China Megathread - Their navy can be taken seriously or taken littorally

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > China Megathread - Their navy can be taken seriously or taken littorally

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khwarezm: Oct 26, 2010; Deal with it.

eSports Chaebol posted:

A relevant comparison to internal warfare against Muslim separatists would be Chechnya.

Chechnya was far more violent than anything that happened in Xinjiang. Like the conflicts just don't compare in scale or conduct.

# ? Sep 29, 2023 00:49

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# ? May 12, 2024 12:46

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

https://twitter.com/kendraschaefer/status/1707438903949721766

I don't know that this actually provides any reassurances until Mintz Group-style detentions actually stop

It is not the only whitelist-only info export law recently passed: https://www.sidley.com/en/insights/...-investigations, the CAC was just one of several regulatory agencies to impose such a requirement

# ? Sep 29, 2023 03:51

Stringent: Dec 22, 2004; image text goes here

I remembered this FT article from back in 2017 which give a very brief overview of what some people in the West saw as the security situation in China wrt the influence of jihadist groups in China. (quoted for paywall)

https://www.ft.com/content/ddeb5872-ff1f-11e6-96f8-3700c5664d30

quote:

A gruesome Isis video depicting Uighur fighters in Iraq calling for attacks on China has raised concern that the Asian nation could become a target for jihadist groups, even as Beijing stages mass military manoeuvres designed to quell separatist sentiment in the restive frontier region of Xinjiang.

The graphic video denouncing �evil Chinese communist infidel lackeys� came from the Iraqi arm of the militant group, according to Site, a US-based company that tracks jihadis and white supremacist activities online. Reuters, which first reported on the video, independently confirmed the translation.

�In retaliation for the tears that flow from the eyes of the oppressed we will make your blood flow in rivers, by the will of God,� says one fighter featured in the video, speaking in Uighur.

The video, which also features child fighters as well as two executions of unidentified people, coincides with Chinese troop deployments in Xinjiang, which were triggered by a deadly knife attack at a government compound.

Geng Shuang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, who had not seen the video, told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that a Uighur separatist organisation known as ETIM �poses a severe threat to the security and stability of China and the region�.

The video release follows disclosure of Chinese �joint counter-terrorism operations� in Afghanistan last month. Beijing is taking a more active role in Afghanistan as the Americans reduce their presence but remains wary that its involvement could make it a target for Islamist wrath.

Chen Quanguo, the new Communist Party secretary in Xinjiang, recently arrived from Tibet, believes a strong hand will deter unrest. Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people native to Xinjiang, face discriminatory education, employment and religious policies. Tensions in Xinjiang tend to flare following demonstrations of military force, which in turn are often deployed in response to violent attacks.

The video is not the first Isis effort to attract Uighur recruits and the group has appealed to some Uighurs� aspirations for their own nation of �East Turkestan�. However, historic animosity between Arabic and Turkic speakers tends to limit the allure of Isis for Uighurs. In 2015 Isis executed three Uighur fighters who were attempting to desert its forces in Syria, Chinese newspaper Global Times reported.

Chinese experts estimate that roughly 100 Chinese citizens have joined Isis in Syria. Not all are Uighurs. Previous Isis videos have appealed to the Mandarin speakers that make up 95 per cent of China�s 1.4bn population.

Chaos in Syria and Iraq has attracted some Chinese adventurers including Fan Jinghui, a former journalist from Beijing, who was taken hostage by Isis and executed in 2015 after unsuccessfully appealing online for someone to pay his ransom.

Also worth noting, Chen Quanguo, the guy they made Party secretary in Xinjiang in 2016 to take care of this, basically ruined his career with his reactionary, heavy handed approach and has since been retired. The guy that replaced him in 2021 came in with an explicit mandate of undoing a lot of Quanguo's measures.

# ? Sep 29, 2023 06:29

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

The assertion that there was no fundamentalists among Uighurs before alleged American meddling is patently false and yeah it's part of China's current messaging effort to rewrite the history of the Uighur genocide. Hell a handful of them were picked up in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 at training camps which led to some Uighurs being among the longest-held prisoners at Guantanamo Bay because no one would take them for years and years, particularly not after China refused to take them back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay

also the idea that the cia of all people were like 'lets work with islamic fundamentalists' in the direct aftermath of 9/11 is wild. particularly since US-China relations were, what, at the best point that they've been in since the founding of PRC? idk seems way more like a claim for internal consumption barring literally any evidence for it whatsoever

Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Sep 29, 2023

# ? Sep 29, 2023 08:25

Stringent: Dec 22, 2004; image text goes here

I think the idea is more along the lines of it being a ripple effect of the American policy of funding and supporting the Mujahideen and other jihadist organizations throughout the Soviet war in Afghanistan and beyond. The fact that Osama Bin Laden himself fought with the Mujahideen lends credence to that narrative for a lot of people, deserved or not. Some people will even cite it as evidence that the US, EU, China and a lot of other places have been victims of the blowback from that policy.

# ? Sep 29, 2023 09:43

Neurolimal: Nov 3, 2012

It's not farfetched to suspect US involvement in a guerilla faction of dissident nationalists initiating clandestine attacks against the US's enemies, considering gestures wildly towards the vast entirety of Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East and all...

...But from what I found on declassified CIA documents, Xinjiang dissidents have been a thorn in China's side since at least the 80's, through at least two US administrations that wanted to use China as a temporary ally. Any involvement would have had to have happened after the Bush administration, which also sought to cooperate with China (and allowed them to question ETIM members that they had holed up in Guantanamo). That only really leaves the Obama administration, and while Obama was hostile to China, under that administration China had performed a successful purge of US operatives & by the tail-end Afghanistan wasn't a reliable base of operations.

If anyone's responsible for sparking and agitating ETIM, it would, oddly enough, be the USSR and Vietnam; aforementioned CIA reports in the 80's noted that China accused both of sending radio transmissions towards Xizang and Xinjiang in Turkic languages that China was going to murder them all, steal their land, force them into intermarriage with Chinese people, etcetera.

SlothfulCobra posted:

One was worse than the other, since the US never got so far as to build reeducation camps to try to stamp out religion.

I really don't think you want to argue this. You mention the WoT having left the American conscience, but I think you yourself are neglecting some of the dire poo poo we pulled in Iraq. One of the few calms during our occupation came as a direct result of a campaign of ethnically cleansing diverse cities & villages.

Hell, our current president co-authored a proposed plan to federalize Iraq through segregation, and even after it had been widely panned the concept remained a talking point in his 2008 campaign.

Neurolimal fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Sep 29, 2023

# ? Sep 29, 2023 12:56

je1 healthcare: Sep 29, 2015

Stringent posted:

I think the idea is more along the lines of it being a ripple effect of the American policy of funding and supporting the Mujahideen and other jihadist organizations throughout the Soviet war in Afghanistan and beyond. The fact that Osama Bin Laden himself fought with the Mujahideen lends credence to that narrative for a lot of people, deserved or not. Some people will even cite it as evidence that the US, EU, China and a lot of other places have been victims of the blowback from that policy.

Still, not even CCP-produced documentaries cited have claimed the Xinjiang terrorists were funded or trained by the US, or that the attackers had wandered back from Syria.

And they're unhelpfully vague about how many were legit terrorists. Even though a Han chinese conducts a mass-stabbing spree or car attack every 6 months, those never get categorized as terrorism but attributed to personal issues or mental illness (which is a nativist bias that plays out in every other country's approach to crime but that's another discussion)

# ? Sep 29, 2023 19:47

i fly airplanes: Sep 6, 2010; I STOLE A PIE FROM ESTELLE GETTY

Stringent posted:

I think the idea is more along the lines of it being a ripple effect of the American policy of funding and supporting the Mujahideen and other jihadist organizations throughout the Soviet war in Afghanistan and beyond. The fact that Osama Bin Laden himself fought with the Mujahideen lends credence to that narrative for a lot of people, deserved or not. Some people will even cite it as evidence that the US, EU, China and a lot of other places have been victims of the blowback from that policy.

We prefer evidence-based arguments, not assertions based on 'patterns': those are called conspiracy theories.

Afghanistan is also not China. When 9/11 happened, there was no denial that a part of Al Qaeda had US ties from the Soviet Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

# ? Sep 30, 2023 05:18

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Exhaustive, well-presented article in the New Yorker about rights abuses in the Chinese fishing/seafood industry, as well as their use as proxies in international conflicts.

The Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat
China has invested heavily in an armada of far-flung fishing vessels, in part to extend its global influence. This maritime expansion has come at grave human cost.

quote:

[...]
In the past few decades, partly in an effort to project its influence abroad, China has dramatically expanded its distant-water fishing fleet. Chinese firms now own or operate terminals in ninety-five foreign ports. China estimates that it has twenty-seven hundred distant-water fishing ships, though this figure does not include vessels in contested waters; public records and satellite imaging suggest that the fleet may be closer to sixty-five hundred ships. (The U.S. and the E.U., by contrast, have fewer than three hundred distant-water fishing vessels each.) Some ships that appear to be fishing vessels press territorial claims in contested waters, including in the South China Sea and around Taiwan. �This may look like a fishing fleet, but, in certain places, it�s also serving military purposes,� Ian Ralby, who runs I.R. Consilium, a maritime-security firm, told me. China�s pre�minence at sea has come at a cost. The country is largely unresponsive to international laws, and its fleet is the worst perpetrator of illegal fishing in the world, helping drive species to the brink of extinction. Its ships are also rife with labor trafficking, debt bondage, violence, criminal neglect, and death. �The human-rights abuses on these ships are happening on an industrial and global scale,� Steve Trent, the C.E.O. of the Environmental Justice Foundation, said.
[...]
China�s fleet has also expanded the government�s international influence. The country has built scores of ports as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure program that has, at times, made it the largest financier of development in South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. These ports allow it to shirk taxes and avoid meddling inspectors. The investments also buy its government influence. In 2007, China loaned Sri Lanka more than three hundred million dollars to pay for the construction of a port. (A Chinese state-owned company built it.) In 2017, Sri Lanka, on the verge of defaulting on the loan, was forced to strike a deal granting China control over the port and its environs for ninety-nine years.

Military analysts believe that China uses its fleet for surveillance. In 2017, the country passed a law requiring private citizens and businesses to support Chinese intelligence efforts. Ports employ a digital logistics platform called logink, which tracks the movement of ships and goods in the surrounding area�including, possibly, American military cargo. Michael Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told me, �This is really dangerous information for the U.S. to be handing over.� (The Chinese Communist Party has dismissed these concerns, saying, �It is no secret that the U.S. has become increasingly paranoid about anything related to China.�)

China also pushes its fleet into contested waters. �China likely believes that, in time, the presence of its distant-water fleet will convert into some degree of sovereign control over those waters,� Ralby, the maritime-security specialist, told me. Some of its ships are disguised as fishing vessels but actually form what experts call a �maritime militia.� According to research collected by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Chinese government pays the owners of some of these ships forty-five hundred dollars a day to remain in contested areas for most of the year. Satellite data show that, last year, several dozen ships illegally fished in Taiwanese waters and that there were two hundred ships in disputed portions of the South China Sea. The ships help execute what a recent Congressional Research Service study called � �gray zone� operations that use coercion short of war.� They escort Chinese oil-and-gas survey vessels, deliver supplies, and obstruct foreign ships.

Sometimes these vessels are called into action. In December, 2018, the Filipino government began to repair a runway and build a beaching ramp on Thitu Island, a piece of land claimed by both the Philippines and China. More than ninety Chinese ships amassed along its coast, delaying the construction. In 2019, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Filipino boat anchored at Reed Bank, a disputed region in the South China Sea that is rich in oil reserves. Zhou Bo, a retired Chinese senior colonel, recently warned that these sorts of clashes could spark a war between the U.S. and China. (The Chinese government declined to comment on these matters. But Mao Ning, a spokesperson for its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has previously defended her country�s right to uphold �China�s territorial sovereignty and maritime order.�) Greg Poling, a senior fellow at C.S.I.S., noted that taking ownership of contested waters is part of the same project as assuming control of Taiwan. �The goal with these fishing ships is to reclaim �lost territory� and restore China�s former glory,� he said.

[...]

China's distant-water fleet is opaque. The country divulges little information about its vessels, and some stay at sea for more than a year at a time, making them difficult to inspect. I spent the past four years, backed by a team of investigators working for a journalism nonprofit I run called the Outlaw Ocean Project, visiting the fleet�s ships in their largest fishing grounds: near the Gal�pagos Islands; near the Falkland Islands; off the coast of the Gambia; and in the Sea of Japan, near the Korean Peninsula. When permitted, I boarded vessels to talk to the crew or pulled alongside them to interview officers by radio. In many instances, the Chinese ships got spooked, pulled up their gear, and fled. When this happened, I trailed them in a skiff to get close enough to throw aboard plastic bottles weighed down with rice, containing a pen, cigarettes, hard candy, and interview questions. On several occasions, deckhands wrote replies, providing phone numbers for family back home, and then threw the bottles back into the water. The reporting included interviews with their family members, and with two dozen additional crew members.

[...]

We spoke to two Chinese deckhands who were wearing bright-orange life vests. Neither wanted his name used, for fear of retaliation. One man was twenty-�eight, the other eighteen. It was their first time at sea, and they had signed two-year contracts. They earned about ten thousand dollars a year, but, for every day taken off work because of sickness or injury, they were docked two days� pay. The older deckhand recounted watching a fishing weight injure another crew member�s arm. At one point, the officer following us was called away. The older deckhand then said that many of the crew were being held there against their will. �It�s like being isolated from the world and far from modern life,� he said. �Many of us had our documents taken. They won�t give them back. Can we ask you to help us?� He added, �It�s impossible to be happy, because we work many hours every day. We don�t want to be here, but we are forced to stay.� He estimated that eighty per cent of the other men would leave if they were allowed.

Looking nervous, the younger deckhand waved us into a dark hallway. He began typing on his cell phone. �I can�t disclose too much right now given I still need to work on the vessel, if I give too much information it might potentially create issues on board,� he wrote. He gave me a phone number for his family and asked me to contact them. �Can you get us to the embassy in Argentina?� he asked. Just then, my minder rounded the corner, and the deckhand walked away. Minutes later, my team members and I were ushered off the ship.

The story is worth a full read; it covers a number of other topics (such as exploitation of supply chain monitoring gaps) in great depth with "new media" illustrations and figures.

It will not surprise you to find that Xinjiang detainees appear in the equation, as labor in seafood processing factories. There's an entire separate story on that.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Oct 12, 2023

# ? Oct 12, 2023 04:48

i fly airplanes: Sep 6, 2010; I STOLE A PIE FROM ESTELLE GETTY

Great article. What angered me wasn't the geopolitics or China's blatant disregard for international norms, but that these boat owners straight up treated their workers like poo poo. The story about the Indonesians and the African workers being abused were horrific.

# ? Oct 12, 2023 06:36

Koramei: Nov 11, 2011; I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.

There seems to be a chunk of the Chinese aristocracy that wants to be a 19th century European colonial empire and not only in the seizing territory sense of it

# ? Oct 12, 2023 15:27

Smeef: Aug 15, 2003; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!; Pillbug

i fly airplanes posted:

Great article. What angered me wasn't the geopolitics or China's blatant disregard for international norms, but that these boat owners straight up treated their workers like poo poo. The story about the Indonesians and the African workers being abused were horrific.

I don't think that's unique to China. There's a certain segment of business owners and managers/supervisors in pretty much every country (though especially in export-oriented countries) who are sadistic brutes with a 19th century sense of business. They're often in industries with razor-thin margins that are upstream from brands and companies in OECD countries that are ostensibly 'good.' The high-margin brands impose social compliance requirements on their suppliers, sure, but they also impose all the associated costs on them while continuously ratcheting up other pressures. So basically we just outsource our slavery and look the other way. Maybe different in this case, though, since China has such a giant domestic consumer market.

# ? Oct 14, 2023 13:35

eSports Chaebol: Feb 22, 2005; Yeah, actually, gamers in the house forever,

It also sounds trite but it�s true: jobs at sea suck and also if you don�t like it there�s no recourse because you�re at sea. impressment -> trafficking is not a surprising transition

# ? Oct 14, 2023 20:35

Staluigi: Jun 22, 2021

Got lots of family who have worked under weird fucky flags doing some processing tours of varying fuckiness and while it can get bad it's nothing like that lol

# ? Oct 15, 2023 03:33

Kavros: May 18, 2011; sleep sleep sleep
fly fly post post
sleep sleep sleep

Just going to share this because it's at least a different wavelength of bizarre, but i marvel at this whole weird movement to whitewash the Evergrande crisis as a "forward thinking action by the forward thinking communist party to ensure that all homeless are housed" and often times evidencing this with pictures of the packed-in fields of high rises that Evergrande had been desperately throwing up while they were full blown Ponzi-advancing their obligations, and now in at least three places i've watched people bring up pictures of high rises that got demolished unused years ago and said that this is all fake news and those buildings are actually used to prevent homelessness in china today

I guess by packing homeless people in the buildings before blowing them up, at least according to these expert explainers of chinese government heroism. Sure, that's a pretty streets ahead move there

# ? Oct 17, 2023 02:22

Barrel Cactaur: Oct 6, 2021

Kavros posted:

Just going to share this because it's at least a different wavelength of bizarre, but i marvel at this whole weird movement to whitewash the Evergrande crisis as a "forward thinking action by the forward thinking communist party to ensure that all homeless are housed" and often times evidencing this with pictures of the packed-in fields of high rises that Evergrande had been desperately throwing up while they were full blown Ponzi-advancing their obligations, and now in at least three places i've watched people bring up pictures of high rises that got demolished unused years ago and said that this is all fake news and those buildings are actually used to prevent homelessness in china today

I guess by packing homeless people in the buildings before blowing them up, at least according to these expert explainers of chinese government heroism. Sure, that's a pretty streets ahead move there

These the buildings that seem to be a thin layer of cement over a cardboard mockup?

# ? Oct 17, 2023 18:57

killer_robot: Aug 26, 2006; Grimey Drawer

That seems to be most of China's building standards.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Oct 17, 2023 23:12

Mister Fister: May 17, 2008; D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
KILL-GORE

I love the smell of dead Palestinians in the morning.
You know, one time we had Gaza bombed for 26 days
(and counting!)

It's starting to look like the US's chip ban is backfiring

https://twitter.com/hsu_steve/status/1714701071963000832

Steve Hsu has an interesting podcast on how the US helped China's US chip startups and their 'coordination problem' where chinese companies might be hesitant to work with these chip startus under free trade, but now chinese companies are forced to work with these chinese chip startups.

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/huawei-and-the-us-china-chip-war-44

# ? Oct 18, 2023 21:49

Budzilla: Oct 14, 2007; We can all learn from our past mistakes.

Mister Fister posted:

Steve Hsu has an interesting podcast on how the US helped China's US chip startups and their 'coordination problem' where chinese companies might be hesitant to work with these chip startus under free trade, but now chinese companies are forced to work with these chinese chip startups.

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/huawei-and-the-us-china-chip-war-44

Just because Chinese firms are getting more orders to build more equipment to produce semiconductors doesn't mean they will be producing replacements they could have acquired from overseas manufacturers.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chinese-powerstar-p3-01105-cpu-is-a-dead-ringer-for-the-intel-core-i3-10105

quote:

On Saturday, Chinese computer manufacturer PowerLeader launched a 'new' processor and compact desktop PC. During the press conference, PowerLeader talked about its first generation Powerstar P3-01105 CPU, featuring the "storm core" architecture, described as "extremely high performance," x86 compatible, and offering great support for Windows. And so it should, as it looks very much like a rebranded Intel Core i3-10105(F) Comet Lake CPU with 4C / 8T.

...

As well as the CPU, a new compact tower PC dubbed the PC PT620P, featuring the Powerstar P3-01105 CPU, was unveiled. A statement about this PC's capabilities provided a small hint that the Powerstar P3-01105 wasn't entirely domestic. According to the machine translation of a PowerLeader exec's statement, the new CPU "has extremely high performance, which is several times higher than that of the domestic CPU." There, it was admitted that this isn't a domestic CPU.

This was a few months ago and Intel's 14nm processors were first released in 2014. By their own admission if this rebranded Intel CPU is several times higher than other Chinese domestic competitors. While it is possible for China to catch up they are far behind in chip design and manufacturing. It only gets harder as the process node shrinks. Look at how much of a disaster 10nm manufacturing has been for Intel.

# ? Oct 22, 2023 06:08

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I suspect the chip ban is not backfiring because Chinese propaganda targeting the US is talking about how the chip ban is backfiring.

# ? Oct 22, 2023 06:18

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

https://twitter.com/Sino_Market/status/1715986787171197105

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/04/china-australia-barley-tariffs-scrapped-removed-trade-tensions
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/22/australia-and-china-suspend-wto-wine-tariff-dispute-ahead-of-albanese-trip-to-beijing
https://www.reuters.com/world/australia-pm-says-deal-reached-with-china-resolve-wto-wine-dispute-2023-10-21/

between the release of Cheng Lei and lifting of trade barriers, Albanese seems to be successfully negotiating de-escalation without allowing the Chinese side to impose conditions on e.g. AUKUS freeze (Albanese will be visiting DC this week)

on the whole, China is getting the short end of this particular stick, but China also needs Australian commodity exports urgently for its pivot to EVs and green tech as the new favourite child

# ? Oct 22, 2023 08:14

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

Budzilla posted:

Just because Chinese firms are getting more orders to build more equipment to produce semiconductors doesn't mean they will be producing replacements they could have acquired from overseas manufacturers.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chinese-powerstar-p3-01105-cpu-is-a-dead-ringer-for-the-intel-core-i3-10105

This was a few months ago and Intel's 14nm processors were first released in 2014. By their own admission if this rebranded Intel CPU is several times higher than other Chinese domestic competitors. While it is possible for China to catch up they are far behind in chip design and manufacturing. It only gets harder as the process node shrinks. Look at how much of a disaster 10nm manufacturing has been for Intel.

Yeah the purpose of the chip ban is not to literally prevent China from accessing chips, it's to set them backwards ten years. Of course its boosted domestic production, forcing reliance on domestic chips was the whole point!

# ? Oct 22, 2023 09:02

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

On the other hand - relations with Manila, not so good:

https://twitter.com/barnabychuck/status/1715948014576222230

# ? Oct 22, 2023 15:51

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

ronya posted:

On the other hand - relations with Manila, not so good:

https://twitter.com/barnabychuck/status/1715948014576222230

I wonder what the end game here is because I feel like eventually this could result in hostilities breaking out; and sure maybe China is more powerful than the Philipines, but wouldn't it devastate trade in the region and potentially drag in other states?

# ? Oct 22, 2023 17:14

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

Raenir Salazar posted:

I wonder what the end game here is because I feel like eventually this could result in hostilities breaking out; and sure maybe China is more powerful than the Philipines, but wouldn't it devastate trade in the region and potentially drag in other states?

the Philippines is too weak to roll back Chinese fortifications once made - it cannot roll back e.g. Mischief Reef by force - and the US is not so interested as to help unless shooting starts first, Europe is actively skeptical, and anyway the rest of ASEAN fervently opposed to remilitarizing the conflict. The Philippine presence on the grounded BRP Sierra Madre is essentially a desperation move. The winner is he who can afford costly prestige projects in the middle of the South China Sea, and China certainly has the advantage in capability and budget at the present

eventually there will be a Philippine change of government to another which can be negotiated with, or at least bought off, with some Chinese megainfrastructure project for domestic electioneering

in the Chinese perspective the strategy of salami slicing has worked excellently so far and there is no sign of its effectiveness ebbing

in the very long run I suspect this has the potential to be something of a booby prize: far-flung Pacific islands are valuable to the United States because the desired presence is far away from its industrial centers. Bases hosted in large countries are dependent on the capricious whims of the Southeast Asian clients that govern them, but isolated islands are less volatile. Conversely such islands are less actually valuable to China, I think, and instead have the potential to render the nearby large countries now more amenable to hosting de facto foreign naval bases (that longstanding ASEAN prohibition). It may be 1000+ km from Hainan but much less to the Philippines or Malaysia.

The idea of a Chinese hegemony in the SCS where China can enforce its current preferred understanding that EEZs extend to a veto on naval vessels (and thereby having a secure backyard) is sexy but implies a regional policy where China plays policeman with continual friction with the neighbours - enforcing its own unilateral fishing quotas, etc. - rather than being able to tactically play off one against the others. Ultimately China views the SCS as a backyard, whereas regional countries view access as critical, and hence the asymmetric backlash from actually asserting a role may render doing so unpalatable. Until the reef bases actually turn back a FON, they're not accomplishing much.

ronya fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Oct 22, 2023

# ? Oct 22, 2023 20:24

eSports Chaebol: Feb 22, 2005; Yeah, actually, gamers in the house forever,

Discendo Vox posted:

I suspect the chip ban is not backfiring because Chinese propaganda targeting the US is talking about how the chip ban is backfiring.

Perhaps you shouldn�t make assumptions based on reporting from media outlets which you yourself explicitly label as �propaganda�. It would make more sense to follow non-propagandistic reporting to try to get a sense of what is actually happening.

# ? Oct 22, 2023 21:49

tractor fanatic: Sep 9, 2005; Pillbug

I suspect the US government is telling the truth about why they want the chip ban, it's for national security reasons to prevent China from developing military AI, because the consultant class in DC has thoroughly convinced the leadership that AI is something other than a mirage

# ? Oct 22, 2023 23:13

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

Once upon a time it was the 1980s, Japan panic was at its all-time high, and there was a technology whose proponents were convinced represented a sea change in industrial civilization at large: high precision machining. The famous Taniguchi chart dates to 1983. This worldview had an outsized impact in Japan itself, which duly invested heavily in high precision upgrading as a way to keep ahead on the industrial value chain (Japan was getting hammered in this period by lower-end manufacturing emigrating to Southeast Asia). When the crash came later, it was found that the sector had been overinvested and many companies had to consolidate at a loss.

In the West this panic instead manifested as a fusion of domestic resentment (a lot of academic energy went into arguing that the consistency and accuracy claims of automated precision engineering was actually a capitalist conspiracy of deskilling) and natsec concerns (e.g., the Toshiba Machinery sale of precision CNC tools to the Soviet Union). The eagerness of Japan to wriggle out of CoCom regulations was of course related to aforementioned overinvestment and resulting need to find export markets.

Don't get me wrong here, the commodification of precision engineering to something consumer-scale did enable a great deal of efficiency and reliability that was previously hit-and-miss. Yes, at the very bleeding edge of ultraprecision, there was dual use technology. But mainly the social benefits came in the form of lower-end tech ("merely" high instead of ultraprecision) moving from merely possible to being so cheap that they are taken as given even in low margin applications like white goods.

But that exact commodification meant that its margins were not as high as the social value generated. Most of the surplus went to the consumer. And overinvestment in a prestige industry likewise led to overproduction and the faintly absurd need to subsidize sales to export markets, which is rather the opposite of exclusivity. There simply wasn't as much of a clustering effect as anticipated.

ronya fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Oct 23, 2023

# ? Oct 23, 2023 04:56

Dante80: Mar 23, 2015

In other news, the banhammer hits hard.

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1716796494815379480?s=20

# ? Oct 24, 2023 16:40

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

In anecdotes:

https://twitter.com/dakekang/status/1716784476876112373

https://twitter.com/dakekang/status/1716784483196895241

(both Kang's and Luk's thread are worth reading; both are addressing middle to upper-middle perspectives, though)

ronya fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Oct 24, 2023

# ? Oct 24, 2023 16:58

i fly airplanes: Sep 6, 2010; I STOLE A PIE FROM ESTELLE GETTY

Dante80 posted:

In other news, the banhammer hits hard.

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1716796494815379480?s=20

While it doesn't affect the information in this tweet, this account is full of misinformation and I wouldn't source anything from them.

# ? Oct 24, 2023 17:20

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

i fly airplanes posted:

While it doesn't affect the information in this tweet, this account is full of misinformation and I wouldn't source anything from them.

Any chance can you give some examples of misinformation so we can know more?

# ? Oct 24, 2023 17:27

i fly airplanes: Sep 6, 2010; I STOLE A PIE FROM ESTELLE GETTY

Raenir Salazar posted:

Any chance can you give some examples of misinformation so we can know more?

He routinely deletes his tweets, and he's always denied the Uyghur ethnic cleansing.

He posts under the r/sino tankie subreddit (because they couldn't handle the regular China subreddit) https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/12d8gcy/achievement_unlocked_today_i_became_the_first/

This is on top of his usual traditional Chinese medicine shill. (eg http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/ctenglish/2018/commentaries/202308/t20230828_800340637.html)

# ? Oct 24, 2023 18:51

AlternateNu: May 5, 2005; ドーナツダメ！

The AP is confirming the cabinet �shift�.

https://apnews.com/article/china-defense-minister-us-taiwan-8bbb77e5e37e5427cb8cc79b6e8d2b22

# ? Oct 24, 2023 19:04

NoModsNoMasters69: May 17, 2023

i fly airplanes posted:

He routinely deletes his tweets, and he's always denied the Uyghur ethnic cleansing.

He posts under the r/sino tankie subreddit (because they couldn't handle the regular China subreddit) https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/12d8gcy/achievement_unlocked_today_i_became_the_first/

This is on top of his usual traditional Chinese medicine shill. (eg http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/ctenglish/2018/commentaries/202308/t20230828_800340637.html)

wow so he posts on a forum you disagree with, and he believes in TCM along with millions of other people.

lol "this account is so full of misinformation they can't be trusted for basic facts, but also I can't find any right now. trust me bro!"

# ? Oct 25, 2023 13:48

Rust Martialis: May 8, 2007; Can't post for 11 hours!

NoModsNoMasters69 posted:

he believes in TCM along with millions of other people.

An actual arguendo ad populum? In *this* forum?

# ? Oct 25, 2023 14:41

tractor fanatic: Sep 9, 2005; Pillbug

Are we defending r/china in this thread now?

# ? Oct 25, 2023 15:25

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

sourcing factual assertions about government appointments to the account where one first found the assertion is imo ok regardless of that account's attitude toward quack medicine. the caveat would then be that the assertions being made should, indeed, be factual, but that seems to be the case here as far as i can tell.

i would go so far as to say that even if the source often provides highly suspect editorial opinions, it can be a convenient way to find certain types of factual information. i myself take this attitude towards several news sources in my country and it's very easy to maintain.

basically, a reason not to use a certain source for a certain type of information would be if that source is known to not be reliable with regard to that sort of information. this guy looks to me to be a hugely pro-PRC-government commentator, which probably colours his posting, but if he consistently and reliably stays on top of this kind of appointment issue he can be a useful source even if one does not share his enthusiasm for xi jinping thought

V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Oct 25, 2023

# ? Oct 25, 2023 15:57

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

I don't think the point was to necessarily say "this information is false because of X" but more "the information probably isn't false but be wary of other information from that account." which is a fair warning because a broken clock can be right twice a day its still broken and it's nice to know this before I buy it.

# ? Oct 25, 2023 16:30

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# ? May 12, 2024 12:46

Dante80: Mar 23, 2015

Raenir Salazar posted:

I don't think the point was to necessarily say "this information is false because of X" but more "the information probably isn't false but be wary of other information from that account." which is a fair warning because a broken clock can be right twice a day its still broken and it's nice to know this before I buy it.

That's what I got from that post too.

Personally, I follow that account and I wouldn't characterize him as "full of misinformation don't source anything from them". That's a bit too much, but ymmv.

# ? Oct 25, 2023 16:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > China Megathread - Their navy can be taken seriously or taken littorally

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