The China Thread

[HVC]

Algorithm caught up to me and YouTube has started recommending videos about Chengdu's metro system enjoy

[Valmy]

I am so jealous when I see other countries able to build public infrastructure.

The best we seem to do is toll roads. And everything always seems to come late and way over budget.

[Sheilbh]

Nothing remotely newsy - but via 404 Media I absolutely loved this summary of a paper (and desperately hope China can save the porpoise):

A Porpoise Corpus with Purpose

Zhang, Yaoyao et al. "Range contraction of the Yangtze finless porpoise inferred from classic Chinese poems." Current Biology.


 Yangtze finless porpoise at the Baiji Dolphinarium of the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Image: Wang Chaoqun

For centuries, people have been enchanted by the Yangtze finless porpoise, the only freshwater porpoise known in the world. Spectators across the ages have marveled at its elusive beauty, chronicling sightings of the porpoise in China's rich poetic tradition.

Now, scientists have mined this vast porpoise corpus for insights into the historic range and population of the iconic animal. This is a neat thing to do on its own merits, but it's also part of a broader effort to save the species from extinction—with only about 1,250 individuals left in the wild, the porpoise is considered critically endangered. 

As regular readers of the Abstract will know, nothing delights me more than scientific conclusions based on historical documents (see: milky seas and Transylvanian weather). Call it science from the stacks, where the library is the laboratory. All the better if it is for a worthy conservation cause.

To that end, the study's authors identified 724 ancient poems that reference the Yangtze finless porpoise over the past 1,400 years, since the Tang Dynasty. Roughly half of the poems included location details, allowing the team to roughly track its population distribution with a chronology of geospatial grids.


Grids of population distribution across 1,400 years. Image: Zhang, Yaoyao et al.

"Our study provides the first evidence from historical literature sources of major and rapid contractions in the range of the Yangtze finless porpoise," said researchers led by Yaoyao Zhang of the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. "We used the occurrence sites in poems to map the historical distribution of the Yangtze finless porpoise. The number of grids with occurrences declined from 169 in the Tang Dynasty to just 59 in modern times, implying a contraction of 65 percent of the historical ranges of the Yangtze finless porpoise."

"Importantly, there was a sharp decrease from 142 grids during the Qing Dynasty to 59 in modern times, suggesting a relatively rapid shrinkage of range over the past century," the team continued. "Our study demonstrates that historical art forms provide valuable information that can be used to track wildlife range changes over time. Chinese poets, many of whom were well-educated intellectuals, sometimes portrayed animals with a high degree of accuracy."

The rapid decline of the Yangtze finless porpoise, driven by intense human activity, has been confirmed by all kinds of empirical evidence—field studies, genomic analysis, population models, and more. In that sense, the team's poetic sources corroborate what is already a well-documented phenomenon.

But as with past studies in this genre, the real novelty of this work is hidden in the supplemental information: In this case, two Excel spreadsheets that painstakingly record all 724 poetic references to the captivating creatures. For instance, the authors highlighted this evocative line from Emperor Qianlong, who lived in the 18th century: "Porpoises chased moonlight on silvered tides."


A Ming Dynasty woodblock-printed illustration that documents the Yangtze finless porpoise. Image: "Sancai Tuhui," compiled by Wang Qi (1573–1620)

As I am woefully monolingual (unless you count Dovahzul), I had to rely on Google Translate to comb through a sampling of the other collected verses. But even through this leaky linguistic bucket, you can catch fleeting glimpses of the river porpoises through the eyes of bygone poets. My favorite is a verse written from "Climbing the Yellow Crane Tower" by Jun Lin, who lived 500 years ago, which is listed in row 112 on the spreadsheet labeled "mmc3." 

"Green smoke and fragrant trees in Hanyang City, on a sunny day, porpoises worship the waves. The egrets turn around the painted tower sails past the shadows, and the cranes return to the sound of immortal pipes and flutes. Cui Lang's verses are the only ones left in ancient and modern times, and Fan Lao's feelings are hung in the halls and temples. Drunk, I strike coral and stroke my long sword, leaning against the sky and whistling alone at a peak."

In a few sentences, this poet brings us into the smells, sights, and sensations of this moment in time. While there is clear scientific value in these historical texts, as evidenced by the new study, they should also be appreciated as threads of cultural continuity. It's one thing to simply be told that we should conserve species like the Yangtze finless porpoise, but it hits on a different level to realize that future generations may never share these experiences of reverence and rumination from the past.

[Josquius]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/american-chronicles/the-chinese-adoptees-who-were-stolen?utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=bluesky&mbid=social_bluesky&utm_brand=tny


A pretty interesting long read on Chinese adoption.
Not something I have ever really known much about. Apparently it was often a scam with the kids being kidnapped and sold, with the story of baby girls being abandoned on the street being a lie.

[HVC]

Seems all the Asian adoptions were a scam. Korea has some tragic stories too.

[viper37]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/american-chronicles/the-chinese-adoptees-who-were-stolen?utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=bluesky&mbid=social_bluesky&utm_brand=tny


A pretty interesting long read on Chinese adoption.
Not something I have ever really known much about. Apparently it was often a scam with the kids being kidnapped and sold, with the story of baby girls being abandoned on the street being a lie.

It's more common than we think.

Guatemela had such a scam running too.  A then 30 year old Guatemalan from Quebec discovered in 2023 that she had been stolen as a baby while trying to find her birth mother.  Apparently, there were hundreds like here during the civil war (1980-1990).  Her adoptive parents had no idea, they met a local notary who presented them with all the legal papers signed by Guatemala authorities.  They paid what they thought were legal fees for the adoption.

[Jacob]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/american-chronicles/the-chinese-adoptees-who-were-stolen?utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=bluesky&mbid=social_bluesky&utm_brand=tny


A pretty interesting long read on Chinese adoption.
Not something I have ever really known much about. Apparently it was often a scam with the kids being kidnapped and sold, with the story of baby girls being abandoned on the street being a lie.

Anecdotally, children being kidnapped - or the fear of children being kidnapped at least - was very much a background sentiment when I went to China back in the day. When asked about why it was mostly about "to sell to farmers who need additional hands", but "for foreign adoption" makes sense as well.

Also, I was told it wasn't really a risk for our kids because they were mixed - they'd stand out too much, basically. I guess for the farmers it'd raise questions, and it'd be harder to adopt them away as well - and of course the news stories about a foreigner's kid being kidnapped would have the risk of becoming an embarrassment for the authorities, causing them to take serious action.

[Jacob]

Question for those who know - how seriously can China fuck us up by withholding their rare earth minerals?

Obviously it'd be super drastic to just permanently stop exporting to the US, or to the West, altogether. The blowback would be significant, and potentially too much for China to handle.

So what are some of the potential plays by China here, assuming they see the US (and possibly Europe) as a cold war adversary?

One scenario is to slow down exports as much as possible to undermine the US economy and technological development, without slowing it so much that it encourages significant development of alternate resources or triggering an active conflict too soon. This could or could not include Europe, I suppose.

Another scenario is to throttle access to the US, but give significant access to the EU as a way to drive (more of) a wedge between the two major constituencies of "the West".

What are your thoughts? How potent a weapon is rare earth for China? How could they best wield it to pursue their political objectives?

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

What are your thoughts? How potent a weapon is rare earth for China? How could they best wield it to pursue their political objectives?

I don't think it's as potent as some believe, but they can certainly make things painful in the short to medium term.  China built up this huge production advantage by undercutting mines in most other places.  It would take some time, and cost more than the current situation, but if China started playing games with rare earth supply mines in various other places can be brought online (or back online, in some cases) to produce what is needed.  This is already starting to happen with Steenkampskraal in South Africa and Mountain Pass in California.

[Jacob]

Interesting. What's the turn around time for these kind of projects?

And, I suppose, what are the turn around times in two scenarios - 1) there's strategic sense to get them up and productive, but it's expensive and maybe not super profitable; vs 2) we need some right now because we're in a full embargo (or war) type situation?

[Admiral Yi]

Yeah, I watched a clip that said rare earths are not all that rare, it's a function of the cost of mining.

[Josquius]

I suppose any pain China could cause would be short term as its not the minerals themselves they dominate but the processing of them- and this entirely due to reasons of economics.
If they make it so its incredibly expensive to get Chinese resources this really encourages other countries to step up their own industries.
The key though is this can't be done overnight.
"Weaponising" rare earths would be quite a balancing act for China between causing as much pain as possible and not making their suppliers less competitive.

[HVC]

Yeah, I watched a clip that said rare earths are not all that rare, it's a function of the cost of mining.

Portugal recently found rare earth deposits and they already have europes largest deposit of lithium. So they're around, it's just that like you said they're expensive to mine. But if China starts throttling the flow the costs prospects get less important.

[Bauer]

I saw a thing on rare earths recently, they aren't rare at all, it's just a name that stuck.  But I think China built up a semi monopoly on buying them and smelting them or something.  Any country should be able to produce them it would just take a bit to transition.

From Wikipedia:

The term "rare-earth" is a misnomer because they are not actually scarce, but historically it took a long time to isolate these elements

[Valmy]

Yeah. There is nothing rare about rare-earth.

Which is something the internet just doesn't get. So many people think lithium is going to be the new oil or something. We are going to be fighting wars to secure lithium deposits.