indigi posted:

what does Japan spend all that money on

Serf posted:

this might actually fit better here

https://twitter.com/JustKiyan/status/1438099802558844930?s=20

quote:

No underage love allowed

Thoth! posted:

President Xi, my people yearn to be free of 'shes actually 1000 years old' waifus. Please.

indigi posted:

I assumed this meant romance between like 14 year old characters, but if you’re right then please Xi save us

Antonymous posted:

I wanna see the chinese cause 'no content depicting democracy' makes no sense since China considers itself a democracy and writes the word democracy on all their propaganda

Serf posted:

this might actually fit better here

https://twitter.com/JustKiyan/status/1438099802558844930?s=20

Serf posted:

yeah this got me too. china is at least as much a democracy as western nations, why would they move to ban depiction of the system they use?

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

this isnt actually any better, assuming one of the characters is playable.

Corky Romanovsky posted:

Could it be a translation issue? Americans get hung up on liberal/liberalism and Republican/republican, so perhaps it is misinterpreted in some way.

hot witch divorcee posted:

i think it's just wholesale made up.

OhFunny posted:

https://twitter.com/NikkeiAsia/status/1438517397762109448?s=20

Interesting.

Joining requires all existing members to agree and I can't see Australia acceding based on recent events.

edit: This is the trade pact Obama negotiated and Trump dumpstered in case someone here wasn't aware.

Mr Hootington posted:

https://twitter.com/PriapusIQ/status/1438574036620087305?s=19

I think this is relevant to this thread.

CaptainACAB posted:

Japan's military acquisition is maybe even more corrupt than the US. The zaibatsus have even less distance between them and the government.

Some Guy TT posted:

does china actually want to join or are they calling our bluff and trying to force us to admit that the only reason exists is to try and gently caress over china and letting them in would defeat the purpose

Thoth! posted:

I feel it's the latter, like the Russia-joins-NATO gambit. Seems like it could also lead to internal disputes between individual members, if it's just Australia or a couple members who're hardline against it, vs. the countries that want more sweet Chinese trade, or already have closer relationships.

SporkOfTruth posted:

hence the involvement of the Marubeni corporation (and the Yakuza!) in Japan's part of the Lockheed bribery scandal

dead gay comedy forums posted:

this sort of stuff got me thinking a while

the worst part about getting informed about China is how much translation/context buffer there is that simply isn't mediated responsibly by most major vehicles and it's best to just hop on twitter and ask an English-speaking Chinese what they know about the situation

of course, that's intentional. I am reminded of my prof of international econ talking about how the iron curtain was a western imposition on the USSR, talking about how sinister their closed society is, but institutional interest to get people to read Cyrillic was none (from the USA/UK at least). Obfuscation happens due to cultivated ignorance, not because the other side is casting shadows on themselves

It seems a hundred times worse with China because of orientalism too tbqh. China is one of the oldest civilizations of the world, Mandarin is a tough language, etc so it is much easier to mystify the Chinese into a cipher, which, of course, works totally in favor with institutional interest. However, the feedback effect is such that while hot takes abound, nobody does the actual hard work of developing context

and from the perspective of an imperial government, that's really loving bad, because you are wide loving open to liars, scammers and cretins of every sort, with incompetence seeping higher and higher until people who should know better look at a discord screenshot and think "holy poo poo that's some incredibly hot info!". Then it turns out that this dolt is a high state department official. loving lmao

Serf posted:

yeah this got me too. china is at least as much a democracy as western nations, why would they move to ban depiction of the system they use?

crepeface posted:

actually, how does voting work in china? i vaguely remember someone mentioning there's some kind of local/regional election stuff?

china.cn.org posted:

The authorized government portal site to China, China.org.cn is published under the auspices of the State Council Information Office and the China International Publishing Group (CIPG) in Beijing.

quote:

THE CHINESE POLITICAL SYSTEM
IX. The Election System

Direct election

Direct election means voters directly elect deputies to the people’s congresses by casting their votes.

Direct elections are applicable to the election of deputies to the people’s congresses of the counties, districts, townships and towns.

Indirect election

Indirect election means deputies to the people’s congresses at the next higher level are elected by deputies to the people’s congresses at the next lower level.

Indirect elections are applicable to the election of deputies to people’s congresses above the county level and deputies among the armed forces at the same level and deputies to the NPC elected from special administrative regions.

quote:

There are some military reasons to prefer nuclear submarines over diesel driven ones if one plans to lay siege on a foreign coast far away from ones own one. Nuclear submarines (SSN) are faster and can stay on station much longer than diesel driven boats (SSK).



But there are also many negative issues with nuclear boats. They are larger and more expensive than conventional ones. The cost nearly 50% more. They also require dedicated infrastructure and very specialized nuclear training for the crews. Australia has neither nor can it supply the necessary fuel for the nuclear reactors.

The price for the new submarines Australia will have to pay will be much higher that for the French ones. Some $3 billion have already been sunk into the French contract. France will rightfully demand additional compensation for cancelling it. The new contract with the U.S. or UK will cost more than the French one but will only include 8 instead of 12 boats. As three boats are needed to keep one at sea (while the other two are training or in refit), the actual patrolling capacity for Australia's navy will sink from 4 to 2-3 concurrent submarines at sea.

The much higher price of the fewer more complicate boats will upset Australia's defense budget for decades to come.

If going to nuclear propulsion were Australia's sole reason for changing the horse it could have stuck to the original French Barracuda design. This has the advantage of using low enriched uranium which is commercially available. There would be no Australian dependency on France for new fuel supplies. The British and U.S. boats use nuclear reactors with highly enriched uranium (HEU 60%). As Australia now decided to buy those boats it will forever be dependent on those suppliers.

The non-proliferation crowd and the IAEA will be up in arms over the deal. How much supervision will there be over the HEU? Who will have access to it?

Nuclear driven submarines are also perceived as offensive weapons, not as reasonable defensive ones. There are more countries on this map than just China.



That Australia, with just 25 million inhabitants, is buying nuclear driven attack subs will not be welcome by its ten times larger northern neighbor Indonesia. Other neighboring countries, like New Zealand, reject any use of nuclear fuel and will not allow ships or boats using it into their harbors.

The new contract will also upset the Australian plans for manufacturing the boats on its own soil. While the French design was ready to start the actual building phase at the beginning of next year the whole submarine project will now go into a new 18 month long definition phase after which actual contracts will have to be negotiated and signed. Meanwhile the hundreds of Australian engineers who moved to France to help with the design and specialists who were hired by Naval Group in Australia will have to be cared for. Australia does not have many people with such knowledge. What are they going to do until the new project actually starts?

The UK will offer Australia to buy British made Astute class submarines while the U.S. is likely to offer the smaller version of its Virginia class submarines. As both countries have active production lines for these it will not make any economic sense to build more than some small parts for these in Australia itself. The U.S. will use all pressure that is necessary to make sure that its offer will win the race. A hint of that is that Australia also announced that it will acquire long-range US Tomahawk missiles to be used with the subs.

The first of the French boats for Australia was expected to be ready in the early 2030s. There will now be a long delay of perhaps a decade for Australia to get new boats.

Its current Collins class will require more than an ordinary refit to be sustained that long. That is going to be expensive. The Germans may want to jump into that gap by offering their Type 214 submarines with hydrogen driven propulsion. While these boats are much smaller they offer a long endurance, can be supplied reasonably fast and come for a much cheaper price than the nuclear driven ones.

Altogether I do not see any advantage for Australia in this move.

What then is the reason to take that step?

It is called blackmail.

China is by far Australia's largest trading partner. U.S. and Australian 'strategist' claim that the submarines are need to protect Australia's maritime trade routes with its largest trading partner ... from China. That makes, as this sketch provides, zero sense.

The only reason Australia has turned politically and militarily against China is U.S. blackmail. Two years ago the U.S. 'realist' political scientist John Mearsheimer came to Australia to explained to Australians how that works.

As Caitlin Johnstone summarizes:

quote:

“Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer. “Right you have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.”

“You’re either with us or against us,” he continued. “And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”

Nervous laughter from the Australian think tank audience punctuated Mearsheimer’s more incendiary observations. The CIA is known to have made numerous attempts to assassinate Castro.

So there you have it. Australia is not aligned with the US to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with the US to protect itself from the US.

Joe Biden may have forgotten the name of the Australian Prime Minister. But Scott Morrison knows who he is expected to work for. In 1975 the U.S. and the UK launched a coup against the Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who was moving his country towards independence. Few in the U.S. will remember that but Australian politicians do. Their country has since always done as it was told to do.

And that is what all the above is about.

indigi posted:

it’s funny whenever bad stuff happens to Australia

Lostconfused posted:

IAMKOREA posted:

Yeonmi Park: In North Korea, 'dank nugs' are unheard of, we do not even have the concept. We had to smoke feral roadside hemp. I smoked a lot of feral roadside hemp as a little girl.

Joe Rogan: Whoa. That's hosed up.

indigi posted:

what does Japan spend all that money on

crepeface posted:

actually, how does voting work in china? i vaguely remember someone mentioning there's some kind of local/regional election stuff?

indigi posted:

it’s funny whenever bad stuff happens to Australia

dead gay comedy forums posted:

iirc democratic centralism through hierarchy



more similar to Cuba than with the USSR it seems. People's Congresses are the constituent political unit and the assembly votes for their representative up in the hierarchy, all the way up to the presidium

Antonymous posted:

kids are taught that voting with majority/plurality wins is the best way to reach group consensus and it's often used in the classroom for students to make decisions. it's like rock-paper-scissors in the US, it's a pretty common way for kids to make choices

that then carries over to adulthood where apartment buildings might have voting on rules and leadership

then there are local elections at township/county level. iirc the system works like parties put forward candidates or anyone can run as independent. and then those county elected officials can vote on the higher levels of representatives. in a sense the the public selects the township leadership, which then selects the county level leadership, county selects province, province selects national.

that's at least my dumb foreigner understanding, I didnt grow up in China

Antonymous posted:

China's education is huge on working cohesively as a group, and doing the right (moral) thing at all times - which is often too black and white and simplistic but whatever, at least it focuses on selfless acts that help others and doing what helps the group.

now idk how much all that pours over into the reality of public / adult life in China but definitely the workplace is unique in china because of this 'brainwashing'

all that is to say the idea of banning 'depictions of democracy' makes no sense

Some Guy TT posted:

does china actually want to join or are they calling our bluff and trying to force us to admit that the only reason exists is to try and gently caress over china and letting them in would defeat the purpose