China's Dreams of World Leadership are Fading

[Marcin2 + 726]

3 hours ago, 0R0 said:

Yes, doesn't a credit bubble feel wonderful? It produces such confidence and great incomes. Till it doesn't.

Do you believe that somehow the meteoric rise of debt that accompanies these good but no longer spectacular numbers is not going to form a crisis and economic retrenchment? 

The high speed rail idea is insanely stupid for the US. The population density is just too low. So the only locations it would have any usefulness to it are along the Eastern Seaboard DC to Boston, or along the Pacific coast San Diego to San Fran, and unlike China, those areas were urbanized a century ago, and the passenger rail that served them has gone bankrupt by 1960. So now is not the time and the US is not the place to build high speed rail. Unless you build it underground.

Maybe  I am more ignorant about banking now than was in the past, but my Masters major was finance and banking, so I still seem to understand banking a little bit. You repeated many times that Chinese banking system is a bubble destined for major catastrophic crisis. I do not have hard data to back this position. Per the data I read Chinese financial system, including its banking is very conservative, its monetary policy is very conservative (most conservative in any large economy), Chinese financial authorities are fighting any asset bubbles and systemic dangers in a very direct, very strong and I would say even brutal (for the larger economy) ways. Also opinions of independent institutions like BIS and many others are that China has really sound financial system with very sound banking system at its core.

I respect you opinions, but please provide for once, just anything more than your opinions, just some hard data or reports/opinions (but please not by journalists that mistake bank assets with bank liabilities) by anybody who knows anything about banking, something made by professional people, something with arguments why Chinese bubble is going to burst soon.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

The problem with your logic is that the EU is run by a spineless bunch of unelected officials who don’t ‘have the cajones’ to INITIATE any action, they simply react after they have seen the response to actions taken by others.

I never indicated that they should follow the US, but for heavens sake pull your head out of the sand and take a stand on your own initiative!

In my opinion, the EU leadership has lost any moral compass that they may have had, everything they do, every policy they make is to guarantee trade with the EU...and to avoid ANY political incorrectness.

Iran processing weapons grade plutonium...no problem as long as the EU can sell them centrifuges. Human rights...not ‘our’ problem as long as we can keep getting cheap stuff from China. North Korea...not our problem, those missiles are not aimed at us. And on and on it goes.

The UK leaving this bunch of pantywaist, no load pussies was a breath of fresh air!

[Marcin2 + 726]

4 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

 

I believe that you 2 gents may have much more in common than you may realize. 

For starters, neither of you are "typical Americans" who have never been overseas, and you both seem to have a good grasp of global politics.

Yes, but Ward opinions sometimes border paranoia. I have witnessed 3 instances of it here: 1.  remake it is a bot issue ( I hope the guy was from Shenzen not Wuhan and was not infected), 2. some general speaking recently how China is going to destroy the world and later giving links to the same sort of stuff (even if something of it is real I am not gonna read gibberish of Chinese lunatic officials), 3. Chinese being live biological weapons carriers in some church in Singapore (it was not obvious to Ward that they could be just Christians. In Poland in communist times a lot of Catholics, especially military and party officials had to go underground with their faith, the pressure of Catholic family was stronger than the state).

On the other hand Ward has really sharp mind and shows a great knowledge of the subject in its comments, so maybe it is better to have such person at a forum, in an improbable scenario that these conspiracy theories become reality.

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

2 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

remake it is a bot issue ( I hope the guy was from Shenzen not Wuhan and was not infected),

Funnily enough he was not even from the same continent!

Surprising I know but that is the truth, he most certainly is NOT a bot either (I am as much to blame as anyone for calling him out on this).

He was actually a very clever and knowledgeable guy, who I disagreed with strongly on most topics, but he is entitled to his opinion as much as anyone on here.

I'm sorry he is no longer posting on here as his alternative views made the site a lot more interesting, as did Day Trader/ Papillon IMHO

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

2 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

Funnily enough he was not even from the same continent!

Surprising I know but that is the truth, he most certainly is NOT a bot either (I am as much to blame as anyone for calling him out on this).

He was actually a very clever and knowledgeable guy, who I disagreed with strongly on most topics, but he is entitled to his opinion as much as anyone on here.

I'm sorry he is no longer posting on here as his alternative views made the site a lot more interesting, as did Day Trader/ Papillon IMHO

Go back to its earliest posts and it is clear that the language was abnormally skewed. Since I've seen and even developed AI code in the past, there is no question it was algorithm driven. After I'd called it out enough, the human came to play. 

That the posts seemed to be coming from Australia is irrelevant. I can make my next posts appear to come from anywhere in the world. 

Finally, recall that it was Papillon and remake it who pushed Daytrader out of here. Coincidentally immediately after Daytrader had agreed to meet "the 84 year old gentleman" Papillion was pretending to be. I reiterate my contention that Daytrader by now could be pushing daisies with his identity stolen. Marcin can play that I'm betting paranoid, but on the other hand I could be 100% correct. 

[0R0 + 6,251]

14 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

Maybe  I am more ignorant about banking now than was in the past, but my Masters major was finance and banking, so I still seem to understand banking a little bit. You repeated many times that Chinese banking system is a bubble destined for major catastrophic crisis. I do not have hard data to back this position. Per the data I read Chinese financial system, including its banking is very conservative, its monetary policy is very conservative (most conservative in any large economy), Chinese financial authorities are fighting any asset bubbles and systemic dangers in a very direct, very strong and I would say even brutal (for the larger economy) ways. Also opinions of independent institutions like BIS and many others are that China has really sound financial system with very sound banking system at its core.

I respect you opinions, but please provide for once, just anything more than your opinions, just some hard data or reports/opinions (but please not by journalists that mistake bank assets with bank liabilities) by anybody who knows anything about banking, something made by professional people, something with arguments why Chinese bubble is going to burst soon.

1st, the same institutions that didn't understand the financial crisis as it was unfolding in front of them are not going to identify a bubble in China based on well groomed numbers that ignore half the credit in the system. The traditional economic models largely ignore credit till you hit Obstfeld and Roggoff in the 2000s.  The main institutions continue to ignore price structure, which led to huge errors in the response to the China driven credit bubble of the 2000s, and continue to ignore the Eurodollar financial system as if it doesn't matter, while it handles the entire global trade financing and capital flows even inside Europe and the US. 

I don't know what you expect to be served with if you don't take seriously the numbers extracted from the NBS in China by the likes of Prof. Malinen. You seem to refrain from commenting on quantitative posts. I assume it is because you don't like the numbers. Presumably because they are not of the provenance you prefer, i.e. China submissions of manicured data to the international institutions. 

It is obvious that the high real estate prices to income ratios make the 50% equity requirement in HK and similar values in China insufficient for an equity buffer, as they were insufficient in late 1980s Japan when similar values were observed in the real estate to income ratio. That since when the credit expansion slowed, the pricing didn't fall 10-20% but 80%. 

The vast bulk of "professional people" work for financial companies that are working to cut deals in China and take a fee. They make a case for the China investments the same way they  made a case for investing in internet IPOs in 1999. You mistake their investment promotion business for economic analysis. They are not in a position to lose business now because China will turn out bad a year or two down the road. After it goes bad they will go on to serve vulture funds picking up the viable scraps of businesses after bankruptcy cleared their unserviceable liabilities.

China retaliates against credible people who criticize it. the CCP retaliates against policy criticisms and business retaliates against pointing fingers revealing outlandish leverage or low margins or stagnant growth. 

In this chart from Brian McCarthy you see the breakdown of financial stimulus waves in China. These are trailing 12 mo. sums (TTM) of expansion of the various forms of credit. Note that the bonds are an aggregate figure much larger than the central government issues. The provincial debt is via SIVs since they are not allowed to issue bonds on their own book. For reference, nominal GDP was 90 Trillion Yuan in 2018. 

We see that the productivity of credit spikes has fallen as they no longer produce GDP growth. Again, from Brian McCarthy.

 

The nature of China's commodity economy is visible clearly in the total correlation of PPI to commodity indices. The value added of industry is a fixed percentage over commodity inputs, and industrial goods prices are completely transparent to commodity input prices, meaning that there is no separate supply and demand dynamic dictating prices of output. Again from Brian McCarthy.

 

Note that PPI for China is for both export goods and domestic goods. While domestic consumption as a % of finished goods has increased, the pricing correlation to commodities has not departed. Meaning that China's final goods pricing is not affected by local demand and supply, meaning, in turn, that the income of the consumer buyers is the fixed percentage value added margin such that China has no ability to generate internal income from anything other than exports. Internal consumer purchasing power all comes from credit expansion. 

Because of the efforts to keep the bubble from popping, the economy has not had the opportunity to rationalize and develop a supply-demand relationship at the consumer level. 

Edited February 11, 2020 by 0R0
Replaced with correct chart

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

15 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Go back to its earliest posts and it is clear that the language was abnormally skewed. Since I've seen and even developed AI code in the past, there is no question it was algorithm driven. After I'd called it out enough, the human came to play. 

That the posts seemed to be coming from Australia is irrelevant. I can make my next posts appear to come from anywhere in the world. 

Finally, recall that it was Papillon and remake it who pushed Daytrader out of here. Coincidentally immediately after Daytrader had agreed to meet "the 84 year old gentleman" Papillion was pretending to be. I reiterate my contention that Daytrader by now could be pushing daisies with his identity stolen. Marcin can play that I'm betting paranoid, but on the other hand I could be 100% correct. 

Ward I bow to your knowledge of AI as I have none and you clearly know far more about this than I ever will,

My dealings with Remake It suggest strongly that he is actually human ( I think his sense of humour alone suggests this) however we can leave that up for debate.He is clearly pro China as is Frankfurter but that is their right is it not? As you are pro USA and I am pro England.

The highlighted bit actually made me laugh as Rasmus, James and I think Tom will know why. I do however agree that Papillon certainly wasn't an 84 year old.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

37 minutes ago, Rob Plant said:

My dealings with Remake It suggest ,.....He is clearly pro China as is Frankfurter but that is their right is it not? As you are pro USA and I am pro England.

Ah, there is the rub.  No one was talking about China.  Rather unelected oligarchs running China, the CCP.  Just as no one is talking about the USA, rather the elected officials in power and a few unelected officials as well.  Same is true in England.  Though in US/UK, it is far more individualistic so you can to some extent say that the government are the people.  You cannot rationally do so in any oligarchy/dictatorship.

But, people from China, have been so bamboozled by the CCP, they think their government is China.  Not just the CCP.  Goes back several thousand years between Emperor/ancestor worship leads to a societal culture believing those in power have mandate of heaven etc.  Thinking for yourself IS NOT ALLOWED.  Same reason Monarchies and everything before the Reformation were nothing but Shitpiles of dung heaps and why science exploded after the reformation.  Only thing that matters is power to the Chinese people as that is what has been drummed into them for thousands of years.  Took Europe several hundred years and hundreds of wars to get rid of their oligarchy

I get a chuckle about those saying China is going to break apart or go into civil war.  Why?  They forget that the driving factor of industrialization, science in the west, was Christianity which preached as its core basic precept(irregardless of its other moral precepts) that you are an individual equal to everyone else.  When you have equal people the NUMBER OF PEOPLE who come up with ideas, inventions is equal to the number of people.  In a monarchy/oligarchy/dictatorship, the number of people who can come up with ideas is limited to the number of people allowed the reigns of power and then will only be developed if it BENEFITS that small group of people in power whereas a single idea/invention developed by someone of equal status benefits EVERYONE who then have more time, energy to develop MORE ideas, inventions to benefit everyone.  More ideas, inventions = improvement.

.  Why I am not worried about China becoming a technology power house.  A dominant power?  Sure, but the technological leader of the world?  Never gonna happen until their governance changes.  I get a humorous chuckle when people talk about world trade deal demanding IP protection etc and at the same time saying China is going to take over the world by leading.... yea right.  Only thing they will lead in is a dark age.  If China implemented IP protection, rule of law, justice, then yes, China would RULE the world and improve it.  With everyone in China being monitored, forcing everyone to look over their shoulder at their credit score... yea, not worried.  People, the good people who can, will flee if there is a place for them to go.  

People do not scare me.  We are all the same. Governments(generally rich autocratic people who lust after power) do. 

Edited February 11, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

48 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Ah, there is the rub.  No one was talking about China.  Rather unelected oligarchs running China, the CCP.  Just as no one is talking about the USA, rather the elected officials in power and a few unelected officials as well.  Same is true in England.  Though in US/UK, it is far more individualistic so you can to some extent say that the government are the people.  You cannot rationally do so in any oligarchy/dictatorship.

But, people from China, have been so bamboozled by the CCP, they think their government is China.  Not just the CCP.  Goes back several thousand years between Emperor/ancestor worship leads to a societal culture believing those in power have mandate of heaven etc.  Thinking for yourself IS NOT ALLOWED.  Same reason Monarchies and everything before the Reformation were nothing but Shitpiles of dung heaps and why science exploded after the reformation.  Only thing that matters is power to the Chinese people as that is what has been drummed into them for thousands of years.  Took Europe several hundred years and hundreds of wars to get rid of their oligarchy

I get a chuckle about those saying China is going to break apart or go into civil war.  Why?  They forget that the driving factor of industrialization, science in the west, was Christianity which preached as its core basic precept(irregardless of its other moral precepts) that you are an individual equal to everyone else.  When you have equal people the NUMBER OF PEOPLE who come up with ideas, inventions is equal to the number of people.  In a monarchy/oligarchy/dictatorship, the number of people who can come up with ideas is limited to the number of people allowed the reigns of power and then will only be developed if it BENEFITS that small group of people in power whereas a single idea/invention developed by someone of equal status benefits EVERYONE who then have more time, energy to develop MORE ideas, inventions to benefit everyone.  More ideas, inventions = improvement.

.  Why I am not worried about China becoming a technology power house.  A dominant power?  Sure, but the technological leader of the world?  Never gonna happen until their governance changes.  I get a humorous chuckle when people talk about world trade deal demanding IP protection etc and at the same time saying China is going to take over the world by leading.... yea right.  Only thing they will lead in is a dark age.  If China implemented IP protection, rule of law, justice, then yes, China would RULE the world and improve it.  With everyone in China being monitored, forcing everyone to look over their shoulder at their credit score... yea, not worried.  People, the good people who can, will flee if there is a place for them to go.  

People do not scare me.  We are all the same. Governments(generally rich autocratic people who lust after power) do. 

haha I don't necessarily disagree with any of this, just dunno where it came from considering my post!🤣

 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

24 minutes ago, Rob Plant said:

haha I don't necessarily disagree with any of this, just dunno where it came from considering my post!🤣

 

Partially true.  Thought it should be said regarding this thread and you looked like a proper guinea pig...

btw... where does this phrase come from???

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

2 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

btw... where does this phrase come from???

Google is your friend...

The animal "guinea pig" was used for animal testing, hence..

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

6 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Partially true.  Thought it should be said regarding this thread and you looked like a proper guinea pig...

btw... where does this phrase come from???

ive been called many things but thats a first!

Pig has featured a few times in comments in the past especially from my ex wife, you're not her are you? God help me!

Edited February 11, 2020 by Rob Plant

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

2 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

I do however agree that Papillon certainly wasn't an 84 year old.

Papillon was a sock puppet, and I banned him and his other accounts for using multiple accounts here to artificially stir up sh*t.  No, he was not an 84 year old, Papillon was an artificial construct, created as an "experiment" to see if sock puppet accounts could be used to sway this forum.  The "experiment" by the now banned user got way out of hand, and as a moderator I shut down the deliberate sh*t stirring sock puppets arguing / agreeing among themselves (same person talking to himself using multiple accounts with different names).

I have no issue actually with members using multiple accounts, so long as the multiple accounts are not used to mess with forum.  For info, I have a non-moderator user name here, although I haven't used it in a long time.  I made it so I cam comment more freely, without the added weight of being a moderator here, just being another user.

The Papillon user was pretty destructive to this forum, and was deliberately used to provoke others here.  So I shut it down.  That type of provocation is not debate or discussion, that is outright trolling.  Papillon is still free to argue against the ban with the site admin.

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

1 hour ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Why I am not worried about China becoming a technology power house.  A dominant power?  Sure, but the technological leader of the world?  Never gonna happen until their governance changes.  I get a humorous chuckle when people talk about world trade deal demanding IP protection etc and at the same time saying China is going to take over the world by leading.... yea right.  Only thing they will lead in is a dark age.  If China implemented IP protection, rule of law, justice, then yes, China would RULE the world and improve it.  With everyone in China being monitored, forcing everyone to look over their shoulder at their credit score... yea, not worried.  People, the good people who can, will flee if there is a place for them to go.  

People do not scare me.  We are all the same. Governments(generally rich autocratic people who lust after power) do. 

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-military-personnel-charged-computer-fraud-economic-espionage-and-wire-fraud-hacking

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, February 10, 2020

Chinese Military Personnel Charged with Computer Fraud, Economic Espionage and Wire Fraud for Hacking into Credit Reporting Agency Equifax

Indictment Alleges Four Members of China’s People’s Liberation Army Engaged in a Three-Month Long Campaign to Steal Sensitive Personal Information of Nearly 150 Million Americans
A federal grand jury in Atlanta returned an indictment last week charging four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with hacking into the computer systems of the credit reporting agency Equifax and stealing Americans’ personal data and Equifax’s valuable trade secrets.

The nine-count indictment alleges that Wu Zhiyong (吴志勇), Wang Qian (王乾), Xu Ke
(许可) and Liu Lei (刘磊) were members of the PLA’s 54th Research Institute, a component of the Chinese military.  They allegedly conspired with each other to hack into Equifax’s computer networks, maintain unauthorized access to those computers, and steal sensitive, personally identifiable information of approximately 145 million American victims.

“This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” said Attorney General William P. Barr, who made the announcement. “Today, we hold PLA hackers accountable for their criminal actions, and we remind the Chinese government that we have the capability to remove the Internet’s cloak of anonymity and find the hackers that nation repeatedly deploys against us. Unfortunately, the Equifax hack fits a disturbing and unacceptable pattern of state-sponsored computer intrusions and thefts by China and its citizens that have targeted personally identifiable information, trade secrets, and other confidential information.”

According to the indictment, the defendants exploited a vulnerability in the Apache Struts Web Framework software used by Equifax’s online dispute portal.  They used this access to conduct reconnaissance of Equifax’s online dispute portal and to obtain login credentials that could be used to further navigate Equifax’s network.  The defendants spent several weeks running queries to identify Equifax’s database structure and searching for sensitive, personally identifiable information within Equifax’s system.  Once they accessed files of interest, the conspirators then stored the stolen information in temporary output files, compressed and divided the files, and ultimately were able to download and exfiltrate the data from Equifax’s network to computers outside the United States. In total, the attackers ran approximately 9,000 queries on Equifax’s system, obtaining names, birth dates and social security numbers for nearly half of all American citizens.

The indictment also charges the defendants with stealing trade secret information, namely Equifax’s data compilations and database designs.  “In short, this was an organized and remarkably brazen criminal heist of sensitive information of nearly half of all Americans, as well as the hard work and intellectual property of an American company, by a unit of the Chinese military,” said Barr.

The defendants took steps to evade detection throughout the intrusion, as alleged in the indictment.  They routed traffic through approximately 34 servers located in nearly 20 countries to obfuscate their true location, used encrypted communication channels within Equifax’s network to blend in with normal network activity, and deleted compressed files and wiped log files on a daily basis in an effort to eliminate records of their activity.

“Today’s announcement of these indictments further highlights our commitment to imposing consequences on cybercriminals no matter who they are, where they are, or what country’s uniform they wear,” said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich.  “The size and scope of this investigation — affecting nearly half of the U.S. population, demonstrates the importance of the FBI’s mission and our enduring partnerships with the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.  This is not the end of our investigation; to all who seek to disrupt the safety, security and confidence of the global citizenry in this digitally connected world, this is a day of reckoning.”

The defendants are charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, conspiracy to commit economic espionage, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.  The defendants are also charged with two counts of unauthorized access and intentional damage to a protected computer, one count of economic espionage, and three counts of wire fraud. 

The investigation was conducted jointly by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, the Criminal and National Security Divisions of the Department of Justice, and the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office.  The FBI’s Cyber Division also provided support.  Equifax cooperated fully and provided valuable assistance in the investigation.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nathan Kitchens, Samir Kaushal, and Thomas Krepp of the Northern District of Georgia; Senior Counsel Benjamin Fitzpatrick of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section; and Trial Attorney Scott McCulloch of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting this case.  Attorneys with the Office of International Affairs provided critical assistance in obtaining evidence from overseas.  

The details contained in the charging document are allegations.  The defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

For info, this forum keeps getting spammed by spammers in China.  Moderators flag and ban the spammers as soon as we see it.  They are persistent spammers.  IP addresses are all from China, and the text is primarily Mandarin.  Latest spammer name is unspeakw4, and I am expecting unspeakw5 soon.  Already had 1, 2. and 3.  An earlier one went to 12 I believe.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

1 hour ago, Tom Kirkman said:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-military-personnel-charged-computer-fraud-economic-espionage-and-wire-fraud-hacking

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, February 10, 2020

Chinese Military Personnel Charged with Computer Fraud, Economic Espionage and Wire Fraud for Hacking into Credit Reporting Agency Equifax

The indictment also charges the defendants with stealing trade secret information, namely Equifax’s data compilations and database designs.  “In short, this was an organized and remarkably brazen criminal heist of sensitive information of nearly half of all Americans, as well as the hard work and intellectual property of an American company, by a unit of the Chinese military,” said Barr.

Yes, and why if it was me, I would have kicked them out of WTO, installed at least 100% tariffs across the board, and banned the use of USD to 100% of their SOE's as a starting position. A decade ago. 

[GeneralLevy + 5]

The modern USA has acquired a paranoia and lack of confidence that nobody can recall in living memory.

Anecdotally that tells us a lot about the global power shift.

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

6 minutes ago, GeneralLevy said:

The modern USA has acquired a paranoia and lack of confidence that nobody can recall in living memory.

Anecdotally that tells us a lot about the global power shift.

Have you ever watched a Trump rally?  It may change your opinion.

[GeneralLevy + 5]

Wouldn’t describe a Trump rally as quietly confident. In fact it perfectly illustrates the opposite.

[GeneralLevy + 5]

There’s a likelihood that China will reach a development akin to South Korea, except a South Korea with a 1.435 billion population.

In an alternative scenario, a collapse of the CCP and replacement with a democratic model makes the above more likely - a case of “be careful what you wish for”.

Whether it wants to take a leadership role, who knows.

[Marcin2 + 726]

13 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Yes, and why if it was me, I would have kicked them out of WTO, installed at least 100% tariffs across the board, and banned the use of USD to 100% of their SOE's as a starting position. A decade ago. 

This narrative was released by Department of Justice exactly with the intent of your model reaction. 
You know that nobody would ever have opportunity to check whether this information is true or false.

You know that accessing such information even among allies is a job description of any government IT specialists ( I do not like hackers designation) . Also US and Chinese hackers, employed by respective governments.

Political goals are the only reason to instigate hate towards China, and most of all reduce as much as possible direct people to people contacts US-China.

Reduction of people to people contacts will make it much easier to go to steps 4 to 7 of hegemony conflict.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

4 hours ago, GeneralLevy said:

The modern USA has acquired a paranoia and lack of confidence that nobody can recall in living memory.

Anecdotally that tells us a lot about the global power shift.

Please support you comment re the paranoia and lack of confidence acquired by the US.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

“Political goals are the only reason to instigate hate towards China, and most of all reduce as much aspossible direct people to people contacts US-China.”

You are missing the point! Most people do not ‘hate’ the Chinese PEOPLE! What they strongly disagree with is the Chinese government and it’s policies.

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

1 hour ago, Douglas Buckland said:

“Political goals are the only reason to instigate hate towards China, and most of all reduce as much aspossible direct people to people contacts US-China.”

You are missing the point! Most people do not ‘hate’ the Chinese PEOPLE! What they strongly disagree with is the Chinese government and it’s policies.

^ this.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/xi-controlocracy-spread-coronavirus-by-xiao-qiang-2020-02

 

[Marcin2 + 726]

On 2/10/2020 at 4:54 PM, Rob Plant said:

Funnily enough he was not even from the same continent!

Surprising I know but that is the truth, he most certainly is NOT a bot either (I am as much to blame as anyone for calling him out on this).

He was actually a very clever and knowledgeable guy, who I disagreed with strongly on most topics, but he is entitled to his opinion as much as anyone on here.

Mentally he was a very clever Mainlander, time zones of his postings suggested he returned to Mainland or resided in Australia. His education was more British than American. I liked his comments, but too often he was playing intellectual games with us, giving vague comments like Pythia as if it was some competition about what he had in mind. I do not like this as English is a foreign language for me.