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

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Peel posted:

I keep variously hearing that China's economy is running towards a crash, or that any prospective bubbles are being successfully deflated. Does anyone have insight into the real nature and issues of China's economy right now? I realise this is broad.

The general impression I have is that instead of papering over the huge wealth inequality that we do here in the U.S.A, China is going on a building/investment spree and forcing loans from the national banks to make it happen. When it all crashes, I suppose that China will have some infrastructure for people to hop into and make use out of it, while the credit system unfucks itself.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2012 02:30

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 12:06

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

TheBuilder posted:

Regarding Macau and its development related to China, it would be interesting to see the breakdown of gamblers based on their nationality. Is most of the money coming in from China? Macau is certainly easier to reach than Las Vegas for Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc. How much money coming into Macau is from CCP members?

I though the story of Macau was that it was a backdoor way to get money out of China?

http://www.economist.com/node/21541417

# ¿ Apr 5, 2012 16:54

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Adrastus posted:

It is true, China is severely lacking in terms of infrastructure compared to Japan. However, people are quick to attribute these difficulties to government incompetence, corruption or even flaws with the system while overlooking the fact that it is more likely the direct result of colonialism and imperialistic aggression perpetuated by Japan, and various other countries in the West, the damage of which China is still struggling to overcome.

Such is the insidious form that pro-Japanese rhetoric usually takes in China, 'We are objectively inferior to Japanese society in such and such aspects, and unless that changes, we have no right to defend ourselves from neocolonial invasion upon our territorial sovereignty.', trying to sugarcoat apologetics for Japanese imperialism in many seemingly respectable layers of introspection and self-betterment. Do not allow them to distract you from the issue at hand. The Chinese ownership to the Diaoyu island is clear and self-evident, supported by documents and records going as far back into antiquity as the Qing dynasty.

So why is China's capital Beijing and not Ulan Bator? Heck, the Qing dynasty wasn't exactly what the West calls antiquity (generally 800BC-400 AD-ish). Unless I'm mistaken or there are multiple Qing dynasties, they date back to the mid 1600s AD, which isn't all that impressive.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2012 15:53

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

pentyne posted:

As the economic climate worsens do you think they'll ratchet up the nationalism to try and deflect criticism from the increasingly unworkable political system. All they can really do to keep control is beat the war drums and put on shows of strength. Any attempt at actual force projection would be a monumental disaster.

Don't forget about climatic effects on the nation. Cross posting from the climate change thread:

http://www.straight.com/news/358181/gwynne-dyer-why-chinese-government-wants-carbon-tax

article posted:

Last week�s announcement by China�s Ministry of Finance that the country will introduce a carbon tax, probably in the next two years, did not dominate the international headlines. It was too vague about the timetable and the rate at which the tax would be levied, and fossil-fuel lobbyists were quick to portray it as meaningless. But the Chinese are deadly serious about fighting global warming, because they are really scared.

A carbon tax, though deeply unpopular with the fossil-fuel industries, is the easiest way to change the behaviour of the people and firms that burn those fuels: it just makes burning them more costly. And if the tax is then returned to the consumers of energy through lower taxes, then it has no overall depressive effect on the economy.

The Xinhua news agency did not say how big the tax in China would be, but it pointed to a three-year-old proposal by government experts that would have levied a 10-yuan ($1.60) per ton tax on carbon in 2012 and raised it to 50-yuan ($8) a ton by 2020. That is still far below the $80-per-ton tax that would really shrink China�s greenhouse-gas emissions drastically, but at least it would establish the principle that the polluters must pay.

It�s a principle that has little appeal to U.S. president Barack Obama, who has explicitly promised not to propose a carbon tax. He probably knows that it makes sense, but he has no intention of committing political suicide, the likely result of making such a proposal in the United States. But China is not suffering from political gridlock; if the regime wants something to happen, it can usually make it happen.

So why is China getting out in front of the parade with its planned carbon tax? No doubt it gives China some leverage in international climate-change negotiations, letting it demand that other countries make the same commitment. But why does it care so much that those negotiations succeed? Does it know something that the rest of us don�t?

Three or four years ago, while interviewing the head of a think tank in a major country, I was told something that has shaped my interpretation of Chinese policy ever since. If it is true, it explains why the Chinese regime is so frightened of climate change.

My informant told me that his organization had been given a contract by the World Bank to figure out how much food production his country will lose when the average global temperature has risen by 2 � C. (On current trends, that will probably happen around 25 years from now.) Similar contracts had been given to think tanks in all the other major countries, he said, but the results have never been published.

The main impact of climate change on human welfare in the short- and medium-term will be on the food supply. The rule of thumb the experts use is that total world food production will drop by 10 percent for every degree Celsius of warming, but the percentage losses will vary widely from one country to another.

The director told me the amount of food his own country would lose, which was bad enough�and then mentioned that China, according to the report on that country, would lose a terrifying 38 percent of its food production at plus 2 � C. The reports were not circulated, but a summary had apparently been posted on the Chinese think tank�s website for a few hours by a rogue researcher before being taken down.

The World Bank has never published these reports or even admitted to their existence, but it is all too plausible that the governments in question insisted that they be kept confidential. They would not have wanted these numbers to be made public. And there are good reasons to suspect that this story is true.

Who would have commissioned these contracts? The likeliest answer is Sir Robert Watson, a British scientist who was the director of the environment department at the World Bank at the same time that he was the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

George Bush�s administration had Watson ousted as chair of the IPCC in 2002, but he stayed at the World Bank, where he is now chief scientist and senior adviser on sustainable development. (He has also been chief scientific adviser to the British government�s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for the past six years.)

He would have had both the motive and the opportunity to put those contracts out, but he would not have had the clout to get the reports published. When I asked him about it a few years ago, he neither confirmed nor denied their existence. But if the report on China actually said that the country will lose 38 percent of its food production when the average global temperature is 2 � C higher, it would explain why the regime is so scared.

No country that lost almost two-fifths of its food production could avoid huge social and political upheavals. No regime that was held responsible for such a catastrophe would survive. If the Chinese regime thinks that is what awaits it down the road, no wonder it is thinking of bringing in a carbon tax.

There are no words if the bolded is even half-true.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2013 23:45

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Fangz posted:

Still, I deviate from the orthodox view and argue that what's at play is not problems with the political system but with the socio-economic difficulty of trying to run a large and diverse country. That 20% food production reduction projection includes the US and everyone else as well (especially India), and unlike the Chinese it's not even in the consciousness.

Oh, the U.S. would probably lose quite a bit more than 20%, but realistically, more than half of the grain crops goes to feedlots, so the US has some production to lose, without hitting up against starvation concerns. Certainly I don't want to see steak be 40 bucks a pound, but poo poo happens. Maybe vat-meat will be viable by then?

I dunno, how much of Chinese food consumption is meat, and what would be a realistic per capita adaptation for China?

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 00:12

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Bloodnose posted:

No, sorry. I don't always post that doom is descending upon the world. This time it's just a look and laugh at how horrible this thing is. Look at how wrong these opinions are.

If you want something 'bigger', Andy Xie wrote another column and he always has some awesome things to say. This one is about a Chinese asset bubble, but it's not really doom and gloom. The title is 'China Can Afford to Let Its Bubble Economy Burst.'

Andie Xie's article posted:

Of course, the real reason for the bubble economy is that vested interests depend on it to get rich quick.
... Leaders should root out speculation and corruption, and focus on livelihood issues.

Uhh, I was under the distinct impression that the leaders were the vested interests.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2013 15:04

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Even the U.S. has a lot of regional cooking. Just because the U.S. mastered prepackaged and reconstituted nutrition (like American "cheese"), doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of variation in the cooking styles when it comes to actual food. New England lobster, Southern comfort food, Cajun/Creole food, the food of the American southwest, KC barbecue and probably a whole slew of other regional styles are specific to the U.S., with on top of the food of immigrant cultures that can be found everywhere. I sincerely doubt Greek food could be found in any non first tier cities in China. Conversely, I can get Thai and Ethiopian food in a crappy suburb of Dallas.

There is a lot of things you can accuse the U.S. of having, but bland food? No.

# ¿ May 23, 2013 13:40

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Arglebargle III posted:

Terrible. A shockingly small percentage of published Chinese studies are properly controlled, in any field. There's a pervasive culture of fraud (just like in the rest of the professional culture) and the conclusion of Western academia has been to declare all mainland Chinese science garbage until they can clean up their act.

A route that I know of with some of the Chinese academics is to co-publish with somebody in a western nation. I know my PhD. adviser and my department chair went to China a few times a year, and hosted some Chinese professors/postdocs on a mostly one-way exchange from China to the U.S.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 06:15

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

MJ12 posted:

From what I've heard they're actually pretty big players in nanotech research and obviously they've got pretty good ballistic missile tech. Which again would also contribute in part to their relative lack of international patents even assuming that their hard sciences are top-notch and not full of corrupt bullshit (obviously there's some corrupt bullshit but there's a question of how much and how pervasive).

I can give an anecdotal confirmation to this. Self assembled carbon nano-tube forests into arbitrarily long fibers and graphitic (graphene :rolleyes:

) areogels are things developed by Chinese collaborators from my grad school days and popularized by one of the professors I know. It's a general method of "use a well-known western professor for adding legitimacy to the data."

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 17:15

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Chickenwalker posted:

You know as a younger man I didn't like MacArthur that much and thought he was boastful and incompetent for his handling of the Philippines, but nowadays I find myself liking him more.

Christ on a Harley, are you the oldest goon (tm)? Mind sharing stories?

# ¿ Sep 19, 2014 19:47

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Dante80 posted:

Context is key. China developing a competent HSR network does not obfuscate the fact that it has a authoritarian government, substantial problems in freedom of press/expression, a crumbling environment, human rights violations etc etc.

Regarding the network itself now, the notion that the Chinese are building "railroads to nowhere" is ludicrous. For reference, here are the actual ridership numbers as more lines are coming online.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, they are methodically constructing a network that is designed to link all major cities in the country with a cheap, dependable and fast (for the citizen, not just the elites) high speed rail service. Their original plan (4+4) is pretty much complete, and they are moving on with the 8+8 plan (8 major lines west-east, 8 lines north-south).

This is the "good" stuff. For the bad stuff, see this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#Corruption_and_concerns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#Wenzhou_accident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#Slowdown_in_financing_and_construction

Thanks for this post. Good stepping off point for reading.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2018 13:57

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Pirate Radar posted:

I think China is a topic in D&D that�s particularly challenging for people to discuss and debate in good faith because of the huge amount of information, deeply entrenched perspectives, and the ease with which people can either take whatever news item to mean that they�re right, or dismiss it because it must be unreliable. Obviously those are problems with any topic, but China seems to bring things out in a particularly bad way. It�s like if you told me that Fishmech was once forcibly removed from a Dunkin� Donuts in Worcester because he became verbally abusive and threatening after he thought the staff gave him the wrong change�I just made that up, I have no proof that it�s true, but if you told me that happened I would think, �yeah, that sounds plausible.� In a similar way, Fojar is quick to discard China 2020 stories because he doesn�t trust the way China reports information about itself, Peven jumps on any suggestion that a Chinese dissident was in the same room as an American because he�s a racist CIA cheerleader who doesn�t think nonwhites are capable of independent political thought and organization, and Guyovitch ignores, downplays, or disrespects official Communist Party doctrine and Chinese news sources because he finds it inconvenient to acknowledge the paramount role of Xi Jinping in the hearts and minds of every Chinese citizen and his fatherly guiding role at the forefront of everyday life in China.

These are things we all struggle with, and in the spirit of recognizing that, and advancing the cause of good faith, I�ll be the first to acknowledge mine. I�m sorry, Fishmech. I speak in frustration sometimes. I don�t really think you�ve ever put your balls on someone else�s lunch tray because you couldn�t think of a retort and didn�t want to lose an argument�it was just so easy for me to believe that was true, and I gave in to that temptation.

Posts like this and Caberham's really keep me coming back to lurk this thread.

# ¿ May 9, 2018 18:45

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 12:06

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Tei posted:

If you have too many males, and not enough females, a good way to balance it is to send the extra males to a war to die.

Or videogames. Either way work.

Or import females from other, worse off countries and make it somebody else's problem. Or all three.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2018 19:33

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