Geopolitics in the 2020s.

[dorlomin]

9 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

 ICU

ICE (internal combustion engine).

Thank you for spotting this. It has helped improve the quality of my post. 

[Dunning1874]

What level of proof do you need to accept that China is committing atrocities against the Uighurs? It's quite blatantly happening and undoubtedly abhorrent. The fact that it's advantageous for Western governments to point out human rights abuses due to the current state of their relationship with China doesn't change the reality of what they're doing.

[welshbairn]

3 hours ago, dorlomin said:

Out side

Critique number 2. No explanation necessary I hope.

[welshbairn]

3 hours ago, dorlomin said:

US company SpaceX is launching a constellation of 10 000s of satellites.

Critique number 3. Not sure why you placed this in the middle of scary plans for space weapons, everyone has them, even India destroyed one of its own satellites last year. The Space X satellites are designed for a relatively short active life, then to burn up in the atmosphere and be replaced. The sheer number of their eventual deployment at the higher range of ambition makes the system pretty well invulnerable to attack, if one's knocked out the others can move around to compensate. 

[Guest JTS98]

6 hours ago, Detournement said:

If it was real China would be a crazy dystopia. It obviously isn't. 

When I was in Asia last year I was shocked by the anti Chinese racism of white European tourists, travellers and residents I spoke to. Australians as well but that was less shocking. JTS98 seems to have went down the rabbit hole. 

I'd usually be offended by what amounts to a coward's accusation of racism. But you're just talking such utter nonsense that it's impossible to get worked up by it.

 

[Guest JTS98]

6 hours ago, NotThePars said:

In fairness asking a Brit if he wants to move to a country which airbrushes it's historical record is really funny

Not really. You can still read all about the British Empire and what happened. Not really comparable to China.

That's one of these posts that seems like a nice soundbite to people who don't understand the issue.

[Guest JTS98]

6 hours ago, Merkie84 said:

I lived in Beijing for 3 years. 
 

Returning to Europe was like going back 5 years in time. 
 

The 21st century will be China’s in the same way the 20th was America’s.

 

 

That's true of pretty much all of developed East Asia, to be fair. Not just China.

It's hard to spend time in Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and think 'Well, the UK is very forward-thinking and developed'. Even aspects of infrastructure and use of tech stuff in KL are miles ahead of most of Europe.

The 21st Century will not be China's if it continues to be governed as it is now.

Edited July 23, 2020 by JTS98

[NotThePars]

14 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

Not really. You can still read all about the British Empire and what happened. Not really comparable to China.

That's one of these posts that seems like a nice soundbite to people who don't understand the issue.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes

This is what I'm directly referring to.

But at the same time,

Don't have a cow, man

[Merkie84]

The Chinese aren’t messing about, they literally have a 100 year plan which they are about 10 or so years through, designed to get them to be the most powerful country on earth with the rest of the world dancing to their tune.

Western democracies barely know what is happening in a weeks time. 

I have spent a lot of time in Asia and Africa over the past feed years, and everywhere you go there is major infrastructure  projects being built by China. Coupled with the hoovering up of the natural resources and buying of debts of these countries, it is hard to see what will stop them.  Certainly not calls for democracy.  

Just because the party is called “ the communist party  of China “ does not mean that it or china will face the same future as for instance the Soviet Union. Marx or Lenin would not recognise 21st century China as being in any more communist than America. 

Chinese society is one of the most rampantly individualistic and capitalist economies there is , it is brutally dog eat dog, climb over your friends and neighbours to get ahead, the latest consumer item etc. 

The days of communal farms and pouring over every word of maos little red book are long gone. 

[Guest JTS98]

7 hours ago, NotThePars said:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes

This is what I'm directly referring to.

But at the same time,

Don't have a cow, man

Yet here is the information freely published in a newspaper. Was the editor of the newspaper arrested? Has the journalist been fired? Has the owner of the newspaper disappeared for a few months for 'questioning'?

It's simply in no way comparable to the situation in China.

[Guest JTS98]

2 hours ago, Merkie84 said:

1) The Chinese aren’t messing about, they literally have a 100 year plan which they are about 10 or so years through, designed to get them to be the most powerful country on earth with the rest of the world dancing to their tune.

Western democracies barely know what is happening in a weeks time. 

2) I have spent a lot of time in Asia and Africa over the past feed years, and everywhere you go there is major infrastructure  projects being built by China. Coupled with the hoovering up of the natural resources and buying of debts of these countries, it is hard to see what will stop them.  Certainly not calls for democracy.  

3) Just because the party is called “ the communist party  of China “ does not mean that it or china will face the same future as for instance the Soviet Union. Marx or Lenin would not recognise 21st century China as being in any more communist than America. 

Chinese society is one of the most rampantly individualistic and capitalist economies there is , it is brutally dog eat dog, climb over your friends and neighbours to get ahead, the latest consumer item etc. 

The days of communal farms and pouring over every word of maos little red book are long gone. 

1) Yeah, and the plan is a weakness as well as a strength. It's a system that, due to the existence of said plan, must reward and promote loyalists rather than the best minds. And we see this in what is basically an inept government, an inept diplomatic core, and a regularly confused military.

A plan is no use if the people implementing it aren't up to the task. And China's system will always stop it having its best people on the job.

2) This is already slowing. Various countries have called them on the terms of deals and growth in the Belt and Road is well behind what was scheduled. They're basically trying to make money by tapping into things the private sector hadn't yet done, and are now discovering that the private sector hadn't touched them because they were not financially viable. Read into the trainline they've build to connect themselves to Europe with its columns of empty wagons running every day because they have to. Utter ineptitude.

But they'll carry on until the boss says stop. And the boss won't say stop anytime soon.

If the Chinese had a competent government, they'd be a major threat. But they just so obviously don't.

3) Agreed. There are communist hangovers, but it's not a communist government in any real meaningful way. It's just a bog-standard dictatorship. And it functions about as well as most dictatorships.

[Ross.]

4 hours ago, JTS98 said:

Read into the trainline they've build to connect themselves to Europe with its columns of empty wagons running every day because they have to.

Are they(And the Russians) still pumping money into this? The whole point was to cut shipping times and transportation costs and get things from factory to consumer at a far quicker rate. The Russians were in on it because(Presumably) it would give them more influence on Western Europe. It was an ambitious plan but one that seemed relatively sensible in many respects, and absolutely mental in others. A slow down in consumer spending would obviously negate a substantial part of the reasoning behind it.

[Detournement]

12 hours ago, JTS98 said:

 

The 21st Century will not be China's if it continues to be governed as it is now.

This is the equivalent of saying Liverpool need to sack Klopp. 

It's readily apparent to anyone with a grasp of economics that state planning has a been a huge advantage to China and if they continue to invest in their country at the same rate in the next 40 years as they have in the past 40 they will by far surpass everyone else. 

[Detournement]

Team America World Police attacking a civilian Iranian passenger airliner. 

Thankfully they didn't shoot it down again.

[welshbairn]

13 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Team America World Police attacking a civilian Iranian passenger airliner. 

Thankfully they didn't shoot it down again.

Maybe aye, maybe naw, but that's the airline that the Republican Guard forced to keep flying to and from China and other hotspots at the beginning of the coronavirus, and is blamed for much of the unusually high infection rate for their region.

[NotThePars]

Green light to gun down then, hooah

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, NotThePars said:

Green light to gun down then, hooah

Of course not, but all you see is a military jet a distance away through the window. Not enough evidence without verification, especially given the airline. The tweet said it had to make an emergency landing but it was on route to Beirut where it landed anyway. It then flew back to Tehran as scheduled.

Edited July 24, 2020 by welshbairn

[Enigma]

China's population is supposed to half by 2100, that might put a wee spanner in the works.

Yeah the ending of the one child policy has pretty much done f**k all to stop China’s declining birth rate. People living way longer too, going to be very interesting to see how China copes with that.

[Savage Henry]

10 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Of course not, but all you see is a military jet a distance away through the window. Not enough evidence without verification, especially given the airline. The tweet said it had to make an emergency landing but it was on route to Beirut where it landed anyway. It then flew back to Tehran as scheduled.

Perhaps, perhaps not.  This could very easily be an RT/Press TV propaganda story.  Still, there’s a very subtle (yet not insignificant) move to raise tensions with Tehran.  The idea that Trump is de-escalating US military involvement in the “forever wars” is absolutely laughable. 

Edit: by the way, it used to be the case that US military planes would accompany passenger flights crossing over Iraqi airspace as a matter of routine.

Edited July 25, 2020 by Savage Henry

[welshbairn]

34 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

Perhaps, perhaps not.  This could very easily be an RT/Press TV propaganda story.  Still, there’s a very subtle (yet not insignificant) move to raise tensions with Tehran.  The idea that Trump is de-escalating US military involvement in the “forever wars” is absolutely laughable. 

Edit: by the way, it used to be the case that US military planes would accompany passenger flights crossing over Iraqi airspace as a matter of routine.

I've obviously no idea what happened, and I wouldn't put it past the Americans to do something like is alleged, but I'm also pretty sure that a commercial airline pilot's strict instructions if buzzed by fighter jets in a warzone or anywhere else is to fly straight and steady and not do anything unexpected like attempt evasion by plummeting a few thousand feet like they're in a dog fight.