Scarlett's Letter.

'Never Biden' voters may be decisive.

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1. In September 2023, scientists funded by a mining company reported finding what could be the largest deposit of lithium in an ancient US supervolcano. Now public researchers on the other side of the country have uncovered another untapped reservoir – one that could cover nearly half the nation's lithium demands. It's hiding in wastewater from Pennsylvania's gas fracking industry. (Source: sciencealert.com)

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2. For the past few years, the West has been trying to break China’s grip on minerals that are critical for defense and green technologies. Despite their efforts, Chinese companies are becoming more dominant, not less. They are expanding operations, supercharging supply and causing prices to drop. Their challengers can’t compete. “China is not just standing still waiting for us to catch up,” said Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. “They are making investments on top of their already massive investments in all aspects of the critical-minerals supply chain.” (Source: wsj.com)

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3. China is preparing independent AI academies in Shanghai and Beijing to nurture the talent it needs to grow the artificial intelligence industry, according to an award-winning AI expert. The Ministry of Education, which is responsible for the academies, would push for more of the institutes in more provinces, said Zhu Songchun, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and dean of the school of intelligence science and technology at Peking University. Zhu also called for China’s academic institutes to open up to the global community as part of efforts to lead the country’s technological innovation. Since the California-based OpenAI took the world by storm more than a year ago, Beijing has seen AI as a potential game-changer, particularly to counter some long-term economic challenges such as a shrinking workforce and declining fertility rate. The race to build up international talent emerges as AI becomes a frontier in the intensifying US-China competition in science and technology and adds to rivalries over the South China Sea, trade and ideology. (Source: scmp.com)

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4. China’s latest housing initiative is aimed at vacant properties, a major pain point in a crisis that’s dragged on for almost three years. But analysts say the package of measures is still too small to end the rout. The decline in China’s sales of new homes accelerated in recent months, with households increasingly preferring to buy in the secondary market. That’s pushed up the stock of unsold homes and empty land to the highest level in years, discouraging new construction and threatening more defaults by developers — including large state-owned firms. The support package announced Friday features a 300 billion yuan ($42 billion) facility from the People’s Bank of China that will fund bank loans for the state companies charged with buying up completed-but-unsold housing stock. Economists expressed concern both about the limited size of the measure relative to the stock of unsold housing, and the risk it won’t be fully implemented. Officials said the central bank program can incentivize bank loans worth 500 billion yuan. That would only address a fraction of the value of vacant apartments in China, which economists estimate at multiple trillions of yuan. (Source: bloomberg.com)

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