Yeah, the Okhotnik and the flight tests with the second stage Product 30 engine already proved that the program was very much alive even before the announcement.

Regarding the Armata project, the talk about “2000 Armatas by 2020” was always a misunderstanding AFAIK. Sure it’s behind schedule and production targets, but they actually planned to get 2000+ modern tanks by the end 2020, that included upgraded T-72s… And “Armata” is comprised of several different vehicles.

The whole Armata “family” will remain in production for a very long time. Producing 2000 T-14s in a few years would’ve been stupid for numerous reasons. But the early hype, those parade appearances included, was a big mistake.

Tbh, I haven’t been following the most recent development very closely. But in any case nothing too unexpected was shown, and we’ll have to wait for additional info on many of the systems. WZ-8 sounds cool though: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30121/chinas-high-speed-recon-drone-is-rocket-powered-and-all-about-doing-what-satellites-cant And according to some rumours at least, it has already been flying over Taiwan (or as Google Translate put it, “enemy occupied islands”).

Overall, the parade did once again highlight why the US left the INF treaty. Some people are talking about a new “missile gap.” Hopefully this time it’s not as “fake” as the one in the early 60s. Either way, it reminded me of one other thing as well: The Yanks are far from home.

It seems China is now the first country with a fully operational hypersonic weapon, in particular when it comes to HVGs. That said, direct comparison to Russia are quite pointless, as Russia has prioritized strategic, intercontinental weapons (Zircon and Kinzhal notwithstanding), as has been the case with previous military programs as well. Number one threat to Russia: US nukes (plus the INF treaty was a big limiting factor until some months ago), whereas for China it’s the US Navy and American bases in the region.

Speaking of missiles, it’s almost as if the upcoming AIM-260 air-to-air missile is, funnily enough, a copy of China’s PL-15 – by Western (double) standards that is, as it will probably have very similar requirements and capabilities. Only this time, China got there first. Americans should start getting used to that possibility, it won’t we the last time.

On a related note, recently we’ve been hearing some positive news about Russia’s military procurement as well. Firstly, additional Admiral Gorshkov “frigates” (more like small destroyers) and apparently even Yasen SSN’s have been ordered. That should ensure blue water component’s slow, but steady modernization, and just in time.

Even more importantly, an order of around 80 Su-57s until 2028 is now more or less official. That will already be a solid number of planes (and the production will of course continue for at least a few decades), considering it’s Russia’s F-22, not F-35. But it seems in the meantime the “the Su-57 program is a total flop and it has already been cancelled” meme is now almost fully believed in the West.

The Armata program is equally derided. Both have been PR clusterfucks. Add some mistranslations as well as misunderstandings about Russian procurement practices and priorities into the mix and it’s bad. And we shouldn’t forget wishful thinking, either. So now the Western Bloc is probably underestimating “declining” Russia even more. Is that a good thing? Maybe, but probably not. Things can’t get much worse in that department, even if Russophrenia is still very much alive as well.

No, unfortunately I didn’t have time to visit Shenzhen, but it will almost certainly be on the list next time.

Your train story was interesting, but not too surprising, as even in these first tier cities the behaviour of older people was, let’s say, peculiar at times. So some traces of the “third world” past still remain, for me the dorms were especially memorable. That said, my experience with the bullet trains was indeed the exact opposite. The stations had English signage, and it was easy to order tickets with the Trip.com app, although I still had to exchange the QR code for paper tickets. The subway worked flawlessly in all three cities as well, but instead of pensioners, the trains were mostly full of smartphone zombies.

Beijing vs. Shanghai: Well, I was in Shanghai for only a few days. I suppose the standard view is accurate; Shanghai is clearly the economic and financial center, more cosmopolitan, while Beijing is the political and cultural capital. So I don’t which one I’d prefer, but my impression was that Beijing was at least a little more distinctly Chinese.

This is my first post in a while (I was travelling etc, not that anyone cares)…

So I visited China for the first time in the summer. Some more or less random observations:

I did some studying there and the university campus area itself and the public spaces were clean and in good condition, but in stark contrast the standard dormitories were quite “exotic” and certainly not up to the first world standards. Similar discrepancies were visible elsewhere around the capital as well. It was certainly not a negative surprise overall or anything, but let’s say that it makes sense why even the first-tier cities are still growing relatively rapidly economically.

One of the first things I noticed on campus was this quite massive rainbow colored uh… “billboard” (was especially noticeably in late June). Unsurprisingly it had nothing to do with the Alphabet People. According to Google Translate’s OCR at least, it was in fact related to the “31 steps for Taiwan” program or something similar, i.e. it was about the ongoing “braindraining” of the island. (The Rainbow apparently symbolized crossing of the strait and the colors represented different sectors of the economy and academia. Makes sense.) CCP “unintentionally trolling” the visiting Western baizuo. Beautiful. That, combined with some Saturday-evening marching drills for students in military training created a very pleasing, largely globohomo free aesthetic.

That said, the prevalance of Apple devices among young people was absolutely disgusting, and I don’t even dislike the company that much (though of course I have never owned any of their products). Therefore I’m more convinced than before that banning/sanctioning them would probably be a good idea, especially now that America is waging war against ‘Chinese achievement’, no matter how much that old man wants to cuck. Sidenote: Obviously not many young women were overweight (or god forbid, had tattoos), but obesity among young children was seemingly even quite widespread, which of course makes sense.

What surprised me though was queuing, as that went smoothly basically everywhere. The quality of customer service was all over the place, however, to put it mildly. I guess it would have been different if I had spoken Chinese, of course, but these were mostly touristy places and people there often spoke some English. On a related note, I’d say the (low-level) bureaucracy was, well, worthy of its reputation. Also, even in a university environment the amount of different, overlapping rules was seemingly very unnecessary from a Western European POV, as was the number of security guards (a position that seemed to fit the description of a sinecure really well). Not that it mattered for the most part, as the overall level of monitoring was patchy at best. It’s the thought that counts, I guess. In general, despite MSM’s budding attempts to stir up XDS, the Emperor wasn’t in the limelight all that much either, not yet anyway. Who would’ve thought…

The military museum in Beijing was quite plain, but it featured some amusing Chinglish + “newspeak” translations, for example:

“Then, the CPC turned to strategic attacks, waged strategic decisive battles, and pursued enemy with strategy. This allowed them to defeating more than 800 million KMT troops, which was easy as crushing dry weeds and smashing rotten wood […] and finally giving birth to the People’s Republicof.”

To be fair, the “millions” might have been a typo because they talked about hundreds of thousands elsewhere, and the museum was obviously mainly intended for domestic audiences, but I guess that’s one example why Chinese “soft power instruments” like its official English language media are still lacking compared to even Russia.

I made a quick visit to Shanghai (goes without saying that the high-speed rail was nice), and in summary Pudong was very stunning on a Saturday evening. In fact, a river cruise along the Huangpu at 9 PM made me realize that the US never actually stood a chance (a powerful take lol).

Finally I made an even shorter visit to Tianjin as well, mainly because I was interested in the aircraft carrier “theme park” and the vessel Kiev. Overall, a strange experience. For one thing, it was in the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking. The park was very Sovok, but with Chinese characteristics. There they were, the “brotherly peoples” of Russia and Ukraine working together to promote Soviet military power to Chinese boomers. The place was relatively run-down and quite empty as well, though nothing really terrible per se – the ship itself was certainly cool.

Speaking of Russia, Putin Derangement Syndrome really is huge among Western students and academia. While we were sitting less than 10 kilometers from Tiananmen Square (!!), out of nowhere some were triggered over PUTLER’S then recent interview for FT and his very routine criticism of “liberalism,” while they never seemed to have many issues with the local system. That, and the fact that I had to spend some (too many) MAO banknotes in a Disneyland of all places, made me realize this timeline is truly bizarre.

I was unsure if I should count the MiG-31s and Su-34s, because I was more thinking in terms of air superiority roles – what can Russia field against NATO air forces if there was a danger of conflict?

Yeah, but both are multirole aircraft with decent BVR-capabilities at least. It of course means that F-15Es etc. should be counted as well.

Regarding China (I don’t know which debate of Karlin and Martyanov you’re referring to), are you aware that the Chinese 5th generation fighters have no cannons?

Yes. Although I’m not sure that’s actually confirmed. By the way, those sources and authors are questionable, to say the least. I wouldn’t take people like David Axe and Alex Lockie seriously at all.

For one thing, if I remember correctly, Andreas Rupprecht (aka Deino) has complained several times how he is constantly quoted out of context by these idiots, in order to fit into their “Chinese military is actually weak” narrative. So it probably happened again here.

Karlin vs. Martyanov. Very entertaining, but off-topic: https://www.unz.com/article/vladimir-the-savior/#comment-2258131

After quick browsing, this comment sounds plausible:

That’s incorrect. The J-20 has a gun compartment but no gun (according to yankeesama) currently to save weight and because firing the gun damages the stealth coating. The weight and paint issues will be sorted out in the future. It would be ludicrous for the J-20 – primarily an air-superiority fighter – not to have a close-range weapon for going up against enemy stealth fighters.

And:

Why is this even an point of argument? The source that claimed that the J-20 has no gun also stated that the aircraft has a space for a cannon should the need arise.

It is merely an issue of installing a cannon if a sortie requires such armament.

Even this is better than most articles on National Interest or Business Insider (lmao):
https://tiananmenstremendousachievements.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/advanced-helmet-pl-10-missile-ensure-j-20s-killing-of-f-35-f-22/

So basically his argument is that J-20’s advanced helmet + the short-range PL-10 missile is the winning combo.

In any case, the “Chinese 5th gen fighters have zero dogfighting abilities” clickbait is obviously total nonsense.

You have good points, and some people take their wishful thinking regarding the F-35 a little too far, but I think you are too pessimistic. I really don’t think the F-35 is a silver bullet, no matter how many hundreds are churned out annually. And some F-35 critics argue that while the plane itself isn’t that expensive anymore, its maintenance requirements in general are so demanding and costly that the sortie and availability rates are… bad. There’s probably at least some truth to that, especially when we are talking about smaller countries and air forces.

That said, with the current and planned production rates, if we assume the F-35 is anywhere near as good as advertised, it would basically mean that the US is becoming militarily and technologically more dominant, even vs. China. (One major caveat: their very vulnerable basing? But that’s it? They would actually be dominant once in the air?) But that is not supported by almost any other indicator or military program. Or is it? There’s one that comes close, though. It’s the “China can’t into nuclear subs, EVER” meme, but it’s even more obviously false, in my opinion.

And if that’s the case, China (and even the US? Or Russia) wouldn’t still be procuring very large numbers of 4.5th gen fighters. Interestingly, it would also mean that in a hypothetical conflict between the UK and France (near equals), for example, the latter would be at a massive disadvantage, as only a few F-35 would wipe the floor with 4.5th gen Rafales (at least theoretically, as long as the F-35s wouldn’t run out of missiles). That makes no sense. Now there are probably better examples, and you could argue that the comparison is stupid because France is not attempting to challenge “The Empire” and is in many ways just a vassal, so it doesn’t count, but still.

Lastly, we have Turkey’s S-400 deal. It’s almost as if Turkey chose the S-400 over the F-35 + Patriot? I don’t think it’s necessarily that simple (or rather, it obviously isn’t), but such a conclusion wouldn’t be too ludicrous at all. Or how dumb are the Turks?

Almost forgot the bombers. Russia is not only “prioritizing” the Tu-160 over the Su-57 program (I’m not sure it’s actually true though, hence the “”) , but as I pointed out in my previous post, Russia has prioritized multirole Su-30s (which are replacing some of the remaining Su-24s) and fighter bombers Su-34 over the air-to-air focused Su-35s as well. And yes, they are planning to deeply modernize some Tu-22Ms and even Su-25s too. The Russian military must have good reasons for that?

Good discussion about the Su-57 and F-35.

Firstly: I’m not an aerodynamics expert either. And while the Su-57 program has certainly not gone 100% according to plan, those forum posts are probably BS for the most part.

The truth regarding the F-35 is probably somewhere between the two extremes as well, as usual. On the one hand, it’s most likely not this perfect symbol of AngloZionist Empire’s decay, nor is the F-35 literally inferior to Sopwith Camel from WW1 (as suggested by alt-media commenters), but on the other hand, it’s not the master of all trades either.

I’ll just quote Spacebattles.com user TR1, who seems to be a real expert on the Russian military. This was posted in 2019:

That is…completely false. Literally a narrative invented by crappy English language blogs, who purposefully misread Bosirov’s words as “we cant fund the Su-57” when in reality all he said is “current planes are good so we have no reason to rush the development schedule”.

There is zero indication the program is starved for money. It is in full development, they are just waiting on izd 30 to be ready to launch production en-masse. If we compare timelines even to Su-27, Su-57 is not really late or super behin schedule.
They would not be testing it alongside Ohotnik [the drone] if they were barely able to keep the program afloat.
As for exports, it is Rostec basically saying “yeah I think they will offer it for export soon”, which means nothing for actual export contracts right now (Knaaz is still making making a production line) and says nothing about a desperation to sell. It also certainly does not mean they will sell to anyone.

The Pak-fa has always been a priority program, and the Russian defense budget is still robust.
People just looked at GPV 2011-2020 and thought the “60 PAK-FA” in it actually meant contracts, when really it was a vague force intention that had little to do with Sukohi’s actual pace.
From the start of the program I figured there would not be appreciable numbers until post 2020, and that is exactly how it is coming together.

When it comes to vs. NATO comparisons, Russia’s very modern IADS must be taken into account as well. Not to mention that by the end 2020 Russia will technically have more than a “few” hundred modern fighters. My calculations, roughly:

12 (or is it 2?) Su-57, 100 Su-35, 160 Su-30, 100+ upgraded Su-27, 60 (?) MiG 29K/SMT/MiG-35, 120 MiG-31BM, 150 Su-34. That’s more than 700 aircraft, and it doesn’t include some MiG-31Ks or Su-33s (to be upgraded).

Even without the IADS, that would clearly be the 3rd strongest air force in the world. Russophile triggering: “3RD STRONGEST!?!? IT’S ONLY THE AMERICANS AND US! IT’S FOREVER 2008 IN THE CHINESE AIR FORCE! MUH ENCLOSED TECHNOLOGICAL CYCLES.” (Anyone who gets the reference, that debate between Karlin and Martyanov was hilarious, I only read it a few days ago.) Now to be fair, one could still plausibly rank Russia above China in 2020, after all Russia’s IADS and bomber fleet remain superior, but the overall conclusion would objectively be far from obvious.

I do agree that they better get their shit together with the Su-57 procurement by the mid-2020s, but overall you can’t ask for much more than that, all things considered.

I suspect that in the Taiwan scenario, U.S. submarines will have little advantage because the First Island Chain will be under thorough monitoring by China’s SOSUS system.

True, but its status seems to be unclear still. I’d imagine things will look quite different in 2025, though.

The number of available US submarines in the Taiwan scenario would also be quite limited, especially at the early stages of the conflict, made worse (for the US) by the fact that Taiwan’s own submarine capability is pretty much non-existent. And they would have to face the very large Chinese SSK fleet.

I think the reverse is true. Most Chinese fighters and bombers still use Russian engines. However, I agree the situation will change in 5-10 years.

I could have phrased that better. I agree, it’s absolutely true that most Chinese aircraft still use Russian engines. But my main point was that domestic engines are also widely in use already and that China is making rapid progress.

Thanks!

I’d like to make a correction regarding the Type 075 helicopter carriers. After doing some additional browsing on the subject after a hiatus, it seems China has in fact “merely” ordered 3 LHDs, which is, to be sure, quite different from having all three under construction simultaneously.

There’s little info available though, so we’ll see. And I think my main point still stands, as that is still a major development and it’s likely that China will churn them out in numbers during the next decade, so a fleet of 4-6 such vessels by 2030 is probably on the cards.

To my surprise, I also learned that the PLAN might have stopped ordering new frigates. There were signs of this earlier, but on the other hand, rumours (and/or fanfiction) about the succeeding Type 054B/Type 057 have been around for years as well. That would leave China with 30 Type 054A frigates, plus potentially some additional older ships, which of course is still a large number.

However, this could suggest that the size of PLAN’s frigate fleet won’t actually grow in numbers, and that China is focusing even more on destroyer build-up and blue water operations. I think most PLA watchers didn’t expect this outcome even a few years ago. That said, considering the overall level of OPSEC, nothing’s ever certain.

Regarding Japan, it doesn’t really have any surface combatants that are fully 1:1 comparable to the Type 055-class. Even looking at the overall inventory, if any quality gap remains past 2020, it will have to be (very) small. This isn’t 2012 anymore, we’re far past that. And as mentioned by reiner Tor, the gap in quantity will only keep growing bigger. A quick glance at JMSDF’s OOB is easily misleading, as most Japanese “destroyers” (in English translations) are actually frigates.

Lastly, while Japan’s diesel sub fleet is very respectable, for blue water operations it obviously doesn’t have any nuclear subs at all. China also has more than twice as many modern SSKs in service already.

I was going to recommend the PLA Real Talk blog, but the site seems to be (permanently?) offline. Sad! It was a great resource.

Your assessment might be even more “ambitious” than mine lol, though I certainly agree with 95% of it and I was going to post something similar (“fake edit”: I guess I did it anyway…).

Some additional points:

Yes, Type 055s are certainly “cruisers” according to the current American definition.

The “last” 4 carriers (by around 2030) will almost certainly be EMALS-equipped supercarriers.

Then there’s the relatively little known Type 075 class “large helicopter carriers,” or LHDs. I haven’t been following its progress recently, and to my surprise (actually, not really at this point) China is apparently building 3 (!! Jesus…) such ships simultaneously, at least according to some sources and English Wikipedia (so might still easily be BS). If true, you can probably add six 40,000 ton Type 075s to the list. And a reminder: only the US Navy is equipped with similarly large LHDs currently.

The current rate of 5 destroyers per year sounds insane, and I think something like 3-4 -> 60-80% of the US Navy by 2030 might be more realistic, though probably still more than enough in most scenarios, considering US “overextension.” That said, I think 5 is actually doable for China, and it would make a lot of sense. And of course China has a very large number of modern frigates and corvettes, whereas the US Navy is very top-heavy, an issue it’s trying to solve with the LCS program.

I can still remember all those not-so-old predictions from informed China watchers, maybe from 5-10 years ago. Back then most expected maybe 30 destroyers by 2030…

Overall it must be concluded that China’s declarations about acquiring a “world class navy by 2050” are basically a joke at this point. But even then the uniformed Western media seemed to take them kind of seriously lol. That combined with some unhealthy dose of wishful thinking. “Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.” It still works.

This article is an excellent summary.

I think I will be repeating myself quite a lot…

Who is Kimppis, and what did he demonstrate?

LOL

To be fair, I respect Mr. Martyanov’s views and also read his blog regularly. It’s true as well that China’s SSN fleet remains a relative weakness, so even in my opinion he’s certainly correct there to an extent. However, I do think he hugely exaggerates those issues for several reasons.

For one thing, as Anatoly and others have already mentioned, it really doesn’t matter that much around the First Island Chain. Many people also don’t seem to know that China’s has by far the largest MODERN diesel sub fleet in the world. Modern Chinese surface combatants have proper ASW capabilities as well. Modern frigates and corvettes are being introduced in huge numbers. The less known Y-8Q maritime patrol aircraft, China’s answer to P-3 Orion and P-8 Poseidon is finally in active service, too.

This weird notion that “China still won’t have modern nuclear submarines by the year 3000” is just part of the overall “China can’t into (military) tech” meme, which still somehow keeps living on. Martyanov thinks that China is not even close to solving its remaining technological bottlenecks. I, on the other hand, argue that the Chinese are close, and that those issues will have been solved by 2025, or even more likely, a few years earlier.

In this context, I feel it’s important to mention China’s progress in aircraft engines. The “anti-Chinese” narrative here is very similar to the submarine one, but it’s possibly even more clearly false, as China isn’t quite as secretive about that sector, and/or the progress is more difficult to hide, for obvious reason. Many seem to simply think that China has not made major advancements in the field. Some even keep suggesting that the relatively slow progress is somehow indicative of some inherent racial/ideological limitations. But how is that really different from the development of basically most/all other countries and their aerospace sectors? Also several countries have actually successfully developed modern fighters, but without domestic engines to power them.

The meme that all (or almost all) Chinese military aircraft are supposedly equipped with Russian engines isn’t true at all. AFAIK, most, if not all J-series Flankers have Chinese engines (the backbone of China’s fighter fleet, hundreds of modern aircraft) and that the Chinese have already tested domestic engines on the 5th-gen J-20, so in reality China hasn’t been one of those aforementioned countries for some time. Russia remains only modestly ahead of China, maybe only by 5 years. 2025!

I also want to point out once more that China has already introduced improved variants of the Type 093 SSN years ago and that Russia has a single (I think?) post-Soviet SSN (Yasen) in active service. Now, it’s of course true that Russia needs a blue water navy and SLOCs much less than China and that upgraded “Soviet-era” boats remain very capable, but considering the fact that even the US Navy is still mostly equipped with “Soviet-era” boomers, it’s very debatable overall how “shitty” the Type 093 actually even is. Certainly the gap between the upgraded variants vs. both the NEWEST Russian and the US subs shouldn’t be more than “a generation.” Type 093 was China’s equivalent Los Angeles class, and the (soon!) upcoming Type 095 will be China’s answer to Virginia and Seawolf, as well as the Type 052D of Chinese nuclear attack subs. That’s it. This isn’t that complicated.

You disagree, fine. We’ll see soon enough. 2025…

This possibility actually crossed my mind while I was typing that comment. It’s very likely, sadly. The very definition of Russophrenia.

And as has been pointed out here, it would explain why they’re pushing Russia towards China. In their mind it just really doesn’t matter, as that Italy… no, Spain/South Korea/Canada/California/Texas/state of New York/Netherlands + Belgium/Chinese province-sized gas station is simply going to “collapse” sooner rather than later.

Likewise in Georgia 2008: Saakashvili may have had delusions that NATO bombers would come to his aid, but there was no chance of this happening, even if Russian forces had gone all the way to Tbilisi.

Yes, but that would have been a very challenging operation logistically, as reiner Tor pointed out. SCS and naval warfare for the US Navy is a different matter entirely.

True, but even so, do you think the US would have made that war promise over tiny islands, if China had a Russia-sized nuclear arsenal? I don’t.

Yes, possibly. There’s also a treaty between the US and the Philippines, and talk is still cheap, especially for a guy like Pompeo.

It might just be the passage of time, and those who still remember the Cold War slowly dying out. Maybe in a few years they will openly threaten Russia with war, too.

This is a very interesting point, and a real possibility. Since 1990 the history ended, there were no real challengers for a few decades and American casualties have been minimal. Maybe most worryingly, their views on Russia are totally detached from reality in every possible way.

At the same time, though, they take Putler’s meddling skillz seriously, somehow, so I guess they must believe in “his” nukes as well? I guess you’re also talking about the whole concept and possibility of a nuclear war and nukes? That it’s foreign to those people?

Of course Trump II (and I’m not talking about his second term) can’t be allowed to happen, Russia is an existential threat to “American democracy” and it must be stopped at all costs, literally.

Let’s say that by 2025, the meddling just hasn’t stopped, especially in Europe, as neoliberalism.txt is still not in full control and the bioleninist utopia is far away (obviously Russia’s fault). The sanctions have also been ineffective: Russia has been growing 3%+ annually since 2020-21, with massive reserves. Then you can make shit up about Putler’s gay holocaust, or something. I could almost see that happening in the 2020s at this rate.

This is how the Chinese military modernization has progressed so far: first they slowly experiment with different designs, the situation overall doesn’t look great, which many naysayers immediately interpret as weakness, “China can’t into tech, copies everything…” But eventually they reach a satisfactory level and start a very large scale mass production. The destroyer build-up of Type 052C, 052D and 055 classes is a perfect example of this. True, the logic might not fully apply to nuclear weapons, but I think that’s still quite valid.

That’s what I wanted to write, exactly the destroyers’ example.

I think it applies to nukes as much as anything else. They don’t want to waste money and resources on building and maintaining an obsolete force, instead put the money into R&D. This has two advantages: they will achieve a fully modern military faster, and they don’t overly alarm the Americans. (Though the Americans started to get alarmed anyway.)

It obviously has two big disadvantages: they are weaker in the meantime, and the military personnel and leadership won’t get very experienced by the time they reach full maturity in terms of equipment. Of course, experience with obsolete technology might even be a drawback in some cases, you get used to something which doesn’t work any longer. But usually it’s more useful than not, you don’t have to learn everything anew, just a few things.

For great demonstration of how seriously american military takes russian military, just look at all the deescalation contacts in Syria. They are not joking there, despite whatever idiotic bluster comes from suits up above.

Agreed, I never said that the US military doesn’t take Russia seriously. (Or at least they very much should.)

With those godforsaken islands they have far more leeway.

.

Pompeo has explicitly promised to attack Chinese forces if they try to seize the Spratly Islands from the Philippines.

Whereas there’s basically zero chance the USA would attack Russian forces invading Ukraine, or any other country that the USA isn’t treaty-obligated to defend.

Source for that quote? And Pompeo wasn’t there in 2014-15. Though I can agree with that assessment to an extent, now that I think about it. I just don’t think it’s related to China’s relatively lacking nuclear deterrence.

China’s naval power projection capabilities are simply more limited in a South China Sea contingency vs. the US Navy, compared to Russia’s capabilities in Ukraine and the US ability to directly distrupt any Russian intervention in the region.

So in my view, it has more to do with exceptional (and conventional!) blue-water capabilities and basing of the US Navy, and geographic realities in general. However, China’s naval modernization and build-up is so impressive that even the South China Sea will look drastically different post-2025.

Lol, I guess you could say that. Or simply just not during 1990-2010, any other era would probably have been better. That is, if my earlier comment is taken 100% seriously, i.e. that the global power balance is pretty much the most important thing in the world. And I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, as it was undeniably a great time time to alive, at least as long as you lived in the West or East Asia.

This is one of the most on-point descriptions of China I’ve read from a foreigner.

For a foreign tourist, I would go as far as to say that China is much more accommodating and has much higher quality service than Russia. China is actually a tourist-friendly country if you can look past its visa wall, hour-long immigration lines for foreigners, and censored internet.

Ruthless competition and vanity is the single largest reason why China has been able to grow at this rate economically. Few other nationalities can handle this mentality, except maybe the Koreans, who themselves are just as competitive and vain: the average Korean might actually be closer to the average Northeast Chinese culturally and genetically than the average Cantonese. This mentality, on the other hand, is alien for Russians (and Southeast Asians too).

I think a big reason why the Chinese don’t do so well in the US is that the ruthless competition and vanity Chinese focus on in America isn’t what’s quite in demand in the US. Social skills and extroversion/verbal skills are required to actually come out on the top in American society, while the Chinese in America focused their energy largely into academics: This is enough to get by in the US, but not to rise to the top. They do so in academics because tertiary education is by far what the Chinese respect the most out of America.

Keep in mind that no matter the nationality, the Chinese doesn’t trust foreigners. China only wants to milk aggressively of their skills and advantages, then toss them aside once they successfully transfer those skills to Chinese people. Combined with China’s top notch hospitality when it comes to treating guests, this was how expats had a Golden Age from the late 90s until 2012ish; it has ended in most sectors after the Chinese got the know-how to run the economy by themselves.

For example, China currently has a severe pilot shortage so they hire foreign pilots (I believe Russian is a top 3 nationality in this) at absurd wages like USD 300K a year to fly Airbus A320s on domestic routes, but subjects them to abysmal, aggravating working conditions.

Likewise, the phenomenon of masses of Chinese students studying in the Anglosphere and Western Europe to a lesser extent without integrating is a perfect example of this mentality.

This is probably why China constantly antagonizes smaller, weaker nations yet sings a very different tone to the US, which is more hostile to it than countries like Sweden or Vietnam.

OK, fair enough, good points.

SIPRI estimates that China’s stockpile was 270 warheads in 2017 and 280 warheads in 2018. If the experts are wrong, they are probably off by tens of warheads, not hundreds.

There are still reasons to believe that those estimates are somewhat outdated – almost certainly not off by hundreds, true, but possibly still more than tens of warheads. That’s not really relevant either way, however. My main point is that the stockpile should still increase considerably by 2025-30.

This is how the Chinese military modernization has progressed so far: first they slowly experiment with different designs, the situation overall doesn’t look great, which many naysayers immediately interpret as weakness, “China can’t into tech, copies everything…” But eventually they reach a satisfactory level and start a very large scale mass production. The destroyer build-up of Type 052C, 052D and 055 classes is a perfect example of this. True, the logic might not fully apply to nuclear weapons, but I think that’s still quite valid.

China also only has 4 SSBNs, of a very noisy design (about as noisy as US and Soviet subs were in the 1970s). At least 3 of 4 are usually at port on Hainan Island, and its unclear if any have ever actually sailed with nuclear weapons on board, whereas France always has at least 2 of its 4 SSBNs armed and at sea.

First of all, it’s clear they’re planning to procure atleast 8 SSBNs (12 is more likely, IMO), probably by 2025, and that includes the upcoming Type 096 class. Secondly, those noise level estimates are the most dubious of them all. For example the newer variants of China’s SSN class, the Type 093, look clearly more modern than the earlier subs, so they must be considerably less noisy, but the infamous ONI chart is still from the 90s, or whatever.

And the oldest American and Russian SSBNs still in service were laid down in the mid-70s, so… That said, I’m ready to accept that the current Chinese boomers are noisier than most of their counterparts around the world, but the difference shouldn’t be exaggerated, and the Type 094 is a huge upgrade from their earlier designs. But the most important thing is that China’s nuclear triad is more… “complete” than France’s, the country is not only, or even mostly, dependent on its subs.

At present, a US counterforce first strike on China, using only 10% of the US nuclear arsenal, could probably wipe out 90% of China’s nuclear arsenal

I doubt that. And again: we should look at 2025-30.

This is, I think, one reason why the US casually promises to go to war with China in defense of tiny, unimportant South China Sea islands, but is careful to avoid any direct military clash with Russia.

I find this whole “look, militarily the US takes Russia much more seriously than China” narrative questionable, I don’t think it’s really accurate…

I agree with reiner Tor’s comment. I’d like to add the following:

– The “official” estimates are more or less outdated, China almost certainly has more nukes…

– China’s nuclear forces are being modernized. That means, among other things, that the Chinese are adding MIRVed warheads, which will grow the size of their arsenal even without considerably increasing the number of ICBMs, as the lack of MIRVs was the main limiting factor previously.

– China’s strategic nuclear forces are already superior to those of France, even if you believe all those dubious estimates, come on now. France has only 4 SSBN, I think? In addition to subs, China has land-based nukes: silo-based and trucks. China is also developing a stealthy strategic bomber (H-20). Lastly, the combined megatonnage of China’s arsenal has been quite high for decades, and in fact much higher than any other country’s outside the top 2, France isn’t even close, IIRC.

– And regardless, one could argue that even a comparatively limited force is a big enough deterrence anyway, as long as you have modern ICBMs, and certainly with the newest models, especially the DF-41, China has already achieved that objective.

My “Sinophilia” (and Russophilia!) has nothing to do with ideology, values or ideals, or atleast that was the case before the West got full into bioleninism (hah, who am I kidding, we haven’t seen anything yet). Rather the whole thing is based on my strong – and admittedly “autistic” – desire to see a world with multiple great powers and a balance of power, instead of the abnormal “end of history” universalism that I grew up in. (Now that I think about it, had I actually been alive during the Cold War and the USSR, I could be much more pro-American today, who knows, but I guess that’s quite likely.)

I can see how that probably doesn’t appeal to most people. But in this context, I view the world as a multiplayer match of… Hearts of Iron/Europa Universalis/Victoria, which means that I obviously want it to be atleast somewhat balanced.

Of course, in my opinion, the “Western democracy” and especially its universalistic message is one of the most overrated things in world history. Most worryingly, its much vaunted “pluralism” is becoming increasingly limited (on this, Polish Perspective’s comment from a year ago (??) summed up my thoughts well).

Then there’s the “small” issue that Russia and China, and particularly their domestic policies, are nowhere near as bad as they are portrayed in the Western MSM. The Russia narrative is so impressively detached from reality that I don’t even know what a good historical analogy would be. World War 1 era propaganda (of any country)? That could be kind of accurate, more so than the WW2 era stuff, in regards to limited ideological differences etc. In any case, China’s alternatives to this free and independent journalism can’t possibly be much worse lmao.

Luckily, in my opinion, China has probably peaked, and I don’t think there is any real chance it will be a global superpower.

China overtook the the US in PPP GDP in around 2014, and as of 2019, 5 or so years later, it’s already 20-25% larger. So that is what “peaking” and not-ever-becoming-a-superpower looks like? Right.

Not to mention that those kind of upward adjustments are standard practice globally, AFAIK. They already did similar things a few years ago, under Surinov (not to this extent for the previous year, but still).

This post reminded me of Finnish Wikipedia’s take on Rosstat that I read a few months ago. It had one source, which was clearly the only reason for the page’s existence. I mean, the whole Finnish Wikipedia seems relatively dead, and there’s no reason to write about Rosstat in Finnish in the first place, as long as you can’t use it in some ridiculous anti-Russian hit piece.

So the source was an article from Finland’s number 1 newspaper (incidentally it also owns The Moscow Times?), which suggested that evil Putler had recently ended the “independence” of Rosstat and that it was no longer reliable as a result. This was from around 2015, if I remember correctly. So apparently Rosstat returned to the Ministry of Economic Development. I do wonder is that any different from many other countries? Probably not, but in any case nothing dramatic happened.

This whole “war against my advesary’s GDP statistics” is a global phenomenon. China’s growth is regularly questioned by the Western MSM, and in the Russophile alt-media, American GDP stats are as fake as the capabilities of F-35. That debt, lolololololol. So in that sense the fact that Russia has now “joined in,” is probably not a bad thing, it shows that Russia’s real trajectory is going against the wishful thinking of its opponents.

Our government both Congress and BJP are so grossly incompetent that our pilots are still flying MIG 21!! WTF the airforce has been crying out for modern fighters for two decades and still don’t have them.

To be fair, even China still operates MiG-21s. However, their inventory of 4th generation (and 5th gen!) fighters is the second largest in the world and 3x bigger than India’s (+ a modern IADS).

By the way, if it’s confirmed that India shot down an F-16, that would probably be good PR for Russian fighters and MIC. From now on the pro-Russian side should start using the incident actively in their propaganda, just like the Americans like to do with Israel vs. Arab and US vs. Iraq kill ratios, this doesn’t happen every day.

Oh, and Pakistan has a sizeable fleet of JF-17s. Are they 4th gen planes? I guess that’s very debatable, and Block 1 is the only variant that’s operational (atleast I think so), but those planes are still worth mentioning and the airframes are new.

Housing wasn’t the government’s responsibility for the past three decades. We didn’t switch to market economy in order to babysit people who can’t buy a $150 water heater on their own.

There’s also the “small” problem that the whole comment is pretty much false, or at the very least extremely misleading.

If it’s at all true that “20% of homes have no hot water,” that likely includes dachas etc., and the number doesn’t actually differ from many/most other Eastern European countries, i.e. it actually isn’t particularly low.

Same with a doctor’s salary, wouldn’t that actually indicate a large increase from only a few years ago? It will probably also keep growing rapidly in the coming years, as Russia is prioritizing health care. His next point: Russia’s minimum wage is already above $200, IIRC. Even 14% wouldn’t be terrible, considering Russia includes North Caucasus. And with both of these you have to take lower prices into account.

“Putler’s worth $70 billion!!!11” doesn’t even deserve a comment. I thought it was $200 billion the last time I checked…

I can do cherry picking as well and list some actual facts. Look at Russia’s respectable PPP GDP per capita of 30K, its very high HDI, surprisingly low GINI that is now considerably below the US, its infant mortality rate and the fact that Russia’s reserves now fully cover the country’s internal and foreign debt. Atleast that gives you a much more accurate picture of this “gangster state”.

Thanks, as expected. I had already read about that “state TV” (in contrast to the West and its anti-state main TV channels, I suppose…) report, and it sounded very Sovok indeed.

So what about the devs of Escape from Tarkov? Not that I really care that much either way, as a console peasant I’m not going to play modern (exclusive) PC FPS games anytime soon. I remember you pointed out earlier that the majority of Russia’s “cultural elite” are actually like that. Although I still find that a little hard to believe lol. Many, sure, but most?

His description of Russia is exactly what the supposed target audience of the game (?), i.e. Western “console peasant” millennials, wants to hear, so it makes sense from that perspective as well. (I know that the the franchise was originally very PC-centric, but they have certainly focused more and more on consoles since the second game. The main thing is that the third game is a comparatively high-profile, multiplatform AAA release.)

I was also quite surprised by Glukhovsky’s (or should that be glukhovsky’s?) views at first, because I remember reading an article where he basically complained that the West doesn’t acknowledge Russia’s legitimate national interests. That was certainly before 2014, but it’s still odd…

In any case: sad!

So is he one of those liberals who atleast realizes that the whole Russiagate and meddling hysteria makes Russia and Putin look ridiculously strong or does he take that shit seriously? Probably pointing at the external enemy is fine when it’s done by the neoliberalism.txt?

========

I think this is kind of on-topic, so i’ll post it here:

Dmitry, so I bought a Nintendo Switch in January. I still haven’t played that much, but I have to say that it’s been a positive surprise. The handheld versions of games like Doom, Skyrim and Dark Souls are quite impressive.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of Mario and Zelda (no nostalgia), but both Odyssey and Breath of the Wild are excellent. BotW especially is fantastic, and very different from the earlier games, the open-world aspect works great and it’s very open-ended pretty much from the beginning. There’s also no hand holding but at the same time the game’s not too cryptic. The overall design is quite exceptional, IMO. And you can play it on the go.

So I would highly recommend the system, but with a few caveats/disclaimers. For one, I still think the system is overpriced, there’s no way around it. Secondly, I’ve always been a fan of dedicated portable consoles, and I even really like the Playstation Vita.

Agreed on multi-quote, and a very good post overall.

I’d just like to point out that I never suggested the tier 1 cities are the “real China.” (That is why I also mentioned Brazil, with its massive inequality.) If China’s economy is understated, it’s so only modestly.

And yes, it seems that even those major cities have a surprisingly low per capita GDP (PPP), comparable to the richer EE countries, IIRC. So I guess one could also argue that their GDP might be understated to some extent as well, but in any case those cities don’t necessarily distort the overall picture (that is, GDP) THAT much…

It could also indicate that this infrastructure investment’s full impact on GDP is still quite delayed and only gradual, and that’s why even the past spending will keep paying dividends quite far into the future, even if the pace of that somehow suddenly slows down soon.

Call me ignorant and uninformed about the debt issue (which admittedly is true), but I’m not really convinced about the overall argument, especially when we’re talking about long-term potential. There are so many different kinds of debts and so many ways to measure and compare them between totally different countries and economies…

Ender, use purchasing power parity. By that metric, I don’t think China’s coastal provinces are that much poorer than Taiwan anymore. In PPP terms China is ALREADY 20-30% larger than the US economy! Do you realize that there’s this 2x gap between China’s nominal and PPP and that the currency markets, including yuan, have been quite volatile in recent years?

Lastly, Czechia and Slovenia already have very respectable per capita GDPs (again, in PPP), and I think they’re still converging, so I’m not sure that’s a great attempt to prove China’s upcoming relative stagnation or something.

I hope you’re right, 2% would be very impressive actually, so much so that it sounds almost too good to be true. That would also make Russia the second highest R&D spender in Europe after Germany (in PPP).

Anatoly, thanks a lot for this summary. I tried to translate some parts of the document with Google Translate (I started studying Russian a while ago though), and it seems I wasn’t too far off.

I might be totally wrong (very likely in this case), but it seems R&D spending’s share of the GDP will remain roughly the same as now, which is around 1.1% of GDP but it will obviously grow in absolute terms due to economic growth. (I just remember seeing a chart like that, maybe.)

Wouldn’t be surprising, as that is still the case in the whole Southern and Eastern Europe (including countries like Italy and Spain), seemingly with VERY few, if any, exceptions. Heck, looking at Wikipedia, Britain also spends comparatively little on R&D for some reason, so I’m not entirely convinced the numbers are fully comparable between different countries.

I’ve mentioned this several times, and I’m certainly not an economist, but in my opinion China’s GDP is probably understated (especially in nominal, ofc). Simply look at the market size and sophistication, as well as China’s technological and scientific rise (even in per capita). There has also been this exceptionally rapid and large-scale decline in (absolute) poverty that still continues, despite China’s high inequality.

So how poor do you think China’s in per capita terms? (Considerably) below Brazil, Thailand or Iran (!), for instance? Because otherwise you would have to conclude that the GDP figures are quite accurate, though maybe even overly pessimistic and still based on outdated methodology.

I largely agree you on Russia, however the official government forecast for the 2020s is actually optimistic, they are beginning to prioritize growth again. I guess the memories of 1998 are still very painful and it seems the economic liberals are indeed too pessimistic about the potential of the economy (or they are jew-lizard traitors, if you ask the Sovok Russophiles on the internet). Russia has been focusing on increasing its reserves, but even then last year’s growth was already pretty good.

Chile? Why Chile? China’s GDP per capita is already almost $20K (vs. Chile’s $27K). And I don’t see how that is relevant in any way, as China has 80 times the population. How will it NOT become a “superpower” (whatever that means)? The momentum is IMO almost certainly unstoppable, and China will easily become a “superpower” by 2030.

I share your increased optimism, and there’s one thing I’d personally add to that list:

It’s the fact that Russia’s economic growth, which was at 2.3% in 2018 (I guess everyone/most know that by now), beat expectations quite comfortably. It’s symbolically important in a sense that this was the first time annual growth was above 2% since 2012. Also, that growth is probably already above Western Europe’s and quite likely even US’s long-term average annual growth, certainly so in per capita. And that was achieved with a federal budget surplus of (almost) 3% of GDP.

It seems growth should still slow down next year, due to the VAT increase and other “structural reforms,” but it should pick up “for good” from 2020-21 onwards, when the large infrastructure build-up and the “National Projects” thing properly kicks off.

Earlier Rosstat made some other GDP adjustments as well. Now the economy actually only declined in 2015 (annual growth), and even then by a quite modest 2.5%, etc. So I think it’s possible Russia might have already overtaken Germany in PPP GDP in 2018, remains to be seen, it will be very very close.

Then there’s of course the continuous rapid improvements in most demographic and social indicators, be it life expectancy, homicide rate, infant mortality… It’s probably true you can’t give too much credit to Putin there, because they would have been quite inevitable with any stability (though I guess you say that about most things), but I somehow find those trends very impressive as this improving “normalcy” remains unreported in the Western media, and it of course goes totally against their post-2014 narrative in particular.

The improvements are also “symbolically” important as Russia is about to overtake American homicide and infant mortality rates. And I just realized that even in regards to life expectancy, the gap between Russia and the US is already comparable to the difference between the US and many/most Western European countries. So much for that “moral” high ground… I do wonder how r/worldnews would react to all of these facts? “Fake news! Fake stats!” Demand more sanctions lol?

* By PUTLER!, for those very slow people unable or unwilling to catch irony, I mean in the sense that svidomy Ukrainians imagine Putin – not a literal Russian Hitler.

I assume this is a disclaimer for Russia Insider and its commenters? 😀 If MSM comments are cancer, sites like RI are really not any better.

To be fair, Russia especially is hardly underperforming, I think its GDP per capita (PPP, obviously) is still comparable to the Eastern European average. And the growth should pick up again in around 2020-21.

On that note, Russia’s oil dependency has always been exaggerated. According to Jon Hellevig’s calculations, oil & gas are maybe around 10% of Russia’s GDP at this point. Some others have argued that the share is similar to Norway (and that was years ago).

High oil prices probably modestly increased Russia’s annual growth rate between 2000 and 2012, but it seems to me that most of that was simply convergence to its more “natural” level vis-a-vis the rest of EE, as Russia underperformed badly in the 1990s.

Also, at this rate it seems Romania will catch up with Hungary reasonably soon.

Let’s do it! 😀 (In all honesty though, I’m still not entirely sure.) And in my experience these things only make sense for single-player games (for 98% of the time anyway), especially in Nintendo’s case, as their online infrastructure is still hilariously bad. Though what do I know, I guess some adults make (real-life) friends while playing video games, but being a “China’s GDP is very interesting” autist, I wouldn’t know anything about that stuff anyway.

While I don’t have any direct experience with the N64, from what I’ve read and watched, it seems it’s the most “overrated” Nintendo console. It sold surprisingly well in the US for some reason (I guess the library was very US-centric and the NES nostalgia of course played a part as well), while pretty much flopping elsewhere, including in Japan (it was outsold by the Sega Saturn there!).

The games generally have poor framerates, poor image quality graphics and the controller is weird. The game library is also limited, not only in size, but it’s also very lacking in certain genres, in particular it has next to no (Japanese) RPGs, which I especially enjoy.

In addition, most of the big hitters have been re-released on other systems (both Zelda games are on the 3DS, Mario 64 on the original DS, plus of course on Virtual Console), so I’d also be ready to recommend a 3DS or a 2DS XL. The SNES is a fantastic system, but indeed probably not worth it for most people, I think the games are quite expensive nowadays and emulators for it are everywhere.

By the way, has anyone played (Old School) Runescape here? It was just released on mobile (it’s exactly the same on PC, with the same account, which is unique, I think), so I gave it a go and enjoyed it, but now I haven’t played it for a month. Very nostalgic stuff, up there with Pokemon.

I’m not sure that’s entirely true.

I’m not saying that Spain is doing badly, but atleast according to Wikipedia, Spain’s R&D spending’s (PPP) share of GDP is modest, around 1.2% (around the same as Russia’s). Interestingly, Poland is only at 1%, even Estonia is not punching above its weight (1.3%).

The UK is bit of a surprise, its R&D spending only at 1.7% of GDP, but still higher than Spain. The US: 2.7%, China 2.1%. Interestingly, China might have surpassed the US last year in overall spending (again, in PPP), certainly this year at the latest (both figures are from 2016).

By the way, Dmitry, have you bought a Nintendo Switch yet? You were considering that some time ago, if I remember correctly. I’m still out of the loop when it comes to modern gaming (only since around 2015, though), but I do like handhelds, and I might be able to afford one soon.

I still think it’s overpriced and in my opinion Nintendo is generally overrated, especially in the US, but I don’t know… I kind of want to play those “big-budget” games on the go. The Playstation Vita is one of the most underrated things ever, and it seems the Switch is overall a great “successor”. Nintendo as a company is also certainly better than all those SJWs.

Chinese (like Japanese) are not as innovative per capita (in terms of science and technology, obviously culture as well) as Europeans, but they don’t need to be as there are so many of them

Yes, that is quite likely, but we don’t know that yet for sure. All that “diversity” and scale might push China above countries like Japan in per capita comparisons. But even at Japan’s level (per capita) it will be more than good enough, yes.

Xi started deleveraging the economy in 2017 after the party congress which is why growth is slowing down.

I agree with your comment overall, but my main point was that the current — still very high — growth rates were quite accurately predicted a decade ago, and they were taken into account in those more optimistic forecasts. In fact, a few years ago (when the “slowdown” narrative moved into high gear) many Western “experts” estimated that China’s growth would decline to below 6% by 2018-19. That didn’t happen and China’s growth was actually higher in 2017 than it was in 2016 (or was it 2016 vs. 2015?).

It seems quite likely — and I have mentioned this several times — that China’s GDP calculation methodology is possibly outdated compared to many/most fully developed countries. So contrary to the meme that China’s GDP growth figures are “fake”, the opposite (sort of) might actually be true, in a sense that the size of the economy could currently be underestimated by 5-20% in the official statistics. Standard stuff for developing countries, so we might see some “surprising” upwards adjustments in the near future (or not).

Does China have a high human capital currently though? Clearly after they become a developed country (which will be probably not so far in the future), high general level of human capital will be attainable for them. But can anyone comment here about their current education level?

I know nothing of this topic. But, as I understand, many of China’s best students today have to go to Western universities to finish their education (i.e. famous overcrowding of Chinese mathematics students filling Trinity College Cambridge) – filling of Western universities, could probably imply significant inferiority of Chinese higher education.

High IQs, yes. The population overall (especially older people, for obvious reasons) are still less well educated than in developed countries. I think China is already doing well in the international university rankings, and the best ones must be competitive. Those who study abroad also often return back to China.

So AK has been tweeting a lot about China today, at first by replying to this tweet:

1/OK, time for a thread about a pet peeve of mine: People who use Japan as a reason to predict that China won't economically dominate the world.

This is just silly, because China is ELEVEN TIMES the size of Japan.

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) January 2, 2019

Don’t have a Twitter account myself, so I thought I’d post my views here.

Commenters in that “thread” are surprisingly… clueless. It seems that to Sinophobes (and to Russophobes) it’s forever 2008 (2009 now?). That said, this Noah Smith is a self-described “neoliberal shill” and Bloomberg opinion writer, so I guess it’s really not surprising.

But still, It’s 2019 and these people still seriously believe that China can’t “innovate”. At the same time, they are putting their hopes in India, after all its democratic political system is apparently more stable than China’s (!). India is also now growing faster than China (barely), so it’s going to overtake those evil commies in the near future. The faith in the end of history remains strong, somehow.

The “India’s economic growth is as impressive as China’s” view is sort of an opposite of the “China’s overall potential is not larger than Japan’s” trope. It’s almost as if properly grasping concepts like population size and total and per capita GDP are beyond the abilities of most people. Of course, I assume that these posters aren’t actually as dumb as your average internet commenter, but I was again reminded of Anatoly’s “The Idiocy of the Average” article.

Not an unreasonable supposition if one is blind to role of human capital and national IQ.
But in reality China will be economically dominant by then, at military parity with the US, though still lagging in culture and soft power. https://t.co/Fylv5Fw1kr https://t.co/oaskHYaRCJ

— Anatoly Karlin 🧲💯 (@powerfultakes) January 2, 2019

I too noticed this sudden (?) rise in pessimistic forecasts about China’s future economic growth just recently. They are simultaneously more optimisitc on India. According to many of these, China’s average economic growth will somehow slow down to US levels by the early 2030s, if not earlier. So China’s economy will never even reach 2x the US in PPP, despite it already being 20% larger in 2017-18! Uhh… That doesn’t sound likely, at all. But what changed? Has China’s recent growth been considerably slower than predicted 10-15 years ago? No…? Are the aging trends somehow much worse? I don’t think so…

Well, in any case it’s clear that they are really taking that “aging” meme all the way. So it’s not only that they don’t take IQs into account, which is totally unsurprising, but that they also believe economic convergence is somehow impossible with aging population, despite the fact that South Korea was already aging decades ago, with low TFR, not to mention Eastern Europe today. What do these countries have in common with China? High human capital.

So from a HBD POV, what is India’s likely long-term trajectory? Not this “India will overtake China soon after 2050” nonsense. They could realistically reach the current per capita level of Brazil (relative to the US)? So steady slowdown to below 5% growth soon after 2040, or something? Overtaking the US might actually be quite inevitable, atleast in PPP, but India won’t rise much further than that? China will be 2x bigger than the US in PPP by the mid-2030s? 3 times larger by 2050?

Agreed.

Russia is still in the “austerity”/import substitution/building up reserves mode, which will last until 2021. You can also speculate whether that was mainly due to sanctions or not. In any case, it made Russia’s economy more resilient in the long run.

Didn’t they start the whole inflation targeting and high interest rates policy around 2013? I honestly don’t know, because I didn’t follow Russia’s economy back then, but it really seems that Russia has not prioritized short-term growth since 2013 (and that will last until 2020-21). So indeed, there were no sanctions, and the oil prices were very high, but Russia’s economy still grew only by 1.3% that year.

The overall conclusion is somewhat misleading as well. The study covers five years, I think? From 2014 to 2018? And in their view sanctions have taken away 6% of the growth in total? So even if we assume that the assessment is fully accurate, that is still only 1.2% per annum (and looking at the chart… around 2.5% in 2014 and at probably slightly less than 1% this year). But even that’s a huge if, which even they admit: “They admit that part of the 6 percent gap could be attributed to other shocks, such as the introduction of inflation targeting and a sell-off in emerging markets.”

Bloomberg: Putler should just surrender

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-16/here-s-one-measure-that-shows-sanctions-on-russia-are-working

Sanctions may have knocked as much as 6 percent off Russia’s economy over the past four years and the drag isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.

“The underperformance has been much bigger than crude alone can explain,” wrote Scott Johnson, an analyst at Bloomberg Economics in London. “Part of the gap is likely to reflect the enduring impact of sanctions both imposed and threatened over the last five years.”

The findings show that punitive measures are having their intended effect of putting pressure on Russia for its interventionist foreign policy without causing a shock that could spill over into other markets. Policies aimed at protecting the nation from future sanctions by building up reserves have made it more resilient, but they have come at the expense of growth. Still, the Kremlin argues that the sanctions haven’t had an impact on its foreign policy.

The analysts based their estimates on a growth forecast that might have seemed reasonable at the end of 2013. The estimate takes structural constraints into account, not sanctions or the drop in oil prices. They admit that part of the 6 percent gap could be attributed to other shocks, such as the introduction of inflation targeting and a sell-off in emerging markets.

However, the fact that the gap in potential versus actual growth continues to widen implies that sanctions are having a prolonged impact, the analysts said. The lingering effect puts under question Russian government forecasts that policy changes and investment will push GDP growth above 3 percent by 2021.

“It’s possible, but that pace won’t be sustainable without a dramatic pick-up in productivity gains,” Johnson wrote. “If sanctions remain in place, as seems likely, that’s one more reason to expect the economy to come up short.”

This study seems quite questionable to me (and I can’t even access it). Those charts are not convincing. Karlin has also downplayed the impact of the sanctions several times.

I guess it’s possible that with Western (European) credit, there would have been no recession after the collapse in oil prices? Even that seems like a stretch, though I’m obviously not an expert. But the impact should certainly be minimal after 2020.

Russia doesn’t differ that much from the Eastern European average. 1991 wasn’t that long time ago, especially when you realize that the living standards actually collapsed in the 90s. The Russians might not be “rich”, but neither are they poor.

Yeah, CBR has overestimated inflation in every single forecast since at least 2014 and they’ve been overly pessimistic about the economy in general. That’s why the rates were that high to begin with. I guess they basically overestimate the economy’s dependence on imports.

Well, I guess I really am “plain autistic,” because at first I didn’t think the interview was that weird or unconvincing. Although I have not been following this clusterfuck of a case closely at all. And now that I think about it, I did notice that Simonyan indeed got quite uncomfortable as the interview went on. So why even publish it? Because she had already promised to do so?

Also, now that most russophiles here (and even elsewhere) are ridiculing those two, I have made some… recalibrations. Oh, and speaking of PR: It’s still 2018 and we went from the World Cup to this shitshow, quite impressive.

However, what really changed my mind was Anatoly’s comment from September 8, which I only read yesterday and after watching the interview:

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/skripal-squib/#comment-2505755
(Goes without saying that I very much respect his Russia expertise.)

So now it’s not only reiner Tor (and seemingly many others). Another “extreme Russophile” raises hand! I didn’t read his earlier comments about the case closely as I wasn’t really following this whole thing, but it seems he really was onto something.

So I’ve been thinking and I’ve made some “adjustments”:

0. Well, I already had my “Russian military blackpill timeline” that focused on the slow procurement of next-gen equipment (Armata, larger surface ships, Su-57…). (The modernization program has still been a big success overall, however.)

1. Assad’s chemical weapons are more believable now for sure. Of course I never particularly doubted that the Syrian government used them when they were losing and before Russia’s intervention.

But really, Assad using chemical weapons when he is very clearly winning makes more sense than the “official” narrative in this Skripal saga. So why not, right? Not that it matters at all. I obviously still “support” Assad and Russia’s intervention, the West couldn’t care less about Syrian civilians.

2. The MH17 was probably shot down by the “pro-Russian” side. However, I never really questioned that narrative either and it was an accident, so whatever, why not, doesn’t actually count.

3. The state-run doping program was probably real as well. I really didn’t believe in much of that earlier, but now I’ve finally realized that it’s not beyond the Russian “state”. That said, I still think that the issue was massively politicized and probably hypocritically exaggerated to an extent.

4. It seems Anatoly came to this conclusion earlier, but the Russian state is probably much more dysfunctional and kleptocratic than I wanted to believe before. Btw, that article on the “Putinism” blog was quite a trip (I read it… or tried to partially read it through Google Translate). One of those photos of Putin (the “botox in the 90s” one) almost gave me nightmares lmao.

So Anatoly, I think a while ago you said that you don’t think Putin is “personally corrupt,” or rather that there’s no proof of that. So have you changed your mind on that as well? Of course it’s quite clear that the blog post is quite a convoluted mess of Kremlinology, nor is it really anything new, I’d imagine.

I have to say that one positive thing to come out of this whole mess is that at least it shows me that despite “following” Russia VERY intensely, especially since 2014 (and actually slightly earlier), I’m capable of adjusting my views. I don’t just simply believe everything what I want to believe.

As well, while the “World Tension meter” is certainly very high, in hindsight I’m quite convinced that this “New Cold War” was more or less inevitable since 1991 even. So we’ll just have to face it.

Lastly, this doesn’t overall change my views that massively, to be honest. The Western narrative on Russia is still mostly nonsense. All things considered, Putin is overall at least a decent leader and Russia a decent country. And of course what matters most is the “geopolitical role” of Russia vs. the US unipolarism.

I really got redpilled (if that’s even the correct term) during the last 24 hours…

I’d really like to know this as well.

Speaking of RT: https://www.rt.com/news/438339-scripal-uk-suspects-rt-interview/

Reiner Tor is certainly going to be interested.

People keep repeating how Russia’s conventional military power is still superior to that of China, but I’m really not convinced that is the case anymore. I’d say they’re overall very comparable.

In certain areas China is quite clearly ahead of Russia, like the surface fleet, and they even have twice as many modern diesel subs. China might even have more “very modern” MBTs (it can be argued that the upgraded Type 96s, T-72s and T-80s are also modern). The PLA has probably close to 1000 Type 99 tanks. How many T-90s are operational in Russia? Maybe 500? That’s just one “surprising” example.

You are really exaggerating China’s dependence on Russian military technology.

So when will they stop buying Russian military equipment? Within the next 5-10 years. They might order some additional Su-35s and S-400s, because it would make a lot of sense, but that will be pretty much be it.

It’s also extremely misleading to say that the MiG-21 (J-7) is the most numerous Chinese fighter. The PLAAF might have more Flankers combined already, if you include all the different variants, it’s very close.

But in any case, and even more importantly, China actually has slightly more 4th generation fighters in service than Russia. Not to mention those 20-30 5th gen J-20s vs. Russia’s 0. At this rate, in the worst case scenario (for Russia), that gap could increase to something like 200-300 (and I’m not even including some potential surprises, like the J-31 program) vs. 20-50 Su-57s by the mid-2020s. (I guess technically that’s not an increase when the current Russian total is 0, and you could even include those 150-200 Su-35s for Russia, but whatever, the point is clear.)

Also, hundreds of those 4th gen fighters are actually equipped with Chinese engines (they mostly have issues with single engine J-10s), as I’ve mentioned previously. China’s engine technology is just a meme at this point.

The only reason why some of those J-7s are still in service is the very simple fact that the Chinese fighter fleet is like 2 times larger than Russia’s and the second largest in the world.

Well, not entirely true. Actually invading South Korea would obviously be very difficult, even if the two countries shared a border. Very much depends on the scenario.

The thing is, and I think somebody already replied this to you earlier (it might have been DFH?), that Russia simply spends a larger share of its GDP on the military.

So Russia’s military spending in PPP is maybe $150 billion? So yeah, that’s three times more. Maybe 4 times in reality?

SK’s PPP GDP is also higher than its nominal, but the country is also much more dependent on imports, its MIC is much more limited in scale, there’s probably less “hidden spending,” etc.

Very interesting, thanks for the info.

Well, at least single player games exist. I actually just started learning Chinese, so I’d would like to play some Chinese (single player!) games someday, no translations needed.

But of course I hope they start translating more of them eventually, I guess that is inevitable to some extent. But yeah, that’s totally foreign to me. I’d just like to play PS2-era games forever.

Do people there even have PCs at home? They only use them at work and at internet cafes or something? I honestly don’t know, but it seems that the internet is very mobile-centric in most emerging markets. That… “reality” is obviously pretty noticeable in the West as well, but I’m quite out of the loop when it comes to mobile devices in general to be honest.

This is a very good summary, thank you.

I just read that according to one source, China is already the clear number 2 in brand power as well, with a global share of 15% (it was 3% in 2008, now more than Germany and Japan combined and those two are fully developed countries with a combined population of around 200 million).

The US still dominates with 43%, but at this rate it seems that even China’s brands will “triumph” in or even by the 2030s.

Source is r/sino: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/9esvgy/china_and_us_dominate_the_brand_value_rankings/

China should overtake the US in R&D (PPP) spending this year? Or in 2019? Or did it happen already? So there’s another metric.

Btw, what do you think of the recent devaluations? It seems to be a repeat of 2014, kind of, but it matters for nominal GDP (which in itself of course isn’t THAT important) and those projections.

It’s it’s obviously quite pointless and impossible to predict long-term exchange rates and hence, nominal GDPs very accurately, but do you still think that China will overtake the US by the mid-2020s? Yuan would need to strengthen quite a lot, right?

On the other hand, China’s GDP might actually be underestimated, as China doesn’t actually use up-to-date methodology to measure its GDP yet, or so I’ve read. Even though many “pessimists” think that’s China’s GDP are faked and overestimated, it could actually be the opposite. Maybe by 20%?

Some very recent reports are also stating that China’s problems with (fighter) jet engines might be almost over too. Has China beaten even the most optimistic predictions? Wouldn’t be the first time to be honest, but SCMP isn’t the best of sources and I haven’t been following these development that closely this year. But here’s the article: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/2162765/china-nearing-mass-production-j-20-stealth-fighter-after-engine

Beijing-based military expert Zhou Chenming said that China expected the US to deploy between 200 and 300 F-35s – its most advanced stealth fighter – in the Asia-Pacific by 2025, which meant “China needs a similar number of J-20s, or at least 200”.

One of the military sources said the public could get its first glimpse of the new stealth fighter, complete with its upgraded engine, at the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition later in the year.

The article must be taken with a huge grain of salt and it’s not clear where they got those F-35 numbers from. I’m not even sure how those planes are directly comparable. the F-35 is smaller and the two fighters have different roles, etc. And you also have to take into account all the other assets in the region (on both sides, of course).

But if China manages to procure 200-300 J-20 by around 2025 and even if they’ll be mostly equipped with these stopgap engines, it will IMHO mean that the US won’t be able to “defend” Taiwan (i.e. defend China from… China). The end. After that, China would likely beat the US even in a long-term conflict over Taiwan (and the surrounding area). There’s no way around that.

Hundreds of J-20, a very large number of advanced SAMs (S-400s and similar Chinese systems), a sizeable fleet of actually modern SSNs (Type 095s) and SSKs (they already have those) and ASW frigates and corvettes, plus the huge geographical advantage would ensure China’s victory by 2025-30. Of course, the amphibious assault would still be risky and costly, but the end result would not be in doubt.

Glukhovsky has come out as strongly pro-Ukrainian since 2014, to the extent of ruining the final book in his Metro trilogy with heavy-handed political commentary.

Wow… that’s depressing. I remember reading an old interview, where he basically said that “the West should realize that Russia has legitimate national interests too.” So what the hell happened?

I haven’t read any of the books, but I finished Metro 2033 recently. I guess really need to sell my PS4 copy immediately (sorry for being a peasant), too bad I didn’t even buy it used, as I usually do. (But I won’t be able to delete Metro 2033 from my Trophy list… Sad! First world problems.)

So the upcoming third game is based on the third book? It’s also their first new game (not including the “remasters”), since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, I think?

Man, it’s probably going to be full of political BS. With Putin-Trump derangement syndrome and all that, it’s going to be a perfect fit for the current mainstream Western market. Another soft power victory… Not that the Western opinions should matter that much for Russia at this point anyway.

@ Duke of Qin:

Eastern European developers make games for Western “retail” gamers. Chinese game developers make highly tailored skinner boxes designed for maximal addiction to a broad of an audience as possible.

Yeah, and that sucks. I’m already losing interest in “AAA” games. Are they starting to focus on more “high-budget,” single-player games at all? Any trends towards that? There must atleast be some smaller studios creating such content? I’d really like to buy some Chinese games in the future.

@ blah blah:

Just like Russia, and to an even greater extent, China has its own ecosystem and a huge market. South Korea especially is small in comparison.

Also, were those two countries major exporters of popular culture back in the 50s and 60s (Japan) or in the 80s and even 90s (Korea)? Give China some more time to develop.

And isn’t Korea’s gaming culture quite similar to that of China? I can’t think of any South Korean video games… oh, except one: Guild Wars (I have never actually played it though).

From a PR/soft power point of view the problem is that Westerners really seem to think that Putin is already like Keverich. The propaganda campaign against Russia is already so severe that I’m not sure how much worse can it actually get. (Keverich of course doesn’t care about any of that, he has made it absolutely clear.)

So I for one welcome Felix the Great as Putler’s successor. (Or more realistically, Patrushev’s successor? In… 2030/36?)

But isn’t that info obviously fake though? I mean, if he actually knew much about Crimea (or, for that matter, about Russia and its elections).

1. The success of the Switch. Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?

I haven’t been following the industry closely lately, as I’ve been more into retro gaming, but I have to say that the Switch’s success was and is a huge surprise. I thought I knew and understood the gaming industry and its trends quite well, but apparently not.

Well, I suppose very few people expected the Wii U to flop as hard as it did and atleast the Switch is actually fully portable, but I just don’t understand the mass appeal of it at all, in 2018. Who are those people buying it?

I mean I understand its appeal in Japan, the lifestyle there and all that, but in the West. WTF is going on? Is it for kids mainly? But don’t they already have their tablets and smartphones? And it’s not like the Switch is cheap, on the contrary, it’s massively overpriced in my opinion.

So in the West, especially in the US (Nintendo is actually nowhere near as popular in Europe) we have: 1. the declining demographic of hardcore Nintendo fans (look at the sales trends from the original NES to Wii U, decline after every generation, the DS and Wii obviously don’t count) and especially look at the Wii U sales numbers… So how big is that Nintendo fan demographic? 10-20 million, maybe, 2. then we have PS4, Xbox One and PC with their third-party support. The PS4 especially has been a big success and 3. casual gamers that already have their mobile devices.

So who are those people buying the Switch in their millions? Where were they when the Wii U was in the market? Or maybe even more interestingly, why didn’t those people buy more Playstation Vitas? As I said, it was probably inevitable that the Switch was going to do better than the Wii U, but I still predicted Xbox One or N64 numbers at best. I don’t understand this at all. Dedicated mass market handheld gaming should be almost dead, more of a niche market than ever before. What’s going on?

2. The system itself and alternatives (This is like… my actual reply lol)

That said, I really like handhelds myself and the PS Vita is one of the most underrated things ever, so I’m certainly going to pick up a Switch eventually. Those third-party ports, like Dark Souls, Doom and Wolfenstein look really interesting, and of course its Japanese offerings.

However, I really think that the system is too expensive currently, it’s not worth much more than €200. So Dmitry, certainly don’t pay the full price for it. Also, in a typical Nintendo fashion game prices are probably going to remain high for most first-party titles, including for used copies.

Looking at your PS4 collection, I’m not even sure whether you are really interested in Switch’s library of games. So if you’re not big into Japanesese games or handheld gaming, there are probably better options for you. How about a standard Xbox One? You could probably pick one up for cheap, especially used and it has all the Call of Dutys and GTAs. I haven’t read that Bloomberg article, but the PS5 probably won’t launch before 2020-21. One thing to keep in mind as well is that Nintendo might release an improved version of the Switch in a few years time.

3. The current state of gaming and SJWs

While I’ve never actually disliked Nintendo and its games, I really don’t have nostalgia for it either. Except Pokemon, I was born in the early 90s and around 99-01 Pokemon was the biggest thing ever. So I somehow and for some reason would really like them to go third-party. Nintendo (or rather, the NES) is terribly overrated in American retro gaming circles (and hence, on the Internet as a whole, gotta love that soft power influence) and Nintendo fanboys are very annoying.

Although recent events and trends have sort of made me respect Nintendo (and even Japan) more. Looking at Western AAA gaming, it doesn’t look too good currently. There’s more and more focus on multiplayer and the game-as-service model and it seems that big-budget games are more Anglo and US centric than ever before as well (probably related to that “Europe can’t into big tech” issue), due to Japan’s relative decline and the total cucking of Europe.

I’m not sure what happened, but I guess the European studios (10 to 20 years ago) were smaller on average, so they got more or less literally owned by the big American publishers, etc. (There are of course exceptions, like Poland’s CDPR. But even their next game is set… in the US.) And of course the worst trend of them all: SJWs. The mainstream gaming has been tainted big-time by them lately.

Those readers who are not into gaming, I really suggest that even you watch this Battlefield 5 (aka Genderfield 5: Feminism Strikes Back) reveal trailer:

Yes, that is really supposed to be WW2. The like-to-dislike ratio is impressive: 335K vs 470K. Which is even more amazing, considering how well their previous game was received, because it was set in WW1 (possibly the biggest… “entertainment product” about that conflict ever?). So they’ve lost a huge amount of goodwill among hardcore fans and gamers in general. This is how our neo-communists are going to rewrite history. It probably won’t come as a huge surprise that the game is developed in… Sweden.

After explaining the creative reasoning, Soderlund moved into personal examples. “I have a 13-year-old daughter that when the trailer came out and she saw all the flak, she asked me, ‘Dad, why’s this happening?’” he continued. “She plays Fortnite, and says, ‘I can be a girl in Fortnite. Why are people so upset about this?’ … I just said, ‘You know what? You’re right. This is not ok.’ These are people who are uneducated – they don’t understand that this is a plausible scenario.

How are Ukrainian wages that high anyway!? The country seems like an outlier, although many poor Balkan countries look weird as well. Both Ukraine’s nominal and PPP GDP per capita are many times lower than Russia’s, for instance. Ukrotriumph? Their living standards aren’t really low after all? Or is that map BS?

No-show? Have you been following the Syrian conflict at all? The latest US/NATO missile strike was pure PR, at “best”. Most missiles didn’t even reach their targets (they really didn’t), the Americans were obviously lying.

You’re right again about the Litvinenko conspiracy, Mickey. The notion that the Russian government would want to eliminate somebody who had betrayed its secret service, written books denouncing Vladimir Putin for giving the order to murder the likes of Boris Bereszvsky, Anna Polikovskaya and others, accused the secret service of being behind the bombings of the Russian apartment buildings, just doesn’t add up or make any sense. The fact that Litvinenko, while lying on his death bed directly accused Putin for being responsible for his death also didn’t lend any value that it was indeed Putin behind his poisoning. It just goes to show you the lengths to which the enemies of Russia and Vladimir Putin will go to try and besmearch Putin’s honorable name. But they’ll never be able to fool somebody with your veracity and skillul analysis – keep up the great ‘independent foreign analysis’!

Got it. Certain parts of the article very much reminded me of your “blackpill timeline,” which was very pessimistic as well.

Anatoly, I read your Russian “Whitepill” article through Google Translate recently:

http://akarlin.ru/2018/08/whitepill/

Obviously a good read overall, but there was this one part that I found particularly… well, interesting, and actually quite surprising:

“Moreover, the mid-2020s will also see a massive influx of electric vehicles into the global car fleet, which could lead to a final collapse in oil prices. There was practically no real diversification: the number of industrial robots per worker in Russia is at the level of Iran and India. Meanwhile, “effective managers” like Sechin turned out to be so effective that Rosneft’s debts exceed the value of the company itself from this year. An acute economic crisis in a few years is almost inevitable.”

So I’m clearly not even entirely sure whether that translation is accurate, but it really seems like you’re kind of suddenly much more pessimistic on the Russian economy. Or is that just the “best-case” scenario for Russian nationalists?

Didn’t you rate Putin’s “economic management” reasonably highly not a long time ago, just before the Presidential elections? Of course compared to the situation in 2000, but still.

You’ve also pointed out several times that Russia’s oil dependency has been considerably exaggerated. Also, Russia’s federal budget is already based on low oil prices. Then there’s Jon Hellevig’s research and numbers as well (GDP share of oil & gas, the consolidated budget, etc). And Polish Perspective’s comment above.

So shouldn’t the repeat of 2014 be kind of… unlikely, if not impossible? At this rate, Russia’s remaining oil dependency should already be considerably lower by the mid-20s, despite all those technological limitations.

You don’t believe in an annual growth of 3% anymore? You seriously think there will be an “acute crisis” in a few years?

I actually just read that even the always (or atleast recently) conservative/pessimistic Russian authorities (in this case, the Economic Development Ministry) forecast a growth rate of atleast around 3% beginning from 2021, after the VAT hike, some other “reforms” and increasing spending.

Look at some cold hard data of Weighted Fractional Count (WFC) of scientific research output from NatureIndex.com, an off-shoot of the Nature Journal. USA does not look like able to pull out from its decline.

There was a question about the ethnic distribution for the proportion of USA WFC score. Well to look at that from a different angle,

Country Dif WFC12 WFC17
USA -2937.73 18729.5 15791.8
China +2938.43 4511.28 7449.71

It is intriguing that between 2012 and 2017 USA lost -2937.73 points while China gained +2938.43 points, numerical magnitude difference of 0.7 out of about 3000 points. While it is unlikely US’s lost was the direct effect of China’s gain, China’s returnee scientist program has attracted significant researchers internationally to return that there could be a global reverse musical chairs going on with increasing unfilled vacancies.

Various other countries are attempting to repatriate their own national researchers back to their home countries, e.g.

https://www.axios.com/canada-has-pulled-off-a-brain-heist-1aba7430-82d5-4316-8008-e039d3964b36.html

“””The “Canada 150 Research Chairs Program” is spending $117 million on seven-year grants of either $350,000 a year or $1 million a year. It’s part of a campaign by numerous countries to attract scholars unhappy with Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and other political trends, sweetened with unusually generous research conditions. Seoul-born Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, a professor at Brown University known for her work on fake news, is moving to Canada. So is Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a Harvard chemistry professor working on quantum computing and artificial intelligence. They are among 24 top academic minds around the world wooed to Canada by an aggressive recruitment effort offering ultra-attractive sinecures, seven-year funding arrangements.”””

https://www.theglobalist.com/brexit-is-britain-facing-a-mass-academic-exodus/

EU research funding has been an important catalyst for this development. It has generated more than 19,000 jobs across the UK and makes up roughly 14% of all UK income from research grants.

French officials, aware of the importance of elite universities, have made it clear that France wants to build academic bridges besides political difficulties. They offered Oxford to build a new campus in Paris with French legal status and access to EU funding.

…

Another important element of the British success story have been EU students and staff members. More than 15% of teaching and research staff at British universities are EU nationals.

This includes some of the most highly regarded scientists. Especially the mathematics departments are staffed with a considerable number of academics from Eastern Europe who now feel that they are no longer welcome.

The world class reputation of British elite research institutions, too, depends on maintaining excellence in particular fields of research such as nuclear fusion or atomic research and this excellence is, in turn, dependent on the input of students and researchers coming from countries such as Hungary, Poland and Romania.

Accordingly, triggering Article 50 this March could lead to a gold-rush mood at European universities on the continent.

UK institutions expect German universities, ranking second in the European league table, to be poaching UK-based staff soon.

The rest of the world do not have to get better in scientific research, USA will just drop by. EU with UK will overtake the lead from USA in three years. With Brexit the EU research grants and researchers will leave UK and EU(exUK)’s performance will be better than that indicated.

EventYr Defender Challenger
2021.30 USA, EU
2028.78 USA, EU(exUk)
2022.38 USA, BRICS
2024.06 USA, China
2037.21 USA, Germany
2037.08 USA, UK

All 5 BRICS countries had positive increaments, the same cannot be said about the western countries but at these rates it might take India and Russia a long time to overtake EU.

EventYr Defender Challenger
2019.14 EU(exUk), BRICS
2021.49 EU(exUk), China
2147.66 EU(exUk), Japan
2055.45 EU(exUk), India
2059.96 EU(exUk), Russia

The WFC index does not take into consideration of the research outputs of Engineering and Computer Science. USNew already considered China has the top Engineering and Computer Science courses, and three out of top 10 courses in each category,

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/computer-science
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/engineering

Various ranking systems tend to favour the home universities. Taking the more neutral ranking from CWUR which is based in UAE, even though most of the elites there tended to be graduates from UK or USA universities,

http://cwur.org/2017/subjects.php#Computer%20Science,%20Artificial%20Intelligence

COMPUTER SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
World Rank Institution Score
1 [Singapore] Nanyang Technological University 100.00
2 [Hong Kong] Hong Kong Polytechnic University 99.23
3 [Hong Kong] City University of Hong Kong 96.74
4 [China] Tsinghua University 95.65
5 [Singapore] National University of Singapore 93.76
6 [Taiwan] National Taiwan University of Science and Technology 92.10
7 [Taiwan] National Cheng Kung University 91.20
8 [China] Shanghai Jiao Tong University 89.92
9 [Taiwan] National Chiao Tung University 89.44
10 [China] Harbin Institute of Technology 89.31

COMPUTER SCIENCE, HARDWARE & ARCHITECTURE
World Rank Institution Score
1 [China] Tsinghua University 100.00
2 [Singapore] Nanyang Technological University 96.66
3 [USA] Purdue University 93.44
4 [Canada] University of Waterloo 93.34
5 [USA] Georgia Institute of Technology 91.95
6 [USA] Massachusetts Institute of Technology 89.14
7 [Taiwan] National Chiao Tung University 88.65
8 [South Korea] KAIST 88.01
9 [Hong Kong] Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 87.75
10 [USA] Princeton University 87.22

COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
World Rank Institution Score
1 [USA] Stanford University 100.00
2 [USA] Massachusetts Institute of Technology 99.85
3 [China] Tsinghua University 99.59
4 [Switzerland] Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich 99.02
5 [China] Zhejiang University 98.86
6 [USA] Carnegie Mellon University 97.05
7 [Singapore] Nanyang Technological University 95.89
8 [USA] Georgia Institute of Technology 95.56
9 [USA] University of California, Berkeley 94.56
10 [Canada] University of British Columbia 92.98

They still import Chinese engines, that is correct. However, as I said, their heavier 4th gen fighters are already equipped with domestic engines, so they aren’t that far behind.

Regarding submarines, that’s not entirely true either. In fact, quite far from it. Their diesel sub tech is probably comparable to that of Russia and they already have around 40 modern SSKs (compared to Russia’s 20, at most).

The biggest gap is probably in nuclear subs, but it seems to be exaggerated as well. AFAIK, the reports that the Chinese SSNs are noisy are seemingly still based on reports from the 90s. Nowadays they have several improved variants of the Type 093 in service and those should already be quite decent. The upcoming Type 096s might already be largely competitive.

Looking at Russia’s shipbuilding industry and its building speeds, I really don’t think it’s too far-fetched to think that China could more or less catch up within a decade. 10 years from now on, Russia’s (or even US’) fleet will still mostly consist of upgraded Cold War-era boats (which will of course still be capable, but anyway).

Check out where China’s surface fleet was 10 years ago and look at it now (or rather, in 2020-22). The Type 052C/D turned out to be the first destroyers that the Chinese were satisfied with and they started churning them out in large numbers. Those Type 096s could be the same for nuclear subs.

That is a simplification. Nowadays they don’t simply have Su-27 “clones,” but improved variants as well, probably most notably the J-16, with an AESA-radar.

Also, AFAIK, these most recent Flanker variants are actually equipped with Chinese engines, so in reality China already has hundreds of such fighters.

It’s the single-engine J-10 and 5th gen J-20 that the Chinese seem to have most issues with. That said, they have tested domestic engines on both, and I’d estimate that they’ll catch up in a decade, more or less.

I don’t think it will lose its power (only its relative power), considering their increasing dominance in science and technology

Looking only at China’s progress, America’s dominance in sicence and technology is certainly not increasing. Actually, you could argue that the “dominance” is already history in many fields. That is exactly what relative decline means.

There are also some very recent reports like this: https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2153798/china-surpasses-north-america-attracting-venture-capital-funding-first-time

America will still be attracting the most intelligent workers from around

Debatable and in any case not that relevant, considering China’s population is over 4 times larger.

It’s difficult to predict exchange rates, etc, but China’s PPP GDP per capita won’t necessarily be massively smaller by 2050, not that it matters too much either way due to that aforementioned population size.

By that I meant countries with considerably higher PPP GDP than nominal.

And no, I certainly wouldn’t like to live in Ukraine, but I’d rather live there than in any “third world” Sub-Saharan shithole with a similar nominal GDP per capita.

Fair enough, I don’t disagree with you on that. The point was just that nominal GDP is misleading, even when it comes to Ukraine.

I don’t know much about Twitter, but #TreasonSummit is actually trending… Nothing surprises me at this point, but this timeline really is weird.

What? In dollars?

Real incomes are quite rapidly recovering this year, I think they forecast a growth of around 6% 2018.

Ukraine hasn’t been doing “fine” since 1991, so it actually isn’t much of an achievement to recover back to those levels.

Also, it seems you’re using nominal GDP. Ukraine is probably quite a bit more import dependent than Russia, but it’s still a very misleading metric. (People. Don’t. Use. Nominal. GDP. When. You. Measure. “Non-Western.” Living. Standards. Few things trigger me as much… this is the ultimate level of autism.)

Did Russia collapse after the devaluation? Did it “experience substantial loss in living standards”? No, as much as Western propagandists would like that to be the case. Are Brazilian and Mexican living standards currently higher or atleast comparable to those in Russia? No and no.

Atleast we can try to be as “objective” as possible. Ukraine is as close to Ghana as Russia is to… I don’t know, Equatorial Guinea? I don’t want to go down to the level of Western MSM’s Russia coverage. We should all be better than that.

(This comment really reminds me how bad things have gotten and how good this blog and its comment section is. I’m almost “defending” Ukraine… What a world.)

You guys should do a charity ping pong match for homeless families of the Donets Basin. AK & FK on one side vs. AP & Hack on the other.

Yes, that’s a very good point. They still need to replace hundreds of J-7s and J-8s and potentially some older Su-27 and J-11 variants as well.

Oh, absolutely, probably their 2nd most capable jet after J-20s (J-10Cs with AESAs could be in many ways comparable, but they are of course much lighter), but that doesn’t mean they particularly needed them. I mean the situation now is VERY different from the 90s and early 2000s, when the Chinese ordered Su-30s.

Probably didn’t even cross his mind. There have been some rumours that the Chinese might order (atleast) additional 24 Su-35s, which sounds believable, because I’m not sure how much logistical sense it makes to have only 24, even though they have hundreds of different Flanker variants in service.

Russia will probably have some export success with the Su-57, selling them to Arabs and possibly Iran, as you mentioned, as well as to Russia’s CSTO/EEU allies and of course Vietnam and Algeria, but totally missing out on any Indian (and Chinese) orders is going to make a big difference.

I wouldn’t necessarily be that pessimistic, but Russia becoming “China’s UK” sounds quite likely. It really is inevitable that China will totally dwarf Russia economically, even in PPP, when you realize that China is already something like 20-25% larger than the US!

All of that was of course clear a while ago, but these delays and problems with the “next-gen” equipment really just makes it all the more obvious. That said, those recently unveiled “wonder weapons” look very interesting and they could certainly be “force multipliers” to an extent. It’s however important to keep in mind that “silver bullets” don’t really exist.

I really think the Russians are too “proud” to import any major systems from China, but they’re indeed getting pushed closer and closer together, so something like that might be inevitable.

But Russia is “running out of time” in a sense that after S-400 and maybe some additional Su-35s there will be hardly anything China will “need” from Russia (I don’t think they really needed any Su-35s either) in the (near) future. In 10 years time China will certainly be 100% self- sufficient in military technology, period (actually, earlier than that).

I very much doubt China, with its already operational J-20, will ever order any Su-57s and Pakistan seems to be interested in the J-31 project, they also seem to only operate lighter fighters.

That really reminded me that there are hardly any major export markets left for the Su-57, if India really is totally out. It will certainly not become another Flanker (especially its Su-30 variants), the world has already changed too much.

I didn’t know this guy played for Croatia:

So much for Croatia being “white”. It seems they have some “Africans” there after all…

Those are very good points. (Well, atleast China is not a NATO or pro-US country.)

As a positive, they are ordering some heavily armed corvettes (Project 20386 and Project 20385 and maybe others), which are arguably (light) frigates, in addition to the Grigorovich-class.

Maybe they shouldn’t and they probably won’t, but I could see that one happening at this rate. Massive problems with any larger surface ships, especially if those reports about the last 2 Grigorovich-class ships are true (that they’re going to be sold to India).

Although now it seems that might not be the case, so maybe things aren’t so dire after all, and I suppose it’s quite likely that Russia’s shipbuilding industry is going to improve considerably in the 2020s.

Pride.

Russian and American fanboys do have one thing in common: their strong dislike of Chinese technology, especially military. They are slowly starting to get it, but there’s seriously like a lag time of 10 years, which is HUGE, when we’re talking about modern China.

I don’t think J-20 is for export, it’s very much China’s F-22 and I’m not suggesting that Russia should order them in any case. It’s however clear they could really order some frigates from China, even though Russia is very much a land power.

Also, it’s quite noticeable that Russia is more “dependent” on exports for its military tech, for obvious reasons (of course their “brand” is stronger too). China doesn’t need to export any J-20s, but Russia is exporting like half of its annual Su-35 production and Su-57 is more or less immediately available for export as well (and these recent comments seem to suggest it’s somehow “mainly” for export, but I really don’t know what to make of them).

It’s naturally hard to compare the two planes objectively, but both are likely to be quite similar in overall capabilities. That said, it’s becoming quite clear that the Chinese electronics industry is ahead of Russia (which is obvious), but that it includes the military as well (try to tell that to the Russian fanboys, though).

A good example is that China already has numerous operational fighters with AESA-radars (J-10C, J-16 and J-20, atleast). Those limitations probably explain Russia’s problems with the Su-57 to an extent. The radar itself is ready and it’s capable, but the Russian industry is unable to manufacture them in numbers and that probably includes some other components as well.

Yeah, I find it interesting that the Western sources are “suddenly” (?) more dismissive of the Su-57, I think that was not the case only a few years ago. Of course it makes sense, considering J-20 is actually operational and in production. But all those “memes” against the J-20 were more ridiculous than anything else I’ve seen. People still living in 1989, basically. How it’s a “copy” of both F-22 and F-35 simultaneously (you can even add a third plane: the MiG-1.44), even though it looks totally different from both, seemingly because 1. it’s Chinese, 2. it has… wings and 3. it’s stealthy.

Lastly I’d like to point out that these media wars against stealth fighters are nothing new. Look at all the alt-media (and even mainstream!) articles and especially comments about the F-35. While the project and the plane itself is certainly flawed, many people really seem to believe that F-35 is literally the worst fighter plane ever. I’d like that to be true of course, but c’mon…

Now that’s better. I’m still not convinced much has changed, but it really makes for some dramatic headlines.

As I said, Russia’s “mass production” is different from that of America’s. It makes zero sense not to eventually procure atleast 150-200 planes, they have 10 prototypes and the new engine is being tested.

I also don’t think it was ever supposed to replace all Su-27s and especially Mig-29s (makes no sense), but instead maybe at most 250 in roughly two decades time (and maybe more after that). So when looking into the 30s, I’m really not too worried.

One difference seems to be that they are only ordering 12 planes with the existing engines, instead of the original 60. The final 5th generation engine seems to still be on schedule, it was never supposed to be ready with the initial version of the plane (originally planned for 2015-16, or so).

However, it’s undeniable there have been some unexpected issues with the project and the excuse that “they don’t need Su-57s” is of course not convincing either. As well, the spin that they would order “additional” Su-35s instead is nonsense, because there have been no additional orders for 4th generation jets (I mean in addition to those originally planned, the 100 Su-35 by 2020 were planned from the beginning).

I actually blackpilled about this whole “Russia can’t into next-gen weapons ‘mass-production’” thing earlier and it’s probably partially (or even largely) explained by all those current technological weaknesses. Russia’s media hype has not helped either, that much is clear. They could really learn a thing or two from China.

But really the point is that the hyperbole from the “other side” was and is not accurate either. There were never plans to replace all those 4th gen fighters with Su-57s anytime soon and mass production meant maybe 10-12 planes annually.

The Armata program and “2000 T-14s by 2020” is another good example. AFAIK, the Russians were actually talking about 2000 “modern” tanks, that included upgrades. So a mix of misunderstandings, mistranslations and probably some wishful thinking as well.

So overall, these failures should not be exaggerated, and of course in general the modernization program has been a success and Russian military is now a modern fighting force.

However, one thing is becoming clear and IMO undeniable: China’s military in 2025 will be considerably stronger than Russia’s. The J-20 program (despite still being equipped with inferior engines, probably) is a great symbol of that, and only the beginning. Russia will keep “punching above its weight” (and I’m basing it on PPP), but there are some obvious limits to that, as these issues and China’s rise show simultaneously.

Yeah, I think that article is nonsense. How did you even find that LOL?

IIRC, that Alex Lockie guy is extremely biased against both Russian and Chinese military technologies. Business Insider is a joke as a “source” as well, especially when it comes to these kind of topics.

First of all, Su-57 not being stealth is subjective and propagandaistic BS. All the usual tropes are there: from not being stealthy, the plane’s capabilities being disappointing in general, no Indian funding (which apparently was not necessary in the first place, the Russian version of Su-57 was always mostly funded by Russia).

It was alrerady known that the initial order for Su-57 is going to smaller than originally planned. But even those supposed quotes don’t suggest anything more dramatic. They have also already built like 10 different prototypes, 2 (?) of which were tested in Syria. So certainly from that point of view, the program has progressed reasonably normally and nothing suggests that it’s somehow a “failure” or “dead,” quite the opposite in fact.

Russian “mass production” is also very different from American “mass production”. The US produces or is planning to produce 100 F-35s annually, whereas Russia simultaneously orders many different types of jets.

What is up with Turkey lol?

Those differences in per capita spending are massive, all over the place. Russia is close to Italy, which is a (very) developed country… Portugal is not far either and even Germany is really mediocre, so atleast that metric is really not that bad?

LOL @ both Thorfinnsson and Daniel Chieh

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Dmitry, this report is a good source and I think Anatoly has been using it as well:

https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/putin-midterm-interim-results/

– Oil & gas does not count for over 50% of state revenues as has been claimed, but only 27.4% [in 2012]. Top revenue source is instead payroll taxes [when you include the so-called “consolidated budget]

The main reason for Russia’s very rapid growth in the 2000s was actually the particularly severe collapse in the 90s + all the reasons why most other Eastern European countries grew rapidly as well. Of course the high oil prices helped, but it really has been exaggerated.

In any case and as I already said, the federal budget is based on $40 oil, so that dependency is decreasing steadily. And despite being conservative, the Economic Development Ministry forecasts high GDP and investment growth rates by the early 20s, so overall things don’t look bad.

Yes, that’s the official figure. I think the Economic Development Ministry forecasts a growth of 2.1% for the whole year, though.

Regarding oil prices, is that actually true? I don’t think the economy was that oil dependent at any point and that is certainly not the case now. I think oil & gas were like 10% of Russia’s GDP back in 2015-16, now that share is even lower.

Also, back in 2013 oil prices were still high, but Russia’s growth was already mediocre and I think even back then it was because they started focusing on inflation… then Ukraine and a total oil price collapse happened.

Not to mention that with the devalued ruble Russia’s current oil revenue is already very high. But yeah, I don’t that dependency should be exaggerated. The federal budget is also based on an oil price $40 per barrel, so most of that extra money is actually going to reserves. So the remaining dependency decreases further, quite rapidly actually, I think.