News Round-Up, August 22, 2023
China's Economic Dilemma: An “Insatiable Dragon” at a Crossroads
By Germán & Co, Karlstad, Sweden, August 21, 2023.China, renowned as the "insatiable dragon," has undoubtedly emerged as a global economic powerhouse. However, the present epoch has witnessed the emergence of formidable challenges that have compelled this mighty dragon to reassess its position on the world stage. A combination of factors, including an ailing economy, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have shaken China's long-held wisdom of presenting itself as a Maoist nation embracing capitalism. China's economic success has been driven by its manufacturing, exports, and investment. Its ability to balance socialism and capitalism has been a critical factor in its meteoric rise as an economic superpower.
However, recent times have tested its adaptability. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit China hard and revealed vulnerabilities in its economic and political systems. The substantial disruption to global supply chains and decreased consumer spending and investment inflicted a severe blow on China's economy. The formerly smooth flow of goods and services ceased, affecting domestic production and decelerating economic growth. China's impressive manufacturing system encountered obstacles as factories closed and trade volumes dropped.
Additionally, the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's invasion caused a ripple effect throughout the international community. China finds itself in a challenging position, trying to maintain a delicate balance in its diplomatic maneuvering. Historically, China has followed an ideology rooted in communism while gradually adopting the principles of capitalism. However, this balancing act has become increasingly difficult as geopolitical tensions have risen.
The Russian invasion in Ukraine has compelled China to review its foreign policy strategy, especially regarding its economic interests in the region. China's pursuit of natural resources and energy supplies, critical for fueling its economic growth, has consistently influenced its foreign policy decisions. However, China now finds itself walking a diplomatic tightrope as it must balance the need for energy resources with concerns regarding Russia's actions and international condemnation.
These recent challenges have brought ambiguity about China's conventional wisdom of projection as a totalitarian state with an aspiration to be a prosperous capitalist country. While traversing through uncharted waters, China encounters a deeply entrenched predicament.
"Does it sustain prioritisation of economic expansion and global dominance, or does it shift its focus towards re-establishing the significance of socialist principles and self-sufficiency?"
China may be either tacitly supporting Russia's actions or carefully calculating its response to protect its interests. Amidst these uncertainties, an interesting development has arisen on the global political stage. Meanwhile, a senior statesman with extensive political knowledge has emerged and poses a significant challenge to China's leader, Xi Jinping. The veteran's expertise and experience may prove to be a valuable asset in navigating these complex geopolitical waters.
Meanwhile, an elderly gentleman with deep political knowledge has emerged to pose a formidable challenge to China's leader, Xi Ping. The veteran US president has become a cruel nightmare for President Xi Ping and many autocratic leaders around the world.
The American president is a charismatic figure with a proud Irish heritage and the ability to connect with people on a personal level. Despite his powerful position, he remains humble and approachable, breaking down the barriers between world leaders and their constituents. But do not be fooled by his gentle touch and affable disposition. There is a fire in this President, a passion that burns with all the fervor of the Irish spirit. When confronted with injustice or the need for swift action, he is not afraid to bang the table and demand immediate attention and resolution. The strength and determination of his actions leave no doubt that he will fight for what he believes in, regardless of the consequences.
Xi Jinping is well aware of his nature.
Nevertheless, these are the penultimate words in a wild, dangerous, ridiculous, unbelievable world struggling to find a way out of a geopolitical crisis that is still not in sight.
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China’s blueprint for an alternative world order
Beijing is using its economic muscle to rally developing countries and reduce the west’s influence over the UN
Financial Times by James Kynge in London, now.The BRICS Club of Emerging Nations Debates Letting Others In
China wants to expand the five-nation bloc, but the members’ conflicting interests may get in the way.
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REuters By Supantha Mukherjee and Simon Jessop, August 22, 2023Japan to Release Treated Water From Ruined Nuclear Plant Despite Concerns
In the face of regional and domestic objections, the country plans to proceed with a discharge at Fukushima that will eventually reach more than a million tons of water.
NYT by Motoko Rich and Hisako Ueno, reporting from Tokyo and Iwaki in Japan, published August 21, 2023.The tragedy of the Venezuelan migration crisis
IN ONE IMAGE: The Steepest Hill
When I first met Mr. Arias, something extraordinary was happening.
NYT By Federico Rios, TodayThe AES Corporation is committed to accelerating the future of energy transitions by delivering greener and more innovative solutions. AES firmly believes that energy infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our sector. Recently, the AES President and CEO, Andrés Gluski, had the privilege of moderating a captivating discussion titled "Harnessing Diplomacy for the Energy Transition and Universal Access" at the @EEI_Intl panel. This engaging conversation highlights the importance of collaboration and innovative approaches in driving the energy transition forward.
Illustration: "The insatiable dragon" by Germán & Co. Copyright.China’s blueprint for an alternative world order
Beijing is using its economic muscle to rally developing countries and reduce the west’s influence over the UN
Financial Times by James Kynge in London, now.When Xi Jinping, China’s leader, delivered an “important speech” at the UN in September 2021, it appeared to be little more than a list of feelgood clichés. He said that the world needed “harmony between man and nature” and added that economic development should bring “benefits for all”.
So short on specifics was his address that the international media mostly ignored it. Through subsequent elaborations, however, that speech has taken on a crucial significance. This is because Xi used it to propose a new scheme called the Global Development Initiative, which is now gaining recognition as a foundation stone in China’s blueprint for an alternative world order to challenge that of the US-led west.
Ostensibly, the GDI is a Chinese-led multilateral programme to promote development, alleviate poverty and improve health in the developing world. But along with two follow-up initiatives also announced by Xi — the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilisation Initiative — it represents China’s boldest move yet to enlist the support of the “global south” to amplify Beijing’s voice on the world stage and build up China’s profile in the UN, Chinese officials and commentators say.
“[Xi’s initiatives] show China’s clearest intention yet to update the rules of global governance that were written by the collective west in the aftermath of world war two,” says Yu Jie, senior research fellow at Chatham House, a think-tank in London.
“The initiatives illuminate Beijing’s moves to carve out its own space in international affairs because it is firmly convinced that China’s relations with the collective west will remain turbulent for a decade to come,” she adds.
The key to China’s blueprint is to steadily institutionalise its leadership over the developing world by creating, expanding and funding a raft of China-led groupings of countries, according to Chinese officials and commentators. They add that the aims of this strategy are largely two-fold: to ensure that a broad swath of the world remains open to Chinese trade and investment and to use the voting power of developing countries at the UN and in other forums to project Chinese power and values.
The crucial context to this strategy is that by seeking increased leadership over the global south, China is throwing in its lot with the largest and fastest-growing part of the world. The 152 countries classified as developing at the UN vastly outstrip their developed counterparts on yardsticks such as population size and population growth, GDP growth rates over the past two decades and overall contribution to global GDP growth as measured by purchasing power parity.
For the first time ever, China exported more in the early part of this year to the developing world — as represented by the countries that make up the Belt and Road Initiative — than it exported to the US, EU and Japan combined (see chart), according to data collected by Dongwu Securities, a Chinese brokerage.
China exports more to developning world than US and Japan
% of Total Chinese Exports in 2023 up to April.
Source: Wind, Dongwu Securities
```“China will always be a member of the family of developing countries,” Xi told a forum in 2021. “We will continue to do our utmost in raising the representation and voice of developing nations in the global governance system.”
The list of international institutions in which Beijing hopes to magnify its influence and, by extension, that of the developing world is getting longer. It includes the UN, the World Trade Organization, the G20 and others, Chinese officials say. In addition, Beijing also intends to expand the membership and raise the profile of several groupings in which it already plays a leading role, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Brics group and others.
“We should not take the Chinese Communist party’s endeavours to establish a new world order lightly,” says Xu Chenggang, senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. “Developing countries with authoritarian regimes, particularly those in conflict with the US and other democracies, are finding that China’s new order is beneficial to their domestic authoritarian rule and their foreign policy,” he adds.
Multilateralism with Chinese characteristics
The UN — with its 15 specialised agencies that exercise global governance in several areas such as finance, telecoms, health and hunger alleviation — lies at the “very centre” of China’s worldview and its plans to boost its influence, says one senior Chinese official, who declined to be identified.
It is also a focus of Beijing’s attempt to gain influence through Xi’s three initiatives. The most important move so far has come in the form of a new UN forum that China founded in 2020. Called the “Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative”, it has about 70 member countries, has held its first ministerial meeting and has won the endorsement of UN secretary- general António Guterres, according to official Chinese documents.
The full list of member countries in the group is confidential, a UN spokesperson and Chinese officials say. However, a list compiled by the Financial Times of 20 countries believed to be members, shows that the group includes many of China’s biggest debtors under the BRI. Through the initiative, Chinese financial institutions have lent nearly $1tn mainly for infrastructure projects in the developing world since 2013.
A study by AidData, a US-based research lab, shows that the 20 countries on the list have displayed impressive loyalty to China in the form of votes at the UN. Between 2013 and 2020, each of them have voted with China on at least 75 per cent of occasions in the UN General Assembly (see chart), the main policymaking body which issues recommendations on global crises, manages internal UN appointments and oversees the UN’s budget.
In the case of Cambodia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe — all of which owe hefty debts to China — their voting alignment with China in the assembly registered at 80 per cent or above, according to the research.
The correlation between increased lending and greater voting fealty was consistent across the sample. “When countries vote with China in the UN General Assembly, they are richly rewarded,” says Bradley Parks, executive director of AidData. “Beijing is dusting off an old playbook and using its largesse to purchase foreign policy favours.
“On average, a 10 per cent increase in voting alignment with China in the UN General Assembly yields a 276 per cent increase in aid and credit from Beijing,” he adds, quoting AidData’s research on voting patterns over the period from 2013 to 2020.
These correlations do not prove that countries vote with China purely because of the debts they owe. Several other factors may also be in play such as political allegiances, trade and investment ties and agendas common to developing countries.
Nevertheless, such loyalty represents a resource that China can draw on in future UN votes, says Courtney Fung, a UN expert at the Lowy Institute, a think-tank based in Australia.
“China can harness these relationships in UN votes or debates to support and underline just how well-accepted China’s positions are within the UN system,” Fung says.
One focus of China’s UN strategy is lobbying. If Beijing can secure the allegiance of the majority of 152 developing countries — out of 193 UN member states — it stands to prevail and correspondingly amplify its voice in world affairs, Chinese officials say.
Recent general assembly resolutions have covered a gamut of issues, including financing for peacebuilding, pandemic prevention and a “new partnership” for Africa’s development.
But, as China’s recent experience shows, it is not only in the broadest forums such as general assembly where the votes of developing countries loyal to China have turned out to be crucial.
In October last year, the UN Human Rights Council voted down a western-led motion to hold a debate on China’s human rights abuses after a cohort of developing countries backed Beijing. The council has 47 members, of whom 19 voted against the motion, 17 for and 11 abstained.
It was only the second time in the council’s 16-year history that a motion had been rejected. But what made the defeat even more extraordinary was that it came just weeks after a finding by the UN Office of the High Commission for Human Rights that “serious human rights violations” had been committed by Beijing against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, a region in north-west China.
Following that victory, China then enlisted 66 countries — most of them recipients of Chinese lending under the BRI — to support a statement at the UN praising its human rights record. Its signatories outnumbered the 50 mostly western countries that endorsed a rival statement which condemned China.
Beyond such one-off battles, China is starting to use the “Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative” to promote its own definitions of key concepts in an effort to undercut those used by the US-led west. One of these is “true multilateralism”, which it defines as equal status for all countries. The whole idea of [China’s definition of] multilateralism is to oppose what Beijing sees as American hegemony
This vision is distinct from what China sees as the abuses of the US-led world order, which it characterises as “bloc politics under the disguise of multilateralism” or attempts to impose the “rules made by a few countries” under the pretext of multilateralism, according to an official Chinese document.
“The whole idea of [China’s definition of] multilateralism is to oppose what Beijing sees as American hegemony,” says Collin Koh, senior fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Another key Chinese strategy is to present itself as a global peacemaker, partly to counter the repetitional damage it suffered when its strategic partner, Russia, invaded Ukraine last year. Crucial to this ambition is the Global Security Initiative (GSI), which was launched this year by Xi and is designed as a China-led multilateral forum.
Its aim is to wrest influence away from the US on global security issues while elevating its own role, officials say. Part of the strategy to achieve this is to call for a “bigger UN role in security affairs” while expanding Beijing’s own role within the UN peacekeeping hierarchy.
This focus on the UN echoes that of the GDI and highlights a crucial feature of Xi’s three initiatives: rather than seeking to create a whole new world order, Beijing’s aim is to repurpose the UN’s authority to more squarely serve China.
China is the second largest contributor — after the US — to the UN’s peacekeeping budget and it supplies more UN peacekeeping troops than the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council combined, according to Courtney Fung’s research. Over a dozen Chinese officers have had top military posts in the UN’s Department of Peace Operations, a foundation stone in the UN architecture, Fung adds.
Although the DPO has been led by French officials since 1997, Beijing hopes that in time one of its officials will be chosen either to lead the DPO or one of its three main offices, Chinese officials say. Chinese peacekeepers deployed by the UN Mission in South Sudan patrol the UN Protection of Civilians site in Juba in 2016.
For Beijing, the prestige it accords UN peacekeeping is part of a bigger push to align itself with the cause of peace. In March, it brokered a landmark deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, ending a seven-year rift. In May, Xi proposed a four-point plan aimed at working towards peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Officials from Beijing also attended a forum held this month in Saudi Arabia on resolving the conflict in Ukraine. European officials told the FT that China’s participation had been “constructive” and said that Beijing had signalled its willingness to attend further talks.
Institutional expansion
In spite of its official adherence to “true multilateralism” — the concept of equal status for all states — China has a complex position on reforming the UN. It relishes its position as one of the five permanent members — along with the US, UK, France and Russia — of the UN Security Council “P5”, which allows it to veto resolutions. ç
It is understood to be open to the idea of expanding the permanent membership from the current five. But it privately opposes the inclusion of Japan and India, both of which are strategic rivals to China, according to diplomats, who declined to be identified. This opposition in effect stymies a proposal to accept the “G4” — Germany, Brazil, India and Japan — as permanent members.
To Collin Koh, this stance lays bare the hollowness of China’s claim to want to bring true multilateralism to the UN decision-making process. “I don’t think China is trying . . . to devolve major decision-making authority from the P5,” Koh says. “But of course this would not stop Beijing from continuing to put itself up as the unwavering, faithful leading advocate of the global south.”
Beyond the UN, China has a raft of plans to boost the participation of developing countries in international forums and, in so doing, to bolster its own standing.
In the G20, which Beijing treats as a key forum to engage with the west, China became the first country last year to push for membership for the African Union, which comprises 55 member states from the continent. If membership is granted at a summit scheduled for September in New Delhi, the G20’s membership will expand to 21 and developing world representation will grow close to parity with that of the developed world.
China is also hoping to expand the Brics group beyond its current members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — so that it becomes a counterweight to the G7, a group of developed powers. More than 20 countries have submitted applications to join the grouping at a summit this week in South Africa, diplomats said.
Another multilateral organisation in the throes of expansion is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security grouping founded by China that has nine countries as full members and is due to absorb Belarus as its tenth. Four of the members — China, Russia, India and Pakistan — are nuclear powers and Moscow sees the group “as the core of a China- and Russian-led anti-western bloc,” according to a paper from the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.
Nevertheless, the SCO’s membership also betrays a common flaw with Chinese multilateralism. The opaque parameters it uses to launch its initiatives and institutions allows countries to look past the rivalries they have with others in the group. But it does nothing to heal the rifts.
Thus the SCO embraces both Pakistan and India, which acknowledge their mutually hostile ties. India’s relationship with China itself is also tense on several fronts.
“The vague language of most of the initiatives made it easy for countries to pay lip service to them. China could then point to this rhetorical support as evidence that a large number of countries backed its world view,” says Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a think-tank in Washington.
“However, these countries would only be willing to accommodate China’s demands up to a certain point. When push came to shove, they would follow their own interests,” she adds.
Source: NYT, BRICS leaders in Brasília in 2019.Credit...Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersThe BRICS Club of Emerging Nations Debates Letting Others In
China wants to expand the five-nation bloc, but the members’ conflicting interests may get in the way.
NYT By David Pierson, Lynsey Chutel, Jack Nicas, Alex Travelli, and Paul Sonne, today.The journalists, who cover the BRICS nations, reported from Hong Kong; Johannesburg; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; New Delhi, India; and Berlin.The group of nations known as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — represents 40 percent of the world’s population and a quarter of the world’s economy. Now it is considering expanding, in a push to be seen as a credible counterweight to Western-led forums like the G7 group of advanced nations.
But the challenge for the club is that it is as divergent as it is large, and hindered by sometimes conflicting interests and internal rivalries. It comprises the world’s largest authoritarian state (China) and its largest democracy (India), economies big and small, and relations with the United States that run the gamut, from friend to foe.
China, under Xi Jinping, wants to expand BRICS, seeing in it a platform to challenge American power. Russia is keen to demonstrate that Moscow has loyal allies despite its isolation from the West over the war in Ukraine. India, locked in a territorial dispute with China, is wary of Beijing’s dominance in the club.
Brazil and South Africa, the other swing states of the developing world, want good relations with China and Russia, but not to be overly aligned with either, for fear of alienating the United States.
As leaders of the five nations meet starting Tuesday at an annual summit, this time in Johannesburg, how they navigate those differences might determine whether the group becomes a geopolitical coalition or remains largely focused on financial issues such as reducing the dominance of the dollar in the global economy.
The task of finding common ground is only getting harder as the great power competition between Beijing and Washington intensifies, placing pressure on other nations to choose sides. And as Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, the conflict is roiling food and energy prices for many of the poorer countries that BRICS members claim to represent.
“China under Xi is looking to use BRICS for its own purposes, particularly in extending its influence in the Global South,” said Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute in London. “India is highly unlikely to go along with it as the Chinese proposal will turn BRICS into something else — one which will serve primarily Chinese interests.”
Dozens of countries have expressed interest in joining the club. They include countries that fall squarely in the Chinese camp, like Iran and Belarus, and nonaligned states such as Egypt and Kazakhstan, reflecting a desire to hedge between China and United States in the face of geopolitical polarization.
The question of expansion will be leading the agenda of the three-day summit, to be attended in person by President Xi of China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is expected to take part remotely. Mr. Putin, who is wanted by an international court that has accused him of war crimes, had earlier planned on attending in person. He decided against it, sparing South Africa the dilemma of whether to arrest him.
China, which as the biggest economy in the group holds significant clout, will want to use the club to show that Beijing has its own circle of influence, after President Biden held a summit strengthening alliances last week with Japan and South Korea, nations in China’s backyard.
Beijing favors a rapid expansion of BRICS, which would also allow China to argue it has widespread support from the developing world.
“The Global South is not happy about the G7 trying to represent them, so they’re voting with their feet to join BRICS,” said Henry Huiyao Wang, president of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing.
India has signaled that it prefers a more cautious approach that would limit Beijing’s ability to use the BRICS club to confront the West. It will want to avoid diluting its own role in favor of countries that might pick China over India in any tussle for influence.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, right, welcoming President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, center, is watched by India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, left, in New Delhi, in January.Credit...Manish Swarup/Associated Press
India’s divergence with China reflects wider tensions and distrust between the two countries that were inflamed by a deadly border clash in 2020 and by India’s participation in a security grouping with the United States, Japan and Australia called the Quad.
India has emphasized that it is open to enlarging BRICS in principle, but wants to develop standards for deciding on new members, and to ensure that any changes are based on consensus.
Brazil has a similar position on the acceptance of new members.
“If they comply with the rules that we are establishing, we will accept their entry,” President Lula of Brazil told reporters this month.
Some of the requirements likely to be discussed include a minimum population or gross domestic product, as well as a willingness to work with the bloc’s New Development Bank, said one Brazilian government official helping plan for the talks who is not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Brazil wants the group to remain a club of large, emerging economies rather than a geopolitical alliance that could be perceived as an anti-Western bloc, said a second Brazilian official helping to plan for the talks.
Mr. Lula said he supported at least three countries joining BRICS: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Argentina. He also suggested that Indonesia, which is widely seen as a natural fit given its size and location, would be a welcome addition.
An expansion, though, could make consensus in BRICS even more elusive. “When you have more countries join, and it’s such a disparate group to begin with, it’s harder to get anything accomplished,” said Theresa Fallon, director of the Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels.
From Russia’s perspective, the summit will provide an opportunity to court the developing world again, after Mr. Putin hosted African leaders in St. Petersburg this summer.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, onscreen, seen during the second Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, last month.Credit...Vladimir Smirnov/Tass, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But the foreign minister of Russia, Sergei V. Lavrov, who will travel to South Africa in Mr. Putin’s place, will likely face questions about why Russia pulled out of a United Nations-brokered deal with Ukraine that allowed the export of grain through the Black Sea. Food prices jumped after the collapse of the agreement.
BRICS members have struggled to show consensus on Russia’s war in Ukraine: China has leaned toward the Kremlin, while India has relied on a strategy of nonalignment. Brazil has offered rhetoric but little action.
South Africa, the group’s smallest member in terms of population and economy, has faced international and domestic criticism for its close ties to Moscow.
South Africa made a show of its neutrality when its president, Mr. Ramaphosa, led a peace mission of African leaders to meet with Mr. Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last month. Still, those talks are yet to yield tangible results.
South Africa bowed to Western pressure when it asked Mr. Putin to attend the summit virtually because of his arrest warrant. But the country is still trying to assert itself, defying what it sees as arm-twisting from the West to isolate Russia. Zaheer Laher, an official in South Africa’s foreign affairs ministry, went so far as to liken Russia’s isolation to “cancel culture.”
South Africa, the last country to join the bloc, in 2010 on China’s invitation, will also have to walk a fine diplomatic line with its allies in the West. In the coming months, South Africa will turn its attention to its second largest trading partner after China — the United States — hosting a meeting about a continental trade agreement.
“It almost feels that in South Africa, the heart is in the east, the money is in the west,” said Gustavo de Carvalho, a researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs.
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Image by Germán & Co.Exclusive: Northvolt raises $1.2 billion in latest funding round for factory build out - CFO
REuters By Supantha Mukherjee and Simon Jessop, August 22, 2023STOCKHOLM/LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Swedish lithium-ion battery producer Northvolt has raised $1.2 billion from investors including BlackRock (BLK.N) and several Canadian pension plans as it prepares to build new factories in Europe and North America, its finance chief told Reuters.
The fresh funding, through a convertible note, comes as investor demand for companies set to benefit from the move to a low-carbon economy picks up pace, aided by policy initiatives in both regions to accelerate the transition.
"It's a very capital intensive industry... finding the right mix is always hard in this new greenfield kind of transitional projects," Chief Financial Officer Alexander Hartman said in an interview.
Leading the round alongside BlackRock, the world's biggest asset manager, were Canada Pension Plan, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and, as previously reported, pension investor Investment Management Corporation of Ontario.
"The battery manufacturing sector has attractive growth potential driven by the accelerating adoption of battery storage and electric vehicles," said David Giordano, global head of climate infrastructure at BlackRock.
"As a leading investor in the energy transition, we look forward to supporting their continued growth."
Other investors to take part included Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), Baillie Gifford, Swedbank Robur (SWEDa.ST), Singapore's GIC and Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises.
A number of funds to invest in the note were classed as 'dark green' under the European Union's sustainable finance framework, a stamp of environmental approval that bodes well for future interest in the company, which ultimately hopes to list, Hartman said.
The fresh funds will help the firm expand its factory footprint, Hartman said. The firm currently has several factories across Europe with the latest a 600 million euros ($654 million) investment to build a plant in Germany, announced in May.
While the company has a facility in the United States, sources said the company is close to finalising plans to build a multibillion-dollar battery factory in Canada that will be announced later this year.
Northvolt declined to comment on the factory plans.
With the latest round, Northvolt has raised more than $9 billion in debt and equity since 2017 in its bid to become Europe's biggest battery manufacturer, including $1.1 billion in convertible notes last year from multiple investors.
It has secured orders of over $55 billion from customers such as BMW, Fluence, Scania, Volvo Cars and Volkswagen.
Separately, Northvolt has assembled its first energy storage system products in Poland and expects to start customer deliveries from later this year.
"We have a business plan... we always want to make sure we have access to the markets," Hartman said.
He declined to comment on whether the company was preparing to go public.
Reuters has previously reported, citing sources, that Northvolt was preparing for an initial public offering that could value the company at more than $20 billion.
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Masatsugu Shibata, a fisherman near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, is concerned the plan to release the water will threaten his livelihood.Credit...Noriko Hayashi for The New York TimesJapan to Release Treated Water From Ruined Nuclear Plant Despite Concerns
In the face of regional and domestic objections, the country plans to proceed with a discharge at Fukushima that will eventually reach more than a million tons of water.
NYT by Motoko Rich and Hisako Ueno, reporting from Tokyo and Iwaki in Japan, published August 21, 2023.Japan will begin releasing treated radioactive wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean this week, its government said on Tuesday, setting aside regional and domestic objections as it moves to eventually discharge over a million tons of the water into the sea.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the announcement after a meeting of his cabinet, saying the release would begin on Thursday if weather and ocean conditions allowed.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in July that the government’s plan met the agency’s safety standards, and it has said that releasing the treated water is not likely to pose a serious health threat to humans.
But some scientists have raised questions about whether the Japanese government and the company that operated the plant, Tokyo Electric Power, have been sufficiently forthcoming about what radioactive material may remain in the holding tanks.
The Chinese government, which has strongly opposed the plan, warned on Tuesday that it would take “all necessary measures” to safeguard the marine environment, food safety and public health. A large segment of the South Korean public also objects to the discharge, as do fishing groups and others in Japan.
Mr. Kishida visited the wrecked nuclear plant on Sunday and met with leaders of the Japanese fishery industry in Tokyo on Monday, vowing to ensure that fishermen can continue to make a living after the release.
Masanobu Sakamoto, head of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, said that while many of his group’s members had come to accept the government’s assurances on the safety of the discharge, it remained opposed because of the potential effects on fishermen’s livelihoods.
Since an earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown in Fukushima in 2011, the question of what to do with the accumulating tons of water used to cool nuclear fuel rods has been one of the biggest challenges facing both the government and Tokyo Electric.
For Japan, it is as much a political problem as it is an engineering or environmental one. Despite the determination by the international agency that it was safe to release the water, opponents at home and in neighboring countries have questioned both the government and the agency’s motives. When Japan’s cabinet approved the treated-water plan in 2021, it described the controlled ocean release as the best available disposal option.
People’s Daily, a state media organization owned by the Communist Party in China, has referred to the treated water as Japan’s “nuclear sewage.” And in South Korea, where seafood imports from waters near Fukushima are still banned, an opposition lawmaker warned that “no one can tell or predict for sure what the discharging of radioactive materials into the sea over an extended period of time will bring about.”
In Japan, both Fukushima and national fisheries associations have said they fear that once Tokyo Electric starts releasing the water, both domestic and international customers may be reluctant to eat fish from the region.
Although it has been a dozen years since the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl forced tens of thousands of people to flee the area around the ruined Fukushima plant, the cleanup is still in an early phase. The government says the water release is likely to take place over a period of 30 years.
Fish for sale in Naraha, Fukushima prefecture, in 2019. Japanese fisheries associations fear that both domestic and international customers may be reluctant to eat fish from the region once the water is released.Credit...Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
The water is stored in more than 1,000 sky-blue tanks lined up on the site of the plant. Tokyo Electric — or Tepco, as it is known — pumps the water through the destroyed reactors to cool melted fuel that is still too hot and radioactive to remove.
As the water passes through the reactors, it accumulates radioactive nuclides. Tepco is putting the water through a powerful filtration system, in some cases repeatedly, that is designed to remove all the radioactive material except for tritium, a hydrogen isotope. Experts say tritium does not harm human health in small doses, and it is prohibitively expensive to remove in any case.
Other nuclear plants around the world, including in China, South Korea and the United States, use similar processes to treat cooling water, and also release water containing tritium into the oceans after such filtration.
Still, some scientists have questions. According to Tepco’s website, just 30 percent of the approximately 473,000 tons of water in the tanks have been fully treated to the point that only tritium remains.
“The idea is, ‘just trust us,’” said Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Dr. Buesseler said that while tritium is “one of the least dangerous” radioactive materials, others, like cesium or cobalt, could be more hazardous if they are released into the ocean.
He said the government had not investigated alternative options such as building more tanks or using the treated water to make cement. “I think they just want the cheapest, fastest solution, which is a pipe in the ocean,” Dr. Buesseler said.
Kazuya Idemitsu, a professor of nuclear engineering at Tohoku University, said he was confident that the international agency would monitor the water release to ensure that only water containing tritium and no other radioactive material will be piped into the sea.
Dr. Idemitsu said that much of the public’s anxiety stemmed from the highly technical nature of the treatment process and the government’s difficulties in communicating the science.
Among fishermen who rely on the ocean waters off Fukushima for their daily catches, what matters is what would-be customers think.
“It’s a life-or-death issue for fishermen,” said Masatsugu Shibata, 67, who took his 40-foot fishing trawler out from a port at Iwaki in Fukushima before dawn on a recent morning and caught about a dozen large flounder. “I will be in trouble if they discharge” the water.
Mr. Shibata, who hopes to pass his fishing operation on to his son and grandson some day, said the fishing business had recovered only about 20 percent of its pre-disaster levels. When the water is released, he said, “there will definitely be reactions, for sure,” adding, “Many people would stop eating fish.”
“Now the government says it’s safe,” he said. “But safety and peace of mind are different.”
The government has already paid a total of 10 trillion yen ($68.4 billion) in compensation to fishermen, farmers and evacuated residents from Fukushima and other affected prefectures since 2011 to help make up for losses that resulted from the disaster.
Some countries have signaled their support for the government’s plan. Last week, before President Biden hosted Mr. Kishida and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at Camp David, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that the United States was satisfied with Japan’s plan. In July, the European Union lifted all restrictions on fish and agricultural imports from Fukushima. The region had blocked shipments of products since the disaster.
While South Korea still bans seafood imports from waters off Fukushima, Mr. Yoon has endorsed the Japanese government plan amid recent warming relations between the two countries.
Opposition lawmakers have attacked Mr. Yoon for supporting the plan, with one accusing him of defending Japan “like a parrot.”
“We cannot let a government policy crucial for the people’s life and safety be decided by the president’s personal friendly feeling and intimacy toward Japan,” said Lee Byunghoon, an opposition lawmaker.
The Chinese government has been especially critical of Japan’s plan to release treated water at Fukushima, and has rejected the international agency’s report as insufficient proof that the release poses no undue risks.
Tensions between China and Japan are running high following the signing late last week of a trilateral security agreement between Japan, South Korea and the United States.
Chinese internet users responded angrily to the news on Tuesday, calling for boycotts of Japanese goods and posting racist comments.
“Japan has started a new form of nuclear war. We should reject Japanese products and restaurants,” read one comment under an article about the planned release from Mengma News, a media property operated by the government of Henan Province.
Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee, said that he was strongly opposed to Japan’s plan and had asked city departments to “immediately activate import control measures.”
China itself operates nuclear reactors along its seacoast, using seawater instead of scarce freshwater to cool the steam from reactors.
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IN ONE IMAGE: The Steepest Hill
NYT By Federico Rios, TodayWhen I first met Mr. Arias, something extraordinary was happening.
Venezuelans in never-before-seen numbers had given up on their country, an economic basket case, and were heading north. By the end of that year, more than 150,000 of them had arrived at the border between Mexico and the United States.
Mr. Arias, 27, was traveling not just with his daughter, who was on his shoulders much of the time, but with his wife, Desyree, and 7-year-old son, Luis Breyner. His mother-in-law and brother-in-law were also with them.
It was still early in the morning when I took this photo. A long day of travel lay ahead of the family, and more long days after that. A strong hiker might make the end of the Gap in four or five days. For travelers with young children, it could easily be double that.
But Mr. Arias had a more immediate problem: a hill. When he came to it, he just stopped, put down his pack, and sat. It was not clear if he could go on, but after about 15 minutes, he did.
Later, he told me that back in Venezuela, he studied industrial mechanics and worked at his father’s auto repair shop. He and his wife also had a food stall. But struggling to feed their family, they decided to try their luck elsewhere.
In 2019, they went to Colombia, where they opened another food stall and Mr. Arias also drove a motorcycle taxi and did some construction. But again it was not enough. It was time to move again.
As we made our way through the Gap in September, I saw the family from time to time, but eventually our ways parted. Later, as they crossed Central America, we kept in touch through social media. In mid-March, I heard from them again: They had just made into the U.S., applying for asylum as they crossed through border control in Texas in March.
Nearly a year later, Mr. Arias remembers the day he came to a halt on the Darién Gap.
“It was all very sudden,” he recalled. He said: “I felt like my stomach was empty. I started to vomit, and I felt very bad. Because those hills are very bad.”
The family is living in Palo Alto, Calif., now. Mr. Arias is waiting for a work permit, and his wife is occasionally doing manicures. Their son will enter fourth grade in the fall, and their daughter will start kindergarten.
Mr. Arias remembers something else about the moment the photo was taken: how ashamed he felt of his weakness, with his children looking on. But that feeling seems lost to the past now.
“I took a risk but I made it,” he says. “I risked it for them. For me it’s an achievement because of that, because I managed to bring my whole family.”