I don’t believe pulling off a Pearl Harbor would be the lesson learned by China.

Actually, the lesson for China should’ve been pretty straight forward. It is to make preparations, more preparations. And if it is made to align with general development instead of a bunker attitude, then it should be settled. The other parties can do not much at all.

I used to not being able to understand the English lyrics, until I do. 😩😂

Have you read Sailer’s “What Lessons Will Xi Draw From Putin’s War”?

Just curious, given that you seem to have high opinon of him. 😉

Recently the DrudgeReport headlines also make interesting read. It got me wondering how much I can trust the impression I got there regarding American domestic issues. 😂

How did Stalin manage a border?

Why is it must be like Afghanistan or Iraq? Why can’t it be like East Europe in Soviet time? Or something else?

Did a bleeding Iraq destablise its neighbors? Will a bloody messy Ukraine hurt Poland?

Regarding HAIJIN policy of five or three hundred years ago, there were the Ottomans and the Tsars, they were also experiencing a traumatic 20th century.

And Japan as well, they openned up more efficiently and then they underwent Hiroshima.

My point is that the onslaught of modernity might not have been avoidable if the imperial China adopted different policies regarding sea exploration and trade.

China as it stands now is still solidly in a catching up position. To be too adventuous on the front of human explorations is probably not a good idea especially when there might not be too significant a firstcomer advantage.

The question is: do you have to be the first ones?

If it proves to be good, China, say, can catch up, no?

As long as we can have a good life, who cares?

As for changing the world, if it is not one’s self doing it, what, then, is the difference from watching TV? It is stupid. What is the difference between cheering for Musk and cheering for a sci-fi plot?

The point is to try not to make the same mistake all over again albeit for different set of reasons.

There are always people who desire breaking up what they have and think they themselves will make everything better.

What makes you think that small tribes shooting each other every now and then isn’t normal or is nonfunctional? The Berbers have done it for hundreds of years.

I would define it as normal people having normal complaints all year around, instead of being in a hysteria or some other abnormal psycho-state every other day.

Someone above cited the lack of basics as the reason Afghans “chose” Taliban over the US funded government. So I asked my question. To me it is rather difficult to accept that you cannot provide the ordinary Afghans a reason to fight. And, as it is now, the US are blaming the locals.

The only value the Afghans are of, to the world and China in particular, is being a reminder of US badness.

They are perfectly forgetable. Who cares. They can build up their civilization by their own pace.

Why would China want to go there?

The minerals as long as they remain in the ground, it doesn’t matter to China, economically.

The Chinese leadership has to be really braindead to go in there.

Also, Pakistan obviously can and want to do a little of this and that. And if the Afghans have to live like in a real actual third world country, what is wrong about that?

I cannot believe the Afgans are bloodthirsty to that level.

It should’ve been possible to build a normal functioning society virtually everywhere among any kinds of people. It is as about very basic human nature.

When you cannot achieve that, it must be about insurmountable pressure coming somewhere. Massive number of migrants, natural disasters, foreign invasion with bad intentions, etc.

In Afganistan, Europe and US were working together to build a democracy, and the democracy, in theory, is not a tender baby, but instead, having its inherent strength to provide for its members. It is supposed to make you stronger and better. And EU and US are not some weak player. And Afghan is not very big.

So, why?

Some say corruption, but ain’t a democracy supposed to be best able to deal with that problem, especially when you have EU and US helping you? And whatever you say about the poor Afghan president, he is not Sadham or whoever, I believe?

I think that a lot of the usual assumptions held by US should now be re-examined.

One has to ask the question why the Kabul government failed to deliever the basics?

They have US support, money, time, weapons. They have freedom and democracy. Why can’t they deliever the basics?

And to those people who have answers now, one has to ask why their answers are not worked on before.

Twenty years, plenty support. What went wrong, if people do not actually want them?

The desire to separate from a certain party can be a motive.

It does not have to be that the empire wants a colony.

Or you can look at it from a different perspective. That he goes with the tide. The tide has now changed direction.

Slippery slope is such a lazy fool’s excuse.

May I quote Ben Franklin, the one where he talked about “if you can keep it.”

Slippery slope basically says that one should avoid all risks to resist one single danger, that all prices must be paid for all kinds of other challenges, or, maybe to reject that any new things would come along at all.

It is a refuse to take up new fights, to deal with uncertainties, to face up to the new complexities accompanying the very concept of freedom. As if you just keep the old way, you will keep it, your freedom, as always.

Vaccines are not yet widely available in many parts of the world.

And the West will scream at you if your country makes it mandatory. When AK says Political Will, he is not being precise.

And the polical pressure to mess with sci research. I mean, come on, the other minute you are talking about gene editting babies. Now you are agianst them sci folks playing with viruses. You cannot be this inconsistent, or can you?

The political will strong enough for this proposal would have been strong enough, far enough, than needed to push everyone to vac.

Thinking about it, this fallacy is what you find with many of the libertarian ideas.

Another point that is missing from the article is that the AGI or another super intelligence might not necessarily take the implicitly assumed individualistic image but being more like a hive, a society, made of discernable semi independent parts.

In other words, it may be like the old game, the same old. I believe Marx or Mao of the AGI bend would take a similar view. Struggle (among semi equal entities) is forever.

Legalism by definition does not drive anything because it is a mean to govern instead of being an inspiration to whatever.

Yes Stalin can do it, but Einstein and von Neumann wouldn’t want to work for him, would they?

You make a complete separation of the two things, but in reality the smart fraction always has their ideas beyond being just a tool for you or anyone (or even their alter ego).

Technology carries its own baggages. People often assume that Technology is value neutral, but it is not exactly true. It is confusing and frequently super messy, but, I mean, did the Soviet scientists not make examples?

There are “patriotic” Christians ie CCP approved kind (I believe it is not the theology that concerns the Party). They are not exactly rare. Personally I know about a handful of young Christians and I also encountered old lady Christians. The percentage among the general population is likely small though.

On Christmas eve, local churches in my city are usually packed, but I think most of them are there not for Jesus. There are even newly built modernism looking churches. Christianity is definitely here, it is also clearly a minority interest.

I read about underground Christianity in China from a few books. I cannot imagine that they are popular.

Sad to know that Rush Limbaugh is dead. I used to listen to his program alot during Obama’s first term.

It was by his program, I found out Mark Steyn, and then Steve Sailer, then this website.

I remember he used to say that it was no time to panic because when it was he would tell his audience.

Before listening to Rush, my image of USA was quite different. Much more simplistic.

The naratives are not that important. The CCP loses on every turn and yet here they are.

And the Korean and Japanese pop cultures, they are impressive, but who really cares.

As long as the CCP manages to improve the quality of life for majorities of Chinese, the smart ones take note, and all else will be forgiven, and cooperation of the better minds of Chinese will carry on which means that only the natural ceilings will stop China, like if the smartest is not at the Einstein level.

This is a fringe website for sure. I just do not like the categorical blockade from the US side given esp. that there are constant jeering about Unz.com not being able to exist in China for it is such a bad country.

Somehow I posted the same comment twice.

Recently the CDN service used by Unz (Is that cloudflare?) began to block access from China. It is kind of depressing.

I believe it was in 2016 when some conservative websites began to block access from China. I even wrote to one of the owners to complain at the time, but they obviously thought it was justified.

So depressing. It makes coming here quite a hassle.

And the weird auto capitalization of words in the comment box.

I know one of the black men is e.e. cummings. :-p

And Khomeni is the rightmost one.

Her name is 梁艳萍 for a reference point. I am not trying to publicize anying, just in case anyone wants to check on the details. It is public information in China.

I have to say that the censoring can be done in all kinds of subtle ways. China being pressured by western influences, and the need to maintain a good image, and that the Party is quite a visible Deep State, all make an assessment on Freedom of Speech not an easy task.

One interesting example. A professor a few years ago sort of trying to push the envelope decided to become a candidate in a local election, i.e., taking the words of the Party on democracy seriously by the letter. He then naturally was reported by NYT but failed to be elected by the numbers. Later on, he was removed from teaching and was given a “research” position in the library effectively censoring his ability to do much. After all this was not a true political leader, merely a teacher able to influence his students and it was by the resources of the university. More interestingly he then moved to USA and became a Chinese nationalist (not KMT) since.

Another example. A second tier math department a few months ago became famous for being selected by an established western institution as the best math department in China based on their metric I suppose. It immediately became targets of ridicule on Chinese social media. The university quickly replied that they were emphatically aware that they were not the best but somehow in trying to improve themselves by metric they apparently fooled the western institution unintentionally.

That the polling having quality issues is one thing, the betting market is also a mess is quite disappointing, even though it should not have been to anyone who paid even a little attention to the history of the stock markets.

the evil imperialists of aemrica cynically use this kind of surveys trying to drag the world down with them into the drain. the chutzpah. it is them who enslaved the Black race and genocidede the native americans. fcckk. the bald faced lie, calling grannies in Chinese villagers racisrt.

The word “neighbor” probably means different things to different people. Like the esoteric Chinese cuisine in 1950s America or actually moving to Sichuan.

Training conditions are different.

Thanks for the kind reply.

I have only cursory knowledge of the west history…

But, but, in between Han and Tang, the Three Kingdoms happened, along with numerous other events and the appearances of many famous figures.

This is such a nonsense piece.

The events and historical figures in between Han and Tang were not occasionally mentioned in some later edited singular works. The later period were immersed in stories of the past. There were countless great poems and beautiful arts. They were all by some Jesuits from far end of Eurasia?!? Really?

This is truly foolish.

making that county safer for White people currently being jailed for self-defense throughout America.

You see, “throughout America” the sheriffs are not like that, but “throughout America” things are not A-OK, yes?

You see it, but you are not seeing it.

I remember Sarah Palin in maybe 2012 said that Nothing can’t be fixed by another election in the good US of A. It’s of course not a new idea but hearing it repeated was still nice, at the time, which was eight years ago.

Or do you, any of you, really think that, whoever wins this time, everything will be fine again, that all of the badness are superficial, that they will go away when the votes are cast?

Merely a decade (and a half?) ago VA was soild R. 😀 The Times they are a-changin.

I remember that in 2008 I was listening to Rush Limbaugh and at one point he’s suggesting that Rhode Island was in play because they were having campaign events there. 😀

Your local sheriff, prosecutors and judges are going to be a lot more important

You got the news that a “Satanic” transsexual libertarian got voted into the Republican candidacy of sheriff somewhere in US of A? 😀

I actually read the fellow’s statement. He or she actually got the libertarian humor or self righteousness. 😀

Reagan was painted as a crazy outsider

There was this famous pic of Reagan shaking hands with President and Republican candidate Ford in 1976 R. convention. The usual title for that pic was that the Republicans immediately realised what a mistake it was for them to having chosen Ford instead.

So, which was it? Reagan the outsider or Reagan the Gov. of California and all that?

Reagan might have been considered an outsider when he was making political ads for, was that GM? That was when? 1965? Was he still an “outsider” in 1980?

There are about 300 mil people in USA. How many of them are “truly” famous and in their prime time? 3000? That would be 1 in 100 k, no?

How many death in USA already? 200,000? We’d “expect” 2 truly famous people who have died. The chance that it has not happened yet, someone who knows his Statistics & Probability can make the calculation.

When you take into consideration of other factors like those famous people must have better access to med. The heck is the problem we are discussing?

It is what Bin Laden said. People like the strong horse.

It is a long game rather than something to do with the universities or any particular items on education policy.

Good or bad, it is the fate of the Chinese people. If the US could just stay away.

The US has proved itself unable to improve the quality of life of people of other countries. Please do not come around trying to help.

South Korea is a success story, but really it took a long time before South Korea stopped being called a basket case in the newspapers of the US.

At the time of Mongols, the Muslim world’s castle tech was not bad comparing to the Europeans’, and yet the Mongols managed to defeat the Muslims almost completely if not for the death of another Great Khan.

It was after the Mongol time that the Ottomans came to be and took Constantinople and pushed to Vienna. Are you suggesting that West Europe’s castles of an earlier time were better than that of Constantinople?

The problem with chaos is that there are multiple kinds of chaos.

A monk in China more than a thousand years ago going to India. Columbus and Zheng He. Etc.

Then we have shelves of scholarly written books on masturbation. 😀

If the new frontiers of space eventually open up, much will change for good. It is just too damn difficult. You cannot be the next Columbus with only your will power and that you have read two books by truly crazy minds like Columbus himself did.

All the interesting things are too difficult at this juncture of history.

One big reason that China looks better is that China has a simple purpose that is to get richer. The US no longer enjoy the benefit of such.

The biological comparison is not simple as you believe. In anycase it is delusional to think that the libertarian ideology can be an easy target.

1. Homeostasis is important for health of a single organism. But in terms of evolution, too much stability is clearly a dead end. Now, is a society more comparable to a single organism in its only lifespan or something bigger like an evolving species?

2. What exactly is a homeostasis going to look like in a society? We more or less know that much regarding human health, but do we know that about a society? When US was fast changing around the prohibition period, was a homeostasis going to be like with or without alcohol? It was not as if the period just before prohibition enjoyed a long term stable status that it should automatically and naturally become the homeostasis that should be maintained ever and ever.

There actually is an argument for libertarianism from the perspectives of utilitarianism or pragmatism, although libertarians themselves seem only to invoke those arguments implicitly.

In terms of cooperation within a group, its purpose often is to do nasty things to the outgroup which means that the ingroup itself becomes a parasite to the wider world. Does it not defeat your own argument?

Best wishes!

Hope the world can go back to “normal” soon.

You have a libertarian’s imagination of how the world works. 😉

Being ruled by an alien dynasty

This is too much of a modern American angle. History of a different people in a different, faraway country did not come to be to serve contemporary USA political discussions, you know.

Size and weight do not matter unless you are trying to turn direction.

For example, the Tokugawa court in the earlier days since the arrival of the Black Ships wanted to adapt the western ways and the Choushu clan was against. The Choushu guys quickly changed their minds after they experienced the shock and awe delievered by British warships.

Such changes of minds by hard evidences (because everything was beyond the processing power offered by traditional thinkings) took place much slower in China than in Japan because China is so much bigger. It was easier for the hardliners to get support from where the people were not convinced of Western superiority because they were “protected” by the vast hinterland.

Right up to the Mao era, overwhelmingly the reason China lost the Opium Wars was still thought to be mainly about corruption and cowardice, i.e., the most lazy traditional thinking regarding failed battles on the border area.

Historians often make no effort to deal with the size difference between Japan and China in analyzing the measures and outcomes of the period from 1850 to 1890.

“The son also rises” seems to be in vogue in China recently as well. When reporters interviewed local champions in College Entrace Exams, more than once the young boys and girls said to reporters such things. It was clearly not by studying statistics as done in the paper cited in the post, but by general observation (of vaguely defined and carelessly understood concepts) I suppose, heard from their parents.

A new sci-fi author from China also wrote a story along this line of thought and got an American award for it. I personally just hate such works. They took away the boyish fun from sci-fi.

One day when I was browsing the history of Taiping Rebellion, I realised it cannot be much more than 50% true. The brilliant leaders (not that they were good) of the rebellion were not sons of successful people.

My own parents came from substantially different backgrounds. My paternal grandpa was very rich and living near big city. My maternal parents were living in much poorer parts of China and were only mildly rich by local standards. It is hard to imagine that they would have married if not for Mao, and, for that matter, the Japanese invasion and all that.

Such “mess up” of marriages must have happened many times, say, during the collapses of dynasties in Chinese history. The gene pool of China, as observed on this website not infrequently, is not as stratified as in India. Also, as mentioned by Charles Murray in discussing the old America, men tend to marry the good looking, and women tend to marry the powerful, and the good looking usually were not the most clever, and the powerful not very beautiful, therefore it stops or at least slows down the stratification. There are many tricks evolution can play us. If evolution cares about “son also rises”, it would not have made sex.

To be argumentative, “values” clearly are important. We are here, for example, not completely because of our genes (whatever that means) but because we read, even though it might not be our parents’ words, but our great great great uncles’ works.

One thing leads to many things. The Opium War was certainly a gigantic milestone in Chinese history. It started the “downfall” but it also brought about a reaction from the traditional China to deal with it. The effort between 1850 and 1890 was almost a success if not for the fact that Japan was faster.

The Opium War to China was not completely unlike the Black Ships to Japan. The effects before 1890 were actually comparable if not similar. The old ways were let down and the tradtional elites struggled to face the challenges and more or less got around without completely throwing away their heritages.

In China there for a very long time is this habit of thought established that is to attribute everything disastrous in the last 200 years to Confucius and the First Emperor of China. They were from more than 2000 years ago. Serious scholars overlook the irony without trouble. The “end” was not started by the Opium Wars, it started by the Manchu, by Genghis Khan, by Qin Shi Huang Di, by Confucius.

The effort between 1850 and 1890 should not have been overlooked.

The whole CCP started off as a “violent property criminal” movement. Look where that got them.

There’s this tendency to look upon the complexity of evolution with a simplistic interpretation that suits a specific worldview…

The Opium wars in 1840 and 1850 did not bring down the Qing. The boxer rebellion was a reaction to the defeat of Qing by Japan in 1895. That spelled the end of Qing.

Actually, it’s not the ports. The openning of ports happened before and around 1850. There was a disastrous internal war around that decade. But the empire generally speaking recovered until a fast rising Japan ended the slower development in China in 1895.

There was Japan, but not the old Japan, a new Japan.

My my the Goodfellas is now a right wing movie. Tell that to John Wayne.

Unz Review is not banned in China.

The British obviously has a strong feeling about cyberspace issues, 5G and all that.

The matter is not that today the British can talk about independence of Scotland with a light heart. Independence or not, the English and the Scots are not going to fight each other like they used to do in the centuries past. Put bluntly, it doesn’t matter that much. This is the real reason instead of somehow today’s British is more enlightened than their ancestors.

Look at former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. In many other parts of the world, independence still meant a lot of blood and arrows and swords aiming at you even after a settlement.

Find someone from Corsica?

Is France inherently pathetic?

Will there be a new Richelieu in your alternative history? You know, a Bismarck made all the difference. France is a big country after all. Even in the remote corners of the world a Genghis Khan can suddenly appear.

… but that’s not the reason not to recommend the book. 😉

The book is short. It is revealing. What not to like?

Yeah. I was surprised to learn that there were German farmers on some small islands in the Pacific during that period.

But Europeans loved to fight in Europe. Europe was always a battle ground until the end of WWII. That is, an almost complete resolution which made Europe irrelevant (in terms of Great Power politics). Peace in Europe came only after that.

Our host seems to think that France and Germany can have easy peace in this alternative history.

Another take might be that there’s something seriously wrong with the pre WWI Europe.

Or, we should be able to argue that Mussolini’s Italy was more or less a “normal” country. In that light, maybe a lighter Hitler could’ve lead a “normal” Third Reich. It did not have to be that dark as it happened. Our host seems to think that WWI took place because of historical accidents. One may as well argue that WWII took place by accidents.

It’s easy to critique police actions after the fact.

This line is repeated so many times. Just at what kind of situation can you question the police’s performance? They’re neighborhood police, they are not Navy Seals fighting in remote corners of the world, you know.

You are just surrendering to the sad situation. Men can have their moments. Domestic dispute can be emotional. Police is supposed to be there to help. And you are saying that the only way they can do their job is by either shooting the unfortunate guy to death or hit the shit out of him. That is not normal. I kind of hope that you can see it.

You know, maybe you have kids, sometime kids do stupid things too. Parents, especially the father can physically control the kid, stop him in the heat of the moment, and then having time to do the teaching. By your logic, this is unthinkable. The father or any adult nearby, what they can do is either kill the stupid kid on spot, or beat him really hard like the adult himself is losing control.

US is supposed to be a beacon of something. A society of trust for goodness sake. Obviously you cannot trust the police not to kill someone on an ordinary dispute call. And you can neither trust the ordinary guy in their moments not to be a terrorist. Maybe that is the reason Americans are all acting up like morons (and yes, your word back to you.)

Based on the descriptions, the deceased black man was hardly evil. He did not deserve to be killed on spot, presumably in front of his own very young kids.

It tells us that the USA police is simply not up to the job facing them. In a better world, police should be able to use non-lethal force to control the black man and the situation would not have exploded.

Physically weak policemen. It seems the only way they can do police work is by pulling a gun on you three minutes into a domestic dispute.

It reminds me what USA did in Iraq. First the rosy imagination of democracy and freedom. Then burst in anger when one of their men got killed by locals. One might call it Chickens with Guns. The inverse of Stick and Carrot.

There are still 600 mil Chinese with yearly income less than 1727 USD.

That is less than 4.74 USD per day.

Or, it is less than 32.88 RMB a day. They can barely buy three serves of noodles in coastal cities of China. One might call it a bare minimum.

Many Chinese for a long period of time wanted and fought for freedom but not for anything that you mentioned here. You take for granted that those are the desirable ends by themselves. Not many Chinese agree. Unless they are thoroughly doctrinated by the West.

Chinese ever since the opium war has a mission that is to make Chinese rich, and free from foreign horrors, like any other nation, like France (when they were not bullied by Hitler) and Britain. At times, Chinese thought it was industrialization, then a republic, or a revolution, or another one, or finally communism. Eventually it is pragmatism that put Chinese where it is today.

Chinese is still not really rich. Majority of Chinese are still poor. And Chinese got many problems, huge historical packages, historically recent dark memories. But I think the one major differences between today’s China and USA is that China has a clear view of its mission and that is to make any ordinary Chinese as rich as a middle class westerner. When and if China reaches that stage, China may eventually prove to be quite a disappointment again. 🙁

I actually have this book on my shelf. This, and a number of books on Raping of Nanjing, and one on CCP campaign in 1948 in a norther Chinese city during the civil war that the CCP purposefully starved the city in an effort to destroy the enemy army within.

I have those books, but never quite managed to read them. Extremely difficult to read. It’s definitely a good thing, a great thing, that those brave authors researched and documented these events.

A related item is how Rwanda is getting out of their recent history. Chinese and CCP’s attitude seems to be to pushing those awful events into history research. The past is frankly on everybody’s mind, only that there’s not much to argue about. It is just downright painful. Other than having a watchful eye, what else can you really do about it? Constant discussion by general public is not desirable and that seems to be more or less the consensus of current Chinese society. When perceived necessary, the Culture Revolution is still mentioned in public, as a warning to the future, by even some of the top most CCP officials.

And of course there’re crazy folks who think Mao did everything right.

Quite a bit of US open and kindness, to any kind of dissidents, comes from its unique position of being a rich and very powerful country.

Frequently we can see in history that the confidently powerful are usually having an open mind and constantly going out of their way to be kind to peaceful enemies.

Also the modern west societies are organized in a historically speaking very peculiar way. It is centered on businessmen, for example. This bit of uniqueness after it being painted into a kind of generality, a universalism, often makes other societies in different times and places look awfully strange and oppressive. It gives the impression that the middles ages were dark and the Chinese past was a nightmare.

One way to look at it is to try to remove the benefits that should’ve being credited to technology, and then you have a hard look at the values of the political and spiritual arrangements.

Here’s a recent one.

A female professor was relieved of her teaching duties when it became widely known that she’s been saying, publicly and on the web, things like praises of Japanese raping of Nanjing. She’s still got the salary and all. Just no more teaching. 🙂

And her sayings became widely known only because she’s involved in some active back and forth on the web over the COVID-19 handling in Wuhan. She’s been posting such stuff for quite a number of years.

She studied in a Japan university. On hearing her treatment, some Japanese professors protested publicly until they being informed that she’s saying praises of such kind and the Japanese professors took back their protest.

Just the teaching duties. 🙂

We can assume the videos were a fraction

Or it might simply be man biting dog kind of news.

Regarding baby crying. My father told me this story. For a long time I thought it was a true story until I read a similar one in a novel. So I am not sure how true it is. 🙂

The year was in 1937, December. Japanese was advancing in the Yangtze delta toward Nanjing. In my father’s village, people were hiding in the fields. There were two new born babies. One was quiet, the other wanted to cry, so the parents covered the baby’s mouth but for too long. They had to wait for the advancing columns to pass by, after all. And the quiet baby lived and the other baby was killed.

Russians are great. Americans are great. Chinese are better and better. I think all can agree on these points. You seem to be arguing that there is a ceiling for Chinese, I think that is just opinion.

And the prevailing challenge of today is that the Americans seem unwilling to let others develop in different directions and by differen speeds.

China is not a paradise. I think you are shooting at a straw man here.

That been said, I don’t think today’s China is a Stalinist system. The website is likely to be shut down, but I don’t think people comparable to Unz will really be put to death.

If the future is unipolar dominated by China of CCP, that I think is worse than today. But it is a straw man.

but there are a number of quite famous cases now that some Chinese did just that. But okay not against nationally important projects but against real estate developments.

For many years, such and the things like that the USA has Robert E. Lee’s statues everywhere are testimonies of American greatness …

It is actually quite interesting considering how many of the Chinese top talents each year went to USA and basically never come back. And this “scene” has been ongoing for at least 3 decades now.

It is remarkable the “second tier” can achieve so much.

For that, you need a figure bigger than Putin.

“Terminal care” has a new meaning now. Or is it always so? 🤔

It is now American. 🙁

the Mandarin class exercised a policy called keeping the peasants stupid and docile

This is a quote from Lao Zi but it is just that, a famous saying, through out the history of China. What China practiced, is to educate the people. Other than a few exceptions, the people were not deliberately kept from books and learning.

Free Speech is valued almost universally through out history. The tolerance of different opinions is rarely argued against. And the powerful rulers, most of them, understand its value and respect and even encourage its practice.

A good thing needs to be cultivated, protected. That there are opportunists is hardly a reason to be against it.

The modern American version of the idea makes it more and more about pornography and petty insults, and sowing division and exploiting society’s fractures. This is unfortunate.

That old USA cannot even stop a civil war from happening. People seem oblivion to that glaring failure when discussing the supremacy of democracy over other political systems. Very strange.

The self-censoring will be with us and it will be ever stronger. At some point it will come to surface.

Back to normal is just a dream now. Even if it looks normal on the outside.

It is like COVID19 without vaccine. The mask on our minds will be there, like forever. There’s no end to this disgusting show.

From certain perspectives, and to some degree, Dr. Sun Yat-sen was kind of like this, but China (and the world) back then was quite different from China (and the world) now, of course. 😀

That footballer is a genuine surprise.

Spaceport is what matters. In the future, subs will be spaceships.

At the beginning of Feb, I guessed that there might be 10k dead in Wuhan before it got controlled. And then how many families would’ve been in great pain, and how much the political stability would’ve been hanging on a thread. It was a brief moment that I was fearing for a mideast kind of situation developing in China.

And now in US there are 100k dead. And yet it seems that it took some NYT trickery to make people feel the pain.

It is frankly baffling.

I am guessing that maybe in China the grandparents living together with the family thus making the loss of them a much felt pain? And that in the US the grandparents are in nursing homes and outside the family therefore the pain is not much felt?

I understand this topic is somewhat inappropriate, …

Actually, if it starts to kill young people, you’d see a far more effective reaction against it. It is not like, in this regard, the plague of the middle ages that it was beyond the knowledge and the means of society.

If the British didn’t just “Conquer” the land, but also kicked off or killed off the native people, and prevented neighboring immigrations, like what the English speaking people managed to do in Australia and North America, but failed to accomplish in say South Africa, …

However, the great grandkids always eventually become soft, …

OTOH, the kids also likely get smarter that they invent Lawspeak, …

But, like someone asked in another comment, what do I care? As long as there is peace and development.

When China acted,

1. there was no clear information that it mainly knocks off the old and sick.

2. it might’ve been only a China problem, which, among other things, means that the impact on economy cannot be that big as soon as China gets it controlled.

3. if by this stage China had got 100k or 300k killed, and if it is a China only problem, there can hardly be political stability.

In anycase, I hope the Chinese on both sides of the strait are not so foolish to have a “hot” confrontation.

I believe there is an Aesop Fable on this.

RE the breaking up of Chimerica. How is it supposed to make America great again? When both sides are trying to win over countries inbetween, and when you take into consideration that the average American and Chinese workers are not unlike in terms of competitiveness, that somehow plastic toy or other widgets made by expensive US workers will be selling just fine?

You are making it sound as if TW are claiming independence because of historical studies. Honestly it got nothing to do about ancient history, but the fear of CPC rule.

And your citing of historical arguments are pretty weak. In anycase I think it is just distraction, so I am not going into that direction.

From mainland’s point of view, CPC is trying to keep things as it was and using economic development, aka Karlin’s strategy, to get bigger and bigger advantage.

I find it odd that the Hong Kong protesters fly American flags

Maybe it is the flag of the “Proposition Nation” that they are flying.

But is TW a core interest of the US?

The prices the US was willing to pay for Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghan were clearly less than tens of thousands of US soldiers. The price for TW I’d imagine is surely not at the scale of say the West Coast of the US?

What China is asking for is to keep the current ambiguity re TW. The only reason some US thinkers, say Bannon, want to provoke a war is that they want to use the opportunity to KO China.

But, if we may bring on a little bit of libertarian thinking, it is not the Country that has an interest, it is the people, the leadership. In a KO level fight with CCP and China, the sure bet is that the entire leadership, the whole elite groups of every country would’ve been changed. Think about WWI.

“Native Taiwanese” is a tiny minority.

Taiwan was firmly part of China since at least the end of Ming. I think majority of Taiwan residents were Ethnic Han since then, but I am not sure.

If they really wanted independence, they could’ve go for it when Taiwan was much richer in comparison and mainland China was much less capable militarily.

They do not want to be ruled by CCP a sentiment that is understandable, but they are doing everyone a disservice by taking on a risky road like as if readying themselves to be martyrs, provoking a carnage in the strait, and becoming ever more a rabid and yet smallish enemy of mainland.

If COVID-19 in Wuhan happened in the 1980s, Taiwan would’ve sent in nurses and doctors, pretty much like every other provinces of mainland China did, and their nurses would’ve exhibitted a higher professional quality. The fear of CCP and their own weakening have made them dislike common Chinese people nowadays. Not unlike what is happening in HK in this regard.

I wasn’t reading. Sorry. This is embarrassing. My bad.

This is ridiculous. Did China invade Japan or what?

Atlantic makes it warm far up north. It is not just the lattitude.

Let me correct this sentence for you: The Chinese Communist Party (Did the chinks invent Communism by the way?) needs a huge economy and the weapons to protect ITSELF against the Chinese people and KEEP ITSELF in power.

It is people not living here exhibiting most intense hate out of ideology and whatnot.

I suggest you pay more attention to your own country. Of course you won’t. People like you, being a nationalist, is just having an excuse so they can blame the foreigners.

We have neolibs who is war plus whatever. Then neocons who is war plus whatever. Now we are seeing neo version of nationalists. They are war with different excuses. You are being played by your own master and you are so free. You think.