For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
By Bill McCarthy
#1851334
I despair when I see how much New Zealand has allowed the Chinese take over key industries in their country. I think the Chinese outnumber the Maori now. They are everywhere and NZ is selling its family silver to them - dairy cattle.
China gets the vast majority of its coal and iron ore from Australia. Will the Aussies capitulate and continue to supply. In any conflict the Chinese could “walk into” both countries without a shot being fired. They are very poorly defended.
By Colonel Panic
#1851336
Paultheparaglider wrote:When I first arrived in Hong Kong in 1990, one of the must do things was to take a trip to the border and admire the duck farms on the other side. If you near that same border now, you see a sea of concrete.

Not long after I pitched up in Hong Kong in 1985 I too took the obligatory trip over the border (via the Lo Wu station). See below.

But the CCP also knows that thus can only continue if the Chinese people accept its authority. This is currently the case, from talks with my Chinese students over the years. But that's based on ever increasing economic prosperity. Any threat to that from the President will lead to his quick replacement.

Sadly I don't think this is going to work in Hong Kong - where even widespread dissent just ends up with overflowing prisons ...

The child was in a roofless school building; I often wonder how her life has turned out.

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By CloudHound
#1851366
Onshoring.

A word I heard for the first time from an Italian airfield lighting manufacturer. The MD had had enough of poor quality from the Chinese subcontractor and commenced bringing all production back to Europe.

My wife and I now look closely at everything we buy and try to avoid "Made in China". Clothes from a number of high street retailers now tend to say Bangladesh, Vietnam or Malaysia which may assuage our anti China sentiment but be a trap by supporting regimes just as bad.

I don't know.

I looked at buying a British made suit for work - yeah! I'm sure the value and craftsmanship was fantastic but way beyond my budget. So I got a German one. :thumright:
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By Flyingfemme
#1851379
CloudHound wrote:My wife and I now look closely at everything we buy and try to avoid "Made in China". Clothes from a number of high street retailers now tend to say Bangladesh, Vietnam or Malaysia which may assuage our anti China sentiment but be a trap by supporting regimes just as bad.

Avoiding Chinese goods is difficult, especially online. The refusal of Amazon to accurately say where many goods are coming from frequently stops me buying. But there is only so much time one can waste on the “small stuff”.
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1851380
The rules of origin system means that some of this can be very difficult follow. A suit cut out and assembled in Vietnam but finished in Germany might well be able to carry a "made in Germany" sticker.
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By Colonel Panic
#1851381
CloudHound wrote:My wife and I now look closely at everything we buy and try to avoid "Made in China". Clothes from a number of high street retailers now tend to say Bangladesh, Vietnam or Malaysia which may assuage our anti China sentiment but be a trap by supporting regimes just as bad.

I used to bring in dozens of containers a year of cheap clothes made in the Far East in the late 1980s early 1990s; most came from Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh & Indonesia. Very little from China at the time, so other than the inclusion of Vietnam & Loas I am not sure that holds.

When I was exporting stuff bound mainly for M&S from Hong Kong prior to that, most came from HK itself (clothes & electronics) & S Korea (leather jackets) due mainly to the high quality control that the rest of SE Asia struggled to achieve.
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By kanga
#1851389
CloudHound wrote:Onshoring.

.. had had enough of poor quality from the Chinese subcontractor and commenced bringing all production back to Europe.
..


The new aircraft engineering factory next door to JAM was built for precisely this reason. The JAM Trustees had to do a 'curtilage exchange' to enable it to be built. This is why our restoration hangar is and further display hangar we hope will be built to the side, rather than behind, the first
By Bill McCarthy
#1851398
You’d expect me to hop in here then ! If you think quality assurance and control is prohibitive in the aircraft industry, then the nuclear industry is ten times more restrictive. I’d been in it for forty years and it is getting more so by the day.
I’ll repeat an example.
A small Dowty seal (about a drip per day leak) had to be changed on a reactor auxiliary system. I would be doing the swap. I had to write a lengthy procedure on how I was to proceed. The procedure had to follow a strict format. It had then to be slotted in for review by a safety committee of ten members, approved, work permit issued, system isolated by tag out system, health physics involved and to accompany me, seal paperwork checked, torque spanned calibrated, etc, etc. It took less than five minutes to actually do the task but required forty signatures from start to finish. The procedure took a week to be authorised. Then it had to be tested which required yet another procedure. Records have to be retained for thirty years.
It was oft said that if you gathered all the paperwork trail of the plant build and operation, it would, if all burned, generate the same amount of heat that the reactor did !!
Last edited by Bill McCarthy on Sun Jun 06, 2021 10:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By eltonioni
#1851468
kanga wrote:Protests against Chinese university campus in Budapest, conflated with domestic opposition to Orban

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57372653


Indeed, and sidestepping OJEU procurement too. Potential old fashioned bungs aside, very little adds up about the benefits to Hungary / Orban. For China, it's Belt and Road straight into the EU.


In other news, Anthony Fauci seems to have given lots of US taxpayers money to the Wuhan Institute to carry out Coronivirus 'gain of function' research that would have been illegal in the USA. Seems this 'gain of function' looks exactly like C19.
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By Sooty25
#1851729
Bill McCarthy wrote:You’d expect me to hop in here then ! If you think quality assurance and control is prohibitive in the aircraft industry, then the nuclear industry is ten times more restrictive. I’d been in it for forty years and it is getting more so by the day.
I’ll repeat an example.
A small Dowty seal (about a drip per day leak) had to be changed on a reactor auxiliary system. I would be doing the swap. I had to write a lengthy procedure on how I was to proceed. The procedure had to follow a strict format. It had then to be slotted in for review by a safety committee of ten members, approved, work permit issued, system isolated by tag out system, health physics involved and to accompany me, seal paperwork checked, torque spanned calibrated, etc, etc. It took less than five minutes to actually do the task but required forty signatures from start to finish. The procedure took a week to be authorised. Then it had to be tested which required yet another procedure. Records have to be retained for thirty years.
It was oft said that if you gathered all the paperwork trail of the plant build and operation, it would, if all burned, generate the same amount of heat that the reactor did !!


Was the dripping Dowty seal from China?
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By Sooty25
#1851730
Bill McCarthy wrote:I despair when I see how much New Zealand has allowed the Chinese take over key industries in their country. I think the Chinese outnumber the Maori now. They are everywhere and NZ is selling its family silver to them - dairy cattle.


It's not just NZ selling out to China, the UK seems to have done quite a good job of selling out to not only China but other foreign entities as well.

Take your pick, premium car brands to water utilities, little is UK owned now. I did transfer my electricity account to a UK supplier, but lets face it, they only run a billing server, the generators are mostly foreign owned now. De-nationalisation and privatisation may have broke the unions but it hasn't done the nation any favours long term. It only needed a tweak to PLC law to prevent it.
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By kanga
#1851751
Sooty25 wrote:..

Was the dripping Dowty seal from China?


almost certainly UK, indeed Gloucestershire :oops: :?

https://www.dowtyheritage.org.uk/conten ... owty-seals

I suppose the pertinent questions (to which I certainly don't know the answer) would be: was the MTBF of this particular component less than the warranty specification, and in this case because of any manufacturing (as opposed to installation, maintenance, environmental, ..) fault ? That of many Chinese-manufactured compoents reportedly is ..