Mantis42 posted:

Who is willing to be the Diaochan of the Thai people?

Some Guy TT posted:

Some Guy TT posted:

Some Guy TT posted:

DesertIslandHermit posted:

A good chunk of American business comes from China because it's cheap as hell labor. But American conservatives can't really talk about how ingrained we are and have been for years. Only that liberals got us into this mess.

quote:

In 2017, President Donald Trump and the Wisconsin GOP struck a deal with Foxconn that promised to turn Southeastern Wisconsin into a tech manufacturing powerhouse.
In exchange for billions in tax subsidies, Foxconn was supposed to build an enormous LCD factory in the tiny village of Mount Pleasant, creating 13,000 jobs.
Three years later, the factory — and the jobs — don’t exist, and they probably never will.
Inside the empty promises and empty buildings of Wisconn Valley.
The 8th wonder of the world*
*wonder not guaranteed

Oct 19, 2020

By Josh Dzieza

Hopes were high among the employees who joined Foxconn’s Wisconsin project in the summer of 2018. In June, President Donald Trump had broken ground on an LCD factory he called “the eighth wonder of the world.” The scale of the promise was indeed enormous: a $10 billion investment from the Taiwanese electronics giant, a 20 million-square-foot manufacturing complex, and, most importantly, 13,000 jobs.

Which is why new recruits arriving at the 1960s office building Foxconn had purchased in downtown Milwaukee were surprised to discover they had to provide their own office supplies. “One of the largest companies in the world, and you have to bring your own pencil,” an employee recalls wondering. Maybe Foxconn was just moving too fast to be bothered with such details, they thought, as they brought their laptops from home and scavenged pencils left behind by the building’s previous tenants. They listened to the cries of co-workers trapped in the elevators that often broke, noted the water that occasionally leaked from the ceiling, and wondered when the building would be transformed into the gleaming North American headquarters an executive had promised.

The renovations never arrived. Neither did the factory, the tech campus, nor the thousands of jobs. Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage.
Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones

Even the handful of jobs the company claims to have created are less than real: many of them held by people with nothing to do, hired so the company could reach the number required for it to get tax subsidy payments from Wisconsin. Foxconn failed at that objective, too: last week, Wisconsin rejected the company’s subsidy application and found it had employed only 281 people eligible under the contract at the end of 2019. Many have since been laid off.

Foxconn did not return repeated requests for comment.

It’s not unusual for either the Trump administration or Foxconn to make announcements that prove hollow. But for Foxconn, the show went on — for two years, the company, aided by the vocal support of the Wisconsin GOP, worked to maintain an illusion of progress in front of a business venture that never made economic sense.
Key Findings

Foxconn said it would build a 20 million-square-foot LCD complex. Instead, it constructed an empty building 1/20th that size it calls the “Fab.” Records show Foxconn recently changed the intended use of the building from manufacturing to storage.
The company said it would aim to employ 5,200 people at the end of 2020, a number that was to grow to the promised 13,000 jobs. At the end of 2019, Wisconsin found Foxconn employed only 281 people eligible under the terms of the contract.
Foxconn attempted to exploit a loophole in its contract with the state by hiring a sufficient number of employees to receive subsidies just before the end of the year. Employees were hired with no actual work to do. Many were laid off after the deadline passed.
One recruiting program targeted foreign recent graduates on student visas. Employees say these workers were targeted because they would work longer hours for lower pay, and their immigration status was used as leverage.
Employees describe a toxic workplace, where supervisors often berated and publicly humiliated employees. Many of the original Wisconsin hires have quit or been laid off.
Despite publicly insisting it was building an LCD factory, as early as 2018, Foxconn employees had been asked to figure out a business plan for the company in Wisconsin.
Foxconn’s search for a viable business led it to consider everything from fish farming to exporting dairy to renting storage space. Almost every idea collapsed in corporate infighting and a reluctance to spend money.
Very little manufacturing ever occurred with the Foxconn project. Recently, the company set up a small manufacturing line for servers.
Foxconn raced to finish buildings and set up an assembly line in time for a visit from Trump during the 2020 campaign. It obtained a temporary occupancy permit for the empty factory building and tried to finish a glass sphere, which had no clear business purpose, before falling behind.

That illusion has had real costs. State and local governments spent at least $400 million, largely on land and infrastructure Foxconn will likely never need. Residents were pushed from their homes under threat of eminent domain and dozens of houses bulldozed to clear property Foxconn doesn’t know what to do with. And a recurring cycle of new recruits joined the project, eager to help it succeed, only to become trapped in a mirage.

...

The project has fallen orders of magnitude short of its hiring and investment targets. WEDC found Foxconn had only 281 eligible employees at the end of 2019, 13 percent of what it had originally aimed for. (Many of the employees Foxconn tried to claim were paid too little or hired too late in the year to get a paycheck in 2019.) After this year’s layoffs, it is nowhere near meeting its 2020 target of 5,200 employees. Foxconn itself acknowledged, in its subsidy submission, that it has so far invested 2.8 percent of the $10 billion it promised. It has built less than 2 percent of the 20 million square feet of manufacturing space it originally planned.

The state is at an impasse. It can deny further subsidies, as it did last week, but taxpayer money has already been spent. The Village of Mount Pleasant took on hundreds of millions in debt that was supposed to be repaid by property taxes on Foxconn’s fantastic campus. It will now have to hope Foxconn honors its contractual obligation to make up the shortfall. (In a joint statement following the state’s subsidy rejection, Mount Pleasant and Racine officials said they were “disappointed in the State’s decision to not support the creation of the Gen 6 facility,” that they observe “significant construction activity” in the Village, and that Foxconn “continues to fulfill its financial obligations under the local contract.”)

“The state has upheld our part of the contract,” said DOA’s Joel Brennan. “Unfortunately, Foxconn hasn’t been able to do that on their side.” Brennan and WEDC officials continue to say they’re open to revising the contract to reflect whatever it is that Foxconn is now doing. Employees say that the company is now making servers, and Foxconn has announced it is making ventilators, though no employees or state officials could say whether any have been produced. Yet, Foxconn has so far refused to amend the contract. The company continues to insist, against all evidence, that an LCD factory is on its way.
Foxconn, in its desperate quest to keep up appearances, failed repeatedly and in ways more destructive than mere ordinary failure would have been

This steadfast rejection of reality is where the Foxconn debacle stands apart from other development projects that fall short of their hype. The company’s desperate quest to maintain appearances caused it to fail repeatedly and in ways more destructive than mere ordinary failure would have been: local businesses were strung along, civil servants spent years figuring out what the company is doing, residents were removed from land the company didn’t need, and again and again recruits were lured in by the vision of a grand manufacturing renaissance in Wisconsin.

That vision got Gou regular access to the White House during a trade war and gave Trump a groundbreaking and almost a ribbon-cutting, too. But maintaining the mirage required a culture of secrecy. Employees were warned not to talk to the press (including, specifically, me). Many were afraid to speak — afraid of getting fired, or of retribution even after they’d left. Publicly, the company issued announcement after announcement — innovation centers, career fairs, smart cities, AI 8K+5G, the AI Institute — each one erasing the memory of the last missed deadline. (One employee quipped that one of the few things Foxconn succeeded in making in Wisconsin was press releases.) The illusion was defended by GOP officials at all levels of government, from Mount Pleasant to the State Assembly to the White House, who accused anyone pointing out that the project was off track of trying to scuttle it for partisan ends, as if the existence of the factory were open to debate and positive thinking might make it real.

But in actual reality, the project has succeeded in manufacturing mostly this: an endless supply of wonderful things for the President to promise his supporters. This past weekend, in an interview with a local Wisconsin TV station, Trump insisted Foxconn had built “one of the most incredible plants I’ve ever seen” in Mount Pleasant and would keep its promises and more if he was reelected. “They will do what I tell them to do,” he said. “If we win the election, Foxconn is going to come into our country with money like no other company has come into our country.”

No one wanted to believe promises like this more than the people who went to work for Foxconn in Wisconsin. They each came to regret different things: the wasted time, the jobs they’d left, the integrity lost making deals and offering jobs only to have the company change course. But one common theme was frustration that it hadn’t turned out to be real and that long after they’d learned the truth, they saw the facade still standing. “There are a lot of good people who fell for this,” said one employee, shortly before departing a job at Foxconn. “Who wanted to see it succeed.”

“We got screwed,” another former employee said. “The state got screwed.”

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

it's the 70th anniversary of the chinese intervention in the korean war and kim jong un is visiting a grave site of PLA volunteers

also the intro to this is funny because the north korean soldier does the flag twirl thing like the chinese honor guards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn31F6pkXtw

Shear Modulus posted:

gou lost though

Mantis42 posted:

Weird how every bourgeois state is ran, or will soon be ran, by some kind of moron clown. And yet, they try to portray Xi Jinping as a kooky cartoon bear when he's actually just a mild servant of the people. Talk about projection!

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

because of that post on cross-strait tensions i checked up on what's the latest in chinese military videos to see if there's any kickin rad amphibious assault propaganda

none of that, although there was a new song promoting the special forces to a bad, 1980s saturday-morning cartoon theme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJD_YINFKU

sincx posted:

The PLAN is still far from ready though.

Type 002 just got commissioned
Type 003 is barely a hull right now
The naval version of FC-31 just got started
None of the Type 075 LHDs have been commissioned
Only 1 of 8 Type 055 destroyers has been commissioned
etc etc

Amphibious assaults are close to impossible at the best of times

The PLAN can't possibly have the equipment to do one across the Taiwan Strait any time soon

stephenthinkpad posted:

China doesn't really need to rely on the carriers but they need a few more 075. I don't want to spend time on the war detail that much. If war break out, China's biggest problem is how to deal with US sanction and financial war afterward, not the hot war itself. The US pretty much will use whatever they are doing to Huawei now against all of the Chinese companies.

So to Xi, that high speed railroad to Thailand and BRI project in Myanmar is probably more important than another carrier.

quote:

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will seek to improve the flexibility of its yuan currency and will reduce restrictions on cross-border use of the yuan, the country’s central bank governor Yi Gang said on Saturday.

Yi said such moves were needed to promote the opening of the country’s financial services industry. He was speaking at the Bund Summit conference held in Shanghai.

China will “improve flexibility of the yuan, and let exchange rates play a better role as an automatic stabilizer in the macro economy and international balance of payments,” he said.

To promote yuan internationalization, China will further improve the infrastructure for cross-border use of the yuan, he said.

China plans to expand several outbound investment schemes to meet onshore investors’ need to allocate assets globally, state news agency Xinhua said on Wednesday, following a steady strengthening in the yuan against the dollar.

Antonymous posted:

America tried to strike China down and it's only going to get stronger than they ever imagined

stephenthinkpad posted:

I think this topic belongs here. I have rewatched news/commentaries from 16 and 17 recently. Watching the entire North Korea missile crisis unfold in a short span gave me a different prospective. I think the entire crisis was engineered by Putin. The missiles Kim shot in the 16 and 17 were really accurate and could always test successfully on schedule at specific dates to send important political messages. It's rumored that Russians directly send their own rocket engines to NK via train.

If you look at the shouting Marches between Trump and Kim, you could sense some carelessness. In other words, Trump was in on the game and knew it was a wrestling show. Remember Trump and Putin had a secret 1 hour meeting right after Trump became president?

Now look at it from Putin's angle, why would he do it? Because Trump is his loving guy, he wanted to orchestrate a nuclear missile crisis and have them sign a treaty. Trump will get tons of political capital for reelection.

From Trump's angle, his master plan was play up the crisis with NK, ultimately sign a nuclear treaty in 18 and immidiately launch a trade war with China, play it all the way to reelection. This fits Trump's MO of no hot wars.

From fat Kim's angle, of course he was willing to be the chess piece if it meant he could learn the missile technology from Russian engine. And he would get extra leverage against China. Driving a wedge between NK and China was also a Russian goal.

From China's prospective. The relationship between NK and China was really bad during 16 and 17. I think Kim executed a couple officials who was tasked to talk to the Chinese envoy. Anyway China's play was telling US "look we can't control this mad dog, don't pressure us to the contain him. Sorry we tried. "

I think the twist is the US diplomatic establisent KNEW Trump was in on the game. So what happened was they did their parts to disrupt the peace deal during the 2nd Trump and Kim meet. Trump's lawyer's scandal blew up at that time.

Also the official version of why Trump walked away from the deal was that Bannon and other Trump goons demand NK totally destroy their nuclear capability before they sign a deal. I think this can't be the whole story. Reason 1, S Korea told Kim as long as he went to Vietnam and blow up one of the nuclear facility, he would get a deal. Kim supposedly called Moon a couple times during his train trip to confirm it. Now why would the South Koreans promise that unless they got the message from the Americans? Reason 2, the nuclear deal Obama signed with Iran was a soft deal. It was a "freeze" deal not total destruction of nuclear facilities. So Trump didn't need to get a super strict deal signed to get his Nobel Prize.

However something happened and it made Trump abruptly walked out on Kim. And Kim pivoted hard to China afterward. I will go thru all the 18 19 news first before I comment on the remaining story.

Antonymous posted:

America tried to strike China down and it's only going to get stronger than they ever imagined

Anime Schoolgirl posted:

biden could get elected and start hot war with china, though

instead of the limp-wristed trade sanctions trump is doing

stephenthinkpad posted:

I think this topic belongs here. I have rewatched news/commentaries from 16 and 17 recently. Watching the entire North Korea missile crisis unfold in a short span gave me a different prospective. I think the entire crisis was engineered by Putin. The missiles Kim shot in the 16 and 17 were really accurate and could always test successfully on schedule at specific dates to send important political messages. It's rumored that Russians directly send their own rocket engines to NK via train.

If you look at the shouting Marches between Trump and Kim, you could sense some carelessness. In other words, Trump was in on the game and knew it was a wrestling show. Remember Trump and Putin had a secret 1 hour meeting right after Trump became president?

Now look at it from Putin's angle, why would he do it? Because Trump is his loving guy, he wanted to orchestrate a nuclear missile crisis and have them sign a treaty. Trump will get tons of political capital for reelection.

From Trump's angle, his master plan was play up the crisis with NK, ultimately sign a nuclear treaty in 18 and immidiately launch a trade war with China, play it all the way to reelection. This fits Trump's MO of no hot wars.

From fat Kim's angle, of course he was willing to be the chess piece if it meant he could learn the missile technology from Russian engine. And he would get extra leverage against China. Driving a wedge between NK and China was also a Russian goal.

From China's prospective. The relationship between NK and China was really bad during 16 and 17. I think Kim executed a couple officials who was tasked to talk to the Chinese envoy. Anyway China's play was telling US "look we can't control this mad dog, don't pressure us to the contain him. Sorry we tried. "

I think the twist is the US diplomatic establisent KNEW Trump was in on the game. So what happened was they did their parts to disrupt the peace deal during the 2nd Trump and Kim meet. Trump's lawyer's scandal blew up at that time.

Also the official version of why Trump walked away from the deal was that Bannon and other Trump goons demand NK totally destroy their nuclear capability before they sign a deal. I think this can't be the whole story. Reason 1, S Korea told Kim as long as he went to Vietnam and blow up one of the nuclear facility, he would get a deal. Kim supposedly called Moon a couple times during his train trip to confirm it. Now why would the South Koreans promise that unless they got the message from the Americans? Reason 2, the nuclear deal Obama signed with Iran was a soft deal. It was a "freeze" deal not total destruction of nuclear facilities. So Trump didn't need to get a super strict deal signed to get his Nobel Prize.

However something happened and it made Trump abruptly walked out on Kim. And Kim pivoted hard to China afterward. I will go thru all the 18 19 news first before I comment on the remaining story.