Daniel Dumbrill
This summer one of my favourite parts of the 13,000 km road trip wasn’t the big destinations. It was the random stops in between. Little towns and cities we’d never specifically plan a trip around. Parking the RV in some ordinary lot next to other travellers, sitting down for a drink and chat. One conversation that stayed with me... A fellow RVer asked why I’d leave Canada for China. “Canada’s such a good country,” he said. I told him China is a really great country too. Then I mentioned something I’d noticed the last time I went back to Canada compared to seven years earlier: a lot more Chinese people, especially older ones, really want to find a way to return. But it’s hard once they’ve cancelled their Chinese nationality. Getting something like the permanent resident card I hold isn’t straightforward. He nodded and said something that made me laugh. “If you leave China and cancel your Chinese passport, we have a rule. We don’t need you back.” Then he asked if I knew how much the fee is to cancel Chinese citizenship. I didn’t. “250,” he said. In Chinese, of course, 250 is another way of calling someone stupid. I’m not sure the 250 fee story is literally true, but the way he told it was perfect. From there the talk turned to how hard the United States has tried to contain China over the past several years, and how those efforts have largely failed. He brought up Huawei specifically, which made sense given my country’s involvement in, and complacency with, the US attempts to bring Huawei down. “Look how hard they tried to bring Huawei down,” he said. “And now they’re still signing agreements, still moving forward, still one of China’s strongest companies.” He’s not wrong. You keep seeing these quiet signals. Huawei recently signed a multi-year global patent cross-licensing deal with HP that includes their Wi-Fi patents - Chinese technology going into a major Western brand’s products, not the other way around. HP is now paying to use Huawei’s patents. They’re also founding members in several patent pools, making their standard-essential patents available under clear terms. They even published a Wi-Fi 7 royalty rate at half a dollar per unit and kept it the same as Wi-Fi 6. Billions of devices already run on their cellular and Wi-Fi patents. Huawei holds roughly 165,000 active patents and has signed more than 260 licensing agreements worldwide. The same shift is visible elsewhere. DJI has built the most widely used civilian drone platform in the world. Their patents and core technologies sit inside operations, filming, and industrial applications far beyond China, even after years of attempts to restrict them. CATL has become the backbone of the global EV battery supply chain. Their manufacturing scale and battery innovations mean major carmakers in the West and Asia are now depending on, and in some cases licensing, Chinese battery technology rather than the other way around. The old assumption that serious technology and intellectual property only flowed in one direction is quietly breaking down. That RVer’s casual comment stuck with me because it lines up with what you keep seeing on the ground. The pressure was real. The results so far have not matched the intention. The technology keeps moving, the licensing deals keep getting signed, and the centre of gravity is shifting whether people want to acknowledge it or not.
Daniel Dumbrill
After a couple of nights in Turpan, our next stop was Ürümqi. The main reason was to find proper RV repair shops to deal with a few issues, the most urgent being a leaking stainless steel water tank. A few stops earlier I’d tried fixing it by tightening the valve and wrapping it with plumbing tape, but it kept leaking no matter what I did. That’s when I realized the problem wasn’t the valve — there was a crack in the tank itself around the faucet and outlet. It turned out to be significantly worse. Not only was the connection point broken, but the entire corner and edge of the tank had been compromised and was slowly leaking. I first stopped at a shop that helped with a couple of other problems. I have two water tanks, and whenever I filled both of them the pressure difference created a suction effect that forced a large amount of water out through the release valve. The owner fixed it by installing an extra hose with a valve so I could equalize the pressure between the tanks. He was extremely kind. His main business is renting out RVs. He made me a great coffee and refused to take any money for the work. He then pointed me to another shop that could fully remove the water tank and weld it properly. If you’re ever in Ürümqi and looking to rent an RV, I’d highly recommend his place. He’s an excellent guy — his contact info is on the first photo of his sign. At the second shop I started getting a little nervous. I hadn’t asked for a price before they began removing the tank. After they got it out, the owner joked, “Why didn’t you ask me the price first?” I told him I just assumed he’d charge something fair. He laughed and said, “Yeah, but now we could just say 20,000 RMB and not let you leave.” He was half-joking, but I was still a bit worried he might be serious. In the end, for about six hours of work with four guys, he only charged me 500 RMB. I thought that was ridiculously cheap. They were really good people, so I ended up leaving them a few packs of drinks we had in the RV plus a brand-new, unopened water pump that was probably worth 800–900 RMB. Throughout our entire trip, we met so many kind, friendly & helpful locals.
