The China Thread

[Sheilbh]

It certainly has a pretty solid place in China also. I can't speak to how it compares, though.

Yes - although even there I wonder if there's an American legacy? Whether from missionaries, or the American troops sent to protect them at various point, or the American support and huge number of supplies for Chiang, which must have included vittles like spam.

[HisMajestyBOB]

One of my favorite stews from my time in Korea was budaejjigae, or "army stew", which consists of spzm, hot dogs, ramen, and various other things.

[Jacob]

Yes - although even there I wonder if there's an American legacy? Whether from missionaries, or the American troops sent to protect them at various point, or the American support and huge number of supplies for Chiang, which must have included vittles like spam.

I was about to state my theory - that I think it's because it's affordable and easy to export / import / store for long periods of time which made it more accessible in various ways.

Then I went to the wikipedia page for Spam and it said this:

China
In mainland China, Hormel decided to adopt a different strategy to market Spam (Chinese: 世棒; pinyin: Shìbàng), promoting it as a foreign, premium food product and changing the Spam formula to be meatier to accommodate local Chinese tastes. Spam-like canned pork products are also produced by other food companies in China as "Luncheon Meat" (Chinese: 午餐肉; pinyin: Wǔcānròu; Jyutping: Ng5 caan1 juk6; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄨˇ ㄘㄢ ㄖㄡˋ).

Hong Kong
After World War II, meat was scarce and expensive in Hong Kong, so Spam was an accessible, affordable alternative. The luncheon meat has been incorporated into dishes such as macaroni with fried egg and spam in chicken soup, as well as ramen.

[Sheilbh]

I love that and I'm totally wrong for Mainland China at least.

Two entirely different explanations for two immediately adjacent regions.

Hong Kong sounds like the British experience too when Spam was big post-WW2 - just (to the surprise of no-one) Hong Kongers were significantly more culinarily experimental and turned it into something great, while we just tried various ways of frying it.

Don't know if Ive mentioned it before but my history teacher in Scotland (when we were doing 19th century social life - Highland clearances, tenements, industrial slums, John Snow etc) told the story of his time in university during Britain's last typhoid outbreak. According to his story, it was caused by the Fray Bentos corned beef factory in Uruguay (so not quite spam but tinned meats). Basically he said part of the manufacturing process has the tins packed with meat and really hot and need to be cooled very quickly, so they get dumped into cold, flowing water. At that point the Fray Bentos factory, which was on the Uruguay River, basically just pumped in river water for that process. There was a batch of tins which were defective and had tiny punctures so the waste and pollution from the river got into the cans, which then ended up in Aberdeen where they wreaked havoc through the student community.

[HVC]

Mmm yum, poop water flavoured

[Josquius]

Yes - although even there I wonder if there's an American legacy? Whether from missionaries, or the American troops sent to protect them at various point, or the American support and huge number of supplies for Chiang, which must have included vittles like spam.

I was about to state my theory - that I think it's because it's affordable and easy to export / import / store for long periods of time which made it more accessible in various ways.

Then I went to the wikipedia page for Spam and it said this:

China
In mainland China, Hormel decided to adopt a different strategy to market Spam (Chinese: 世棒; pinyin: Shìbàng), promoting it as a foreign, premium food product and changing the Spam formula to be meatier to accommodate local Chinese tastes. Spam-like canned pork products are also produced by other food companies in China as "Luncheon Meat" (Chinese: 午餐肉; pinyin: Wǔcānròu; Jyutping: Ng5 caan1 juk6; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄨˇ ㄘㄢ ㄖㄡˋ).

Hong Kong
After World War II, meat was scarce and expensive in Hong Kong, so Spam was an accessible, affordable alternative. The luncheon meat has been incorporated into dishes such as macaroni with fried egg and spam in chicken soup, as well as ramen.

Changed the spam formula to be 'meatier'....
This is China...
They added bones didn't they?

[Sheilbh]

Listened to China-focused podcast episode on Ukraine.

Really striking detail that China was very surprised and quite angry about Russia's initial invasion. Apparently (according to second hand, well-connected sources in Beijing) there was a round of demotions and transfers of Russianists in the Chinese Foreign Ministry because they'd clearly got it wrong. I assume because it happened and they were saying it wouldn't and also they didn't have advance notice from Russia.

At the same time Europeanists and Americanists were re-shuffled closer to the centre presumably because China thought they'd need to understand what they'd do more.

Separately interesting idea (from former Assistant Secretary of State for Asia) that China should be the senior partner in the China-Russia relationship, but because of Russia's willingness to take risks and do unexpected things (from a Chinese perspective) means China often ends up following rather than leading. It's always having to react to Russian action, rather than Russia following or a more "orderly" relationship. Which is interesting and perhaps a little counter-intuitive but I can see the argument - not sure.

[Jacob]

Parts of the Chinese internet- and some of our family friends in China - are in a tizzy about Blinken's visit to China. I particular the rumour is that if the visit "doesn't go well", China may be "kicked out of SWIFT"- which our friends view in rather apocalyptic terms.

This wasn't on my radar at all, and a quick internet search gives only one hit for me - from the South China Morning Post (it's a paid article, but the headline and intro suffices, I think):

US sanction threats against Chinese banks over Russia trade ties risk 'gargantuan' financial instability

• Reports suggest US has 'preliminarily discussed sanctions on some Chinese banks' over their trade with Russia
• Analysts say moves to remove China from the Swift interbank financial system could create a 'huge problem' for global trade

Washington would create global financial instability, while damaging the United States' already tenuous ties with Beijing, if it carried out reported threats to sanction Chinese banks over their trade with Russia, and even cut China out of the Swift global interbank system, analysts said on Wednesday.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, without elaboration, that Washington was drafting sanctions to help US Secretary of State Antony Blinken persuade Beijing to stop any commercial support for Russia's military production.

Does anyone have any insight on this? Has this been reported significantly in Western media. Do any of you have thoughts on likely scenarios?

[Josquius]

I thought this was already happening?
Recall hearing somewhere Russia was having big problems doing business anywhere as banks weren't risking the rest of the world for Russia.
I guess some Chinese banks are ignoring this? - with political pressure I wonder?

[Jacob]

Yeah, I guess that some Chinese banks were circumventing the ban and this may result in consequences now. Which seems simple enough on the face of it, but I guess the question is what are the consequences, and what are the knock-on consequences?

[Sheilbh]

So no idea on China but it strikes me as unlikely, largely because of the point on secondary sanctions in this thread about Scholz's trip to China, which I wasn't aware of. From a Handelsblatt reporter

Dana Heide
@Dana_Heide
At GER business daily @handelsblatt, I am focused on Germany/China relations. I have been following 🇩🇪🇨🇳 relations for ~8 years, was China-correspondent in Beijing from 2019-2022, back in Berlin since 22. Here are my key takeaways of chancellor Scholz' recent trip to China (1/13)
1.The trip showed that Xi Jinping is largely ignoring key concerns of the German government:
⚡️China's continuous support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, including support for its defense sector & 
⚡️ China's massive overcapacities flooding European markets. (2/13)
2.Germany might not have as much leverage on Beijing as the US has. But: The European market is of crucial importance to China - Chinese companies need to sell their massive overcapacities somewhere or else there will be huge losses that could result... (3/13)
... in an increase in unemployment - at a time where China's economy is already suffering.
Scholz is not using this leverage. Instead, during his visit he sent the signal that he doesn't even want the additional tariffs the EU-will probably impose. (4/13)
On the question of Chinese military support for Russia, the US is much more assertive than the EU, even though this support is directly threatening Europe's security. While EU has sanctioned not even a hand full of entities, US has sanctioned ~100 according to @FT.  (5/13)
3. Scholz is making the same mistake his predecessor Angela Merkel made: Instead of focusing on the long term and working for the interest of Germany and the German business community as a whole, he gives in to the (short term) needs of a few big companies. (6/13)
4. The China issue seems to have almost vanished from public discussion in GER. Because we @ @handelsblatt consider the relations as crucial, we published more than a dozen articles before, during & after the trip. But overall, GER media did less reporting than in 2022 (7/13)
Here are some of the reporting we did @sgusbeth @Benninghoff_M @annmeiritz @MartinGreive @CarstenVolkery.

Anyone who is interested please get a subscription and make sure that we can continue our extensive reporting. Thanks for reading! (8/13)
Exklusiv: Deutschlands Industrie löst sich nicht von ihrer China-Abhängigkeit - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100025576.html


Exklusiv: Deutsche Pharma-Inspekteure trauen sich nicht mehr nach China: Anti-Spionage-Gesetz gefährdet Versorgung - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100031126.html


(9/13)
EU-Bericht: So verzerrt China den Wettbewerb - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100031141.html


Exklusives Interview: Herr Botschafter, können Sie ausschließen, dass China eines Tages Taiwan angreift? - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100031492.html


(10/13)
So ernüchternd fällt die Bilanz der deutschen China-Politik aus - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100029521.html


Zwischen Kooperation und Konfrontation: Scholz' Gratwanderung in China - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100031110.html


(11/13)
Xi warnt Scholz vor Protektionismus und nennt Bedingung für einen Ukraine-Friedensgipfel - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100032521.html


China-Reise: Als Scholz Frieden wollte und Äpfel bekam - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100032924.html


(12/13)
Op Ed: Scholz wiederholt in Peking Merkels Fehler  - https://hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100032750.htm

(13/13)

I feel like going from EU sanctioning a handful of companies, US hundreds to SWIFT would be going from 0 to 100 with very little prep for your ally (especially if the intent is supporting Ukraine/hurting Russia) or for your own domestic companies to prepare. The US can do it because of its huge financial power to basically force Europe into line (this happened over Iran where the Euro-members of the JCPOA tried to create an alternative after Trump's actions, but basically couldn't).

I think it'd be very different for doing that v one of the world's biggest economies.

[Jacob]

Saw a headline recently (I think it was in Danish media, or maybe Reddit) that the EU was saying that China has to open up its internal markets for public contracts and make them more equal, or Europe will close their market to Chinese competitors. Not completely sure where it sits in the spectrum of "someone advocating for it" vs "this is what we are doing now, with real resolution" or somewhere in between with some degree of "this is a real signal that should be taken seriously and it might actually happen."

[Jacob]

So Blinken has arrived in Shanghai and the Chinese have been a little bit cold. No red carpet, and Blinken was met by a lower level official (maybe from the Shanghai government?).

[Sheilbh]

Saw a headline recently (I think it was in Danish media, or maybe Reddit) that the EU was saying that China has to open up its internal markets for public contracts and make them more equal, or Europe will close their market to Chinese competitors. Not completely sure where it sits in the spectrum of "someone advocating for it" vs "this is what we are doing now, with real resolution" or somewhere in between with some degree of "this is a real signal that should be taken seriously and it might actually happen."

My guess is it won't happen because for China it's a strategic interest.

In Europe, I think that journalist describes Germany's position pretty well - I'd add the comments from big German businesses including that they're doubling down on China or don't want sanctions on Chinese EV production (either because they don't view subsidies as uncompetitive, or because they fear retribution). Macron gave his second big speech at the Sorbonne on his vision for Europe today, as ever a mixed bag. But he's got a trip to China coming up so said the EU "must show that it is never a vassal of the US and that it also knows how to talk to all other regions of the world" which has been interpreted as aimed at China. There's some member states who want to take a hard line but many more who are closer to the German position or don't really want confrontation.

And Europe is far more economically interlinked with China than the US - so in fairness it's going to be more difficult for Europe economically (just like Russia) and it's tough to see the other routes for growth. But also those are consequences of policymakers.

Again just a guess, but I'd say some people are probaby pushing for it (the Baltics, Czechia, probably some of the Scandis) but it'll end up with a complaint to the WTO.

So Blinken has arrived in Shanghai and the Chinese have been a little bit cold. No red carpet, and Blinken was met by a lower level official (maybe from the Shanghai government?).

I think the official (from what I could tell basically the civil servant in charge of North America in the MFA) is definitely a snub.

Less sure on the red carpet - I could be wrong but I feel like that's more a thing for heads of state/government or if you're making a big grand gesture. I've seen foreign policy people saying that it isn't a big deal though. So it could be a snub, it could be signalling "normal working visit by a foreign minister".