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I've seen multiple claims before of China forcibly bringing in Uighurs who had been living abroad, but I'm not really sure what the point of that is. Apparently to silence potential critics outside their control? I dunno. Not like there's much logic behind the suppression and extermination of the domestic ones. I guess racism, Han nationalism, and allegations of islamic terrorism.
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Aug 17, 2021 21:40
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I have no doubt that the UAE has the facilities for it. However, I don't understand why they would lend such facilities to the adversary of their chief patron. Same reason Syria and Libya were 'hosts' of choice for the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.
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Aug 17, 2021 21:47
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Same reason Syria and Libya were 'hosts' of choice for the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. I give up. Why did the CIA set up shop there?
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Aug 17, 2021 21:59
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I give up. Why did the CIA set up shop there? Syria hates Islamic fundamentalist groups and Libya was trying to get on the US's good side when 9/11 kicked off. Turned out well for both of them.
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Aug 18, 2021 01:00
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Syria hates Islamic fundamentalist groups and Libya was trying to get on the US's good side when 9/11 kicked off. Turned out well for both of them. Are you suggesting that allowing US black sites in-country contributed to the genesis of the viscous, internal civil wars that were sparked as part of the Arab Spring?
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Aug 18, 2021 01:03
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mA posted:Well yes, I'm sure every major country has black sites within its borders, and Tibet is within China's borders. Well it is now.
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Aug 18, 2021 06:15
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Syria hates Islamic fundamentalist groups and Libya was trying to get on the US's good side when 9/11 kicked off. Turned out well for both of them. This makes sense. The Chinese government blacksites in Dubai have to be done with the OK of the UAE because otherwise they would have been easily located by the authorities. All they'd have to do is use the victim's cell phone data to track where she sent the text from. It can't be in the middle of nowhere because she had to have cell coverage, so it can't be hard to find. The two factions have to be working together, possibly with Russian oil ties.
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Aug 18, 2021 11:38
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China is finally focusing on what matters: eradicating the salacious dancing grannies of guangchangwu. https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/environment/article/3145450/china-considers-legal-changes-curb-noise-pollution
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Aug 18, 2021 11:50
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How are u posted:Are you suggesting that allowing US black sites in-country contributed to the genesis of the viscous, internal civil wars that were sparked as part of the Arab Spring? No, I'm suggesting Syria and Libya got no good will from the US by being their blind spot. The Arab Spring was largely a confluence on stagnant economies, growing discontent among young people faced with few prospects, and climate change upending agriculture in the region.
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Aug 18, 2021 15:42
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/18/chinese-president-xi-jinping-vows-to-adjust-excessive-incomes-of-super-rich Chinese president vows to ‘adjust excessive incomes’ of super rich Chinese Communist party to crack down on almost weekly creation of billionaire company bosses quote:China’s president has vowed to “adjust excessive incomes” in a warning to the country’s super-rich that the state plans to redistribute wealth to tackle widening inequality. I'll be interested to see how this shakes out. Thoughts? A genuine attempt to reign in inequality? Or, another tool to purge political opposition to Xi? A little bit of both?
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Aug 18, 2021 18:06
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I mean, if there was even the merest hint of of communism left in China, I'd be all over this. Most likely it's just to intimidate those with newly found wealth and power. And fill Xi's personal coffers.
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Aug 18, 2021 19:25
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Megillah Gorilla posted:I mean, if there was even the merest hint of of communism left in China, I'd be all over this. Basically, Xi's term is over next year, but he wants to get rid of term limits and stay in office. He knows that he will be challenged, and these crackdowns are his way of eliminating potential power bases and intimidating opponents.
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Aug 18, 2021 20:12
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:Basically, Xi's term is over next year, but he wants to get rid of term limits and stay in office. He knows that he will be challenged, and these crackdowns are his way of eliminating potential power bases and intimidating opponents. Term limits were eliminated years ago and not knowing that puts your entire contextual knowledge of the situation at hand. There's plenty wrong with China but if, as a rapidly growing and developing nation, you didn't look at the US right now and think "yeah we should probably reign in the billionaire class before they're so powerful they can effectively dictate policy unchecked" you'd be pretty drat dumb, and these guys are not dumb.
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Aug 18, 2021 21:22
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Xi Jinping has a net worth of 1.5 billion USD, I assume he's exempt.
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Aug 18, 2021 21:42
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I think it's weird that it's being said in more vague terms rather than something straightforward like "instituting taxes on higher incomes". There's nothin' wrong with the general principle of taking money from the wealthy, but I'd just worry that it'd end up being a tool to specifically crack down on potential powerful critics while leaving loyal cronies untouched.
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Aug 18, 2021 22:03
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The already high mysterious death rate of Chinese billionaires will rise, the exciting Chinese companies will sell stakes to the government and become sclerotic, the old corrupt shithouse legacy industry companies will continue their awful ways undisturbed.
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Aug 18, 2021 22:22
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LimburgLimbo posted:Term limits were eliminated years ago and not knowing that puts your entire contextual knowledge of the situation at hand. On paper, there are no term limits. In practice, the term limits were removed by Xi's CPP only three years ago. It is still expected by tradition, established over the preceding 40 or so years, for presidents to appoint their successor after two five years terms in office. This is why Xi anticipates resistance to staying in power, especially since he has implied before that he needs at least another decade to realize his visions regarding China.
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Aug 18, 2021 22:48
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think it's weird that it's being said in more vague terms rather than something straightforward like "instituting taxes on higher incomes". it’s because taxes are a detail and a policy choice. taxes aren’t really about power, at least not directly. phrasing it this way seems like it’s trying to address power, and who has it in chinese society. you can loophole out of taxes but it’s not going to be easy to loophole out of the government taking an active role in limiting your power as a class. nobody would give a crap if this was just about making them pay their fair share and some billionaires wealth goes from $15b to $14b on paper
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Aug 19, 2021 04:33
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Libertarians: "Central planning doesn't work" China: exists
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Aug 20, 2021 01:52
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no hay camino posted:Libertarians: "Central planning doesn't work" China doesn't meaningfully engage in "central planning", they're a state capitalists. China largely relies on market forces and indicators to direct economic growth more efficiency, withholding more direct intervention to industries of specific strategic concern. "Planned economy skeptics" would be correct that central planning as originally implemented under Stalin don't work long term to maintain a prosperous society or sustained growth and rising living standards without accruing massive inefficiencies.
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Aug 20, 2021 03:44
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Smeef posted:China is finally focusing on what matters: eradicating the salacious dancing grannies of guangchangwu. nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo my walk to work in 2014 was less than 10 minutes and I would pass three different dancing grannie groups. the music was horrifically loud and I would have to turn up my headphones all the way to try to drown it out, and one time I was listening to Sex on Fire and the beat synced perfectly with a group of grannies and I will never forget that moment. it was so good.
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Aug 20, 2021 17:12
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I recently watched a youtube documentary that discussed the topic of the Chinese trade imbalance with Europe, but can't seem to find it. I'm 99% sure it was a DW production, but it's NOT the two-part documentary "China's Gateway To Europe" so let's get that out of the way first. It dealt with European wholesalers going to a city in China with the largest wholesaler market in the world (Yiwu maybe?), and how those products are sold and distributed to Europe, IIRC with a focus on Germany and Spain specifically. Specific scenes included a European wholesaler who specializes in glass products shopping around for a cheap glass vendor, a quick discussion with a Chinese vendor who specializes in year-round Christmas products, a female Chinese business owner who operates a pots-and-pans manufacturer with the trademark that all of their products are coloured red, a tourist shop owner in Spain who says all of his store's items have to be made in China now, a discussion with the owner/operator of a German sea port, and a discussion about how hundreds of train cars that were full upon arriving to Europe are then returning to China empty. Does any of this ring a bell for anyone? I must have watched it in June or July, and yet my YouTube history going back to May doesn't show anything at all, leading me to suspect that it may have been removed from YouTube. I've contacted DW directly but am still waiting on a reply, and it may not have even been DW, so I'm at a loss. I've spent the last hour trying to track it down again, because it was absolutely fascinating.
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Aug 21, 2021 21:34
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I also recently watched a youtube documentary
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Aug 21, 2021 21:54
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Raenir Salazar posted:China doesn't meaningfully engage in "central planning", they're a state capitalists. China largely relies on market forces and indicators to direct economic growth more efficiency, withholding more direct intervention to industries of specific strategic concern. In that case neither does the kind of economies ran by western countries from the mid 70s onwards.
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Aug 22, 2021 00:18
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I would like to point out that the term "state capitalism" was coined by Lenin to describe the economy of the Soviet Union.
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Aug 22, 2021 00:26
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I would like to point out that the term "state capitalism" was coined by Lenin to describe the economy of the Soviet Union. Yup! The USSR's economy under Lenin was known as the New Economic Policy or novaya ekonomicheskaya politika. It was perhaps one of the most successful periods of economic growth the USSR would have until Stalin's 5 Year Plans inflicted massive depravity and suffering on the Soviet and Ukrainian peoples (see the Holodomor). The New Economic Policy was Lenin realizing that the USSR needed to abide by free market capitalism in many sectors while maintaining state control over strategic sectors, just like China today; and perhaps fittingly a massive number of Chinese central planners visited Russia to find information on the NEP when they began their period of Dengist reforms.
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Aug 22, 2021 00:47
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You can call Stalin a lot of things, but "unsuccessful at the economy" is not one of them.
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Aug 22, 2021 01:07
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Cpt_Obvious posted:You can call Stalin a lot of things, but "unsuccessful at the economy" is not one of them. If your sole judgement is "number go up" that is, but, uh, bad look for a communist in 2021 in my red rear end's opinion
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Aug 22, 2021 01:12
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I would like to point out that the term "state capitalism" was coined by Lenin to describe the economy of the Soviet Union. *starts masturbating furiously*
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Aug 22, 2021 01:13
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Cpt_Obvious posted:You can call Stalin a lot of things, but "unsuccessful at the economy" is not one of them. At great considerable needless amounts of human cost and genocide. There was zero political or economic need for dekulakization or the holodomor; the Soviet Union probably could have industrialized even better if millions of people didn't die. After WW2 the Soviet economy would end up stagnating and failing to raise Soviet living standards to the same level as in the West despite multiple attempts at reforms. It was not successful long term, as can be factually certified by the collapse of the USSR as the USSR fell significantly behind the west in higher technology fields like superconductors, computer chips, circuit boards and so on partly because of inherent structures of the Soviet economy disincentivizing civilian development of consumer electronics (as you can read up more on in Rockets and People). It was capitalists like Albert Khan traveling to the USSR with other American industrialists who did much of the work to make the Soviet industrialization work as well as it ended up being; Russian Socialism with American Fordist Characteristics.
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Aug 22, 2021 01:23
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Raenir Salazar posted:After WW2 the Soviet economy would end up stagnating and failing to raise Soviet living standards to the same level as in the West despite multiple attempts at reforms. It was not successful long term, as can be factually certified by the collapse of the USSR as the USSR fell significantly behind the west in higher technology fields like superconductors, computer chips, circuit boards and so on partly because of inherent structures of the Soviet economy disincentivizing civilian development of consumer electronics (as you can read up more on in Rockets and People). This is really papering over the fact that these very failed reforms actually reduced the amount of centralization and opened up the markets. In fact, the Soviet Union only began to collapse after the free market was re-introduced.
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Aug 22, 2021 01:28
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Cpt_Obvious posted:This is really papering over the fact that these very failed reforms actually reduced the amount of centralization and opened up the markets. In fact, the Soviet Union only began to collapse after the free market was re-introduced. The problems of the Soviet economies was well reported on even before perestroika; see Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy; it dives deep into the issues of the Soviet economy and the problems that were afflicting it, such as its overreliance on grain imports and constant failures to address this. You make it sound like if it wasn't for Gorby the USSR would still be around and this would be revisionist history and scapegoating; the Soviet Union was heading towards collapse for the decade prior. The reduction in centralization is not the same thing as introducing market economic reforms, and certainly the markets (not counting black market markets  ) certainly didn't open up prior to peretroika. You might be thinking of the Kosygin reforms but these weren't about opening the markets but about introducing new management and profit driven economic signalling. Hardly comparable to the New Economic Policy or the Chinese economic reforms under Deng's leadership. In fact under perestroika these were free market like reforms; they didn't actually amount to re-introducing the free market; there was still significant amount of statist command over the economy; the free market as we understand it didn't get re-introduced until Shock Therepy, after the USSR had already collapsed due to its massive political and economic contradictions (see Paul Kennedy).
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Aug 22, 2021 01:38
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Raenir Salazar posted:You might be thinking of the Kosygin reforms but these weren't about opening the markets but about introducing new management and profit driven economic signalling. The "management change" was literally decentralization where enterprises were made far more autonomous from the state. And good lord, I cannot believe you are painting the reintroduction of the profit motive and commoditization as a non major, non decentralizing reform. This is absolutely magical thinking.
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Aug 22, 2021 01:57
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Cpt_Obvious posted:The "management change" was literally decentralization where enterprises were made far more autonomous from the state. And good lord, I cannot believe you are painting the reintroduction of the profit motive and commoditization as a non major, non decentralizing reform. This is absolutely magical thinking. What do you think I am arguing again? I am not sure how this responds to anything I actually said. Its safe to say to reiterate the original point under contention that the USSR wasn't state capitalist between the start of the five year plans and the end of the USSR to the degree that China currently is. Russia under the NEP was more comparable to China today than at any other point during the socio-economic history of the USSR; and that China isn't operating under early Soviet era Central Planning.
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Aug 22, 2021 02:04
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I had no problem with your description of the NEP, it was your characterization of later reforms that felt inaccurate. To "re-rail" this derail, the Soviet Union underwent decentralizing reforms towards the end of it's reign and they did not save it from collapse because centralization had little to do with the economic failings of the Soviet Union. It was the external factors that did them in, namely their relation with the West. And that's the secret to the success of Deng's reforms: positioning themselves as allies to the West instead of adversaries. The USSR was surrounded by enemies while China offered these exact same nations cheap labor as a trade partner. That's why one collapsed and the other prospered.
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Aug 22, 2021 14:47
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Cpt_Obvious posted:This is really papering over the fact that these very failed reforms actually reduced the amount of centralization and opened up the markets. In fact, the Soviet Union only began to collapse after the free market was re-introduced. Gorbachev implemented Perestroika precisely because the Soviet Economy was moribund, on the verge of collapse, and could not keep pace with the West. Andropov himself actually started the reforms before he died. You act like the Soviet Union was doing great and totally not importing grain from the US or anything before mean old Gorby came along and ruined the fun.
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Aug 22, 2021 15:19
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I had no problem with your description of the NEP, it was your characterization of later reforms that felt inaccurate. No this is the opposite of true and how to understand what's going on. Even at the worst point in relations between the USSR and the West, the West never stopped buying the only thing of value the USSR produced, namely oil and gas. It was the collapse of oil prices in the 80's that triggered the Soviet collapse as it became impossible to continue the shell game of pretending the economy was working. Even today the Russian economy is largely based on natural resource extraction. The lesson China learned from that was not 'sell cheap labour to the West', (although 'be the factory of the world' was an important step in the long term strategy), it was that you cannot be a superpower while your economy is stuck at the bottom rung of the value chain. An export focus wasn't so much about ameliorating Western hostility so much as it forced industries to make things people actually want. Long term China very much wants to be at the top of the value chain. That's why everyone who does business in China has to commit to technology transfer, that's why they've placed enormous bets on being world leaders in AI (while snapping up the critical raw resources necessary to produce high tech products). Alchenar fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Aug 22, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 15:19
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Gorbachev implemented Perestroika precisely because the Soviet Economy was moribund, on the verge of collapse, and could not keep pace with the West. Andropov himself actually started the reforms before he died.  No, the Soviet Union was destined to failure but not because of some sort of internal incompetence or poor planning. I am not saying that reopening the economy led to the demise of the Soviets, I am saying you can't ignore western influences like the Cold War which China never really had to deal with because the USA and their allies weren't constantly trying to gently caress them. And to be clear, The 1965 reforms were decades before gorbie. Alchenar posted:The lesson China learned from that was not 'sell cheap labour to the West', (although 'be the factory of the world' was an important step in the long term strategy), it was that you cannot be a superpower while your economy is stuck at the bottom rung of the value chain. An export focus wasn't so much about ameliorating Western hostility so much as it forced industries to make things people actually want. Long term China very much wants to be at the top of the value chain. That's why everyone who does business in China has to commit to technology transfer, that's why they've placed enormous bets on being world leaders in AI (while snapping up the critical raw resources necessary to produce high tech products). China learned a whole lotta lessons from the USSR, I just wanted to highlight the "become invaluable to the Western economy so they don't gently caress you" one because it gets swept under the rug. I don't even think they intended to learn that particular lesson, they just happened to back the winning side and it turned out well for them. Seriously, you can't ignoring the protracted conflict that the USSR had with the wealthiest nations on Earth, especially in a discussion about economic collapse.
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Aug 22, 2021 15:58
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The USSR inherited one of the wealthiest nations on earth from a pack of poo poo aristocrats and capitalists. It's not Cuba or Vietnam, the decadent west did not cause the fall.
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Aug 22, 2021 16:27
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Seriously, you can't ignoring the protracted conflict that the USSR had with the wealthiest nations on Earth, especially in a discussion about economic collapse. You can't just keep saying this without pointing to the specific ways that you want to claim that the Cold War screwed with the Soviet economy (if we are fast tracking to 'military spending' then that was an issue but a massive security state was more a consequence of the fact that everyone living in the USSR absolutely hated it and would have voted to get rid of it had they been given a chance, which wraps back to being a significant problem for the argument that the economy was working just fine).
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Aug 22, 2021 16:32
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