The Quad naval alliance forming.

[0R0 + 6,251]

27 minutes ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

I read bits here and there about some giant underground tunneling network that is supposed to hide weapons/nukes in the CCP kingdom. Do you think any of those reports/rumors are credible?

Yes, obviously. If the excess steel and cement they are producing are not going into visible infrastructure and commercial constructs nor exports then where would you think they are going?

Russia is looking to get a lifeline from the West to replace China as a trade and security partner. The US security establishment  has been very reluctant and even antagonistic to these approaches from the Kremlin. Even Trump, who sees value in bringing Russia away from China is not willing to accept them while they support Iran and Syria and attack Ukraine and threaten Poland Hungary and Romania.

[0R0 + 6,251]

On 7/15/2020 at 2:21 PM, Marcin2 said:

Quad is also not directly dangerous for China. Nobody will fight any war between the 2 strongest nuclear armies.

@Wombat is indicating that there precisely such a plan afoot, and is likely during 2022-2023.. The goal is to sink China's Navy and/or remove their presence in the S China Sea, particularly attractive scenarios would be the Philippines taking back the militarized reefs and Spratleys under a Quad umbrella to deter Chinese opposition or react against it by sinking China's Navy.

There is still much doubt about China being no. 3 nuclear army or being no.4. Their missile capacity and precision on long ranges is still in question as there was no telemetry reported in the West (at least not one I had seen) from a Chinese experiment/test with a sufficiently long range missile hitting a precision target.

Their main line of thinking has been and remains that they conduct a war in which there is no retaliation against them. Thus bio warfare, like CV19, or EMP weapons against carrier groups. it should be noted, that they can't use an EMP weapon close to their shores because it would also wipe out their civilian electronics in the coastal cities. The range of EMP weapons capable of overwhelming hardened US equipment is too long to use in the S China Sea. Both US and Russia agreed to abandon those weapons because of their danger of causing damage for thousands of miles away from the target. But the Chinese believe they would face no retaliation if they don't kill US navy personnel in their EMP "Pearl Harbor"

I think they are smoking something they shouldn't if they believe someone is going to wait to see what their missile does on impact before the US and its allies send a barrage of nukes in retaliation.

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

20 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

Yes, obviously. If the excess steel and cement they are producing are not going into visible infrastructure and commercial constructs nor exports then where would you think they are going?

This is all unknown to me, i'm interested in finding out more. Are there links you could post about this? 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

14 hours ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

Reading some Aussy news. Funny how the "elites" are behind the curve but the general population was in favor in curtailing Aus/CCP relationship for quite some time. Sounds just like opinions in the US. For all the talk about how societies are becoming more fractured, public opinion is remarkably consistent across populations.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/china-can-t-bully-us-into-submission-the-pm-has-australians-backing-20200515-p54thb.html

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/rundown-of-china-s-spy-agencies-will-make-uncomfortable-reading-for-some-20200713-p55bhs.html

It would not be considered normal for the general population to receive individual payoffs, would it?

Edited July 17, 2020 by Dan Warnick

[Marcin2 + 726]

18 hours ago, 0R0 said:

The China make you rich story is over and has been declining for a decade. Those opportunities have burnt out. The arbitrage of China migrant (serf) labor off which the US corporations and Chinese coastal industry live, is coming to a close as 1/3 of it retires this decade and the replacement generation is 1/2 the size - and has less reason to leave their farms as incomes there have grown far faster than migrant incomes for a decade as farm productivity has stagnated.

You can not expect the boom driven by Chinese boomers to continue when they are preparing to retirement and then retiring this decade. Retirees have phenomenally low impact on economic activity. The Chinese market is a mirage and will  disappear into history over this decade.

I do not understand what you have about Chinese demographics. In the future they would come the way of UK, France, Italy, South Korea and later probably even Japan and Germany. I do not think they would have large immigration like US, only some White and blue collar workers that are in need.

But why this should be all doom and gloom ?

China is generally more advanced in technology than for example Italy and on par with France and has better demographics.

And they invest in automation and R&D. I acknowledge that current tight dictatorship grip on everything including economy by Xi Administration can spoil a lot but I do not think it would derail economic growth.

[Marcin2 + 726]

11 hours ago, 0R0 said:

@Wombat is indicating that there precisely such a plan afoot, and is likely during 2022-2023.. The goal is to sink China's Navy and/or remove their presence in the S China Sea, particularly attractive scenarios would be the Philippines taking back the militarized reefs and Spratleys under a Quad umbrella to deter Chinese opposition or react against it by sinking China's Navy.

There is still much doubt about China being no. 3 nuclear army or being no.4. Their missile capacity and precision on long ranges is still in question as there was no telemetry reported in the West (at least not one I had seen) from a Chinese experiment/test with a sufficiently long range missile hitting a precision target.

Their main line of thinking has been and remains that they conduct a war in which there is no retaliation against them. Thus bio warfare, like CV19, or EMP weapons against carrier groups. it should be noted, that they can't use an EMP weapon close to their shores because it would also wipe out their civilian electronics in the coastal cities. The range of EMP weapons capable of overwhelming hardened US equipment is too long to use in the S China Sea. Both US and Russia agreed to abandon those weapons because of their danger of causing damage for thousands of miles away from the target. But the Chinese believe they would face no retaliation if they don't kill US navy personnel in their EMP "Pearl Harbor"

I think they are smoking something they shouldn't if they believe someone is going to wait to see what their missile does on impact before the US and its allies send a barrage of nukes in retaliation.

Exactly, sometimes i also think they are smoking something. I mean oilprice.com forum commenters.
I usuallly like to scan this forum cause often some good ideas or information.

But sometimes you guys are getting surreal, like with this US attacks China or China attacks US stories.

I mean even Pentagon hawks do not believe in this scenario.

The game in US is about to postpone Chinese hegemony.

In short term US is winning through technology sanctions and weaponization of US dollar.

These are tools at US disposal and are efficiently used against China since 2018.

Strategists say that these are short sighted means as China is doubling down on R&D and de dollarization but I really do not know.

But I have not read any piece written by Pentagon guys that States that China has lousy missile technology. they write a lot about Chinese missile and nuclear technology and that this is a real problem for US and a good solution in area of assymetric warfare for China. You have read anything to the contrary Please give a link.

 

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by Marcin2
Typo

[Marcin2 + 726]

India has some 40 Dassault jets on stock and further 40 on order but workhorse of Indian Air Force is 270 SU 30 MKK. Till 2030 this will not change even if India would try fast to move permanently to French jets and get rid of Russian airplanes.

[0R0 + 6,251]

3 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

I do not understand what you have about Chinese demographics. In the future they would come the way of UK, France, Italy, South Korea and later probably even Japan and Germany. I do not think they would have large immigration like US, only some White and blue collar workers that are in need.

But why this should be all doom and gloom ?

China is generally more advanced in technology than for example Italy and on par with France and has better demographics.

And they invest in automation and R&D. I acknowledge that current tight dictatorship grip on everything including economy by Xi Administration can spoil a lot but I do not think it would derail economic growth.

I am not optimistic about Italy either,  unless it leaves the Euro, undergoes a crash and revives from there to wherever its inverted demographics allow. French demographics are healthy, China's are not.

China is dependent on its demographic offering to the world more so than anyone else. It is how they fund their import needs for 1.. Agriculture, 2. Industry and 3. Technology.

The 1/4 of China that is a developed economy relies on 1/4-1/3 to grow its food and 1/4 that is migrant labor to build thing for export for a pittance and service the 1st world portion. 1/4 is middle income. The 1/4 migrant labor is disappearing this decade entirely. They will need to retain all the farmers if not take back some migrants. Their ability to export depends on fine tuning production as they had not even tried and that requires proper engineering talent, not a diploma from a cram school. 1 in 10 graduates with a relevant engineering degree can do the job they were trained for, the stat comes from a survey of the American China chamber of commerce survey of US corporations producing in China. It would be a tall order for China to actually use automation for production effectively. Their 1/4 of the population that is 1st world can't staff it, nor operate it. That portion of production has to shut down, since the other 3/4 of the country that didn't get to high school, can't do it, not to speak of the 8-10% that make it to college and the 1% that have a useful skill set commensurate with their degrees. Thus they can't automate into cheap exporters once the migrant labor is gone. If they cann't export then they can't obtain their needs in Ag and industrial inputs and they face food shortages and famine since they can't afford to import foods either. They have already skimped on high grade coal and iron ores to save on Forex and converted to local brown coal and low grade ores and resumed blast furnace operations that cost 30% more than Western arc furnace methods  The only driver for that is to keep open the forex cash flow to allow more essential imports to come in. They even sell that steel at a loss into global markets in order to get the forex cash flow. Just another loss to fund from the banking system.

The Chinese banking system was approaching negative net cash flow by 2025 as savers retire and stop stuffing their accounts and instead draw on them. Since the industrial investments do not produce a consistent cash flow, if any at all, the system can not pay off in real terms, so would either have to cut retiree's savings balances or print up money to plug the holes. Which means retirements+money printing=food and essentials prices go up while incomes don't. As things stand, apparently the transition may be happening right now, as CV19 pulled it forward from 2025.

The US phase 1 trade deal was intended to drain China's dollar cash flows further with forced imports from the US. The attack on their dollar financing, from which they were expecting to fund the current account is another leg of the same strategy.

China has failed miserably in obtaining incoming immigration. Its 1000 lights program is a total flop as it failed to recruit any permanent scholars and very few new temporary expats. They just got existing expat scholars incorporated into the program so that the universities could claim the $2miil research budgets each of them got. None of them stayed beyond their contract. On the other hand, every year they lose about 13k scientists to migration to the West and SE Asia, and 5-6000 inventors. US obtained 45k scientists and 22k inventors. According to the National Science Foundation and academic estimates.

Chinese attitudes towards dark skinned races is aggressively racist. So that is not going to be a source.

Harry Dent does a decent connection of demographics and economic results. Look up his work. Raoul Pal as well.

Keeping the Chinese economy, financial system and forex in good order has been a juggling act for most of the last decade. Brookings Institute estimates put China's GDP as much as $2 Trillion below the official estimates published. As much as 7% of GDP claimed as invested savings never happened..The money wasn't saved, and the investment wasn't made.

You need to read views not contaminated by Chinese propaganda efforts.

 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

On 7/15/2020 at 9:24 PM, frankfurter said:

pathetic. observing the Trump cabal is like observing a group of aggravated chimpanzees. the glee expressed by people here to prepare for a nuclear war is beyond repugnant. seemingly, none of you have studied history, or you choose to ignore it. historical proof: alliances increase greatly the risk of war, not decrease. 

Too many factors for you to make that conclusion. If you want to demonstrate this as true you'll need to go into detail. Otherwise quit pretending to be a military historian. 

Edited July 19, 2020 by KeyboardWarrior

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

On 7/16/2020 at 7:46 PM, 0R0 said:

The range of EMP weapons capable of overwhelming hardened US equipment is too long to use in the S China Sea. Both US and Russia agreed to abandon those weapons because of their danger of causing damage for thousands of miles away from the target. But the Chinese believe they would face no retaliation if they don't kill US navy personnel in their EMP "Pearl Harbor"

This blogger has some good info on the EMP insanity.

https://michaelmabee.info/china-emp-threat/

[0R0 + 6,251]

10 hours ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

This blogger has some good info on the EMP insanity.

https://michaelmabee.info/china-emp-threat/

interesting read. I think it is something the US has to be responding to with serious investment into hardening and a clear message that the launch of particular EMP capable missiles would be considered a 1st strike and cause immediate retaliation that can't be called off. China is entirely mistaken to consider the possibility of an EMP strike at any size or location not being responded to as a total nuclear attack long before it is completed and damage assessed.

I have no idea how much effort and success or failure have been conducted in defensive hardening or in enhancing EMP or developing super EMP capabilities. It would only be known by surreptitious signaling to China on US capabilities as a detterent to their potential actions. I would defer to well connected military and geopolitical strategists for this kind of analysis. The information from that source is decidedly clear on the multiply redundant US capability to take out anything in space or traveling in HEMP elevations several times over. A demonstration was made for Chinese consumption after they made their own signaling demonstration of taking down precisely some space junk. the US response was to take down 8 such pieces of space junk, each with a separate system. This demonstration of massively redundant capacity using several technologies has been the deterrent to date, and likely the reason the US and the Quad allies are actively threatening China's claims over the S China Sea. They are apparently unconcerned with China's capacity to escalate into HEMP or super EMP and hypersonics. 

The US emphasis has been on space dominance as the means to ocean dominance. While I can't say how well that has been executed, the demonstration above would indicate that it is a solid advantage and may negate whatever China has chosen to show by testing. Their LOE and HOE missiles are all discoverable and susceptible to attack from space, and the US demonstrated that those can be taken out. China's satellite fleet is never over the horizon from US satellite offensive capabilities. So their supposed ability to avoid self inflicted HEMP damage over the horizon is moot as the same applies to US satellites shadowing the Chinese fleet.

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

16 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

interesting read. I think it is something the US has to be responding to with serious investment into hardening and a clear message that the launch of particular EMP capable missiles would be considered a 1st strike and cause immediate retaliation that can't be called off. China is entirely mistaken to consider the possibility of an EMP strike at any size or location not being responded to as a total nuclear attack long before it is completed and damage assessed.

I have no idea how much effort and success or failure have been conducted in defensive hardening or in enhancing EMP or developing super EMP capabilities. It would only be known by surreptitious signaling to China on US capabilities as a detterent to their potential actions. I would defer to well connected military and geopolitical strategists for this kind of analysis. The information from that source is decidedly clear on the multiply redundant US capability to take out anything in space or traveling in HEMP elevations several times over. A demonstration was made for Chinese consumption after they made their own signaling demonstration of taking down precisely some space junk. the US response was to take down 8 such pieces of space junk, each with a separate system. This demonstration of massively redundant capacity using several technologies has been the deterrent to date, and likely the reason the US and the Quad allies are actively threatening China's claims over the S China Sea. They are apparently unconcerned with China's capacity to escalate into HEMP or super EMP and hypersonics. 

The US emphasis has been on space dominance as the means to ocean dominance. While I can't say how well that has been executed, the demonstration above would indicate that it is a solid advantage and may negate whatever China has chosen to show by testing. Their LOE and HOE missiles are all discoverable and susceptible to attack from space, and the US demonstrated that those can be taken out. China's satellite fleet is never over the horizon from US satellite offensive capabilities. So their supposed ability to avoid self inflicted HEMP damage over the horizon is moot as the same applies to US satellites shadowing the Chinese fleet.

I wonder if this is why the CCP is a busy tunnel builder. If they have convinced themselves a first strike EMP is a viable option, it would make sense to create a massive "bunker complex" where they could hide equipment/CCP members on a giant scale. If they go with the assumption an EMP would trigger a EMP only response from the US it would make sense, still insane but there is a perverse logic IMO.

[0R0 + 6,251]

21 minutes ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

I wonder if this is why the CCP is a busy tunnel builder. If they have convinced themselves a first strike EMP is a viable option, it would make sense to create a massive "bunker complex" where they could hide equipment/CCP members on a giant scale. If they go with the assumption an EMP would trigger a EMP only response from the US it would make sense, still insane but there is a perverse logic IMO.

Leave it to the CCP to view their population as entirely expendable.

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

6 hours ago, 0R0 said:

Leave it to the CCP to view their population as entirely expendable.

If they stockpiled electrical distribution equipment, transformers etc. by the tens of thousands in those tunnels, they could easily fool themselves into believing they could repair their electric grid quickly and EMP vs EMP is not only survivable but a desirable course of action. If the CCP echo chamber creates a self propagating reality such as this, the entire world is in serious trouble.

This brings the 'Autistic CCP' observation to a scary new level.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Strangelovesurfing

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

On another thread I made a half joking observation about the CCP claiming all the lands under the Kahn, looks like that wasn't a joke at all.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN21W1AH

https://www.google.com/amp/s/zeenews.india.com/world/chinese-websites-claim-kyrgyzstan-kazakhstan-part-of-china-draws-ire-of-central-asia-2282791.html/amp

Of course this new trial balloon is dismissed as not being an official CCP position, soon it will be. 

The Mongols like the Manchu apparently are Chinese now.

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Strangelovesurfing

[Marcin2 + 726]

15 hours ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

If they stockpiled electrical distribution equipment, transformers etc. by the tens of thousands in those tunnels, they could easily fool themselves into believing they could repair their electric grid quickly and EMP vs EMP is not only survivable but a desirable course of action. If the CCP echo chamber creates a self propagating reality such as this, the entire world is in serious trouble.

This brings the 'Autistic CCP' observation to a scary new level.

It is fantastic to observe your behaviour and many other commenters at this forum. It is like watching Black Mirror episode men against the fire , with you guys having some sort of implants and viewing the world through skewed lenses of your prejudices, only here it is not a movie.

Look , Chinese are people like us, CCP is just one of many authoritarian governments, with relatively good performance for a dictatorship.

Nobody in China wants a war. They use 2 billion tons of cement 700 million tons of steel 10 million tons of copper ( Well it is easier to say about 30% up to 55% of any resource of this planet bar hydrocarbons) to make their lives better. And not going to destroy it in a big boom of any Kind.

And MAD and nuclear weapons, is proven to be the great peacemaker. Inventors of nukes should get Nobel peace prize 10 times in a row.

I acknowledge there is some probability of WW3 but as always in history the first shot will come from the power that cannot realize its goals through other, peaceful means.

You tell me which power is ascending and which is going the other direction.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Marcin2
Typo

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

1 hour ago, Marcin2 said:

I acknowledge there is some probability of WW3 but as always in history the first shot will come from the power that cannot realize its goals through other, peaceful means.

You tell me which power is ascending and which is going the other direction.

Have you been paying attention at all?

How is CCP behavior in anyway peaceful?

Please give your view on the new territorial claim the CCP just started leveling against Bhutan?

This is peace? Sudetenland anyone?