Kerry’s COP28 fusion address will change the world

By:
On:
In: Asia

On November 20, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry announced that he would present a new global strategy for fusion energy at the now-ongoing COP28 conference in Dubai.    

In a high-profile visit to the headquarters of Commonwealth Fusion, one of the world’s leading private fusion companies, Kerry declared:

“Fusion energy is no longer just a science experiment. Benefitting from decades of investment from the [US] Department of Energy’s world-leading Fusion Energy Sciences programs, it is now also an emerging climate solution. I will have much more to say on the United States’ vision for international partnerships for an inclusive fusion energy future at COP28, during an event on December 5.”

Kerry also spoke of “The first ever modern strategy — fusion strategy — for the United States.”

Whatever the details of Kerry’s address, we have good reason to expect that it will be substantive and not simply a political gesture. It could literally change the world.

Kerry will be the first top-level US government figure to thrust fusion into the center of the global stage in this way. As former secretary of state under the Obama administration, Kerry is quite aware that his fusion initiative is de facto a foreign policy move. To us, it constitutes one of the few unambiguously positive such moves in a long time.   

In narrow terms, Kerry’s forthcoming speech will signal the aim of the US to restore its leadership position in international fusion research – a position which has eroded progressively since the late 1980s.

At the same time, it will reflect the fact that realizing fusion as an economically viable energy source will require enormous resources, more effective cooperation between states and a new form of public-private partnership involving diverse technological approaches.

We expect Kerry’s proposal will extend the new “philosophy” of fusion research and development which has emerged in the US as well as the UK in the last decade, to the entire global fusion effort.

The implications go even beyond that. Whether he intends it directly or not, Kerry’s forthcoming announcement promises to redefine the entire issue of reducing human CO2 emissions, which is the central focus of COP28. In a sense, it amounts to turning the global warming campaign upside down.

In our view, fusion is far more than an unlimited energy source; it embodies the upward vector of human civilization, which has increasingly been lost over the last 50 years.

The specter of a global warming “doomsday” has fed dangerously into the environmentalist ideology, which sees human beings first and foremost as destroyers of the planet. Although many environmental problems have to be solved, human civilization cannot survive without upper and outward development. That is what fusion is all about.  

Without nuclear energy – fission today, fusion tomorrow – the global anti-CO2 campaign translates into brutal economic austerity, especially for developing nations.

In the meantime, amid deep economic crises in many of these nations, we witness the farcical spectacle of the COP28 conference, with 80 000 representatives traveling from all over the world on a thousand CO2-spouting planes to one of the world’s largest oil producers in order discuss how to reduce CO2 emissions!

If Kerry succeeds in making the realization of fusion power a top global priority as an answer to the “climate crisis”, that alone could make this latest United Nations extravaganza worthwhile.    

Background of Kerry’s initiative

What is the background of Kerry’s forthcoming move? Where is this coming from? I and my co-author have a pretty good idea about that.

I have followed developments in fusion since 1977, promoted fusion research through countless articles, presentations and at one point even played a role in off-the-record “fusion diplomacy” between the US and the USSR.

My co-author is an active participant in the growing private fusion “ecosystem” in the US and has worked with Scott Hsu, now senior advisor to the US Under Secretary of Energy for Science and Innovation and Lead Fusion Coordinator for the Department of Energy.  

Hsu is a central figure in the ongoing transformation of US fusion strategy and no doubt one of the main sources of the concepts Kerry will present in his forthcoming speech.

Co-author Florian Metzler with Scott Hsu. Photo: Florian Metzler

As readers of my Asia Times articles know, efforts to realize fusion as an energy source are moving forward at an accelerating pace, propelled by technological breakthroughs, powerful national commitments of nations such as the UK, Japan and China and not least of all by the skyrocketing growth of private investment into fusion companies.

Although the US has been the leading breeding ground for private fusion companies, there has been no decisive national commitment to fusion.

The US used to be the main fusion “superpower”, with the largest and most comprehensive fusion effort in the world. Not surprisingly, US fusion capability was centered on national labs with close military connections.

But starting in the 1980s the US fusion sector suffered from massive budget cuts, from which it has still not fully recovered. I experienced this firsthand. Participation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project served as a pretext for failure to pursue a serious national fusion effort.  

Kerry has long been a strong supporter of fusion, going back at least to his term as senator of Massachusetts. In 2012-2013, for example, then-Senator Kerry mounted a major effort to prevent the shutdown of the Alcator-C-Mod reactor at MIT – one of the most promising innovative fusion projects in the US.

I remember meeting the mastermind of the Alcator program, the brilliant Italian physicist Bruno Coppi. Although Kerry’s effort succeeded in prolonging the life of the Alcator-C-Mod, the reactor was prematurely shut down in 2016.

Just two years later, however, the results and know-how of the Alcator provided the basis for the start-up company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, now one of the largest and most successful private fusion companies aiming to commercialize fusion.

It is no accident that Kerry chose his November 30 visit to Commonwealth Systems as the occasion to announce his forthcoming fusion initiative at COP28.

The process of “spinning off” a 100% government-funded research program into a private fusion company – with continued government support – has no doubt played an important role in forming Kerry’s vision for the future of fusion.

From fusion monopolies to ecosystems

There is more to this tale, however. The last two decades have witnessed a momentous transformation in the philosophy and organization of fusion-related research and development in the United States.

In former times, fusion research was practically a monopoly of giant US national laboratories, specifically the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory and the Naval Research Laboratory. Not by accident, all of these have a strong military background.

The US national labs’ contribution to the worldwide fusion effort cannot be overestimated. Without that and the work of a few analogous institutions in other countries, fusion would be nowhere today.

At the same time, problems inherent to such giant entities such as the tendency to fixate on a few large projects at the expense of smaller ones and conflicts of interests in the struggle for government funding have had a crippling effect. That applies especially to the post-1986 period when fusion research in the US was chronically underfunded.

Meanwhile, throughout the 2010s, the face of fusion research in the US has been radically transformed from insular research activities pursued by decades-old entrenched lab groups toward the cultivation of a topically and organizationally diverse research “ecosystem.”

The change reflects a new philosophy of fusion research, one that acknowledges that, in the absence of a single frontrunner among reactor concepts, a diversity of physical and technological approaches as well as a diversity of organizational forms is prudent.

National labs, universities and startups should not be seen as living in their own separate spheres, but can and should be brought together in complementary ways.

The key driver of this transformation has been the innovation agency of the US Department of Energy,  ARPA-E, created in 2009. While ARPA-E’s budget for fusion is extremely limited, the agency’s influence goes far beyond just injecting funds into projects. 

In fact, ARPA-E has played a critical role in coordinating across different fusion actors, providing a stage to present ideas and have them subjected to scrutiny and peer validation.

My co-author has participated in such discussions and witnessed how the role of ARPA-E has had a signaling effect and often led to investor commitments that far exceeded ARPA-E’s public funding amounts.

The creation and rise of ARPA-E coincided with another key development: the rise of the fusion startup and the growth of a private fusion industry –  a process fueled by massive investor interest.

During the 2010s, the saturation of internet markets along with growing public concerns about climate change turned investor attention to new markets and fusion in many ways fit the bill. 

A flagship among fusion startups is Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), the Massachusetts-based startup that was spun out of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 2017.

CFS’s December 2021 announcement that it had raised US$1.8 billion in capital from private investors served as a signal for a wave of investment into new-founded fusion companies.

Commonwealth Fusion’s SPARK reactor, now under construction Image: Creative Commons

The Fusion Industry Association (FIA) was founded in 2018 as a lobby for the burgeoning private fusion sector. (Readers can learn more from the interview I conducted in December 2021 with the FIA’s CEO Andrew Holland.)

The latest 2023 survey of the Fusion Industry Association reported that private fusion companies had raised a total of $5.9 billion in private funds.

Member companies of the Fusion Industry Association. Image:  FIA

The contrast between fusion startups and traditional fusion players has created a clearly defined task for ARPA-E. Some degree of “sensemaking” was required to reconcile the two separate universes of fusion approaches and claims. 

The emergence of the private fusion industry in parallel to the old incumbents created paradoxical situations. While there were groups that claimed net energy production could not be achieved until at least the 2040s, several private companies claimed to have already achieved it.

Companies like Helion, for instance, signed a power purchase agreement this year with Microsoft, claiming it would deliver fusion energy as early as 2025. 

All of this screamed for some sort of independent referee who maintains an overview of the full range of activities in the fusion space and who keeps actors honest through rigorous and independent assessment of their claims. Such a process can then also help inform the distribution of resources with the goal of yielding the greatest societal returns. 

That kind of referee emerged with the person of Dr Scott Hsu, who is today a high-level government employee with the Department of Energy but who is also a highly decorated physicist with a research history at Los Alamos National Laboratories. 

Hsu has transitioned out of his research job to become a program director at ARPA-E, which served as a stepping stone to his current role in the DOE executive suite.

Hsu is known and respected across the US fusion community. He’s widely seen as an embodiment of ARPA-E’s core principles: deep technical as well as managerial and strategic acumen; understanding of policy and economic issues; curiosity and openness towards new approaches alongside rigor in their assessment and evaluation.

The significance of Hsu’s transition from affiliate of a research lab to a government position cannot be overemphasized. While many countries occupy their expert commissions with acting scientists laden with conflict of interests, the US provides a track for high-level government employees who can put deep technical expertise to bear in the interest of the general public.

In Hsu’s role today as lead fusion coordinator he acts as a central node connecting political decision-makers to those who devise and conduct fusion research at the lab level. 

Educating and pulling along political decision-makers has become more and more critical. This relates to the size of the annual funding pool for fusion research as well as regulatory concerns. 

A key worry was that a future fusion industry may face a similar fate as the fission industry, which has been burdened by inflated regulatory requirements.

 To the great relief of many in the industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided in April this year to regulate future fusion reactors not like fission reactors but like particle accelerator facilities, greatly simplifying regulatory requirements, 

To summarize, much momentum has been building in the US fusion space in recent years Many drivers have come together fortuitously – from investor interest to the creation of ARPA-E and the commitment to create a coordinated ecosystem. The resulting dynamics have turned basic research efforts into a mission-driven ecosystem. 

The extension of this process on the international scale that we are seeing now represents a logical next step. Other countries have taken notice and are likewise aiming to support and align their fusion-related actors.

While the intention is clear, often such countries are overwhelmed on how to engage with difficult technical and strategic questions. A global strategy may provide guidance to them to coordinate and exchange information on an international level and to create an even vaster and more diverse ecosystem that identifies and exploits synergies and complementarities among different actors. 

Kerry’s fusion initiative: a selective chronology

Whoever wants to fully appreciate the force behind Kerry’s fusion initiative should take a glance at some of the highlights of the process that went into it. The following chronology contains only some highlights but should be enough to get a sense of how the process builds up more and more.

2005: In a report for Congress, entitled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future” the US National Academies called for decisive action, warning policymakers that US advantages in science and technology ­­– which made the country a world leader for decades – had already begun to erode. The report recommended that Congress establish the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the US Department of Energy (DOE) modeled after the successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the agency credited with key innovations such as GPS, the stealth fighter and computer networking. 

2007: Congress passes “The America COMPETES Act” which officially authorized ARPA-E’s creation. In 2009, ARPA-E received its first appropriation of $400 million, which funded ARPA-E’s first projects.

2010s: the US switched to an ecosystem approach. Commercial nuclear fusion start-ups that first appeared in the 2000s – Commonwealth Fusion, TAE Technologies, General Fusion, Tokamak Energy and others attracted more and more private investment and development of major capabilities in fusion technology.

March 19, 2012:  US Senator John Kerry visits MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) to tour the Alcator C-Mod tokamak and see first-hand how the experiment operated. The C-Mod fusion project was at risk of being terminated due to proposed cuts in the domestic fusion program in the fiscal year 2013 presidential budget. Kerry was already working to restore the project’s funding, writing a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee strongly arguing against cuts to domestic fusion research.

2014: The American Security Project, a bipartisan think tank founded by John Kerry and Chuck Hagel in 2006, publishes a White Paper entitled “Fusion Power – a 10-year Plan to Energy Security”, declaring: “It is a national security imperative that America makes a dedicated commitment to fusion energy”, and calling for an investment of $30 billion over 10 years, “with the goal of producing demonstration levels of electric power within a decade.”

2018: Commonwealth Fusion Systems is founded as a spin-off from the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center with initial funding of $50 million in 2018 from the Italian multinational Eni. Not surprisingly, the CEO of Eni joined Kerry on his latest visit to CFS.

2018: Founding of the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) as a Washington-based lobby for private fusion companies.

2020: Creation of the Milestone-Based Development Program for Fusion of the US Department of Energy via the 2020 Energy Bill and the CHIPS and Science Act. 

2021: US Representative Don Beyer founds the bipartisan Congressional Fusion Caucus, which has since grown to 50 members.

March 30, 2021:  The first annual policy conference of the Fusion Industry Association in Washington, DC is held.

October 1, 2021: Publication of the UK government’s official Fusion strategy, a comprehensive program with emphasis on building up a domestic fusion industry capable of building fusion power plants.

March 17, 2022: White House summit meeting devoted to “Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy.” The US Department of Energy launches an agency-wide initiative to accelerate the viability of commercial fusion energy in coordination with the private sector. Hsu, head of the fusion program at ARPA-E, is named new DOE Lead Fusion Energy Coordinator, joining the Office of the Under Secretary for Science and Innovation.

September 22, 2022: the US Department of Energy (DOE) launches the Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program to support the development and commercialization of a fusion pilot plant

March 9, 2023: President Joe Biden’s proposed Budget for the Fiscal Year 2024 contains a historic $1 billion request for increased government funding for fusion.

April 14, 2023: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted to regulate fusion under a different framework than fission, making it possible for fusion to avoid the licensing morass that has long plagued conventional nuclear reactors. 

April 14, 2023: Japan’s Cabinet announces a full-scale national Fusion Energy Innovation Strategy.

August 18, 2023: Bipartisan consensus in the US Congress on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to regulate fusion under the byproduct materials framework and amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to include fusion.

November 8, 2023: US-UK Joint Statement between the UK Department for Energy Security and Net and the US Department of Energy, announces a strategic partnership to accelerate fusion energy demonstration and commercialization.

(I was not surprised to see this agreement. During my visit to UK fusion facilities in August 2023, I was struck by the particularly close connections between the national fusion laboratories of the two nations, which no doubt reflects the long-standing special relationship between the two countries in defense-related areas.)

November 20, 2023: US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Kerry visited Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) headquarters in Devens, Massachusetts, near Boston, along with CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard and Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi.

John Kerry, left, talks with Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO Bob Mumgaard and Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi. Photo: CFS

Continue Reading

The Big Bang never happened – so what did?

By:
On:
In: Asia

Jonathan Tennenbaum, director of the Asia Times Science, provides the advantages.

Eric Lerner made headlines in September with his Asia Times content,” Saying goodbye to the Big Bang,” in which he argued that the principle is incompatible with a vast body of celestial data gathered over many years, including most recent statistics from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Yet two well-known astrophysicists Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser, who had previously been ardent Big Bang proponents, were persuaded by the data to acknowledge that the conventional cosmic theory must be inherently flawed. They said,” It’s starting to appear as though we might need to reevaluate important aspects of the creation and course of our world.”

Lerner, Eric.

Eric Lerner outlines the fundamental concepts of an alternative theory of the development of our world in this and the two articles that follow. This theory is based on the work of physicist Hannes Alfvén, who won the Nobel Prize.

The exact theories that explain the origin and evolution of stars, galaxies, and larger-scale structures in the Universe, according to Lerner, hold the key to understanding practical fusion power on Earth. He wants to demonstrate this using the work of his own business, LPPFusion, on the fusion method known as deep blood concentrate. This is Part 1 of him:

How did things get to where they do? People have relied on faith and folklore for centuries, and some still do. But today, the majority of people look to science to explain the history of how our nation, species, world, and the whole cosmos have evolved.

A deluge of fresh information from the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) &nbsp, among other instruments, has caused the history of the cosmos that most cosmologists have been telling to fall apart over the past year. &nbsp, The theory that the universe is expanding from a massive blast 14 billion years ago is currently refuted by dozens of different sets of data and has been disproven by any medical exam.

What would have happened, though, if the Big Bang had n’t occurred? Exists a different theory of cosmic creation that has really been supported by data? And what difference does what occurred in far-off stars billions or billions of years back make to the present?

In fact, a different, medically supported record of cosmic evolution has emerged over the past 50 years, with science Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén and his associates at the forefront.

Using the natural methods that we observe and study these on Earth and in our solar system, this method statistically describes and predicted the major events we see in the Universe before studies.

It’s a tale that does n’t require enigmatic forces like inflation, dark matter, or dark energy. Since plasmas, electric conducting gases, are essential to understanding cosmic evolution, I’ve dubbed this alternative “plasma cosmology.”

A principle of cosmic evolution without growth was developed by Hannes Alfvén as a pioneer. Photo: Commons for Creative

The production of fusion strength, a form of cheap, clean, secure, and limitless power to replace fossil fuels, is one of the most important processes that explain the cosmos ‘ advancement that can be used right here on Earth. The study of the sky can result in very real and significant scientific advancements here on Earth, as has been the case numerous times in the past.

The Evolutionary Technology

A proper scientific method is necessary to study and comprehend the creation of the Universe or anything else in a scientifically sound manner. To attempt to write a grand cosmical drama always leads to myth, as Alfvén put it 40 years before. Research is the attempt to replace misunderstanding with expertise in extremely vast areas of space and time.

In other words, we ca n’t sit at our computers and create the most exquisite equations that depict how the Universe must have been in the beginning if we want to learn about the real Universe. That results in story that is expressed in mathematical terms. The same way that Sumerian, Hebrew, or English can simply define myths, so you calculus.

Instead, we had use observations to follow the exact universe evolution step-by-step backward in time and forward in area. Next, as far back as we can tell with our current technology, we are constantly describing an evolutionary history that does not begin at some fictitious “beginning.”

Next, a description of truth that acknowledges that the Universe is made up of both the processes that create and maintain such structures—things like protons, molecules, cells, and people—is necessary for an accurate understanding of the evolution process.

When applied to complex methods, including the Universe as a whole, the bottom-up intellectual method known as “reductionism,” which asserts that the universe is composed of elementary particles that form nuclear, atoms, molecules, and so on, results in contradictions and “mysteries.”

Rather, it is necessary to consider the processes that create these structures to be equally important to the structures themselves, such as the thermonuclear fusion that results in chemical elements in stars.

Consider what happens when you take a breath as an easy illustration of the change in strategy. Your breathing receive hydrogen atoms from the atmosphere, which then enter your bloodstream, enter cells, and eventually become a part of your body.

It is obvious that the air particles in the surroundings are dead. But when they enter your tissues and become a part of you, do they miraculously become “alive”? When they are eventually exhaled as a component of carbon dioxide molecules in your mouth, do they “die” at that point?

These issues become enigmatic and contradictory from a materialist perspective that claims you are” only” made up of molecules, forming molecules, creating cells, and so forth.

However, when reality is viewed as a series of processes, we can see that when we breath in, the air molecules that enter our cells join the process that we refer to as “life,” which is the distinct process of each unique human being.

The buildings in your body are constantly evolving and renewing, from atoms to tissue to tissues to your entire body, but this process of life creates and maintains them. With each breathing, the specific hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen molecules you are made of change, but the process that creates each of those molecules into you continues from birth until death.

You, as a unique individual being, are connected to the larger method of biologic and social development that gave rise to and sustains your life process.

These processes may be studied with the same scientific accuracy that is used to identify structures like atoms and molecules, and they are crucial to comprehending evolution, the most comprehensive process of all.

The earliest techniques that we can currently observe

What period of history do we currently have evidence for being the furthest again? The observations of the largest-scale buildings in the Universe provide us with the broadest perspective again.

As surface- and space-based cameras have peered deeper and deeper into space, they have found larger and larger clusters of galaxies. Galaxie clusters that are almost spherical are strung together like pearls on filaments with a diameter of tens of millions of light years, and the superclusters are twisted into an ever-larger hierarchy that spans more than four billionlight years. They are also longer.

We can determine the speed at which galaxies are moving inside of such enormous structures, so we can estimate how long it took to type them. These velocities typically do n’t go faster than 1, 000 km/sec, or roughly 1/3 of the speed of light.

Simple mathematics reveals that these objects must be about 7 or 8 trillion years old, or about 500 times older than the fictional time of the Big Bang, because the formation of any thing takes at least as long as it takes the subject to turn around its axis.

One of the main inconsistencies in the Big Bang hypothesis ‘ predictions is the existence of these enormous things.

Through techniques that we have observed in the lab, it is possible to determine the development of the observed order of buildings in, up to and including these largest buildings, without the time constraint imposed by the Big Bang strategy.

Alfvén and his colleagues first demonstrated in 1978 that, given enough time, such institutions were the unavoidable outcome of the contacts of a small number of techniques, all of which were well-observed in laboratory tests and explained by widely accepted theory.

The squeeze effect, which is the interest of electric currents moving in the same direction as a result of their contact with the magnetic fields created by their own motion, is this primary for operation. Ampere made the initial observation of this effect in 1820 using voltages in cables.

Left: In the pinch result, currents that flow in the same direction create magnetic areas that draw the different currently flowing in that direction. Right: In particles, electrons move in filaments along magnetic field lines. Graphics: LPPFusion/MIT

Any little currents of electrons moving in one way in a blood in space will attract other current that just so happens to be traveling in the same way. They thwart opposing currents that flow through them.

Electrical tides accumulate over time in ever-greater amounts. Alfvén emphasized that because astronomical plasmas outside of celebrities have such low densities, they are often magnetized, which means that the electrical fields that currents produce control their motions.

Particle incidents that would alter tides and nbsp are uncommon.

With currents flowing in the direction of the magnetic field, yet incredibly small amounts of current self-organize into filaments. The magnetic field forces electrons to maneuver in small lines around the area way as they move across it, so they are compelled to do so very closely, much like gymnasts holding onto a shaft.

The filaments take on a distinctive form as currents flow along the filament’s plane in the middle and are wrapped in helixes around the outside.

These filaments ‘ axes are concentrated with plasma by electrical forces, which act as a vortex that draws fluids to the middle. The swirling forces of these forces also propel these celestial whirlwinds at speeds of 1,000 km/s.

For strands are still visible today at all weights throughout the Universe. They are exquisitely depicted in pictures of the Veil cloud. Tiny tides of a few amps gradually merged together over incredibly long periods of time to form enormous strands with radii of many billion light years and carrying close to one billion trillion amp.

The largest buildings that we can currently see emerged from those fibers.

The spiral electrical filaments that we see in the cosmos at all scales are depicted by the Veil Nebula, which is shown here in an image from the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA image

How can we be sure?

How can we be certain that these enormous structures were created by this method and that the Big Bang, black power, and dark matter are real events from a fairy tale?

Second, the theories of the formation of these filaments and their merging to enormous size are based on a theory called electromagnetism, which has been proven through millions of experiments and serves as the foundation for much of modern technology that supports human community.

Every time you turn on the latest, Maxwell’s electricity theory is verified. This is very dissimilar from theories like dark strength, for which there is no proof through laboratory tests. Dark power is not a comprehensive theory with accurate predictions.

Next, in laboratory experiments, we can watch and control the fibers themselves.

In all high-energy plasmas that are used to generate fusion energy on Earth, filaments naturally appear, as we’ll go into more detail in the following sections of this series. The filaments are the first step in a method of concentrating blood and heating it in our own deep plasma concentrate machine.

Left: The dense plasma focus device FF- 2B used by LPPFusion has filaments that span centimeters but are driven by the same processes as those used to span tens of thousands of kilometers of the Sun ( at right ). On every scale of the cosmos, there are strands. Images: NASA / LPPFusion
The path of electromagnetic fields and the currents that are aligned with them are shown on a polarization map of the local galaxy M83. The power of far-off electromagnetic fields can also be determined using for information. NASA image

Third, and perhaps most importantly, we see that these fibers have electromagnetic fields that are present at all scales of the world. The effects of magnetic domains on the polarization of light and radio waves can be used to electronically detect them.

The numerical hypotheses that these fibers are guided by electric and magnetic forces have been verified by in-depth comparisons of the electromagnetic fields ‘ structure and size.

When we describe the next stage of celestial development, which involves the relations of these magnetic strands with gravity, we’ll talk about more evidence for this method in the next part of the series. That, we’ll demonstrate how the enormous ancient electrical filaments actually gave rise to the hierarchy of stars, galaxies, groups, and superclusters.

The way in which electric and magnetic fields oscillate in electromagnetic energy, such as lighting and radio waves, is referred to as polarization. Here, the wave moves to the right while the magnetic field ( blue ) oscillates horizontally. &nbsp, Image: Commons for Creative

This first ask: Is this the earliest operation to have ever happened in the Universe before moving on to that next topic.

No always. We return to Alfvén’s idea of going back in day step by step. The earliest method for which we currently have reliable information is this filamentation approach. However, researchers have considered the possibility of earlier stages, including Alfvén and his associates.

For instance, we are aware that just simply equal amounts of energy can create matter and antimatter in a laboratory. Contaminants that are equivalent to matter particles but have the opposite charge make up ether.

However, problem is 50, 000 occasions more prevalent than antimatter in the universe, such as in celestial rays.

Alfvén and colleagues discovered that matter and antimatter would normally separate at incredibly large scales as a result of interactions between an “ambiplasma” and gravitation, electrical currents, and electromagnetic fields. Large-scale filamentation may have formed at the same time as or even before this parting process took place.

However, because there is no concrete observational evidence for such an earlier stage, we must state that it is currently” speculative” —something that may be true, theoretically possible, but is not in any way supported by science.

We would need more and various studies than we currently have to confirm it. For those looking for nice stories, this may not be a satisfactory response, but it is the scientific response.

However, in the following section of this series, we will move forward rather than backward in time to the gravitational-magnetic recession phase of cosmic evolution that ultimately gave rise to galaxies, stars, and stars.

LPPFusion, Inc.’s chief professor is Eric J. Lerner.

Continue Reading

Henry Kissinger’s Cambodia legacy of bombs and chaos

By:
On:
In: Asia
Henry Kissinger in the early 1990sshabby pictures
By George Wright, Painful Sony &amp
London, Phnom Penh, and BBC News

Several former world leaders gathered to pay gift this year as word of Henry Kissinger’s passing spread.

George W. Bush, a former US president, claimed that the country had “lost one of the most reliable and peculiar tones on foreign matters.”

The original US secretary of state, according to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, was driven by” a true passion of the free world and the need to guard it” and was a master of politics. Kissinger was referred to as” a giant of diplomacy, strategy, and peace-making” by Boris Johnson.

However, Henry Kissinger is not frequently referred to as a mediator in Cambodia.

In an effort to drive out Viet Cong troops in the south of the country, Kissinger and then-President Richard Nixon ordered covert bombing raids on natural Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

More than 2 million tons of bombs were dropped on Cambodia by the US as a whole. For illustration’s sake, the Allies dropped really over 2 million tons of bombs throughout World War II, including those that detonated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kissinger insisted that rather than the nation of Cambodia, the bombing was intended for the Taiwanese military there.

Vorng Chhut sits outside his home in Svay Rieng, Cambodia

When bombs began to fall on Vorng Chhut’s community in the province of Svay Rieng, close to the Asian border, he had not heard the name Henry Kissinger.

” Not even the willow branches were left. People fled, but those who remained in the town perished, he claimed. ” I ca n’t remember all the names of the people who passed away. When it got peaceful, people would come and destroy the body because they were swollen.

Bombs Over Cambodia, a 2006 Yale University statement, claimed that” Cambodia may be the most intensely bombed country in history.”

According to a 1973 Pentagon report,” Kissinger approved each of the 3, 875 bombing raids in Cambodia in 1969 and 1970,” as well as” the strategies for preventing them from appearing in newspapers.”

” It’s an order, and it needs to be carried out.” something flying, on something moving. Do you understand that? According to classified records of his phone conversations, Kissinger told a lieutenant in 1970.

Although the exact number of fatalities from those weapons is unknown, quotes range from 50,000 to over 150,000.

Samrong, Cambodia, 1973

Roland Neveu/shabby pictures

The unintentional attack of the little town of Neak Luong, which resulted in the deaths of at least 137 Cambodians and the injuries of another 268, is one of history’s most infamous incidents.

Keo Chan, whose family and ten children had just been killed, was mentioned in a New York Times article by Sydney Schanberg, who would eventually appear in the movie The Killing Fields.

” Every member of my family has passed away!” He sobbed while pounding the wooden chair where he had fallen with his finger. ” Every member of my family has passed away!” Please take a photo of me! I’ll letting the Americans see!

When are you Americans going to take it away? another man asked as he stood close to an explosive weapon in the city.

For many years to come, old American bombs strewn throughout the land of Cambodia, maiming and killing individuals.

Some claim that Nixon and Kissinger’s bombing campaign also had the effect of laying the groundwork for one of the worst pogroms in the 20th centuries. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge, which was led by Pol Pot, claimed the lives of about 1.7 million people, or about a quarter of the population.

A young Cambodian woman looks at the main stupa in Choeung Ek Killing Fields in 2014

Omar Havana/shabby pictures

The ultra-communists had little support before that, but as British bombs fell, their numbers increased.

The Khmer Rouge forces were safely “using destruction by B-52 strikes as the main topic of their propaganda,” according to the CIA’s director of operations report from 1973.

The first member of the Khmer Rouge to be tried for crimes committed during the government’s reign of terror stated to the UN-backed court in 2009 that” Mr. Richard Nixon and Kissinger allowed it to grasp golden options.”

Kissinger has consistently resisted criticism of the attack of Cambodia.

In 1973, he stated,” I really wanted to make clear that it was a bomb of North Vietnamese in Cambodia, not of Cambodia.”

Bombs, according to him, were just dropped on places “within five miles of the Asian boundary that were largely unpopulated” when he was 90 years old.

Richard Nixon points at a map of Cambodia

shabby pictures

This was not the situation, according to Elizabeth Becker, an American journalist who covered the bombing campaign in 1973.

She told the BBC,” You second spoke with the refugees as they were leaving the bombing, and then you went there and saw moonscapes– you’d see buffalo corpses, houses burned, grain fields gutted.”

Why was this present air pressure bombing the countryside but frequently, you wondered after seeing the devastation? Farmers in Cambodia used to ask me,” Why is fire falling from the sky?” back then because they were n’t even accustomed to seeing cars.

Before the bombing began, Pen Yai, 78, worked with the Viet Cong inside Cambodia, but he claimed that American weapons killed a large number of residents, including his parents and brother-in-law.

” I could n’t sleep because I was so terrified. Everyday, people perished. We could do nothing, he said, so we just ran and found the dead.

Kissinger, who afterwards received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest human honor, and shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in negotiating an end to the Vietnam War, has received praise from a number of world leaders.

Prum Hen sits outside her home

However, some people who lived in Cambodia in the 1970s does have a positive memory of his reputation.

Prum Hen, 70, was compelled to leave her community when British bombs began to detonate. She claimed that when she learned of Kissinger’s passing, she had little sympathy because she did n’t know much about him.

She continued,” Let him die because he killed a lot of our people,” adding that she still harbors strong animosity toward the US.

” They bombed our nation, killing numerous people and severing families from their babies.” Afterward, husbands, wives, and kids were murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

The seriousness of Kissinger’s laws in Cambodia, according to Ms. Becker, cannot be overstated.

” To claim the attack was vague… it was cruel.” It’s the tradition as well as the sheer number of people.

What it did to the nation never be overstated.

Related Subjects

On this account, more

Continue Reading

The Indian siblings taking the chess world by storm

By:
On:
In: Asia
Chess siblingsAmruta Mokal/Chessbase India
By Susan Ninan
Sports Writer

In the last decade, few have fit the chess prodigy descriptor as well as India’s Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. He was 10 years old when he became the then-youngest International Master, the second-highest title after Grandmaster.

He became the second-youngest Grandmaster in 2018, defeated five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen three times in a row in online games, and is only the second Indian after Viswanathan Anand to make a World Cup final and qualify for the Candidates tournament.

While all of this unfolded, another chess-playing member of his family diligently awaited her turn – Praggnanandhaa’s sister Vaishali, who is older than him by four years.

The first in the family to play chess, Vaishali’s skill and toil have never been in doubt. Her successes however have been less noticeable, and her flashy milestones have been slower to arrive compared to her sibling.

Earlier this month, 22-year-old Vaishali defeated three former women’s world champions to win the Women’s Grand Swiss tournament and qualify for the Women’s Candidates tournament.

She now stands on the cusp of becoming only India’s third-ever female Grandmaster after Koneru Humpy and Harika Dronavalli. It will make Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali the first Grandmaster brother-sister pair in history. They’re already the first-ever brother-sister to make the Candidates. It’s a remarkably successful kinship in chess.

“When Pragg became the youngest International Master, he crossed my rating for the first time. Suddenly at home, the focus was entirely on him,” Vaishali told BBC. “It upset me. I don’t think I managed those emotions well,” she says and adds that this took a toll on her playing.

“My parents would chat with me about it and I’d be okay for a while. But every time he had a great result and the attention was on him, I would slip back to feeling a bit miserable. It took me some time to overcome those feelings and accept that he is exceptional. Once I completed my Woman Grandmaster (WGM) title, I felt better about myself. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been nothing but proud of his achievements. I see the hard work behind it,” she says.

Chess siblings

Amruta Mokal/Chessbase India

When they began training under Grandmaster RB Ramesh as kids, Vaishali was the higher-rated player of the two. Over the years, their journey in the game took different paths and it was often accompanied by stabs of envy for the one trying to keep up.

“It’s never easy for the sibling who’s on the other side,” says Ramesh, For the longest time (as recently as the World Cup in August) the media would turn up at their home in large numbers after every major result from Praggnanandhaa and ask Vaishali how it felt to be his sister or ask their parents how proud they were of their son.

“I think somewhere in her head it converted into pressure. The pressure to perform and not be ignored,” says Ramesh.

The urgency to get to a Grandmaster title and not be cast into oblivion was visible in her confounding opening choices at times. “I would look at her live games sometimes and wonder, why is she playing this? I could sense the desperation and pressure. What she’s been doing well lately is sticking to what she knows best. The results are showing,” he says.

Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali’s relationship evolved over the years and the pandemic phase brought the siblings closer. Today they’re each other’s fiercest mascots and closest confidantes.

“During the pandemic, we really got talking about all sorts of things that perhaps we never did before. He has a lot of confidence and clarity. Sometimes when I’m feeling lost or unsure, I turn to him. He often has the right answers,” Vaishali says.

“Not too many others in chess have someone they can go back to, a family member, or an active player with whom they can analyse games, and talk chess for hours. It’s only now that I think that we both really value this privilege,” she adds.

Chess siblings

Amruta Mokal/Chessbase India

At the Asian Games in October, Vaishali dragged Praggnanandhaa along on an hour-long walk and bawled to get a bad game out of her head. The rest of her Indian teammates had drawn their respective games in the women’s event, but her loss to Tan Zhongyi had seen India fall to China.

Overcome with emotion and disappointment, she decided not to play the next tournament on her calendar – the Qatar Masters. Praggnanandhaa managed to talk her out of it. It worked well for her. She finished the tournament as one of its best women’s players and earned her third and final Grandmaster norm.

At the Grand Swiss tournament that followed they shared a playing hall and Praggnanandhaa was seen walking over to his sister’s board during her games to see how she was doing.

The Indian siblings are a contrast in temperament.

Praggnananandhaa is extroverted, fun-loving, and gregarious. Vaishali is quiet, introverted and prone to overthinking. The latter comes with a mind that is built for brutal self-admonishment – despite a major win at the Women’s Grand Swiss and Candidates qualification, Vaishali couldn’t stop thinking about her narrow GM title miss.

Over the board, Praggnananandhaa has shown incredible defence skills and level-headed play. Vaishali is the sort of tenacious attacker who can play a line that’s not particularly favoured by chess engines, sacrifice a number of pieces, create a web of tactical complexities and smother the opponent.

She demolished International Master Leya Garifullina in this exact manner at the Women’s Grand Swiss. In another game at the same tournament, she crushed former world champion Mariya Muzychuk in 23 moves after the latter overreached, inviting the Indian to employ a devastating attack. Vaishali’s sheer dominance at the tournament, scorching all in her path was the loudest statement of her arrival.

Chess siblings

Amruta Mokal/Chessbase India

Having the most promising male and female Indian chess player in the country coming from the same family is a pretty remarkable sight.

Father Rameshbabu handles the logistics and travel planning and mother Nagalakshmi is the sergeant on eternal vigil who accompanies both children through long tournaments around the world.

There’s no glib PR work that goes into their image building. Vaishali usually manages both their social media accounts and Praggnanandhaa often seeks her out for help with responding to emails. It’s almost like a family-run start-up on a chess excellence mission.

In 2012, Vaishali and Praggnanandhaa won the nationals and qualified for the Asian youth championships in Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. Back then the primary concern for the family was shoring up the money to meet travel expenses for three. They managed to stitch together the funds and both returned champions – Vaishali in the under-12 girls, and Praggnanandhaa in the under-8 boys.

“We have grown up winning age-group tournaments together. Recently, we won the same medals at the Olympiad and Asian Games. Now we’re headed to the biggest tournament of our lives together.”

Theirs is the kind of rare, rousing story that chess fans and writers wait to watch and write about and has everyone else curiously invested in this pair of siblings who are overhauling records, and browbeating opposition while sneaking smiles at each other.

BBC News India is now on YouTube. Click here to subscribe and watch our documentaries, explainers and features.

Presentational grey line

Read more India stories from the BBC:

Presentational grey line

Related Topics

More on this story

Continue Reading

OAG moves official accused by fugitive

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

Transfer made for transparency, it says

PUBLISHED : 1 Dec 2023 at 04:00

A provincial public prosecutor accused by fugitive Chaowalit Thongduang of plotting to have a drug suspect snatched from the clutches of police has been transferred to the Office of the Attorney-General (OAG) pending a fact-finding investigation.

Chaowalit: Claims against prosecutor

OAG spokesman Prayuth Phetkhun said yesterday that the attorney-general had signed an order to transfer prosecutor Phongphiphat Kerdthep from the Songkhla Provincial Prosecutor’s Office to the OAG’s Office of Trafficking in Persons Litigation during the fact-finding inquiry.

Chaowalit, alias “Sia Paeng Nanod”, recently posted videos online accusing a public prosecutor, only identified by the Thai alphabet initial “Bor”, and six others of involvement in a plot to seize a suspect called Sitthidet from police in Phatthalung province in 2019.

In the videos, Chaowalit, 37, claimed he was unfairly treated and he was the only person sentenced despite numerous other suspects being involved.

The OAG spokesman said the public prosecutor’s transfer did not imply guilt but was to uphold transparency in the investigation and maintain public confidence.

The probe panel would also look into the fugitive’s claims that certain prosecutors had allegedly demanded 500,000 baht from him to drop a case against him, said Mr Prayuth.

On Oct 22, Chaowalit escaped from Nakhon Si Thammarat Hospital, where he was taken from the provincial prison for dental treatment and has since evaded capture.

He was serving a 20-year and six-month sentence in Nakhon Si Thammarat Prison for attempted murder related to an armed attack on police during the attempted snatch on Sept 2, 2019, in Phatthalung.

Although cornered in a forest hideout in Trang province on Nov 8, the fugitive, along with armed bodyguards, managed to escape after exchanging fire with police.

Earlier this month, the Songkhla provincial prosecutor filed a report with police in Muang district after allegedly receiving a death threat from a Chaowalit associate, whose identity was not disclosed at the time.

The letter, dated Oct 27, demanded the prosecutor return money to Chaowalit, threatening harm to him and his family if he refused.

The message contained the word “die” and a drawing of a gun.

The prosecutor denied knowing the fugitive, adding that he had been transferred to work in Songkhla from the Office of Juvenile and Family Prosecution in Phatthalung in April.

Continue Reading

China ties to UAE AI firm G42 catch CIA’s attention

By:
On:
In: Asia

An Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm that formed a partnership with the Microsoft-based OpenAI last month is on the radar of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

G42, founded in 2018 in the United Arab Emirates, is being probed by the CIA and other American spy agencies for its collaboration with large Chinese companies, including the US-sanctioned Huawei Technologies, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The company is owned by UAE’s National Security Advisor Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, son of UAE founder Zahedan bin Sultan Al Nahyan. It is managed by Chief Executive Peng Xiao. 

The CIA has opened a file to investigate Xiao, who was educated in the US but then renounced his American citizenship for an Emirati one. 

US officials warned that G42 could have passed the genetic data of millions of Americans to China. 

Xiao said in an event in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday that the company has frameworks to protect data privacy and data classification, and that the safety of its AI systems is “fairly well addressed” to prevent prying eyes.

However, he added that G42, as a vendor, cannot be held accountable for the data that has been passed to its customers.

The New York Times report was followed by a Bloomberg report, which said that US House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry is effectively blocking a measure that would require firms to notify the government about certain investments in China and other countries of concern. 

The measure was approved by the Senate as part of its version of the defense bill earlier this year, but it faces strong opposition in the House from McHenry, who suggests targeting individual companies only, instead of having broad investment restrictions. 

Xiao’s connections

Over the past five years, the mysterious Xiao has been the key person who connected the sheikhs with different Chinese companies. 

According to his LinkedIn account, Xiao received his bachelor’s degree at Hawaii Pacific University in 1994 and his master’s degree at George Washington University in 1997. 

Peng Xiao renounced his US citizenship for Emirati citizenship. Photo: x.com

He was the chief technology officer at MicroStrategy, a US business intelligence company, in 1999-2014. He was the chief executive of Pegasus, a subsidiary of DarkMatter, which is a UAE-based cybersecurity firm, in 2015-2018. 

In 2018, he became the chief executive of G42, which was established in the same year. 

After the pandemic broke out in early 2020, G42 and BGI Group, a Shenzhen-based genomics company, jointly set up a Covid-testing laboratory in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi. 

In March 2021, when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had a meeting with his UAE counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Xiao made a presentation about a Covid vaccine program launched by G42 and China National Pharmaceutical Group. 

Miles Guo, an exiled Chinese businessman, said in a video in August 2021 that Xiao could be the illegitimate son of Han Zheng, who became Chinese vice premier in 2018 and vice president in March this year. But Guo did not provide any evidence.

In August 2022, G42 announced the launch of the US$10 billion G42 Expansion Fund, a global technology growth fund formed in strategic partnership with Abu Dhabi Growth Fund. Xiao is the Chairman of the G42 Expansion Fund’s Investment Committee.

According to its website, G42 has increased the number of its AI research team members from 30 to more than 22,000 over the past five years. 

On July 20 this year, G42 and the US-based Cerebra Systems jointly launched the California-based Condor Galaxy 1, the world’s largest supercomputer for AI training. On October 18, G42 said it will leverage OpenAI’s generative AI models in sectors such as finance, energy, health care and public services in the UAE. 

US officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo have discussed with UAE officials this year about China’s ambitions to gain supremacy in the world’s cutting-edge technologies, including AI, quantum computing and genomic research, the New York Times reported.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Wednesday when commenting on the New York Times report about G42 that “China always opposes the US overstretching the concept of national security, politicizing and weaponizing economic and trade issues or approaching them from an untenable security angle, and obstructing normal investment activities in the industrial community and private sectors.

“Such moves by the US undermine international economic order and trade rules and threaten the stability of global industrial and supply chains,” he said. “Those attempts find little support and will not get anywhere.”

Read: Xi and Biden at summit speak of conflict avoidance

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

Continue Reading

PM eyes tourism-crimping haze

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

Govt moves to curb PM2.5 in North

PM eyes tourism-crimping haze
Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, centre, leads cabinet ministers to attend a meeting in Chiang Mai on Wednesday to give his policy to combat haze and smog pollution. (Photo: Panumate Tanraksa)

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Wednesday voiced concern over the impact of PM2.5 pollution on Chiang Mai’s tourism industry during the high season and pledged to hold talks with neighbouring countries to combat haze and smog pollution.

On his second day of visiting the northern province, the prime minister met representatives from various agencies and laid down guidelines as they step up efforts to deal with the seasonal bushfires, ultra-fine dust and other harmful air pollutants in the region.

“I can see that they take the air pollution issue seriously and want to lessen the problem. I use the word ‘lessen’ because it’s extremely challenging to eliminate the problem. Let’s be realistic,” he said.

The prime minister stressed the need to curb sources of PM2.5 that have long affected people’s health, saying exhaust fumes, slash-and-burn farming and waste management must be addressed.

A wider use of renewable energy and a transition to electric vehicles could significantly reduce air pollution. Meanwhile, slash-and-burn practices and problems linked to the management of farm waste could be solved by economic strategies, he said.

Mr Srettha said if product prices were elevated, farmers would be more willing to absorb the expenses associated with farm waste management.

“The costs of managing farm waste are also high. Several suggestions have been made and I believe we have to pursue these measures as they are sustainable,” he said.

Mr Srettha said haze and forest fires have been plaguing the northern region for years and affecting the region’s tourism industry, with people staying away from the northern region in February and March because of poor air quality.

The government will hold talks with Laos and Myanmar to seek their support and cooperation in fighting haze and Thailand might also offer to help them with managing farm waste for mutual benefits, he said.

He said cooperation from businesses is also essential to promote clean air and strongly urged them to buy farm products from those that comply with regulations.

He said the Clean Air Bill would hold accountable those responsible for sources of air pollution outside national borders.

According to the Kasikorn Research Centre, the estimated economic losses from the haze and smog problem on tourism in the North during the five-day Songkran festival this year (April 13-17) could be as high as 700 million baht.

La-iad Bungsithong, manager of Ratilanna Riverside Spa Resort in Chiang Mai, said March is in the low season with hotel bookings usually at 55-60%.

However, this year’s pollution worsened and the bookings fell to 45%.

Nanthaporn Komolsitthivej, a senior staffer at Thai Lion Air, said the ultra-fine dust pollution clearly affected travel demand to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai this year.

Usually, extra flights are provided to accommodate a sharp increase in demand, but the number was lower than anticipated this year, she said, adding Chiang Mai was among the top destinations during the Songkran festival, but it slipped from the top five this year due to the haze pollution.

According to the Public Health Ministry, 2,648,243 people were affected by haze pollution from 2020-2023.

Chiang Mai recorded the highest number of 649,032, followed by Chiang Rai (467,574) and Lampang (396,271).

Bannarot Buakhli, an adviser to a council in Chiang Mai, yesterday urged the government to include Om Koi wildlife sanctuary in its forest fire management plan.

Continue Reading

Zhongzhi collapse could be bigger than Evergrande’s

By:
On:
In: Asia

Top executives of a major Chinese wealth management firm are being probed after the company reported a net liability of up to 260 billion yuan (US$36.5 billion) last week.

Beijing police said over the weekend that they have launched a criminal probe into the wealth management unit of Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, which reportedly manages about 3.72 trillion yuan worth of assets and is regarded as one of China’s largest “shadow banks.” 

A person surnamed Jie, who is believed to be a nephew of the firm’s late founder Jie Zhikun, is among those who have been arrested, Chinese media reported on Monday. Jie Zhikun died in December 2021 due to heart disease.

The arrested were accused of being involved in illegal fundraising activities and other suspected crimes. 

The police operation was launched a few days after Zhongzhi reported on November 22 total assets of 200 billion yuan and total liabilities of between 420-460 billion yuan, meaning the firm’s net liabilities were somewhere between 220-260 billion yuan.

On Monday, Chinese commentators published a series of articles and videos criticizing Zhongzhi for partnering with some state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and using its reputation to sell wealth products. 

They also slammed Jie’s family members and senior executives for cashing in on their wealth product investments before Zhongzhi’s financial problems were reported by the media this summer. 

“With a net liability of 220 billion to 260 billion yuan, Zhongzhi is severely insolvent and is having a huge operational risk,” a financial anchor said in her vlog posted on social media on Monday.

“The company said it’s not easy to liquidate its assets, most of which are bonds and equities that are now undervalued. It seems to be telling the public that its net liability may actually be more than 260 billion yuan.”

She says Zhongzhi’s founder and executives built a financial empire by forming partnerships between the firm and SOEs while using the latter’s reputation to raise funds over the past two decades. She says Jie’s family had accumulated as much as 25 billion yuan of wealth during the peak period.  

Zhongzhi Enterprise Group’s founder Jie Zhikun died in December 2021. Photo: Baidu

“Zhongzhi said it has lost its direction after the death of Jie in 2021. How could the company blame a dead person after a huge amount of its assets disappeared?” she asked?

“The fall of Zhongzhi may be one of the largest defaults since the establishment of the New China in 1949,” a financial columnist wrote in an article. “The negative impact of Zhongzhi’s collapse may be even bigger than that of Evergrande as Zhongzhi has huge assets under management.”

“Many senior executives in Zhongzhi have made their fortune and left the company while the company’s wealth management product clients lost their money,” he says. “Who is going to take the responsibility?”

An apology

In June, some clients complained that they could not get their money back when the wealth management products they bought from Zhongzhi and its subsidiaries such as Zhongrong International Trust matured. 

On August 11, an unnamed former employee of Zhongrong was quoted by Cailian Press, a financial website, as saying on August 11 that at least 350 billion yuan of Zhongrong’s wealth products that were sold through Zhongzhi’s sales channels had stopped payouts. 

He said the figure did not include the products directly sold by Zhongrong.

The National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA), China’s financial regulator, has set up a task force to examine Zhongzhi, Bloomberg reported. 

After a three-month auditing, Zhongzhi told its clients in a letter on November 22 that it wanted to apologize for its ineffective internal operation after Jie’s death. It said its management had tried to restructure the business and turn around the unfavorable situation but the moves did not achieve the expected results. 

“After the issuance of this letter of apology, Zhongzhi’s clients’ last hope that the company would survive has vanished,” a financial writer using the pen name Mi Mei says in an article. 

Over the past two decades Zhongzhi had invested in different companies and financial assets but all these investments, controlled by Jie, had seen falling returns in recent years, Mi Mei wrote. 

Zhongzhi’s liabilities are way bigger than its assets. Image: Twitter

According to a Beijing Police announcement, a person surnamed Jie was arrested for Zhongzhi’s illegal fundraising activities.

Chinese media said after Jie died, his nephew Liu Yang was appointed by the board to lead the company. At the same time, Jie’s other nephew, Jie Zizheng, a 34-year-old executive director at the firm, had the power to decide which projects to invest in.

Jie’s other successor options were his daughter Jie Huiyu, as well as his second wife, Mao Amin, a famous Chinese singer, and her two children.

Read: Chinese wealth management firm stiffs big investors

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

Continue Reading