SEOUL: North Korea’s foreign ministry accused Israel of bombing a hospital in the Gaza Strip on Oct 17, saying it had openly committed a war crime “under the undisguised patronage of the United States”. In a statement by state-run news agency KCNA, a ministry spokesman also blamed the United StatesContinue Reading
Indonesia is one of the top geothermal energy producers in the world, with more than 300 sites.
On the slopes of Mount Guntur, an active stratovolcano in the West Java province, for instance, geothermal energy is harnessed from the Kamojang crater.
Geothermal exploration began in Kamojang in 1926, and the first geothermal well was drilled there during the Dutch colonial era.
After nearly 100 years, the well is still emitting steam continuously at a high pressure today.
The Kamojang geothermal power field, the first in Indonesia, is managed by Pertamina Geothermal Energy.
“The advantage of a geothermal system is that it can operate 24 hours, seven days a week,” said Mr Hanifah Bagus Sulistyardi, operations manager at Pertamina Geothermal Energy (Kamojang).
“The energy supply is not intermittent, compared with solar. The solar energy power plant can only operate a certain number of hours per day, and it cannot operate at night.”
SEOUL: South Korea, Japan and the United States strongly condemned the supply of arms and military equipment by North Korea to Russia and said they had confirmed “several” deliveries of such weapons, a joint statement issued on Thursday (Oct 26) said. Russia and North Korea have denied the transfer ofContinue Reading
JIUQUAN, Gansu: China is slated to send another crew to its Tiangong space station on Thursday (Oct 26), in the latest mission for a growing space programme that plans to send people to the moon by 2030. The Shenzhou-17 is scheduled to blast off from the Jiuquan launch site inContinue Reading
JIUQUAN, Gansu: China sent a fresh crew to its Tiangong space station on Thursday (Oct 26), in the latest mission for a growing space programme that plans to send people to the moon by 2030. The Shenzhou-17 blasted off from the Jiuquan launch site in arid northwest China at 11.14am,Continue Reading
Tensions have been particularly high over Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy claimed by Beijing which over the past year has launched major military exercises in response to actions by US lawmakers. The United States has stepped up defence support of Taiwan, fearing that China is moving forward on plans to seizeContinue Reading
FEAR OF DEPENDENCE SOEs were instructed last year to replace office software systems with domestic products by 2027, the first time such specific deadlines were imposed, according to five brokerage firms that cited a September 2022 order from China’s state asset regulator. Reuters could not independently verify the order. Domestic replacementContinue Reading
The Chinese luminaries dispatched this week to New York to warm American hearts included former National Basketball Association star Yao Ming, who played for the Houston Rockets from 2002 to 2011; former IMF deputy chairman Zhu Min; Xue Lan, dean of Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University; and novelist Hao Jingfang. “It is really theContinue Reading
Gaming and short video service operators – including Tencent Holdings, TikTok owner ByteDance and NetEase – must also provide a “minor mode” on their platforms. As of 2021, China had more than 191 million internet users younger than 18, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre. With tighter curbsContinue Reading
Perhaps the most instructive aspect of the visit was Putin’s explicit acknowledgement of the different roles played by Moscow and Beijing in international politics.
Putin described the Russia-dominated Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP) – a concept Moscow has promoted as a response to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that would fuse the Eurasian Economic Union with the BRI – as a regional or “local” project. Meanwhile he happily described the BRI as “global” in scale.
For the past decade, Russian policymakers and experts have consistently held up the GEP as symbolising Russia’s equality with China. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has described it as “the creation of a continent-wide architecture”.
Putin’s words, coupled with the lack of any meaningful results of the meeting (bar a contract on food and agricultural products which has yet to be confirmed by Beijing), illustrate the extent to which Russia’s war against Ukraine has deepened the asymmetry between the two powers.
The lack of genuine progress on the issue of the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline, which will transport gas from Russia’s Yamal gas fields, which used to supply Europe, via Mongolia to China, was further evidence of this asymmetry. Xi was kind enough to express hope that the project could proceed quickly. But he did not outline any concrete steps in that direction.
China’s agreement, if confirmed by a contract, would have been the most clear signal of Beijing’s strategic support for Russia, especially given Gazprom’s shrinking European market. By prolonging negotiations, China seems to be trying to extract specific concessions from Russia, related to the price of gas, possible Chinese ownership of gas fields in Russia, or Beijing’s acquisition of shares in Gazprom.
Meanwhile, in May, China revived the prospect of building the so-called section “D”, enlarging the capacity of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline system, which will bring gas from Turkmenistan via Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to China, emphasising China’s other sources of energy supplies.
While continuing to offer Moscow political support and not interfering with Chinese companies’ attempts to take advantage of the exodus of Western companies to increase their presence in the Russian market, Beijing has clearly attempted to prevent any embarrassment related to Russia. A gas contract would have overshadowed the BRI summit and generated a strong reaction in the US and Europe, potentially strengthening China hawks in the West.