The United States has been secretly seeding clouds over North Vi etnam, Laos and South Viet nam to increase and control the rainfall for military purposes.
Government sources, both ci vilian and military, said during an extensive series of inter views that the Air Force cloud seeding program has been aimed most recently at hinder ing movement of North Viet namese troops and equipment and suppressing enemy antiair craft missile fire.
The disclosure confirmed growing speculation in Con gressional and scientific circles about the use of weather mod ification in Southeast Asia. De spite years of experiments with rainmaking in the United States and elsewhere, scientists are not sure they understand its long‐term effect on the ecology of a region. NYT, Jun 3, 1972
NSF document on weather warfare
military document 1997 on weather modification
Could decades of U.S. government and military tampering with the weather be one of the hidden causes of erratic and violent weather in Michigan and elsewhere?
Since the United States was forced by public opinion to abandon convenlional ground warfare in Southeast Asia, the conduct of America ‘s running battle against socialism and self-determination in the Third World has become increasingly covert and increasingly anonymous. In Vietnam, the electronic battle field replaced ground troops, with American pilots night-bombing electronically-targeted populations they couldn’t even see. In Chile, the U.S. and Western Europe used the withholding of international credit and the promotion of labor disorders to wreck the economy under Allende. When ground troops are still necessary, as in Angola, agencies like the CIA now use mercenaries whose paychecks are funneled through friendly nations to make them untraceable.
The obvious conclusion is that there is almost nothing, from sex to shellfish toxin, that the U.S. is unwilling to consider as a weapon in its all-out effort to keep world markets safe for corporate imperialism and maintain its supplies of vital raw materials, held largely by the Third World countries. The controversy over wheat sales to the Soviet Union raises the spectre of the U.S. starving out food-poor nations through its lopsided control of world food production.
Now it appears the U.S. is willing to go even further—to modify the weather of “enemy” nations in order to ruin their planting seasons, destroy harvests, and bring on famine. The U.S. government, led by the Department of Defense, has been developing weather modification technology for some time, has applied it in Southeast Asia, and may have experimented with it elsewhere.
The American military—and that of numerous other nations to whom this knowledge has been exported—now has the ability to produce intensified local rainfall by cloud seeding; to cause drought by over-seeding; to regulate fog, snow. hail, lightning, and cloud formations; and possibly to divert the courses of tropical storms.
When activity of this sort is combined with the extensive international use of weather modification for more benevolent purposes, it’s not too difficult to imagine that the constant tampering with the ecosphere may be at least partially responsible for the changeability, severity, and violence of day-to-day weather in Detroit and almost anywhere else these days. Typically, however, only after years of tampering has the government finally begun to study the possible long-range effects of weather modification on local and worldwide climatic conditions.
Among the most important centers of weather mod research are Cambridge Research Laboratories at Hanscom Field outside Boston and the Navy’s China Lake Base near Los Angeles. At least ten other nations have asked China Lake for assistance, and private weather modification concerns in the U.S. have contracted with at least 60 countries.
Although rainmaking experiments in the U.S. go back 80 years, weather warfare began to be taken seriously during World War II. Directly after the war, to the infinite disgust of Texas cattle farmers, the Air Force managed to repeatedly produce drought conditions in the Southwest. As private weathermaking corporations began to spring up, and the government showed increasing interest, Cold-War generals of course insisted that the U.S. should stay ahead of the Russians in the field.
As a result, the CIA first used weather fare over Hue in 1963, and according to disclosures before Sen. Claiborne Pell’s subcommittee in 1974, the Pentagon spent $21.3 million flying over 2600 rainmaking sorties over Indochina tween 1967 and 1972. They succeeded in increasing rainfall as much as 30 percent in some areas, softening roads, A causing landslides, wash ing out river crossings, and generally worsening poor traffic conditions.
House hearings last September disclosed that the Thai government has also modified weather against liberation forces in its northeast sector.
In 1972, Radio Havana charged that the CIA had modified Cuba ‘s rainfall in order to ruin its sugar crop. In the following year, Rhodesia’s neighbors accused the lan Smith regime of modifying their weather. And last year. Dr. Jorge Vivo, Director of the Geographic Research Center of the University of Mexico, charged that the U.S. artificially detoured Hurricane Fifi into the Honduras in order to save Florida’s tourist industry.
The Air Force, Navy, and NASA all have a number of weather satellites aloft, collecting and computerizing information on cloud formations, temperature, and so forth, night and day, on a global basis.
Weather modification experts from the Air Force’s Air Weather Service and other branches of the military frequently move on to private industry or to civilian government agencies involved in weather tampering research, including the Departments of Transportation, Interior, culture, and Commerce; the U.S. Weather Service and its parent organization, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration; the National Science Foundation; and the Atomic Energy Commission. Between 1961 and 1971, Commerce worked with the Defense Department to affect the course of four hurricanes.
The U.S. has done considerable work with missiles, whose exhaust materials can change atmospheric temperature and electron density, thus affecting rainfall. The military has also looked into altering the ozone layer around the globe, which could lower temperatures and cause wind shifts—subsequently affecting rainfall, desert belts, and sea levels.
Weather mod expert Cordon MacDonald explains (in Unless Peace Comes) how droughts can be brought about: “Preliminary analysis suggests that there is no effect 200-300 miles downrange, but that continued seeding over a long stretch of dry land clearly could remove sufficient moisture to prevent rain 100 miles downwind. This extended effect leads to the possibility of covertly removing moisture from the atmosphere, so that a nation dependent on water vapor crossing a competitor country could be subjected to years of drought. The operation could be concealed by the statistical irregularity of the atmosphere. A nation possessing superior technology in environmental manipulation could damage an adversary without revealing its intent.”
Pierre St. Amand, Director of the Navy’s China Lake Base, elaborated to the Pell subcommittee:
“Strategic use would be use that tended to upset set the economy of another country for a long period of time, or to cause extensive damage to the crops of that country . . . It might, to take a negative viewpoint, be advantageous to cause heavy rain during planting season to preclude sprouting and growth, and then to cause severe and protracted drought during the growing season in a country dependent on certain crops tor food and foreign exchange.”
Hoping to avert such a genocidal scenario, the Senate two years ago passed a resolution calling for an international ban on weather modification. The House has yet to act on the resolution, but its international Relations Subcommittee is reportedly getting little cooperation from the Ford administration.
The U.S. and the Soviet Union have presented a draft treaty to the United Nations, but many arms control experts consider it weak, since it bans only long-term catastrophic use of weather modification and probably would not have outlawed the U.S. activities in Vietnam.
Until we have strong international controls on weather warfare and a government that can be expected to live up to them, we would be wise to think twice before attributing tragic weather developments, especially in the Third World, to the whims of “Mother Nature.” And the larger question remains: If the U.S. can drown a country’s planting season, scorch its harvests, and send a hurricane to devastate it, how long will it be before the ecosphere is totally out of whack and the forces loosed by weather warfare come home to haunt us?
Information for this article was drawn from Mark Looney’s article, “Is the U.S. Waging Weather Warfare'”, in the November 20, 1975 issue of WIN magazine. Box 54 7, Rifton, NY 12471. Used by permission.
“A nation dependent on water vapor crossing a competitor country could be subjected to years of drought. The operation could be concealed by the statistical irregularity of the atmosphere. A nation possessing superior technology could damage an adversary without revealing its intent.”
****
________________
The extreme weather, which has persisted for over 70 days, is starting to weigh on China’s industrial activity and economic growth.
Since the start of August, hydropower plants in Sichuan have been operating below 50% of their regular capacity, China’s Caixin media outlet reported on Tuesday. This has led to power cuts in Sichuan, leading auto giant Toyota and Apple supplier Foxconn to suspend operations.
The dry weather has also damaged crops and could hurt the fall harvest, thus sending China to compete for exports from the international markets and driving up already high food prices.
Sichuan’s worst drought in more than a half century spurred the Chinese province to extend industrial power cuts and activate its highest emergency response, adding to manufacturers’ woes as they shut down factories in the region.
Temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and scant rainfall, along with surging demand for air conditioning, have caused gaps in power supply, the southwestern province said in a statement. Officials extended an order that curtails electricity to some industrial users to Aug. 25 from Aug. 20 originally, according to company announcements.
article apr
Thousands of factories that make processor chips, solar panels and auto components in Sichuan and Chongqing shut down this week for at least six days.
Some announced there was no disruption in supplies to customers, but the Shanghai city government said in a letter released Thursday that Tesla Ltd. and a major Chinese automaker were forced to suspend production.
The city government of Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, told households to conserve power by setting air conditioning no lower than 27 C (80 F). Another city, Dazhou, earlier announced rolling three-hour daily power outages for neighborhoods.
The Yangtze basin, covering parts of 19 provinces, produces 45% of China’s economic output, according to the World Bank.
The national impact of shutdowns is limited, because Sichuan accounts for only 4% of industrial production, while other provinces use more coal-fired power, which hasn’t been disrupted.
The government says China’s two main state-owned power companies, State Grid Ltd. and Southern Grid Ltd., are moving power from 15 other provinces to Sichuan.
A member of the Communist Party’s seven-member ruling Standing Committee, Han Zheng, promised official support to ensure power supplies during a visit Wednesday to State Grid, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
China suffered similar disruptions last year when a dry summer caused hydropower shortages and shut down factories in Guangdong province in the southeast, a global manufacturing center. Other regions suffered blackouts due to coal shortages and mandatory power cuts to meet official energy efficiency targets.
This year is unlikely to be so severe, according to Larry Hu of Macquarie Group.
“If the power rationing in Sichuan only lasts a few weeks, the impact on the industrial production at the national level should be very limited,” Hu said in a report.
Xuguang Electronics Co. in Chengdu said the six-day shutdown would reduce its output by 48,000 electronic circuits. The company said it expected to take a 5 million yuan ($600,000) hit to its annual profit.
BOE Technology Group Co., which makes electronic displays, said a Sichuan subsidiary would suspend production. BOE promised in a statement issued through the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to “fully guarantee delivery of customers’ products.”
News reports said producers in Sichuan of solar panels and lithium for electric cars also shut down, but no companies announced disruptions in supplies.
The Chengdu-Chongqing Twin City Circle – The Plan to Boost Regional Development
On October 21, 2021, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) and the State Council jointly issued the Plan Outline for the Construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Twin City Region (the ‘plan’), an extensive document detailing a new plan to create a new city cluster in China’s western regions. First announced in 2019, the project aims to address developmental imbalances by integrating two of the most economically active cities in western China – Chongqing and Chengdu – into a mega-city cluster, focusing on developing key infrastructure and industries.
The new Chengdu-Chongqing Twin City Region (‘Twin City region’) will be the fourth such economic cluster to be built in China and the first in the west of the country, following the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region in the north, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region in the east, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in the south.
The latter three economic clusters have overseen an explosion in economic activity in their respective regions, and today represent some of the wealthiest regions in mainland China. If successful, the Twin City region will help to cultivate new opportunities for an area with considerable developmental potential, while greatly facilitating the movement of people and goods across the region. It will also help create an ‘economic corridor’ to access more remote and isolated parts of China, such as Tibet and northwestern China.
Overview of the Twin City region
The Twin City region covers an area of 185,000 sq km. It includes all of the nine districts in the Chongqing city center and a further 20 suburban districts and counties, mostly those bordering Sichuan Province to the west and northeast of the city center, but also a few to the south and east.
In Sichuan, the region covers the provincial capital of Chengdu and 14 sub-provincial cities (excluding a few city districts) mostly clustered in the eastern part of the province toward Chongqing. It includes Mianyang, the second-largest city in Sichuan and an emerging technology hub, as well as the major manufacturing cities of Nanchong and Deyang.
The combined area is home to 96 million people and reached a combined GDP of RMB 6.3 trillion (US$984.77 billion) in 2019, according to the introduction to the plan.
By comparison, the GBA covers an area of 59,900 sq km and was home to 73 million permanent residents as of 2019. The region recorded a GDP of RMB 11.58 trillion (US$1.8 trillion) and a per capita GDP of RMB 161,500 (US$25,267) in 2019. The YRD region, meanwhile, the largest of the four city clusters, covers an area of 358,000 sq km and houses 227 million people. The region registered a GDP of RMB 23.7 trillion (US$3.7 trillion) and a per capita GDP of RMB 104,452 (US$16,342) in 2019.
GAIN INTELLIGENCE ABOUT DIVERSIFYING YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN IN CHINA WITH OUR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SERVICESWith a per capita GDP of RMB 58,333 (US$9,126) in 2019, the Twin City region falls far below that of the other city cluster regions, and also below the national average of RMB 70,892 (US$11,091).
The distribution of wealth is also not equal across the region. Chongqing accounted for 37 percent of the Twin City region’s GDP, a higher proportion than Chengdu, even though Chengdu is far better connected to its surrounding cities than Chongqing is. Improving connectivity, both logistics and economic, between the two cities could therefore serve to better distribute wealth and opportunities across the region.
Main targets for the Twin City plan
The plan provides a blueprint for further integrating the industries and infrastructures of the two regions and developing their respective economies. These include plans to expand the transport network to better connect various cities and counties, both within the region and beyond, as well as upgrading and expanding key infrastructures, such as telecom and utilities.
In addition, the plan provides a vision for the development and expansion of key industries, most notably manufacturing, modern services, and high-end technology.
The plan also proposes specific goals to achieve by 2025. These include:
- Reaching a 66 percent urbanization rate of the permanent population.
- Building an intercity railway enabling one-hour travel between Chongqing and Chengdu.
- Expanding the railway network to cover 9,000 km in total and connect all cities with a population of over 200,000.
- Building a shipping and logistics center for the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
- Expanding 5G coverage to cities, towns, and key settings.
- Investing approximately 2.5 percent of GDP in R&D.
Below we provide a brief overview of some of the plans for the transport network, infrastructure, and industry development.
Integrating and expanding transport infrastructure
Rail
One of the key goals of the plan is to realize the ‘1-hour city circle’, a vision that would enable people to commute between the major cities in the region in just one hour and thereby make it feasible for people to work in one city and live in another.
At present, it takes multiple hours to travel between Chongqing to Chengdu by public transport. (Note that some high-speed trains traveling between Chongqing and Chengdu take only one hour, but they are relatively irregular and expensive, and the door-to-door travel time would amount to much longer in practice for the majority of commuters).
The plan also proposes creating a unified public transport system in the region to enable passengers to use the same transport card or payment mechanism to take multiple means of transport in different cities and districts across the region.
In addition to inter-city railways, the plan also proposes the expansion of multiple inter-provincial railroads, including new railway lines running south from Chongqing to the city of Kunming in Yunnan Province, a railway running west from Chengdu to the Qinghai capital of Xining, and the construction of the Sichuan-Tibet railway. These inter-provincial railways would serve to strengthen the region’s position as an ‘economic corridor’ and key hub for the transport of goods across the country, as well as opening up new trade routes with remote parts of the country.
Air
In addition to railways, the plan seeks to expand the capacity of existing airports, build new airports in smaller cities, better integrate the operations of different city airports, and link them with city railway networks.
Among these are plans to expand the Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport, as well as a proposal to build a second international airport in the city, although the plan does not provide specific details on how and when this should be done.
In addition, new branch airports have been proposed for the cities of Leshan, Suining, and Ya’an, and the Langzhong district in Nanchong city.
In Chengdu, the plan similarly proposes the expansion of the city’s Shuangliu International Airport. It also calls for integrating operations with the newly opened Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, and proposes improving the airport collection and distribution system and exploring new technologies and models for combined air and rail transportation.
Upgrading the manufacturing industry
As is the case in many areas across China, economic development in Sichuan and Chongqing has been largely driven by manufacturing. Although the two cities’ economies have are shifting inexorably toward the service industries, secondary industries still have an important role to play. 40 percent of Chongqing’s GDP in 2020 still came from manufacturing industries; for Chengdu, it was just over 30 percent. This is even more true for smaller prefecture-level cities: Mianyang, the second-largest city in Sichuan, derived over 44 percent of its GDP from manufacturing, compared to just over 43 percent from services.
The government is seeking to further spur the industry to drive economic growth, focusing on key traditional industries – such as auto and motorcycle components manufacturing – but also shifting gears to focus on new and emerging industries – integrated circuits, industrial robots, and CNC machine tools.
The plan offers a two-pronged approach to developing the industry, dividing different manufacturing sectors largely into the north and south of the region. In the north, the plan aims to integrate and develop industries such as the manufacturing of advanced materials, automobiles, and motorcycle accessories; in the south, the development will focus on F&B, equipment manufacturing, and energy and chemicals, among other industries.
The plan also outlines the creation of an ‘internationally competitive’ industry cluster driven by smart connectivity and new energy industries, calling to jointly build a high-level automotive industry R&D and manufacturing base. Other industries of interest are aerospace, rail transit, energy equipment, industrial robots, instrumentation, CNC machine tools, and motorcycle components.
Finally, the plan proposes the construction of new industrial development zones and further integration of existing industrial zones in the two areas. Newly built industrial zones would either cross provincial boundaries, such as across Guang’an city in Sichuan province and the Yubei district in Chongqing, or create individual ‘enclave’ parks in the other region’s jurisdiction.
Developing the digital economy
With the region shifting toward a service-oriented economy – especially in highly urbanized Chengdu – the government is keen to use its other key tool for boosting the economy – digital industries.
But first, in order to enable the digital industry to take off, the plan sets out goals for building the requisite infrastructure, which involves, among other goals, accelerating the construction of 5G networks, advancing optical fiber access networks, deploying next-generation Internet based on IPv6, and promoting national-level Internet exchange points for broadband expansion.
Meanwhile, the plan lays out a vision for the development of the digital industry, aiming to develop fields such as integrated circuits (ICs), new types of displays, and intelligent terminals. It also seeks to cultivate innovative applications, such as ultra-high-definition video, AI, blockchain, and digital creative industries, while promoting the upgrading and digitalization of traditional industries.
Developing modern services industry
Helping to tie together the services and manufacturing industries are several peripheral service sectors that the government is also keen to develop. These cover sectors such as R&D and design, technology services, business consulting, and human resources.
Among other sectors, the plan seeks to further strengthen Chongqing and Chengdu’s position as a logistics hub. The plan proposes to achieve this partially through the creation of a joint international freight center, as well as regional logistics centers in places such as the Sichuan prefecture-level cities of Zigong, Suining, and Dazhou and the Chongqing districts of Wanzhou and Fuling.
The creation of a ‘western financial center’ is another one of the plan’s core goals. The plan envisions cultivating a wide range of financial services, including cross-border renminbi businesses, overseas renminbi investment funds, fintech, and green finance. The plan aims to further integrate the financial markets and regulatory jurisdictions of the different areas and promote cross-border cooperation in fields such as guarantees, venture capital, and private equity. The plan also calls for the creation of a bankruptcy court and improving the financial adjudication system, building up the regulatory and legal infrastructure to cultivate a healthy financial market.
The Chengdu-Chongqing region has huge economic potential. If the plan for the development of the Twin City region is implemented successfully, we can expect to see increasingly vibrant economic activity and the establishment of new industries and companies in the area.
This model for city integration has seen success in other regions of China, helping to build some of the most prosperous regions and cultivating some of China’s most innovative industries. The Twin City region also has a certain advantage over its coastal counterparts: its central location makes it an ideal hub from which to reach still-developing markets in western and northern China, and its lower labor costs may become increasingly attractive price-sensitive companies based in expensive coastal cities.
However, the plan in its current form does not provide concrete steps for how the government plans to achieve these goals. It also makes no mention of the role of foreign capital in the development of the region. The details for building the infrastructure and developing industries are likely to be hashed out in future policy documents aimed at specific industries and fields and may include outlines for participation by foreign companies and investors.
Foreign investors interested in tapping into the western China markets are therefore advised to keep a sharp eye on policy developments and updates, particularly as it relates to industrial pilot zones, as these are the areas that are most likely to seek foreign capital.
The Yangtse Delta Bassin (YDB)
No comments:
Post a Comment