
There’s a Global Race to Control Batteries–and China Is Winning - olivermarks
https://www.wsj.com/articles/theres-a-global-race-to-control-batteriesand-china-is-winning-1518374815
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nosefouratyou
[https://qz.com/1004330/north-korea-is-sitting-on-
trillions-o...](https://qz.com/1004330/north-korea-is-sitting-on-trillions-of-
dollars-on-untapped-wealth-and-its-neighbors-want-a-piece-of-it/)

As mentioned in Tom Clancy: Full Force and Effect.

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lazyjones
I'm probably not the only one asking myself whether Cobalt is really necessary
for competitive batteries: [http://www.electronicdesign.com/power/race-cobalt-
free-recha...](http://www.electronicdesign.com/power/race-cobalt-free-
rechargeable-batteries)

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NicoJuicy
Free of paywall:
[https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/...](https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/theres-
a-global-race-to-control-batteriesand-china-is-winning-1518374815)

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draluy
Thanks!

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NegativeLatency
Looks like someone inserted a smart apostrophe and attempted to escape it
leading to a visible /’ in the caption of one of the later pictures.

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bloak
Mr President, we must not allow a battery gap!

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sam_goody
This is a reference to Dr. Strangelove[1]

Whatever the enemy does (there, Russia building mine shafts) we must do to
counter. A humorous classic which explains a mindset and was far closer to the
truth than people like to admit.

Worth a view. Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it.

[1] [https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-
clip/c00b94e5-bbb3-4ea9-a078-7a1...](https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-
clip/c00b94e5-bbb3-4ea9-a078-7a1a21b87bc5)

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che_shirecat
What’s with HN’s weird obsession with China? Every other day it’s a new
sensationalized headline about how China is somehow taking over AI, or
startups, or the world. Is China just a easy catalyst for American insecurity
or is there some other trend that I’m missing here?

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em500
China is the second largest economy in the world and will likely be the
largest one in within one or two decades. Is it really that strange that it's
often in the news?

In Europe, the USA still makes the news far more often than China, so here we
all have a "weird obsession" with the USA.

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dis-sys
> China is the second largest economy in the world and will likely be the
> largest one in within one or two decades.

No, China is just a poor developing country with a per capita GDP of around
$8k USD. That is just a small fraction of what US/EU achieved. Everything is
just because of the huge population, but again that is not an advantage when
the population is rapidly ageing.

Chinese communist party recently announced the goal to reach $12k USD gdp per
capita in 2020, basically they want 1.4 billion people to work damn hard for
the next 3-4 years to reach 20% of today's American GDP per capita level! To
give you better understanding on this matter - US economy is growing 2.5%-3%
annually in the last few quarters, with that kind of growth, in the same
2018-2020 period, US GDP per capita is going to add up to 9% and that new
volume expected to be added is comparable to the entire Chinese per capita GDP
figure.

Focusing on the total GDP and intentionally downplaying China's extremely poor
per capita figure is not even politically correct - what can be individually
achieved & enjoyed by those 1.4 billion regular Chinese are clearly far more
important than a meaningless national GDP figure.

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cabalamat
> Focusing on the total GDP and intentionally downplaying China's extremely
> poor per capita figure is not even politically correct - what can be
> individually achieved & enjoyed by those 1.4 billion regular Chinese are
> clearly far more important than a meaningless national GDP figure.

Depends what you're evaluating. If you're evaluating standard of living, yes.
If OTOH you're evaluating the power potential of a country's government, then
total GDP is more important than GDP/capita.

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dis-sys
power potential of a country's government? what is the point of having/backing
it when regular citizens couldn't have a fair share of that power?

telling 1.4 billion Chinese to work their ass off for the next 3-4 years so
China's GDP per capita figure can reach 20% of today's US GDP per capita is
not impressive at any level. it is a solid proof that China is still damn poor
after 40 years of economic reform.

there is no competition whatsoever - when Japan challenged America's economy
in the early 80s, the GDP per capita figure of Japan was on par with the
American one. We are now talking about an economy that is working day & night
trying to reach 20% of America's GDP per capita.

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tanilama
It is certainly impressive.

A market bigger than US governed by a single political entity, that has the
ability to control its citizen beyond the imagination of any western
governments.

That is enormous power, and it comes in aggregate. US has been the
biggest/smartest country to turn its internal market into a weapon. Now that
China has it, it will surely use to same, if not greater extent, and that is
what makes it intimidating.

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dis-sys
the article is pay walled.

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paulsutter
Click on the web link at the top of this page then the article

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rdlecler1
None of the google links escape the paywall.

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lostlogin
There are a couple of fully scraped options there.

