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Raenir Salazar posted:The UK and the US (and other countries) didn't force other countries to use their currency at gun point, literally nor figuratively, but because it was obviously to their benefit to do so. Because any country with a large economy you want to do business with, naturally you're going to want to have their currency in order to more easily make purchases. source?
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Oct 8, 2024 15:09
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Raenir Salazar posted:
Certainly seems like the bad thing china is doing here is orders of magnitude less bad than what the US is doing though, wouldn't you agree? China is attempting to negotiate directly with the houthis, and urging all parties to abide by international law. The US has been recklessly bombing Yemen, making statements condemning the actions of institutions of international law such as the ICC and ICJ, and directly arming and funding a campaign of genocidal extermination. China certainly looks more like the state abiding by the rules based international order here. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 8, 2024 18:53
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I don't know if encouraging the Houthis to attack civilian targets belonging to their geopolitical rivals is "urging all parties to abide by international law", or that it's magnitudes less bad than any mere statements condemning the actions of any international institution I got excited seeing the notification for all the new posts in the China thread, but alas, they're all about US history again.
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Oct 8, 2024 19:27
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Tuesday's NDRC briefing was a wee damp but this looks more promising: https://twitter.com/Lingling_Wei/status/1844023360617083256 (cyclical still beats the previous liquidity framing, imo) Still stand by my previous prediction of a few months of expansionary policy, despite market turmoil since Tuesday
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Oct 9, 2024 14:55
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Raenir Salazar posted:4. This isn't the IP thread, the facts are that Hamas did commit a terrorist act on Oct 6th killing around 1400 people committing war crimes and that Israel had a right to defend itself; and a right to defend itself from attacks on its citizens by Iran and Hezbollah; its actions are obviously disproportionate and have gone too far in support of what is at its core a legitimate use of force under international law, and I support the US effort's to negotiate a cease fire and restore stability to the region and a roadmap to a stable two-state solution; there's a core throughline that's consistent with the idea of a rules based international order but yeah I'd say that's not super relevant to discussing China. Incredible, nearly every single fact presented here is incorrect.
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Oct 9, 2024 19:56
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Raenir Salazar posted:4. This isn't the IP thread, the facts are that Hamas did commit a terrorist act on Oct 6th killing around 1400 people committing war crimes and that Israel had a right to defend itself; While I support Palestine and their struggle against apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, I should note that at least a good few of those Israelis were not committing war crimes at that point in time. (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 9, 2024 20:17
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The ICJ has called out Israel for it's genocidal acts. In China's best interest, why would they get involved with this Middle East conflict? If China doesn't support the genocide it won't hurt their ships. edit: LIke do you want China to go against the ICJ and go against the attempts to stop a genocide? Rabid Snake fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Oct 10, 2024 |
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Oct 10, 2024 09:23
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Rabid Snake posted:The ICJ has called out Israel for it's genocidal acts. In China's best interest, why would they get involved with this Middle East conflict? If China doesn't support the genocide it won't hurt their ships. Well if China cared about the ICJ I imagine they would be members of it so that’s neither here nor there. If someone started droning ships vaguely related to Russia in order to stop Russia’s criminal and murderous war in Ukraine and the US then negotiated with them to specifically not target ships owned by them but let them target any other ships including Chinese ones, I don’t think it is inconceivable that China would characterize it as “unhelpful” as the US does now.
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Oct 10, 2024 21:00
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Of course for all the maneuvering or whatever China is supposed to be doing around the Houthis, the Houthis don't actually do much checking of the nationality of the ships they attack anyways to see if it's connected to somebody who's connected to somebody who's connected to Israel (although admittedly the shipping industry never makes it straightforward which ship belongs to who, you look at the list of the attacked ships, you'd think they had a grudge against Marshall Islanders). Either way, the Houthis have hit a couple of Chinese ships regardless of whatever understanding they're supposed to have.
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Oct 11, 2024 03:55
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An observation: https://twitter.com/michaelturton/status/1845630606459437245 Given the timing, it seems that Beijing was going to respond the same way regardless of what Lai said, which is itself indicative. Joint Sword B includes "要港要域封控、对海对陆打击、夺取综合制权等科目" "Sealing off key ports and areas, attacking at sea and on land, seizing comprehensive control, etc.", considerably more aggressive than the earlier pre-speech exercise 2024A: https://twitter.com/JaimeOcon1/status/1845608487650513361 I don't think this really alters anything domestically but comes in the context of a campaign to revitalize a more distinctive Taiwanese representation in Europe
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Oct 14, 2024 07:23
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I've read Turton for a while, and he is generally an old crank on many things. I wouldn't call him a serious, academically-minded journalist. He's a step or two above the poo poo I read from the foreigners in taiwan facebook page. fake edit: hey we have mutual friends on facebook! But there was something interesting... quote:Lai’s speech pays tribute to that construction of Taiwan’s history, not merely in its recapitulation of the past, but in its vision of the future. Lai said that the government would “roll out the new Silicon Valley plan for Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli to form a central technology cluster connecting the north with the south” (this implies that later in his presidency Hsinchu and Miaoli will be combined into a new municipality, as many have predicted), and offering the “Smart Technology Southern Industrial Ecosystem Development Plan.” Lai hit all the keywords: “smart,” “cluster,” “ecosystem” and “Silicon Valley.” I assume this is about combining Hsinchu County/Miaoli county? I could see Taiwan taking some of the
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Oct 14, 2024 08:23
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It's not really dissimilar to speech takes I've seen from more academically-minded academics, e.g. https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/2024/10/12/lais-national-day-address/ - that it was extraordinarily gracious to an essentially KMT reading of Taiwanese identity, but that Beijing has declined to accept the olive branch (That being the only point I had in mind here, not the rest of the column on Lai's domestic agenda. Is it really fair to demand that a Taiwanese president in cohabitation have a domestic agenda, anyway?)
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Oct 14, 2024 08:59
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quote:One hundred and thirteen years ago, a group of people full of ideals and aspirations rose in revolt and overthrew the imperial regime. Their dream was to establish a democratic republic of the people, to be governed by the people and for the people. Their ideal was to create a nation of freedom, equality, and benevolence. However, the dream of democracy was engulfed in the raging flames of war. The ideal of freedom had for long eroded under authoritarian rule. Yeah that is a line that would really piss off the independence hardliners, and this is not sarcasm.
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Oct 14, 2024 09:38
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https://twitter.com/RushDoshi/status/1845599338451345754 &c. That aside: Not normally D&D material but it's topical: https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1845779112750944707 From https://www.ccg.gov.cn/hjyw/202410/t20241014_2508.html 巡航都是愛你的形狀: Cruising always in the shape of loving you 
ronya fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Oct 14, 2024 |
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Oct 14, 2024 12:02
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It's spooky and an obvious threat and violation of Taiwan's sovereignty, but they've done it before, and it's probably just another example of the PRC throwing a stinky baby fit over wanting to asset its imperial hegemony over its neighbors. They were more upset about Nancy Pelosi.
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Oct 14, 2024 14:46
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The 2022 invasion of Ukraine was immediately preceeded by Russian Black Sea fleet declaring all of north-east Black Sea as missile exercise areas restricted from all shipping, so whenever China does this it makes me feel anxious.
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Oct 14, 2024 20:33
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Nenonen posted:The 2022 invasion of Ukraine was immediately preceeded by Russian Black Sea fleet declaring all of north-east Black Sea as missile exercise areas restricted from all shipping, so whenever China does this it makes me feel anxious. Any invasion of Taiwan would be even more obvious to US intelligence than Ukraine was quite a bit in advance because the buildup that would be required. There is no surprise invasion of Taiwan.
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Oct 15, 2024 02:53
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One take: https://www.scmp.com/economy/policy/article/3282799/china-stimulus-should-absolutely-surpass-10-trillion-yuan-government-economist-saysquote:‘A turning point’ (that article also has a handy table of announced measures over the past week) Conversely: https://www.wsj.com/world/china/behind-xi-jinpings-pivot-on-broad-china-stimulus-08315195 quote:After resisting calls to take forceful steps to prop up the economy for two years, Xi relented in late September and ordered a barrage of interest-rate cuts and other measures to put a floor under growth. early 1990s japan also oscillated between camps urging a 'think big' effort versus camps whipping macroprudential debt-quality measures and shock at the overall size of the stimulus bill, leading to big debt commitments but also a big neutralization of future expectations, ultimately defeating the purpose of the stimulus observe these measures are contradicting each other: if the neoliberals have their way, local government finances can go for a toss anyway: maintaining T1/T2 real estate by endorsing T3/T4 permanent migration to the big cities, advocating big local tax reductions, and accepting a wholesale reversal of the Zhu Rongji-vintage consensus system (by re-centralizing debt to the center). But, the neocons are mainly concerned with local government sustainability and stability, meaning they would prefer less structural change in social systems and financing, and be satisfied with shoring up local govt finances (implying a higher local tax burden rather than lower, to close the budget gaps). So there has to be a reckoning some time down the road, it can't be avoided. My guess is that China will take the path of least resistance, which (like Japan before it) is to basically satisfy neither camp by initially do big measures and then hike down the road to let local govts cover their budgets first
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Oct 21, 2024 05:13
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Unrelated, interesting, an interview with a younger generation person working for an unspecified private sector company tasked with political censorship: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/10/interview-with-gen-z-chinese-censor-june-4-is-internet-folk-festival/ quote:Q: Do you think you deserve sympathy? If you were to step back and look at your work from an outsider’s perspective, what would you have to say about censors?
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Oct 21, 2024 16:52
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Ah, some serious Arendt vibes there.
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Oct 21, 2024 17:12
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India announced yesterday (and China confirmed today) that an agreement on border patrols in some parts of Ladakh has been achieved:quote:https://indianexpress.com/article/i...inated-9632146/ quote:Reuters: The Indian Foreign Minister said yesterday that India and China have reached a deal on patrolling along the disputed border in the Himalayas. He said it can lead to disengagement and resolution of a conflict that began in 2020. Could we confirm with the Ministry that such an agreement was achieved? And are there other details? My second question related to this is, does the agreement open the path to a bilateral meeting between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit happening now? This represents status quo in the other areas where China has achieved unilateral moves of the line of actual control, so it's more of Beijing graciously letting New Delhi have a face-saving win so that Modi doesn't walk away from yet another BRICS event without any apparent progress, I think (as the weaker party, getting China to agree to preserve the status quo anywhere is a win). At the same time it indicates at least some evolution in Chinese negotiation strategy when dealing with foreign leaders who face their own domestic political constraints
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Oct 22, 2024 12:18
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This essay is making the rounds and is worth reading: https://research.gavekal.com/article/prejudice-and-china/. Currently not paywalled.quote:The first is the China you read about in much of the Western media: a place of despond and despair. It is permanently on the cusp of social disorder and revolution, or it would be, were it not an Orwellian nightmare of state surveillance, supervision and repression that strangles creativity and stifles progress. This is the place that Westerners who have never visited China typically imagine, because it is the place portrayed by the media. (I am in the "important but uninvestable" camp myself. You can look at the MSCI China index surge in October and wow at the returns, but at the same time that surge that is this volatile pretty clearly has nothing to do with fundamentals, which haven't really changed and if anything slowly become more gloomy, and has everything to do with a capricious stock market policy fairy) Lots of folks on twitter have already pointed out that overcapacity is perfectly consistent with the industrial leapfrogging, a sense of foreboding malaise, and the post-2020 trade surplus surge: if stakeholders know that the investment will not make back its costs before it depreciates, then someone must be left holding the bag eventually. The question is whether the current policy wave stops at making local governments whole (versus bailing out also households and domestic investors, i.e. volunteering the central government as the bagholder). It seems improbable to point to capital flight as the reason China needs to export so much manufactures: it's not like, in the absence of capital flight, this capital would have consumed all the BEVs that ASEAN/LatAm are now importing.
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Nov 2, 2024 17:04
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Raenir Salazar posted:Western interests are generally more moral interests yes, because western nations generally have superior human rights records, firmer grasp of a democratic processes and elections.  Goddamn. I don't even know where to begin with this. Are you sure you're not a time travelling British governor general? Glad we allow this level of racism as long as you use euphemistic language. Like what is even your historical window for this claim lmfao. Post WW2? Not that it'll be true in any you name but itd be funnier to know. Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Nov 2, 2024 |
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Nov 2, 2024 20:57
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ronya posted:This essay is making the rounds and is worth reading: https://research.gavekal.com/article/prejudice-and-china/. Currently not paywalled. quote:This is the vision of China that allowed CEOs of Western industrial companies to spend their time worrying about DEI initiatives while Chinese companies were racing ahead of them. This reads like some "woke killed them" nonsense tbh. Really missing the real causes.
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Nov 3, 2024 11:51
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lol that line was crazy the idea that industrial CEO's are intimately involved in DEI more than instructing HR to do something about it Isn't DEI a tech jobs boogie man anyway?
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Nov 3, 2024 21:16
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fez_machine posted:lol that line was crazy Somebody smarter than me has probably come up a good thesis about how the point of DEI is to deflect criticisms of capitalism by modeling capital itself as an agent of social progress without making any large concessions in terms of overall material conditions. It would make sense then that DEI would not only be unnecessary, but entirely pointless, if the state is willing to explicitly proscribe capital from openly pursuing political agendas. e: also though the made-up amount of meddling that conservatives imagine in their deranged fantasy actually DOES happen in China because there are Party cadres installed by the state in the bureaucracies of large companies eSports Chaebol fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Nov 4, 2024 |
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Nov 4, 2024 02:12
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I'd tune a lot of that out, anti-DEI patter is quite common in the Chinese business circles thinking that the columnist is channeling (I would not even agree that Western financial press has been generally China bearish since the 2020s: in 2020 and 2021 bullish views were quite common as covid-related business disruptions tore through the US and Europe, whilst China was largely domestically unaffected. It would not be until 2022 that "dynamic clearing" started really struggling with the new strains in circulation. This is borne out in concrete FDI data: FDI in 2021 was at a decadal high before abruptly crashing in 2022-2023. Of course, the Western China-bullish case is not typically the same as the Chinese China-bullish case; the latter tends to presume there is much potential for paradigm-changing new Chinese investment still) It's also the case that the technological leapfrogging is not general but tied to the 新三样 "new three" of solar, batteries, and EVs, and there is no particular reason to think that these industries especially are afflicted with DEI considerations in the West (as opposed to, say, service industries). Of course, the choice to pursue such industries was made in 2013-2015 well before Trump can impose semicond restrictions in 2018, amongst many other targeted bets, many of which did not pay off. What is really being sketched here is the 'Western vision', i.e. the fickle view du jour by the Western financial press, as viewed from the pages of the Chinese financial press (as the columnist positions himself as an investment advisor between the two).
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Nov 4, 2024 03:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:Western interests are generally more moral interests yes, because western nations generally have superior human rights records, firmer grasp of a democratic processes and elections. Churchill was British. Franco was Spanish. Ryti was Finnish. Pétain was French. Quisling was Norwegian. Leopold was Belgian. Salazar was Portuguese. Tony Blair is British. Boris Johnson is British.
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Nov 4, 2024 09:15
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Raenir Salazar posted:
And thats why The West murdered way more people and interfered with way more nations internal affairs than anyone else on the world: its just moral Its their moral obligation, I guess
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Nov 4, 2024 10:29
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Such is the burden of the white man.
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Nov 4, 2024 10:42
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Raenir Salazar posted:Western interests are generally more moral interests yes, because western nations generally have superior human rights records, firmer grasp of a democratic processes and elections. How are the interests of Russia, Iran, China and North Korea generally moral? Just chiming in to golf clap this absolute banger. I mean, you've got white supremacy, cold war propaganda, islamophobia, and sinophobia all in one line! Absolute master class in neoliberal ideology.  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 4, 2024 13:20
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Stringent posted:Just chiming in to golf clap this absolute banger. I mean, you've got white supremacy, cold war propaganda, islamophobia, and sinophobia all in one line! You forgot to mention the russiophobia, but I suppose that would undermine the white supremacy claim. Still, it only took a month for a bunch of people to suddenly read that post. I wonder why?
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Nov 4, 2024 17:01
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The arguments(?) being implied are also kinda bad. Like Jon Pod Van Damm not only get's Hitler's nationality incorrect (Hitler was Austrian, not German, which implicitly accepts the pan-German nationalist right wing framing), but just presents a list of white European politicians, erasing completely the large numbers of non-white Europeans, and also the large number of non-white Americans in America/Canada/New Zeeland/Australia; and also excludes Japan and South Korea which are arguably Western countries. But then like, what is the argument even, that "Western" interests are immoral because a bunch of specifically European leaders did allegedly bad things (no idea what bad things Ryti, Tony Blair, or Boris Johnson did, also I'm in the list but I'm neither a European world leader nor Portuguese?), but I could easily present a list of non-Europeans who did bad things: Oda Nobunaga, Hideki Tojo, Mao Zedong, Stalin (assuming Jon Pod's framework is that the West is exclusive to Western and Central Europeans and not Eastern Europeans and Slavs), Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Ghengis Khan, Kim Jung-un, Nehru, the Shah, the House of Saud, Breznev, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Bashir Assad, Erdogan, Xi Jinping, and wow I've now have more non-Western bad people then Western (European) bad people, this doesn't seem to be a very good argument. And of course to make a comparison like, "X political system is better than political system Y" is not like Sino/Russo/Etc Phobia. Criticizing the political systems of other countries is not spreading or engaging in irrational fear mongering on the basis of their culture and nationality. If its okay to critique capitalism and western actions it should be also on the table to critique non-capitalist or capitalist opposed systems and the actions of non-western countries for some definition of "western". The implication that "western" means "white" seems a bit off base and reductionist to me. Especially when I very specifically said "how are the interests (i.e national/state/government decision making & policy making regarding foreign policy) moral regarding those countries, and did not at all say how are their societies or cultures not moral. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Nov 4, 2024 |
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Nov 4, 2024 18:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:The arguments(?) being implied are also kinda bad. Like Jon Pod Van Damm not only get's Hitler's nationality incorrect (Hitler was Austrian, not German, which implicitly accepts the pan-German nationalist right wing framing), You are also accepting a hardcore ethno-nationalist framing if you think that an immigrant cannot become the nationality of the country they've obtained citizenship of.
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Nov 4, 2024 18:28
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Grimnarsson posted:You are also accepting a hardcore ethno-nationalist framing if you think that an immigrant cannot become the nationality of the country they've obtained citizenship of. There's a distinction though between "German" as in "Citizen of the Kaiserreich" circa 1917 and "German" as in the nationalist construct, I think this context was clear as to what I meant and was referring to because OP was referring to "Westerners" in listing Hitler as a "Western" leader.
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Nov 4, 2024 18:40
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Raenir Salazar posted:also I'm in the list but I'm neither a European world leader nor Portuguese? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_de_Oliveira_Salazar
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Nov 5, 2024 13:21
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aww, what do you have against teacher uncle ho?
HookedOnChthonics fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Nov 14, 2024 |
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Nov 14, 2024 10:01
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Raenir Salazar posted:The arguments(?) being implied are also kinda bad. Like Jon Pod Van Damm not only get's Hitler's nationality incorrect (Hitler was Austrian, not German, which implicitly accepts the pan-German nationalist right wing framing), but just presents a list of white European politicians, erasing completely the large numbers of non-white Europeans, and also the large number of non-white Americans in America/Canada/New Zeeland/Australia; and also excludes Japan and South Korea which are arguably Western countries. What's the temporal boundary of the "more moral" system you're talking about? Was colonialism part of it? The war in Iraq (that's at least one thing Tony Blair did)? The Vietnam War?
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Nov 14, 2024 10:45
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Raenir Salazar posted:(assuming Jon Pod's framework is that the West is exclusive to Western and Central Europeans and not Eastern Europeans and Slavs) Eagerly awaiting your verdict on Czechs.
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Nov 14, 2024 18:10
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Precambrian Video Games posted:Eagerly awaiting your verdict on Czechs. They're the centralist of Europeans, if I mentally picture the most "middle" of Europe, I imagine Prague. The Artificial Kid posted:What's the temporal boundary of the "more moral" system you're talking about? Was colonialism part of it? The war in Iraq (that's at least one thing Tony Blair did)? The Vietnam War? Probably a tricky question; depending on your point of view it's entirely possible for a "country" (for some definition of country or nation or state, etc, any area of land with laws applied to it populated by people(s)) to be both been colonized, engaged in colonization of some form (including programs aimed at ethnic consolidation i.e Francofication(sp?), Russofication, Sinofication, and other forms or variations of assimilation, the New Soviet Man etc), and consider themselves in the post-Colonialization era as Western. And also tricky because some countries depending on your ideological lens, like Canada, are "Settler-colonial projects" engaged in colonialization as we speak! But they're undoubtably Western, a part of the West, and generally a very liberal free democratic society where dissent is largely speaking permitted. But again, a nation can be western and generally have a more "Moral" political system in this context despite flaws, relative to for example, literal dictatorships.
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Nov 14, 2024 23:23
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