China

And you can be sure the following are taking note:

The Philippines
Vietnam
India
Indonesia
Thailand
Burma/Myanmar
Much of Africa
What's left of Sri Lanka
Central and South America
various other places

 

China's final warning...

 

So why is it such a big issue then? It isn't the trip itself it is the proposed discussion points. They are concerned that Pelosi is going to go back on the China policy the US regime has had for the last 50 years.

 

Speaker of the house =/= Joe Back-bencher representative.

 

I was at airport in Shanghai in line for a domestic flight to BFE. Unfortunately I was in coach class and had to endure the line (almost missed the flight). Anyway, there was a Chinese man going literally apeshît at the ticket counter. Yes, westerners get angry but don’t underestimate the Chinese when they go apeshît.

 

She should issue a press release saying she is there to enforce the current policy.

 

Or inspect some microchip/semi-conductor factories, meet with management, and make pitches to offshore some of them to the US.

 

Workplace discipline in Red China:

 

Red China at Sea...



Right now their SSNs are pretty bad, although the paucity of detailed information makes them hard to evaluate. They are probably comparable to the Soviet Victor class SSNs (basically 1960s-1970s level of technology). The Japanese and Korean SSKs, even with their limitations as non-nuclear submarines, are probably much superior.

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PLAN is about equal to the Victor III in terms of sonar stealth and construction understanding, they also lack a credible SSBN as the current ships are very nosies and not considered creditable against the USN.

The SSK fleets are at parity with Kilo which is basically because that's all the operate, everything else is just torpedo fodder.

The main thing is that the Chinese PLAN has the benefits of modernizing the internals of much of their fleet, with low cost electronics etc, but they still have the engineering problems of building a deadly submarine, you can have all the faster computers in the world inside your submarine, but if you can't figure out the best hull shape for operating inside of the thermal levels you wasting your time.

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How do their most recent nuke powered subs compare to western subs in terms of noise?

The Han class was supposedly louder than 2 skeletons ******* in a metal trash can, but I've not seen much good data on their Type 94/95s.

Anyways, RAND has a China Military Scorecard (PDF) that covers this topic in some detail starting on page 184.

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Chinese submarines are mostly older diesel submarines which can be deadly in littoral environments but don't poise a huge threat to a blue water navy. The Entire Chinese navy is designed around area-denial weapons. These submarines along with land-based missiles & airbases are designed to keep US carrier forces far from shore in the case of a conflict but at this point they don't have much ability to hunt or engage a US fleet in equal combat.

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They're ****, they are loud, and there aren't very many of them. They might be useful in a conflict with the Philippines or Taiwan, but against Russia or the US, they would die horribly shortly after they cast off lines.

The thing is, even if someone handed you a set of drawings for a VCS, and even if you had a mountain of cash, and even if you had all the specialized tools and material necessary to build a VCS, building them quiet is (relatively) cheap and easy. Monitoring them, repairing them and improving them is really hard, and really expensive. Stupid **** that you only learn through years of experience operating them causes issues.

That's the part that catches a lot of diesel boats out. Sure, you can buy a quiet boat, but when things start to make noise, you have to have the money, expertise, and facilities to repair them. You can't play the "is it quiet enough" game, because honestly, its not.

 

Wait, I’m not supposed to do this with my team in Nashville?

 

If push comes to shove, US can enact an embargo around China by threatening to sink any ship beyond its territorial waters. If Chinese navy tries to intervene, those ships get sunk too.

 

Cnbc earlier today reported that a China based EV battery supplier has told tesla and Ford not to expect shipments for the time being

**** like this is more damaging than weak, wishful military threats. Hits our economy

 

Biden infrastructure bill has funds for domestic battery makers

 

Where are we going to get the components necessary for our war machines if it becomes necessary? Think about that with our ‘chip’ situation right now. D*** we have really opened up pandoras box.

 

Our clumsy foreign policy may end up helping us if this really happens. It would force us out of a destructive, fascist domestic policy.

 

Buy ENVX

 

Are y'all really hell bent on the US getting into a war with China? We are in a stagflation economic situation and we don't manufacture here like we used to. What would be the benefit to Americans?

 

On the bright side, since the glass could be half full...this bolsters the Drill Baby Drill brigade and highlights the failure of trying to kill fossil fuels.

 

Biden signed the chips act. Note the tough on China position started with Trump. We now have huge spending bills to move batteries and chips to the US.

Note when the US lost textile and other low skilled manufacturing jobs to China, no one gave a **** - another reason from Trumpism. But those factory jobs are more easily transferred to countries like Vietnam, so don’t expect a bailout of those industries.

 

China and Taiwan - Zeihan on Geopolitics

 

Default is not an option for Chinese who invest in real estate. They put 20-30% down. No way they walk away (nor will the government allow builders go bankrupt). The collapse of the real estate market is folks who stop buying in the first place (greater fools theory).

 

This is why we shouldn't fear China. Their economy is super over leveraged and poised for a depression. The government can prevent that by continuing to pour in money but then they will have worse inflation than the US. They shut down whole cities for covid thereby killing people and productivity. They are still in population threat due to the one child policy.

The only thing that makes them scary is they have a lot of people and they are the primary supplier of goods to the US. Cut that tie and their economy falls even faster. Now, this shouldn't happen in one day, but US businesses should be encouraged to find new supply chains. Move some things back to the US and shift other things to all of China's poor neighbors. If they build their economies they will be able to protect themselves from the Chinese military.

Some in Congress are talking about cutting off access of US property to rich Chinese. That would further put them in trouble of protecting their wealth and would give those with some power incentive to leave or seek real reforms within China.

 

Xi Jinping's Taiwan invasion plan torn up as Beijing's navy assessed: 'Massacre for China'

China ridiculed as Xi Jinping warned not to gamble with Washington 'Can't take the US!’

 

China wins again.

"
The WTA instituted a boycott, requested a private meeting with Peng, and called for a "full and transparent" investigation into her accusations. WTA chairman and CEO Steve Simon told The Associated Press at the time" ... the one thing that we can’t do is walk away from this." But the WTA never got that investigation from the Chinese government, and it never got to meet with Peng, either.
"

so...

"The Women's Tennis Association announced on Thursday that they will be ending their boycott of China and will resume playing there in the near future."

WTA ends Peng Shuai boycott without resolution, will resume playing in China

 

"After 16 months, PR China has failed to meet our conditions for returning to play there. Therefore we have given up and will return to play there anyway."

WTF.

 

wtf

'Alarming evidence' links China's Communist Party to American K-12 schools, anti-indoctrination group claims

 

Despite my reading of the whole thing, they never said one thing that the Chinese teachers in schools were actually doing wrong. If an exchange student or teacher says, “this is an exciting time to live in China—things are growing, getting better, cities and colleges are improving, China is becoming a world power, the standard of living is going up “—is that propaganda?? Even if they say, “people in China are happy with the direction the CCP is leading us?” is that is that the kind of thing this group is upset about? They throw in that some schools are near military bases. I just have a feeling that if a teacher had tried to plant spyware on a kid’s computer or led a dubious field trip to the Air Force base to look around, that would have been mentioned in such a long article that was already starving for any facts.
I think I am going to underreact on this one, but I am open to being persuaded.

 

I think it's more about spin and context than about espionage. All the nice things you mentioned about China could have been said about Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union at various times but largely were not, because they were enemies of the United States. I think these folks want China treated similarly by our institutions.

 

"it was discovered that 143 school districts across the United States have engaged in contracts to establish Confucius Institutes and Classrooms"

"In 2009, former Chinese Communist Party Senior Chairman Li Changchun admitted that Confucius Institutes were an ‘important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up’ and in 2017 Chinese government officials lauded the programs as a way to push China’s Belt and Road initiative"

I'm sure the classes tell you all the good and all the bad about China based on those two quotes.