So, this was true once:
The Chinese learned a lot from Western Joint Ventures, and I remember talking to a consultant back in the early 2000’s about tech transfer. He said it was very clear: you got into the Chinese market and/or used their lower cost production and what they got in exchange was tech transfer. This isn’t some evil conspiracy, back in the 80s when the US fell behind on cars they basically forced Japanese car companies to set up factories in the US, and yeah, there was transfer of knowledge to American companies.
Now, for the West, what Western companies and the West in general got in return for their tech was not worth the cost: it was stupid and short-sighted, but companies were lining up to do it and economists and business gurus and politicians in the West were for it: the only thing that mattered was making more short to mid-term profits and all sorts of nonsense about it not mattering where goods were produced was espoused by very important intellectuals and officials. There was no attention to the long term cost in terms of loss of technological lead and moving the industrial base to China. I know: I was one of the voices warning, publicly, to stop taking short term profits by selling China our future.
But at this point it’s no longer accurate. Chinese car companies are more advanced than Tesla: they have better batteries, better HUDS, better auto-pilots and they also have faster product cycles.
Again, in most fields the Chinese are now more advanced than the West: the remains are important but in a minority—things like lithography and aerospace, but they’ll catch up in both in time and for Aerospace I’d already buy a jet-liner from China before Boeing, and Boeing’s problems have nothing to do with China. Airbus is still clearly better, but it won’t be in twenty years, and possibly not even in ten.
The West was 100% complicit in the “China Cycle”, but that cycle is almost entirely over and China is now just straight up more advanced and out-competing us.
The West made this choice. We could have maintained our tech lead for another fifty years or so if we wanted to and followed the necessary policies. We didn’t, and to expect China to not use the same methods every other major country used to industrialize is insane. Every accusation made in the “China Cycle” is something the US did to Britain back in the 19th century.
Perhaps China could have industrialized without it being disastrous for the West, but not under any sort of laissez-faire or neoliberal international trade regime.
If you’re young, learn Mandarin. Maybe even if you’re not young.
Oakchair
Yes, for the Western ruling class the accent of China is harmful. Yes, the ability of the west to gain benefits by bullying and abusing the rest of the world is hindered by China’s wealth, power and technology. But why should we view a psychopathic ruling class sinking as anything but a goal for humanity? Ask Gaza, Afghanistan, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, Honduras, Pakistan, Niger, Somalia, Ukraine, Serbia etc etc etc how they feel about it.
Pretty much the entire fall in world poverty in the last 40 years occurred because of China. Now African can get roads, hospitals, airports and manufacturing goods instead of coups and bombs. Ironically, this is an example of greed (accompanied with China understanding how nations develop) improving the world. The western ruling class destroying themselves is the best thing they’ve ever done for humanity.
Hopefully they crash and burn like a Boeing 747.
Willy
I worked for a company where I’d been told that I had to do my part to help them automate, so they could maintain a competitive edge. After they sent those automated productions to China they canned my ass. I didn’t feel so bad after hearing similar stories from others more educated and qualified. Since we’d been part of our companies, were we to blame?
Obviously, we’d all been powerless. And if it hadn’t been us, then it would’ve been another powerless person. It was a handful of men, just a few evil stupid men, who’d taken control over our companies and were moving the rest of us around like puppets for the sake of their own short-term gains. I suppose we puppets could’ve had a revolution as soon as we’d figured it out. But those evil stupid men had filled us with just enough hope and fear by using lies, for the sole purpose of keeping us domesticated and our energies confused.
In a better world they’d be terrified of us, or at least respectful enough to know that our long-term consequences about their actions would also be involving them, personally.
Instead of seeing things as “the company” or “the system” or even larger sweeping generalizations of large territorial tribes such as “The West”, we might need to figure out how to get everybody to focus on the actual power masters behind whatever conditions are being foisted upon us. We need to stop worshipping individuals as godlike superiors. The truth, the way of things, is the only true godlike superior.
Long ago I recommended Joe Rogan’s podcast just because I saw his Cornell West interview. Joe’d later bow to the money, even bragging that Elon Musk was a great friend (who cares) and a genius (complete bullshit). Joe’s fawning over Cornell had been an act, to keep his audience domesticated with energies confused. All Musk ever did was learn how to bullshit geniuses into giving him all the credit, then all the power, so he could eliminate them and then use other geniuses for his own personal gain. The US government even fell for his schemes. But maybe that organization was also, a few evil stupid men puppeting lots of powerless confused energies.
I saw Rogan’s latest comedy routine where he again bragged about being buddies with Musk. People booed. Talk about an unfunny, uninspired, insipid, burning boatload of shit, the exact opposite of a George Carlin. That guy’s rich and famous? We’d been conned. Again. In a saner, more intelligent world, we’d all be better, much better, at cutting through any of the manipulative bullshit which seems so intrinsic to the vast majority of power players, before they ever even become powerful. And we’d always focus our energies on the very worst of them first, to avoid the ‘confused energies’ they rely upon.
Tc
China also got a shitload of pollution , industrial easte, and everything bad that goes with industrialization. So there’s that.
Of course North America and Australia made up for the lost pollution opportunities with fracking, strip-mining, etc.
I’m sure their quality could br as good as the west’s but I still don’t trust anything made in China (are metal parts mixed with dangerous heavy metals? questions like that). Then again, our own industry deregulators iare busy racing to the bottom on that front too
KT Chong
I’d to introduce you guys to a source to find out ACTUAL facts about China’s economy and the current state of the trade war — i.e., this is a good source to find hard data and information to counter all the “Chinese is collapsing” propaganda that permeates the Western media :
https://www.youtube.com/@Inside_China_Business/videos
The YouTuber — an American analyst and entrepreneur in China but does not speak Chinese — pulls together complex data, charts, figures, numbers, reports, researches and studies from varied hard industrial and scientific sources. He analyzes, connects and digests the raw data. Then he summarizes and presents the information in short videos, which are usually under 10 minutes.
His presentations are in simple, easy to understand English. His videos show all the sources, charts, numbers, etc., on screen as he speaks to support his analyses… unlike, let say, Peter Zeihan who just keeps bullshitting but rarely if ever shows any hard data or number to support his claims. What I also like about his videos: under his video and in the descriptions, he always lists and links all his sources, (which IMO should become a required and standard practice for ALL YouTube videos,) so you can cross-check and peruse his sources.
Here are some highlights and samples of his videos. I recommend watching those videos in small doses instead of binge-watching them all at once.
On EVs:
• UBS hired engineers to tear apart and analyze BYD’s electric car. Here is what they learned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgmDiWfZJcI
• Detroit auto engineers tear down BYD’s Seagull: “An extinction-level event”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGgo_wpV1ug
• Chinese cars are taking over Australia. That’s why our legacy carmakers push for tariffs and bans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zxOdnr7YuY
On BRICS:
• China is completing a global ports network for the BRICS economic bloc, and nobody noticed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KlIBDMpFNM
• The BRICS trading system is already wiping out US farmers, as global price discovery is destroyed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7m5Z6FuPbk
• The Russia-China grains corridor will completely displace the US, Canada, Australia, and France:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehdH2g4OnCs
On the trade war:
• China’s enormous subsidies come from trading profits. US and European subsidies come from taxpayers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pmiTxEfCQc
• Sanctions against Huawei fail, then birth “Delete America” campaign across China’s supply chains:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebGXnWA-EkU
• Solar panel factories in the United States are going broke, except the ones China is building:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbO3ovIGQnc
On the chip war:
• Sanctions were supposed to stop China’s semiconductor industry. The opposite happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIYR8Rrvaf0
• Now it’s official: our own semiconductor industry is in a “death spiral” after Chinese export bans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHpzzaaI-20
• Now it’s 3: Huawei, SMIC shock the semiconductor industry again by introducing 3-nanometer chip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjQ3ft0ummY
On Export Control:
• America’s factory boom now a bust as China cuts off graphite sales, likely to push tariff repeals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tq3tfq1ap8
• Airbus, Boeing, and the Pentagon have a Russia-China problem: we need their titanium to build planes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxe_oWEI5nQ
• China’s export curbs on Antimony aren’t a new front in the trade war. The problem is much worse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKStf1uSqYA
KT Chong
Oakchair,
America knows it is in deep shit because China is breaking America’s monopoly of the international payment system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaIKeXnX1UM
That is the real threat to the US hegemony.
Carborundum
I’m trying to envision the Western policy regime under which this wouldn’t have happened. As soon as the Chinese decided to get their shit together the die was cast. Looks to me that the level of progress in areas without joint ventures is just as impressive as in the areas with them. A billion people who decide they like to work are pretty potent, much more so than several hundred million who focus on their entitlements.
nobody
Engines are the main stumbling point for Chinese aircraft technology. China is largely dependent on Russian technology for jet engines, and Russia itself is still far behind the western cutting-edge in this area.
It will be a long time until China can design and build something on par with the Trent 7000 or GEnx.
mago
I’ve commented here before how in the 90’s I would recommend to friends starting families that their children should learn Mandarin.
Not so sure about that now, but it’s always a useful tool to learn about an ascendant culture’s way of thinking and communicating.
The reason I’m not so sure is I think the ancient civilization known as China is going to crash and burn in short order, along with the rest of the world.
The imbalances are reaching (have reached) a critical tipping point.
I’ve also previously commented that the Chinese are exploitative in the extreme. They’ve never encountered a water way they didn’t want to dam or any environment they didn’t want to engineer.
They’ll also kill and eat or render into a medical remedy any animal that walks, swims, flies or burrows.
It’s interesting that a culture that gave the world Taoism, Tai Chi and some superlative cuisine and poetry could be so bureaucratically bound.
I’ve also previously mentioned a mentality given to dualistic black and white thinking. As a Bhutanese man said to me of his Chinese wife, don’t try to explain gray areas to her, she doesn’t understand.
There’s much the Chinese contribute on the other side of the register. For example, they run killer restaurants that one can find in any corner, hamlet and shopping mall in the greater US of Ah.
Basta ya! I’ve overstayed my visit once again. Ciao.
bruce wilder
For some value of “we” and “our”, capiche?
It is rapidly receding in the rearview, but if you really wanted to understand the deal that Deng offered the West back in the ‘90s, then you should have watched clothing and textiles. Someone with some financial acumen and connections could make literal hundreds of millions connecting China to Walmart and JC Penney.
The quality of clothing went up, almost incidentally. But, the clear message to financial masters of the universe was that billions could be made by transferring production while maintaining distribution. For a time.
The PMC class prospered in a way from their role midwifing the ever more complex transfer of production. The Rust Belt rusted. New York, Boston, D.C., Seattle, California did just fine. Damn Electoral College!
SocalJimObjects
One man’s tech transfer is another person’s borrowing, and speaking of the later America did a lot of “borrowing” from Europe for her industrial revolution, https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-europe
Bukko Boomeranger
Don’t despair, Ian! (or rather, DO despair, but for different reasons…) The current system of “China, the factory floor for the entire world” can only last as long as intercontinental shipping costs are effectively zero. The coming Peak Oil Collapse will put paid to that. All of a sudden, making things THERE and freighting them HERE (wherever “here” is outside eastern China) won’t so simple. There will still be bunker fuel for ships and diesel for trains. Just not so much of it, and it won’t be so cheap. Why waste those valuable substances on sending cheap plastic crap (or even expensive industrial products) for outsiders? Who are often ungrateful and unable to pay with meaningful currency. There’s going to be a lot less “stuff” (cue George Carlin routine on that theme) going around. The Chinese are going to be keeping more of it at home. The rest of the world will have to make do with what it makes at home. Even if it IS inferior to what (no longer) comes out of China. In the Grim World of the Futurescape, non-Chinese won’t be obsessing with the latest, greatest electric vehicles. They’ll be happy for food to eat. Would you like turnips with that, sir?
Willy
I knew an ME for a PNW semi-truck maker, whose company was moving production to Mexico. They sent him down there after the new plant was up and running to help with the transition. He’d half-expected to see wall to wall children toiling in the hot sun. What he actually saw was a handful of well-educated tech types tweaking all the robots, inside a new A.I building. It’s safe to assume that as the work keeps returning to the USA, the workers wont.
Long ago, I had no problem with China-made rubber dogshit, since the value from pranks only lasts a moment. I’d later rationalize China-made underwear since nobody sees it. Then I appreciated Harbor freight, since China-made tools usually lasted long enough to complete that one unusual project. After noticing that tools made by American brand names looked identical to the Harbor Freight stuff, with only the colors and logos being different, I rationalized myself a savvy shopper. Then I noticed my Korean phone was China-made. I started taking care of all my old major appliances since the new China-made reputable-name-brand had become tech-jingly disposable, at the request of American management.
And now the making is coming back, at least to North America. Maybe there’ll be a cycle where American robots make quality American stuff for affordable prices. Because they’ll have no other choice. Observe the “surprising” slow sales of the F-150 Lightning, just far too damned expensive for Ford’s famous original targeted class of consumers.
Overall, it now seems wise to observe how China will be managing their own consumer culture going forward, because they now seem most able to lead the world in such things. The managing, I mean. They’re just smarter than the Americans, still struggling to see beyond their late-stage capitalism.
Anon
Medical remedy. Lol. Thank you for this characterization, as I am mostly familiar with the culture in the historical and epistemological sense. I assume they have their problems, but can only interpret them macro-economically. The same is true for Russia; which of late has increased in its moral standing, amongst various influential voices in alternative media. As a Westerner, who still finds much to appreciate in his culture, despite its spiritual and material decline, I am prone to being reminded that the grass is always greener on the other side. It would behoove us in the West, to focus on improving our own standing, through sincere INtrospection and INvestment.
Anonymous
Is there any reason why building jet engines would be that hard? China has successfully built their 5th generation military jet. Given COMAC and Boeing implosion, getting experienced engineers (who would be squeezed out by Boeing’s corporate culture) should be ready. Wind tunnels and simulators are easy to build, and the Chinese are already doing well on material science and robotics (to improve built quality). They’re not there yet, but considering that they could get sanctioned out of their civil aviation at any time and already proven capable of standing up a full digital devices ecosystem in 3-4 years, jet engines seem like an easy problem by comparison.
Anonymous
Is there any reason why building jet engines would be that hard? China has successfully built their 5th generation military jet. Given COMAC and Boeing implosions, getting experienced engineers should be easy. Wind tunnels and simulators are easy to build, and the Chinese are already doing well on material science and precision robotics (to improve built quality). They’re not there yet, but considering that they could get sanctioned out of their civil aviation at any time and already proven capable of standing up a full digital devices ecosystem in 3-4 years, jet engines seem like an easy problem by comparison.
Anonymous
mago,
Extrapolating the characteristics of a nation of 1.4 billion people based on one guy complaining about his wife is methodologically unsound.
The Chinese interest in damming rivers goes back the need of a rice cultivation civilization to deal with periodic flooding and droughts. Whatever you might think of their purported bad stewardship, they’ve been feeding themselves off of their fields for thousands of years, whereas Americans have drained their Western aquifers and eroded away most of their deep virgin top soil in little over 100 years.
We don’t get China air apocalypse stories anymore. Could it be because once the Chinese people become wealthier, they can apply their resources towards building a better environment for themselves?
By all means don’t learn Mandarin. Your Mandarin will never be as good the English of Chinese born after 1990. And auto translation programs are a lot easier than years of memorizing Chinese characters and figuring out tones.
StewartM
Tc
China also got a shitload of pollution , industrial easte, and everything bad that goes with industrialization.
Don’t you think that was also deliberate, by the capitalist-y PTB to avoid environment regulations? Everything in the name of stockholder value, baby!!
StewartM
“Shareholder value” is the main reason why the West has lost its competency and technical ascendancy. Putting the capitalist class in charge is putting the most greedy, most badly-informed, and most short-sighted group of people possible in charge of firms. The shareholders also are the group with no real interest in the long-term future of the business. Thus their destructive actions are all-so-predictable.
The employees know better and would run companies better, the customers know better and would run companies better, as both groups have a real stake in the company still being afloat and competitive a generation or more in the future. They have a real stake in the company making quality products. “Shareholder value” is the reason why US cars still can’t catch Japanese cars in quality/reliability after nearly 50 years, because the Japanese business model is “customers first, workers second, stockholders third” and “shareholder value” does not permit such a pecking order.
mago
Kind of funny Anonymous. The dude I referred to lived and worked with the Chinese for twenty years, so it wasn’t just his wife. My personal experience has borne out the generalization.
As for damming rivers, it extends beyond agriculture. There was a project on the board to dam a remote and pristine river in southern Tibet, just because. Doing so would have created huge environmental damage. I don’t know if it ever came to fruition.
There was another plan to create an alternative to the Panama Canal in Nicaragua, which would have displaced indigenous populations and destroyed invaluable wildlife habitat.
As for learning Mandarin, I said nothing about doing so myself. It seems that some people read the same way they listen—partially and with preconceived biases.
different clue
@Willy,
I myself always did have a problem with China-made rubber dogshit. Import enough lower-priced China-made rubber dogshits into America and all the American rubber dogshit makers lose their jobs. Outsource all the rubber dogshit production to China and all the American rubber dogshit makers lose their jobs.
What if making rubber dogshits was the only thing I knew how to do? My rubber dogshit job was sent to China and now I have no job, followed by no home, and then no food.
Let “rubber dogshit” in this example stand for “nearly everything”. Rubber dogshit makers were not the only people to lose their jobs.
Are we Americans too dumm to be able to make a rubber dogshit? I think not. I support “Survivalism in One Country”. That means that our fellow aMERicans make aMERica’s rubber dogshits at an aMERIcan wage right here in aMERica. And Etch-A-Sketches and drugs and Stanley Thermoses, too.
Anon
@Anonymous: I did not take @mago’s commentary as gospel, and hold it in no reverence; however, it is difficult to find a critique of China that isn’t steeped in regime change operation. I gather there aren’t many vocal critics in China either, and if there are, I haven’t heard a peep of their English. Russia is less opaque, but nonetheless foreign. It was Ian’s piece where he mentioned the Chechens that got me investigating the internal machinations of the Russian Federation, resulting in the (deeper) understanding that it too is a great power, and the wider perception, that nothing is perfect.
Anonymous
mago,
Still, you chose to quote one guy who was complaining about his wife rather than base your observation off of a broader range of experiences. Are your impressions based on recent observations in China itself or mostly amongst the Western residing diaspora population? If the former, how recent was your last observation?
Sympathetic non-Commie China watchers like Steve Hsu and Arnaud Bertrand note that the mainland culture is changing rapidly and decisively towards sustainability and a more humane living environment.
I don’t defend every decision of the Chinese government. I’m not aware of the project you mentioned but I remember many Chinese people being quite vocal against the Three Gorges Dam project. I was just pointing out that it’s pretty rich for westerners who mismanaged their resources (stolen from the natives) in a century to barrenness to cast stones against a people with a 20x longer track record.
Anon: plenty of Utube channels of westerners living and traveling in China out there. Most of the good documentary channels are in Chinese but there’s closed captioning. Here are a few. Imagine seeing China without the gray filter.
https://youtube.com/@tencentvideodocumentary?si=MBcTHNsjEM5lj8a4
https://youtube.com/@cctvdocumentary?si=CZS0qP-UDKprGEGe
https://youtube.com/@yit?si=cupkxGoeCwssU-7E
mago
and she said to me baby you ain’t seen nothing yet/ and babababy/I’m gonna give you something you ain’t never gonna forget/cause you ain’t seen nothing yet
Then there’s the China Syndrome.
I don’t know and I don’t care.
Chickens coming home to roost.
SocalJimObjects
It’s always amusing whenever someone suggests using something like an auto translation software to understand a foreign language. Sure you will be able to obtain some kind of translation courtesy of something like Google Translate, but too often you will end up with Garbage In Garbage Out.
Just one example that I came across earlier today was the following: 美選最強催票機, which Google Translate dutifully translates to “The most powerful ticket reminder machine in the beauty pageant”. That sentence was actually from a news headline reporting Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. The allusion of the US Presidential election as some kind of beauty pageant is what I would call a Google Translate classic, and the error in translation can only be understood by someone who knows both languages.
Anon
@Anonymous: My point was I want it without the ‘CCP’ filter.
Anon
@Anonymous: Or perhaps my desire to see views beyond their consensus, is a function of my own Western hubris, demanding dissent. It could just be my anarchism. Perhaps the CCP is merely an entrenched cultural artifact, and separating it from general Chinese thought is like separating an American from ‘democracy’. The CCP seems to play a very explicit role in social alignment, and there must be losers in this process, just and unjust; but here I am speaking like an agent again.
StewartM
SocalJimObjects
Just one example that I came across earlier today was the following: 美選最強催票機, which Google Translate dutifully translates to “The most powerful ticket reminder machine in the beauty pageant”.
Mandarin and all the Chinese “dialects” are among the most difficult for Google to translate. I’m not surprised.
For those wanting to get a peek at learning Mandarin, and for a take on Chinese culture, I suggest this Youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/@ABChinese
KT Chong
China-hater US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) released a report titled “The World China Made: ‘Made in China 2025’ Nine Years Later,” and the report has a surprising conclusion:
“We should be circumspect enough to realize that, in many areas, the days when China needed to steal from us are past. Now, in sectors as diverse as shipbuilding, EVs, and energy, China leads the rest of the world.”
The report is here:
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/rubio-releases-report-the-world-china-made-made-in-china-2025-nine-years-later/
Direct link to the full report:
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-World-China-Made.pdf
KT Chong
I don’t know him. No one here knows him. We don’t even know his real identity, not that we want to know or even care. So why should any of us trust anything he has to say about China or Chinese because he has heard something from some friend or the wife of some friend or whoever, that may or may not exist, especially when his comments reek of racism: “Chinese people are exploitative,” Chinese people are too stupid to make jet engines, but hey, at least they run killer restaurants,” “Chinese people are simpletons and can’t see and don’t understand gray areas,” blah, blah, blah.
Which is why I’d rather use third-party hard sources to counter and debunk his wild claims. You do not have to know who I am. You do not have trust me or my (imaginary or not) friend or wife of a friend. You just have to trust the hard data:
China wants to dominate global commercial aerospace markets by 2035. They are ahead of schedule:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYcpWM507n8
China’s COMAC will be bigger than Boeing and Airbus, combined, by 2040:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lxCrdzVEHk
Anonymous
And if you study Chinese for years and years and get really comfortable reading Chinese news, you can translate that as “US election’s strongest vote getting tool”. I can think of several American born Chinese who trudged through years of weekend Chinese school as kids and might not be able to manage that translation without trying resorting to auto translate of phrases for help. The reason translation went to beauty pageant is because the truncated phrase for US election is the identical to the standard phrase for beauty pageants.
Translation tools have gotten much better than they used to be and linguistics is a lot easier to manage than other kinds of machine learning/AI ventures. Translation tools that can pick up slangs and short hands, and pull in more context and metadata, will be able to deliver a better translation. I think that for anything other than classical Chinese, the translation functions will become near perfect in the next 10 years.
And even if translation tools progress slowly, non native Chinese learners are competing against young Chinese who start learning English in first or second grade and continue on through high school and sometimes college. Although they’re not at the English standards of Scandinavians or Germans, many young Chinese people know enough English to easily travel abroad and continue their education in English language universities. By all means learn Chinese if you enjoy doing something hard or want to inhabit a very different cultural and mental space for a bit, but these days it’s very unlikely to bring economic advantages to the speaker.
mago
I’ve often had difficulty deciphering KT Chong’s comments.
I used to think he was thinking in Chinese and translating it into English, but was never sure.
In this thread he conflates different remarks into one source and labels innocuous remarks as racist.
I’ll give him (or her?) the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s just a language thing.
Not gonna touch the translation topic, although I have translated literary works the old school way, so I have at least a passing knowledge of some of the challenges involved.
Speaking of which KT, are you familiar with the term ad hominem?
mago
Skimming articles and comments then responding on the fly seems to be a prevalent phenomenon.
As a Taoist sage who I respect once noted, hurrying is for those of little accomplishment.
mago
ABC, KT? Just curious. . .
Anonymous
Anon,
The CPC is the universally recognized government of mainland China, has 100 million members, and had something like support of 90 percent of the population. Any proper coverage of China will have a “CPC filter” because modern China is, for better or worse, built by the CPC.
However, lucky for you that the US just put in $1.6 billion into anti-China propaganda. So you will soon be able to enjoy even more Shenyun, Uyghur separatist fake atrocity stories, and VOA gray filtered stories soon. They just won’t tell you anything useful about actual existing China.
Anonymous
No need to let this through Ian but your choice.
Your covert tipping of hand is why I no longer regularly post here or contribute to your fund raisers.
It’s fine to me that we don’t agree on most things. You and your reader base are Western liberals of a certain type and I’m not, but I make a point of checking perspectives that I don’t agree with to reduce my own blindspots. But you let mago spew numerous ad hominems and yes, as KT Chong said, essentialist racist assumptions, in this thread and then editorialized my comment to remove my far less nasty response to him.
I’m glad I didn’t wade into the Communism thread. So much projection by a bunch of people who read very little Marx and none of the significant Marxist thinkers of the 20th Century.
SocalJimObjects
A lot of people here are smoking something strong. Starting from 2021 onwards, private tuition of all sorts of subjects have been banned in China, and English was not excepted, https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/china-cracks-down-on-language/. In other words, English proficiency in China has reached its peak and will continue to decline going forward.
It’s really rich for people who don’t speak a second language to expect other people to be fluent in language X based on just one or two hours of study every week. Consider the case of Taiwan’s Bilingual 2030 Policy, where the government has explicitly introduced all sorts of measures to boost young people’s proficiency in English; the program’s ambitious goals have been constantly watered down, and the Education Ministry is now saying that bilingualism may not happen after all!!!
Just three months ago, a local news station ran an interesting item about a Taiwanese student who had spent his first 9 years of study in Great Britain only to return to Taiwan due to family reasons. On attending his first English language class, he was constantly criticized by his teacher for speaking “very poor” English. ROFL!!!
I am not advocating anyone here to study Mandarin. At the end of the day, if you want to do X, you’ll find and create reasons to do it, and if you don’t want to do it, then you’ll discover and invent all sorts of excuses not to do X. What’s really funny however is that Louis C.K got it right after all. In one of his skits he said something along white people arriving in Year 2 and expecting to find a table for 2 at a local restaurant ……
Richard Holsworth
Contorted segue. Just read that Larry Ellison wants Oracle to be a nuclear power. Actually, some background: Bill Gates is a major force behind softening up the public on nuclear power; with the rise of AI with its insatiable need for massive amounts of electricity, competitiveness dictates “innovative solutions”. Re-enter out hero: Bill Gates has gotten approval to build a nuclear reactor in Wyoming. Now all the big guns in AI want their own reactors. And the way is now paved for this to happen.
2021 article on the need to stop the regulatory capture of the NRC:
“Under the Trump administration, the commission moved further toward industry self-regulation. Notably, in January 2019, the three Trump-appointed commissioners outvoted the two holdovers on the five-member commission to reject the staff’s recommendation that US nuclear plants be required to update their protections against earthquakes and flooding.”
https://thebulletin.org/2021/01/biden-can-rescue-the-nuclear-regulatory-commission-from-industry-capture/
Same source 2024:
“The Biden administration’s recent abandonment of Jeff Baran for another term as member on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) bodes ill for the independence of the agency—and the safety and security of the country. A longtime commissioner, Baran reportedly did not have enough support from some senate Democrats to win another nomination.
His crimes? Being ‘an overzealous regulator overtly hostile to nuclear energy.’
Senate Democrats say they would prefer a nominee who is not ‘too focused on safety.’l
https://thebulletin.org/2024/02/congress-torpedoes-a-biden-nominee-and-casts-doubt-on-nuclear-safety/
Richard Holsworth
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961) | National Archives
“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.“
if something can go wrong but (we’re assured) probably won’t; but if it did the consequences would be “bad”*
*Spengler:
Don’t cross the streams.
Venkman:
Why?
Spengler:
It would be bad…
https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud-wars/oracle-shocker-larry-ellison-planning-3-nuclear-reactors-for-worlds-largest-data-center/
Richard Holsworth
Ellison secretly acknowledges Mutphy’s Law. Billionaire boltholes to survive the end of the world billionaire co-founder of Oracle,
Larry Ellison, bought the majority of the island of Lanai in remote (and safe) Hawaii in 2012.
https://www.loveproperty.com/galleries/73268/billionaire-boltholes-to-survive-the-end-of-the-world
KT Chong
>Larry Ellison, bought the majority of the island of Lanai in remote (and safe) Hawaii in 2012.
This reminds me of an oldie but goodie:
Honest Government Ad | Visit Hawai’i! 🌺
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfAiB2ZoRhM
And related:
Honest Government Ad | Visit Puerto Rico! 🇵🇷
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-GYqakwHdg
different clue
If ” the end of the world” arrives and finds Ellison on his Lanai estate, will starving Hawaiian Islanders ( both native and settler-colonialist and imported labor descended) acccept starvation and other death on the other Islands? Or will many of the move to Lanai seeking survival? And who will have more guns and bullets? Ellison and his private army? Or all the refugees seeking survival on Lanai?