Admittedly,
Uber’s self-driving robotaxi has a human sitting in the driving seat, but only
to take over if something unexpected happens. The car drives carefully but
confidently in downtown traffic and light snow, handling four-way stops,
traffic lights and pedestrian crossings with aplomb. It even knows how to deal
with drivers performing the “Pittsburgh left”, a local custom that allows the
first vehicle at a traffic light to turn left in front of oncoming traffic. The
most noticeable difference from a human driver is that the vehicle makes no
attempt to avoid Pittsburgh’s notorious potholes, so the ride is slightly bumpy
at times. The engineer in your correspondent’s robotaxi takes over occasionally,
for example to guide the car through roadworks where the lane markings have
recently been changed.
Autonomous
vehicles are not yet quite ready to operate without human supervision, then.
But they have made rapid progress in recent years, and can now be seen on the
roads in several American cities, easily identified by the clusters of sensors
on their roofs. Uber’s robotaxis ferry riders around in Pittsburgh and Phoenix.
Waymo, Google’s self-driving car unit which is now a separate company in the
Alphabet family, has gone a step further, operating autonomous minivans in
Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix, without safety engineers in the driving seat. It
plans to launch a commercial ride-hailing service there this year. GM,
America’s biggest carmaker, hopes to launch a robotaxi service in 2019 using
autonomous Chevy Bolt cars that do not even have steering wheels or pedals.
AVs
operated by tech giants, startups and established carmakers can also be seen
around Silicon Valley and Pittsburgh, America’s two main hubs of the emerging
industry, drawing on talent from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities
respectively. In other parts of the world, driverless shuttles ferry passengers
on university campuses, in business parks or along special bus lanes. AVs stole
the show at CES, the world’s biggest technology fair, in Las Vegas in January.
Suddenly, it seems, everybody is jumping on the driverless bandwagon.
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