Quote of the week…

Natural Gas Shortages Hit China…

“It’s a perfect winter storm for Xi,” said Willy Lam, a longtime analyst of Chinese politics who is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. “Nothing seems to be working, partly because nobody seems to have much cash.”

NYT

Leopard Tank

After weeks of indecision, Ukraine's allies have finally taken a stand. Several dozen Western battle tanks will be sent to help Kyiv's forces in the coming months. They will enable Ukraine to resist the onslaught of Russian troops and above all to regain the initiative in the coming spring, when the weather conditions will be more favorable for new mechanized maneuvers. The announcement was set to be made on Wednesday, January 25, by both the United States and Germany, who have managed to agree on a coalition, despite major initial differences.

Spiegel

TURKEY'S FUTURE UNCERTAIN AN ANNOUNCED DEJA VU FOR SWEDEN

After seven years of cooperation with independent organisations in Turkey, the Palme Centre is now leaving - following a decision by Sida - a country in deep crisis. Independent organisations in particular play an important role in Turkey in raising awareness of democracy and human rights among the population. But they are working against the wind. Turkey's state apparatus is crumbling. Helin Sahin of the Palme Centre writes in Dagens Arena.

Helin Salin, 22 July 2014

What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

Natural Gas Shortages Hit China as Temperatures Plunge

The post Natural Gas Shortages Hit China as Temperatures Plunge appeared first on New York Times.

January 25, 2023

For many people across China, a shortage of natural gas and alarmingly cold temperatures are making a difficult winter unbearable. For Li Yongqiang, they mean freezing nights without heat.

“We dare not turn on the heat overnight — after using it for five or six hours, the gas stops again,” Mr. Li, a 45-year-old grocer, said by telephone from his home in northern China’s Hebei Province. “The gas shortage is really affecting our lives.”

The lack of natural gas, which is used widely across China to heat homes and businesses, has angered tens of millions of people and spilled over into caustic complaints on social media.

One person in Hebei Province wrote of waking early four nights a week because she was too cold to sleep despite two comforters on her bed. A viral video on China’s internet shows a high-rise apartment building in a different northern province, Shanxi, with the windows plastered with bright red posters of the sort often seen at Lunar New Year — except that these posters say “cold.”

Already this winter, hundreds of millions of people have caught Covid since Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, abandoned his “zero Covid” policy in early December. That policy had kept infections low but required costly precautions like mass testing — measures that exhausted the budgets of local governments. Many towns and cities now lack the money they need even to pay their own employees, much less to maintain adequate supplies of gas for homes.

The crunch, experts said, has exposed systemic weaknesses in China’s energy regulations and infrastructure, while showing the reach of the global market turmoil provoked last year by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has long been a major supplier of natural gas to China and many regions, particularly Europe. When Russia halted exports to Europe last summer, nations bid up world prices as they stockpiled supplies from elsewhere. A surprisingly warm winter has since helped push gas prices lower in Europe, but the bitter cold is now pushing them even higher in China.

At the same time, China’s provincial and municipal governments have reduced customary subsidies for natural gas consumption that used to keep a lid on heating bills. The national government has responded by telling local governments to provide heat, without giving them money to pay for it. As a result, gas is effectively being rationed, with households receiving the minimum needed for cooking food but very little for heat.

“It’s a perfect winter storm for Xi,” said Willy Lam, a longtime analyst of Chinese politics who is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. “Nothing seems to be working, partly because nobody seems to have much cash.”

This is the third grass-roots energy crisis in just five years for Mr. Xi. His government abruptly banned coal-fired boilers across large areas of northern China in 2017 in favor of gas ones. It was a quick fix for air pollution, but residents soon found there was not enough gas for all the new boilers.

Then in 2021, the price of coal jumped higher than the regulated price at which utilities could sell electricity generated from coal. Reluctant to lose money, utilities temporarily closed power plants, contributing to a wave of blackouts.

Many in Europe worried last year how they would heat their homes this winter after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia reduced and then halted natural gas shipments to the continent.

But Europe has not just had an unusually warm winter. Gas companies there have raised prices, encouraging conservation, and governments have subsidized consumers to offset at least part of the extra cost. European companies also accumulated large stockpiles of extra gas last autumn. Worries have faded that families in Europe will not have enough natural gas to heat their homes this winter.

In China, the temperature has become unusually frigid. Over the weekend, numerous weather stations in northernmost China’s Heilongjiang Province reached the lowest temperatures they had ever recorded. Mohe City, the northernmost city in China, reached lows for three straight days below minus 50 degrees Celsius. China’s meteorology agency has issued nationwide warnings this week of very cold weather.

The government has taken notice of the gas shortages.

“Some localities and enterprises have not implemented measures to ensure the supply and price of energy for people’s livelihood,” Lian Weiliang, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, said at a news conference on Jan. 13.

He added that the national government would hold local officials responsible for supplying homes, but did not indicate that Beijing would provide any money to help them do so. China will also build more natural gas storage sites, he said, to try to avoid similar problems in the future.

China actually has enough natural gas to make it through the winter, said Yan Qin, a China energy specialist at Refinitiv, a data company in London. The problem is that pricing regulations and declining subsidies are preventing gas from reaching households in northern China when temperatures plunge.

Much of the world has shunned Russian energy during the war, but China has stepped up its purchases of natural gas from Russia. Imports from Russia of liquefied natural gas, which can be transported by ship, jumped 42.3 percent last year, as Chinese companies bought cargos that businesses in Japan and elsewhere were no longer willing to buy because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Much of that Russian gas was imported at very high prices. But Chinese regulations strictly limit the price at which municipal and township gas distributors are allowed to sell gas to households. This winter, the wholesale cost of gas is up to three times the price that distributors are allowed to charge residential customers, said Jenny Zhang, a natural gas expert at the Lantau Group, an energy and power consulting firm in Hong Kong that specializes in mainland China.

Distributors are allowed to pass along extra costs to industrial and business users of gas, but not to individuals. So when prices rise, the companies have a big incentive to cut off homes and sell mostly to industrial and commercial users.

The problem is particularly acute in populous Hebei Province near Beijing. Many local gas companies have been at least partly privatized in recent years.

“They don’t have deep pockets when the gas price is swinging,” Ms. Zhang said.

And local governments in places like Hebei are under severe financial strain.

Their main source of revenue, sales of land leases to developers, dried up last year as the pandemic costs skyrocketed. The acreage leased to developers plummeted 53 percent last year as the real estate sector ran into financial difficulties.

Hebei Province, which wraps around three sides of Beijing and has 74.5 million people, has fared worst of all. The national government has been particularly insistent over the past five years that Hebei homes and businesses switch to gas because air pollution from their use of coal quickly wafts into Beijing. Many residents, including Mr. Li, the grocer, no longer have coal or coal-burning stoves.

Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, was then among the first cities to run low on money for Covid testing last autumn. It moved quickly to abandon testing late last year as soon as Beijing began signaling flexibility on the “zero Covid” policy, only to end up with an immediate wave of cases. Now temperatures in the mountainous province are falling far below freezing.

With revenue dwindling and costs rising, local governments in Hebei have little financial muscle to resume subsidizing gas quickly for their customers.

“If they would be able to subsidize,” Ms. Qin, the China energy specialist, said, “we would not have this shortage.”

Ukraine's allies consent to crucial tank deliveries

After initially hesitating, Germany is expected to send a limited number of Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv, while Washington is formalizing the delivery of some 30 Abrams tanks.

Le Monde by Thomas Wieder (Berlin (Germany) correspondent), Piotr Smolar (Washington (United States) correspondent) and Cédric Pietralunga

Published on January 25, 2023

After weeks of indecision, Ukraine's allies have finally taken a stand. Several dozen Western battle tanks will be sent to help Kyiv's forces in the coming months. They will enable Ukraine to resist the onslaught of Russian troops and above all to regain the initiative in the coming spring, when the weather conditions will be more favorable for new mechanized maneuvers. The announcement was set to be made on Wednesday, January 25, by both the United States and Germany, who have managed to agree on a coalition, despite major initial differences.

According to several US media outlets and confirmed by European sources, Washington is set to officially announce the delivery of some 30 M1 Abrams tanks on Wednesday. This announcement would constitute a shift in the American position and a disavowal for the Pentagon. According to the Wall Street Journal, American president Joe Biden made this decision following a telephone conversation on January 17 with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The equipment would be acquired through a specific security assistance program for Ukraine, without drawing on current US military stocks.

For its part, Germany would deliver a limited number of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and, above all, authorize other countries that possess them to do the same, notably Poland. According to the news website Der Spiegel, which revealed the information late on Tuesday, this decision looked set to be officially announced on Wednesday by Scholz, during a speech to the Bundestag at midday. According to the German site, Berlin intends to send at least 14 Leopard 2 tanks from the Bundeswehr's stockpile, which has a total of 320 tanks, but only 200 of which are operational.

Until very recently, the United States had been reluctant to send heavy armored vehicles to Ukraine. Difficult to maneuver, complicated to maintain and fuel-hungry, the Abrams tanks could be a poisoned chalice for the Kyiv forces, explained Colin Kahl, the Pentagon's third in command, on his return from a trip to Ukraine on January 18. "The Abrams tank is no more difficult to use than a Leopard or a Leclerc, but its turbine consumes twice as much fuel as the diesel engines of its competitors, which requires much greater refueling logistics," confirmed Marc Chassillan, a French specialist in land armaments.

Pressure on the German Chancellor

Anxious to preserve the solidity of the Western bloc, the United States decided to take the step to unblock Germany's position. Concerned about its relations with Moscow, Germany had not wanted its Leopard tanks to be the only ones sent to Ukraine. This position had been clearly explained in recent weeks by Social Democrat (SPD) Chancellor Scholz, who was adamant despite intense pressure within his governing coalition, notably from the Greens and the Liberals (FDP). If the coalition failed, Moscow could have welcomed the first serious rift between the allies in a year, according to Western sources.

The pressure being put on Scholz by European leaders also played a role. For several weeks, Poland had been saying it was ready to deliver some of its army's Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but could not do so without authorization from their manufacturer, which has a contractual right of review over the re-export of their equipment. This conditionality, combined with Berlin's reluctance, exasperated Warsaw to no end. "The Germans are delaying, procrastinating and acting in a way that is difficult to understand," said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on January 24, explaining that he wanted to create a "coalition of countries supporting Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks."

Eager to defuse this rise in tension, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) declared on Tuesday morning that countries wishing to deliver Leopards to Kyiv could "start training" Ukrainians in how to use these tanks. At the same time, it was learned that Poland had officially asked Berlin to allow it to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. "The request will be examined as a matter of urgency," the German government said, clearly anxious to calm Warsaw's impatience, which had said the day before that it was ready to dispense with Berlin's authorization to send its tanks to Ukraine.

Support of the US Congress

On the American side, the pressure also intensified in recent days in Congress, particularly among senators, where support for the Ukrainian cause remains very strong. The Republican Lindsey Graham and the Democrat Richard Blumenthal spoke side by side on Tuesday on this subject. For Graham, the delivery of tanks to Kyiv "is recognition of the fact that our current objective is to stand by Ukraine until the last Russian soldier leaves its territory. For his part, Blumenthal, who led a bipartisan delegation to Kyiv a few days ago, stressed the importance of a very rapid delivery of this equipment to facilitate the Ukrainian counter-attack to the Russian border.

In addition to Poland, a number of European countries have expressed their willingness to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, which estimates that its troops need about 300 tanks to repel the Russians. During a trip to Brussels on Tuesday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte explained that the Netherlands is considering buying 18 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, which it leases from Germany, to provide them to Ukraine. "We leased them (tanks), which means we can buy them and donate (to Ukraine)," he said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. "But there is no decision yet," he added.

According to local media, Norway is also ready to give up 8 of its 36 Leopards. Finland has also said it is available. Military experts estimate the number of Leopards currently in service in European armies at around 2,000, making them by far the largest contingent of tanks on the Old Continent.

The Elysée Palace did not wish to comment on the possibility of sending German and American tanks to Ukraine on Tuesday evening. Officially, France is studying the possibility of delivering some of the 222 Leclerc tanks in its army to Kyiv. But the military is reluctant to do so, believing that they already have too few to train properly. Ministerial sources also indicate that the maintenance of these technological monsters, manufactured by the French company Nexter, can be complicated for a country at war, especially if the number of tanks delivered is limited. The United Kingdom was not deterred by this factor. On January 14, London announced the upcoming delivery of 14 of its Challenger 2 heavy tanks to the Kyiv army.

'A race of speed'

The only certainty is that these decisions mark a new stage in the war in Ukraine. Having become stalled in the autumn, the front has seen new movements in recent weeks. The Russians say they have conquered the town of Soledar, in the east of the country, and are carrying out unconfirmed new attacks near Zaporizhzhia, further south. For their part, the Ukrainians are at work in the Kreminna region in the north of the country. Various sources also report troop movements on both sides of the front to prepare new offensives.

Above all, Ukrainian and Western intelligence services anticipate a new mobilization of conscripts in Russia, after the one announced on September 21, 2022, by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This could result in the arrival of tens of thousands of new Russian soldiers on the front line in the coming months. This reinforcement would be difficult for the Ukrainians to contain without reinforcing their equipment. "Ukraine and Russia are engaged in a race of speed, in armament for the former, in mobilization for the latter," explained a military source.

"The first one to be ready will have a chance to grab the advantage over the other."

Sweden-Turkey Spat Means Finland Might Take Unilateral Route

After a right-wing extremist burned a copy of the Koran in Stockholm over the weekend, Ankara is even less likely to approve Sweden's NATO bid anytime soon. Finland has said it might have to move ahead on its own.

Spiegel by Anna-Sophie Schneider

24.01.2023

A few dozen people gathered on Saturday not far from the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. Far from being a normal protest, it was a targeted provocation. The notorious right-wing extremist politician Rasmus Paludan set fire to a copy of the Koran.

Paludan, head of the Islamophobic party Stram Kurs (Hard Line), has both Danish and Swedish citizenship. He poses as a defender of basic rights and claims that his protests are aimed at countering what he claims are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s efforts at influencing freedom of speech.

His Saturday stunt triggered furious reactions from across the Muslim world. Turkey also immediately condemned the burning of the Koran, calling it an "anti-Islam act, which targets Muslims and insults our sacred values." It was, in short, immediately clear that Paludan’s "protest" would have far-reaching political consequences.

On Monday, Erdoğan went a step further, saying that the Swedish government cannot count on Turkish support for its efforts to join NATO. "It is clear that those who allowed such vileness to take place in front of our embassy can no longer expect any charity from us regarding their NATO membership application," Erdoğan said.

Relations between Ankara and Stockholm had already been tense. Turkey has long stood in the way of efforts by Sweden and Finland to join the trans-Atlantic military alliance. Both countries decided in May 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to abandon their neutrality and join NATO.

Twenty-eight of 30 member states have since rubberstamped the two countries’ applications, with Hungary saying that it would be granting its approval next month. That leaves Turkey as the only NATO member left to give its consent. But despite numerous talks, Ankara hasn’t budged in months.

Turkey’s leaders accuse the Swedish government of supporting terrorist organizations, a reference to the Kurdish militia group YPG, which Ankara sees as an arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey. The PKK is also considered to be a terrorist organization inside the European Union, but Brussels has declined expand that classification to the YPG. The NATO membership applications from Finland and Sweden handed Erdoğan a perfect opportunity to bring the issue back into the spotlight.

In addition, the Turkish president accuses Sweden of being a sanctuary for terrorists and is demanding that Stockholm extradite several members of the PKK along with opposition and Kurdish activists. A memorandum between Sweden, Finland and Turkey last summer was supposed eliminate the differences of opinion that exist between the countries. But the sense of relief triggered by the diplomatic triumph proved short-lived.

The document is formulated in such a way that it is open to a wide variety of interpretations. And Turkish leaders are still unhappy with how the Nordic countries have construed it. Ankara has sent careful signals that It would be open to Finland initially joining NATO without Sweden, but Helsinki was long opposed to doing so.

On Tuesday, however, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said that the time had come for his country to consider moving ahead without Sweden. He also told Reuters that talks needed to be put on hold for a time, following the events of the weekend. "A time-out is needed before we return to the three-way talks and see where we are when the dust has settled after the current situation," Haavisto told Reuters in a phone interview.

First Rapprochement, then Alienation

Given Turkey’s comments thus far, however, it doesn’t look as though a solution to the impasse will present itself anytime soon.

For Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, the NATO question has become a true test. The conservative politician has only been in office since mid-October. But even before he took office, Social Democratic governments before him had made concessions to Erdoğan, such as authorizing weapons exports to Turkey for the first time in 2019. Kristersson has sought to expand this delicate rapprochement. A constitutional amendment aimed at strengthening Sweden’s anti-terrorism laws was received positively in the Turkish press.

Indeed, Kristersson’s first trip abroad, taken in November, was to Ankara – a strong signal to Erdoğan. But that trip saw an event that in hindsight could be seen as the trigger of a new escalation in the NATO confrontation. The escalation that culminated on Saturday in the burning of the Koran.

During Kristersson’s trip, Erdoğan demanded yet again that a number of alleged terrorists be extradited. Specifically, he mentioned by name the former journalist Bülent Keneş. Erdoğan accuses Keneş of having taken part in the 2016 putsch attempt in Turkey. The Swedish prime minister made it clear that political leaders have no say on extraditions and that all such decisions are made by courts of law. And not long later, the highest court in Stockholm rejected Keneş' extradition.

It was a bitter defeat for Erdoğan, to which he responded with yet more demands. He insisted on the extradition of 130 people. Kristersson, who had already become the target of criticism for his attempts at rapprochement with Ankara, saw the demand as an afront. He said the Turkish request could not be granted.

The rejection from Stockholm was accompanied by increasingly provocative protests in Sweden against Turkey. On January 13, Kurdish activists hung an Erdoğan doll upside down in Stockholm and lit it on fire. Ankara responded by summoning the Swedish ambassador.

Following the burning of the Koran, the diplomat was once again summoned – for the second time in just a few days. But both the burning of the Koran and the burning of the Erdoğan doll are covered by Sweden’s freedom-of-expression rights. The legal consequences being demanded by Ankara are thus precluded.

Over the weekend, Kristersson tried to calm the tensions. Freedom of expression is a fundamental element of democracy, he wrote on Twitter, but "burning books that are holy to many is a deeply disrespectful act." He extended his sympathies to all Muslims who were offended by the stunt.

It didn’t work. After the burning of the Koran on Saturday in Stockholm, Swedish flags went up in flames on Sunday in front of the Swedish Consulate in Istanbul. Protesters called for a boycott of Swedish products and a meeting between the defense ministers of Sweden and Turkey was cancelled.

No Hope Until After the Election

Erdoğan will likely emerge as the greatest beneficiary of the uproar. The Turkish president is up for re-election in May, and the anti- Erdoğan protests in Sweden could very well give him a boost. Erdoğan has consistently benefited from anti-Western posturing in past elections, and this time around, the opposition isn’t likely to contradict him given Paludan’s antics.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the country’s largest opposition party, the CHP, blasted the burning of the Koran on Twitter, writing: "I condemn this fascism, which is the pinnacle of hate crime."

In short, it is difficult to imagine Turkey giving the green light to Sweden’s NATO membership aspirations before the presidential election.

"What happens after that depends to a certain extent on who wins," Paul Levin, director of the Institute for Turkish Studies at the University of Stockholm, told the news agency AFP. If Erdoğan remains in power, he said, Ankara’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO application may not happen for several years. The only thing that might speed things up, Levin believes, is if other NATO members make concessions to Turkey.