tybs
Taiwan calls for US commitment as China turns up heat
Tsai Ing-wen lauds historic ties ahead of 40th anniversary of Taiwan Relations Act.
BEIJING/TAIPEI – Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Tuesday sought greater American involvement in helping to ensure the island's security as China ratchets up military pressure.
Wednesday marks 40 years since the U.S. enacted the Taiwan Relations Act, which promotes commercial and cultural relations with the island even after Washington established diplomatic ties with mainland China. In the weeks ahead of the anniversary, China engaged in jet flybys across a de facto maritime border with Taiwan and issued a veiled threat of a strike.
Through the Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. Congress "made sure that Taiwan would survive its darkest hour and have the opportunity to transform itself into the free society and robust democracy we are today," Tsai said in a Tuesday video call to an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The act reflects "the United States' commitment to our shared interests of peace, security and stability in the Pacific," Tsai said.
She raised alarms over Chinese military overtures, which she said were detrimental to regional peace and stability. Tsai expressed hopes of further arms sales to Taiwan to help the island defend itself.
"I hope that the United States can make clear at a very senior level that it considers the security of Taiwan vital to the defense of democracy," she said.
Cross-strait tensions have been on the rise since late last month, starting with Tsai's March 27 meeting with a Hawaii National Guard general while returning home from a Pacific tour. On March 31, China flew two fighters over to the Taiwanese side of the maritime border in the Taiwan Strait.
It is "possible" that the Chinese military will carry out targeted strikes on a Taiwanese military base, the Chinese Communist Party-affiliated Global Times said in an editorial last week.
Beijing considers the mainland and Taiwan part of "One China" and rejects the existence of the median line. The March 31 crossing was initially considered an accident, but the Global Times editorial suggests that it may have been intentional.
"We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means," Chinese President Xi Jinping had said in a January speech, departing from immediate predecessor Hu Jintao's silence on the topic.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-calls-for-US-commitment-as-China-turns-up-heat
when the information is confirmed by a repeating set of digits. Trips, quads, quints etc
chek'd 3 Osprey's E to W
correction W to E
China Moves To Ban Bitcoin Mining As Crypto Crackdown Continues
For bitcoin traders, 2019 is starting to look like a repeat of 2017 in more ways than one.
While that might be a slight exaggeration (though bitcoin's sudden surge over $5,000 last week was certainly a welcome relief from more than a year of market doldrums, even sending the moribund bitcoin futures market higher), a headline that hit the tape this morning is bound to provoke comparisons to bitcoin's heyday, when Chinese authorities briefly provoked a panic in the market by abruptly cracking down on crypto exchanges operating in the country, part of a campaign to bring the cryptocurrencies trade under state control.Late Monday, China's National Development Reform Commission listed crypto-mining among industries it intends to eliminate because of its environmental impact. The agency will allow public comment on the guidelines until May 7, but warned that they could take effect as soon as they are issued. As Bloomberg reports, China was once home to more than 90% of bitcoin trading and 70% of mining, thanks to notoriously cheap subsidized energy, particularly in the countryside. But after a crackdown began in 2017, most of the big mining pools in the country - including Bitmain - decamped for abroad, setting up mining pools in Canada and elsewhere. Back in 2018, Beijing reportedly asked local authorities to try and push crypto miners out.
Still, according to a consultant who spoke with Reuters, roughly half the bitcoin network is probably still located in China. And Chinese companies remain the largest manufacturers of bitcoin mining rigs.
Nearly half of bitcoin mining pools – groups of miners that team up for economies of scale - are located in the Asia-Pacific, a Cambridge University study said in December.
"Half of the network is probably located in China," said Alex de Vries, a consultant with PwC in Amsterdam who specializes on blockchain and researches cryptocurrency mining. He added that the number of mining facilities in the world is still limited to several hundred.
One blockchain investor said China's decision to finally ban crypto mining outright was probably part of a push to "reboot" the crypto industry to bring it under state control.
"The NDRC’s move is in line overall with China’s desire to control different layers of the rapidly growing crypto industry, and does not yet signal a major shift in policy," said Jehan Chu, managing partner at blockchain investment firm Kenetic.
"I believe China simply wants to ‘reboot’ the crypto industry into one that they have oversight on, the same approach they took with the Internet."
As Reuters pointed out, three Chinese makers of bitcoin mining equipment filed for IPOs in Hong Kong, but two have allowed their applications to lapse.
However, the two largest, Bitmain Technologies, the world’s largest manufacturer of bitcoin mining gear, and Canaan Inc, have since let their applications lapse.
People familiar with the deals said that Hong Kong regulators had many questions about the companies’ business models and prospects.
Bitmain declined to comment on the NDRC’s proposal to ban bitcoin mining. Canaan did not respond to requests for comment.
According to Canaan’s IPO prospectus filed last year, sales of blockchain hardware primarily for cryptocurrency mining in China were worth 8.7 billion yuan ($1.30 billion) in 2017, 45 percent of global sales by value.
In any event, any miners who are still operating in China will likely follow their peers abroad. Which could be a boon for Canadian ghost towns with access to abundant power sources who are looking for a tech revolution to save their ailing communities.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-09/china-moves-ban-bitcoin-mining-crypto-crackdown-continues