Mao Zedong may have been the father of modern China, but Deng Xiaoping is the architect. The economic liberalization strategies adopted by him have enabled China to navigate the perils of capitalism without relinquishing power to the bourgeoisie. This is ideology in the making.

Faculty senate of Emory college calls for no-confidence vote for president

So did the US just dissolve the prestige of the USD for $6 billion?

Seems… Short-sighted?

Is power consumption a leading metric for economic growth? China notched 7.4% electricity consumption growth in March YoY. They’ve been fairly correlated in the past, with the caveat that growth in services generally leads to contraction in electricity consumption.

I’m notching up my GDP growth estimates for this year from barely above 5% to a healthy 5.5%+. There’s a lot of internal development that’s not getting reflected, and so something is clearly happening in China. But what?

996 is a tech thing. It’s unsurprising that, in fields where China is widely recognized as lagging behind the US, more work and longer hours are valued over workers’ rights.

China’s economy grew 5.3% in the first quarter, beating expectations

Real estate continues deleveraging, and yet 5.3% GDP growth YoY.

Retail sales growth continues to be sluggish (3.1% vs. 4.6% predicted) and CPI is coming in cool (0.1% vs. 0.3% predicted). My theory for this is that China is actually seeing costs drop more quickly than CPI metrics can keep up. Traditional big-ticket household spending categories are housing, transportation, and education. Housing prices are obviously on the decline, but transportation costs are also decreasing due to the combination of cheaper EVs and an expanding HSR network. Education costs have been clamped down on after the crackdown on private tutoring, while average education outcomes have been raised by the crackdown on gaming. Meanwhile, traditional recurring costs like food and energy have been pushed downward by increasing trade with Russia as well as the rise of cheap solar.

It may be time to revisit the notion of ever-increasing consumption value as being important for economic growth. In this case, you can get the same quality of life with substantially less money. Why spend more to pad the top line retail sales number?

A shower thought on “Chinese vassalage”:

The DPRK, whose dependence on China is extensive and extremely well-documented, still has an absurd amount of flexibility, self-determination, and independence from Chinese policy. It’s essentially the “worst case scenario” in terms of Chinese influence… And the DPRK was still allowed to develop it’s own nuclear weapons despite Chinese opposition. What are the odds that Canada would be allowed to develop an independent nuclear weapons program today? Cuba? Mexico?

Zero.

Some insight here: one of the key factors in Chinese cultural identity is the family unit. Whereas the American family unit is limited to yourself, your spouse, and your potential children, the Chinese family unit stretches further back to your parents/grandparents. There’s a much stronger pressure to have and raise children, which impacts the cultural perception of LGBT rights.

The US is increasing it’s primary energy production from fossil fuel sources (by 40% since 2010) and they’re decreasing total emissions? Sure…

How would you do HVDC to Japan? Underwater lines?

Space shuttles are also obscenely expensive

Wok, vegetable cleaver, bidet. The world is your oyster.

But but but

Colonial apartheid settler rights are human rights

[2023/11/15] Haaretz has released a list of 1175 confirmed casualties

This list is continually updated. Per this list there are 1175 casualties (1087 from October 7th): 771 civilians, 59 police, 332 IDF, and 13 emergency services. Some number of these casualties are foreign, non-Israeli migrant workers.

[2023/10/15] “Over 1,400 were killed (and) over 120 Israelis were abducted by Hamas terrorists” since the October 7 attack, Tal Heinrich, spokeswoman for the (Israeli) prime minister’s office, told journalists

Don’t you have to, y’know, cross the Rockies for that?

That sounds insanely expensive.

Quebec City to Windsor? What’s the other line?

The IDF doesn’t even speak Arabic well.

Absolument. I did a deeper dive of US “emissions” here: https://hexbear.net/comment/4246041

In short, the US significantly under reports their emissions from natural gas because they don’t sufficiently consider the short-term impact of methane or the degree of methane leakage occuring.

Literally the US Army has published videos that claim they were involved in the Tiananmen protests.