The main popular article on this topic that I am familiar with is Patrick Chovanec’s The Nine Nations of China (written in the spirit of Garreau’s and Woodard’s work on North America).
Commenter AquariusAnon provides an update with a focus on China’s major cities and their ideological outlooks. His series of comments are reprinted below.
Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen
- Beijing is indeed Siloviki vatnik Sinotriumph. Actually it has strong historical cultural influences from Mongolia and Siberia, and there’s a little bit of a Buryatia vibe among a huge population of the locals, especially older men.
Russophilia in Beijing is manifest in the 6 flights a day between Beijing and Moscow, and have been at least 4 daily since 2010. Also, last time I was in Beijing, I noticed quite a few restaurants have Russian menus.
But Beijing still has a relevant, nontrivial liberal population: Arts and entertainment in China is largely centered on Beijing. Even if they have to work within the limits of Chinese censorship, they are highly liberal. Overall, vatnik-influenced Sinotriumph siloviki is still dominant.
Based on my experiences with Western expats in China, they find Beijing to be much more authentically Chinese and down to earth than Shanghai. There is some outright hostility towards foreigners in Beijing, but this is probably the Tier 1 city of China where its the easiest to befriend a local. So culturally, its quite similar to Russia.
Car culture and traffic jams are huge in Beijing. The architecture and city planning is very, in fact, extremely, Soviet. I recall my first impression of the outskirts of Moscow was how similar it looked to the same areas of Beijing.
- Spot on about Shanghai. Russian influence ends at borscht among the Shanghainese. They’re also a small minority of Chinese tourists in Russia. Aeroflot flights to Shanghai are almost 100% connections, unlike those to Beijing.
Anglophilia is actually drastically declining among Shanghainese, due to negative experiences in the Anglosphere. The average Shanghainese finds the Anglosphere backwards and culturally alien, but acknowledges its superior education system and its economic size. Pretty much all middle class and above Shanghainese send their children to North America for education, but when it comes to general lifestyle influence, Japan is by far #1.
Keep in mind that Shanghai is essentially a first world Asian city on par with Tokyo or Seoul, but so happens to have internet censorship and a 50% vatnik population with their annoying peasant behavior. Shanghai is pretty economically segregated though, with areas split between tourist, elite locals and western expats, middle class, and peasant migrant vatniks.
Western expats find Shanghai to be a lot less authentically Chinese compared to Beijing, feels more like an international megapolis. Its unmatched in Mainland China for Western-friendly amenities, food, dating scene, and nightlife.
- Shenzhen is a place where rural kids from all over China go to seek opportunity. The Sinotriumph technology cognitive elite is there, largely sourced from poor families in rural areas. Huge amounts of factory workers. There are no locals in Shenzhen at all, and almost everybody comes from a peasant background, whether rich or poor.
Shenzhen should be in between Beijing and Shanghai for liberalness. A lot of the top technology specialists may be highly nationalistic, due both to their nature of work, and that many got degrees from the Anglosphere but completely, and utterly failed to assimilate. On the other hand, factory owners and real estate people in Shenzhen will lean liberal (apolitical mostly though).
Conclusion
In all cities, and this includes Beijing, any type of Sinotriumph can’t hold a candle to the triumph the cargo cult. Your most hardcore anti-American, pro-Russian military silovik’s favorite car will likely be an Audi, and probably has a secret second home in Canada, Australia, or even California. And he’ll laugh you off if you suggest buying a house in Russia.
And the middle class in all cities are mostly bugmen consumerists. In terms of domestic policies, they’re mildly critical of the CCP, and in geopolitics, mildly Sinotriumph. In either case, nothing drastic that the gravy train gets derailed. Cargo cultism of Japanese, Korean, and Western products are still going strong with this group, because Chinese products sometimes really can’t compete.
All the tier 1 cities in China slightly exceed Moscow by just a tiny amount in terms of both amenities and wages.
P.S. Apple’s decline in China is mostly due to how ridiculously priced it is in the Chinese market. People buy Huawei (and other Chinese brands) not for nationalism, but because it works just as well at a fraction of the price. Shanghai’s liberast elite are still overcrowding Apple stores, with lines outside on weekend afternoons.
Taiwan
This is svidomy core of the Chinese civilization. Svidomism that somehow infused neoliberalism.txt.
Taiwan has been stagnant since the late 1990s. Wages haven’t grown at all in this period! Wages and prices are Portugal levels in Taiwan now. Buildings are largely from the 80s and falling into disrepair, and pretty much all apartment buildings have illegal, flimsy, uninsulated tin shacks built on the roof for rentals units! Infrastructure projects are often massively delayed.
Taipei overall has a tired, beat up vibe. Doesn’t even look first world at first impression.
The Svidomist parliament mostly argues, sometimes fights, and doesn’t get any work done. Not just anti-Chinese svidomism and LGBT nonsense, but the current ruling also started a slippery slope for immigration: The Vietnamese, and to a lesser extent Indonesians, are about to become an underclass ethnic minority in Taiwan.
The economic elite of Taiwan on the other hand, is a very different situation. Generally, they dislike the CCP, but pretty much every single rich Taiwanese businessman got rich off of Mainland China, usually by opening factories or selling their products there. For many white collar professionals, their relative expertise compared to Mainland counterparts (Taiwanese education/training is still quite serious and well-regarded) means they are in high demand in China. Taiwanese professionals get paid in between expat packages and regular wages in China, which puts the salary roughly 1.5x what they get in Taiwan, at roughly the same cost of living.
There’s also a big tourism industry in Taiwan that exclusively focuses on Chinese group tours. Taiwan is one of the few places where locals handle these cheap tour groups themselves.
The somewhat pro-China KMT largely represents the interests of these crowds above. However, they have no pivoted into “Make Taiwan Great Again” as the DPP svidomists utterly failed in that regard.
Taiwanese svidomy is the strongest in the poorer, more agragrian south of Taiwan.
Quick word on the demographics of Taiwan: 84% are Chinese who immigrated prior to the civil war mostly from present day Fujian province (Hoklo) and mixed with some of the coastal aboriginals, 14% are civil war refugees (Mainlanders), and 2% are aboriginals, mostly the unmixed tribes in the deep mountains. The 14% of “mainlanders” and the aboriginals are almost entirely pro-KMT. Aboriginals turn towards the KMT because the svidomist DPP is a Hoklo nationalist party, which obviously excludes the aboriginals. DPP’s support is almost entirely Hoklo.
P.S. patronizing Taiwanese products and especially cafes in China is being seen as a very “Sovok” thing now at least in Shanghai, about as ridiculous as Georgian cuisine in Moscow. Overpriced, poor value for money, and packaging/designs/tastes are either stuck behind the times, or simply inferior in every way imaginable compared to Japanese, Western, or independent domestic SAPL-owned competitors. This isn’t 1990-2005 anymore when the Taiwanese were the only ones who dominate the Chinese market for “foreign” consumerist products.
…
Besides Taiwan’s solid educational system and corporate culture, which means an R&D sector that punches way above its weight and the corporate culture means ample Mainland opportunities for graduates as described earlier, Taiwan’s stock exchange is also significantly outsized compared to its economy/population, due to the Mainland also.
Also, the Taiwanese lower class is much more civilized than Mainland Chinese vatnik peasants.
Quick add on Chinese liberast “Russophobia”
Western-style Russophobia, which is nothing more than PDS (Putin Derangement Syndrome), is nonexistent in China. Putin isn’t viewed unfavorably even among Chinese liberasts.
The average Chinese liberast elite writes off Russia as a corrupt, underdeveloped country that somehow has a massive military. They see Russians as undisciplined primitive people who drink and fight too much with poor impulse control/work ethic. And this type of “Russo-contempt” among Chinese liberasts is the biggest reason why high end Chinese tourism and Sino-Russian economic ties significantly lag behind the vatnik-Maozuo budget tour groups and military ties.
This lag will only grow bigger with time and Chinese liberasts are one of the most materialistic people on the planet, respecting only wealthy countries and willing to only invest in wealthy countries or perhaps some poorer ones that take care of wealthy foreigners well (e.g. tourism-centered economies like Mauritius, Bali, or Thailand). Russia miserably fails in both regards. Somehow Chinese liberasts also think of Russia as a high-crime and terror-prone place full of scammers.
“Russo-contempt” among Chinese liberal elites will stay until the Russian economy upgrades to Italy/South Korea levels. Its viewed among them as Brazil with snow, nukes, and tanks, which is not entirely false.
What’s worrying is that Russo-contempt has seeped into middle class millennials and Gen-Z Chinese too. Russian language classes are getting less and less popular Chinese universities, with no end in sight.
Russophilia in China is limited to the following groups:
- Sinotriumph siloviki, or hardcore Sinotriumphialists as a whole. They view Russia as the leader of the global anti-Western “Axis of Resistance”, and knows the extreme importance of Russia as China’s strategic rear.
-
Sino-vatniki over the age of 50. They were kids when China was a vassal of the Sovoks (1949 to 1960, with lingering cultural influences until the Cultural Revolution), so Sovok culture, the main sights of Russia (e.g. Red Square, Winter Palace, Lake Baikal), and to a lesser extent even the Russian language, are very familiar among them. English wholly replaced Russian as China’s default foreign language only right around the start of the Cultural Revolution.
President Xi falls into both categories, which explains his views towards Russia.
However, its highly likely his successor will be a Gen-X Russo-contempt liberal. This doesn’t mean China will be neoliberalism.txt, as even liberasts are, and will always be, Sino-patriots.
North East
Harbin is actually a below average provincial capital wealth-wise. Northeast China (Manchuria) is an economically stagnant region full of Sino-vatniks with a declining population. They form the bulk of both the peasant population in Beijing and Russia’s Chinese population; most Chinese restaurants in Russia cook Northeast Chinese dishes. Other places outside of their natural habitat where you’ll find the Northeast Chinese vatniki in bulk are Hainan Island, South Korea, and to a lesser extent Japan. A lot of them are also prostitutes in Paris.
The “elite” in this region is extremely ostentatious and rather vulgar: Extreme love of the latest designer clothing, sports cars, and gold. Sometimes they even get into debt to acquire these things. Combined with a love of grilled meats and drinking, this is the region of China that’s the most similar to Russia culturally.
Now talking about culture, Russian influence in this region lingers to this day: Russian sausages and black bread, and Russian cuisine as a whole, are actually a staple of Harbin locals’ food. Lots of Russian architecture and former Orthodox churches in Harbin. In fact, Harbin was built by the Russians. There are a lot of Russians, mostly vatniki from Siberia, in Harbin. The locals don’t really like them for their typical vatniki drunken behavior (but the locals themselves aren’t much better in that regard).
Heilongjiang, the province that Harbin is the capital of, is one of the very, very few places that still has areas with mandatory Russian on the college entrance exam; cities on the Chinese side of the Sino-Russian border in Heilongjiang have huge Russian trader populations and the city centers of these towns are entire Chinese-Russian bilingual. Many locals in these towns speak Russian; sometimes a few Russian words even show up in the local dialects in these regions.
You’re nuts if you think Italy or South Korea have a stronger economy than Russia.
The strength of an economy is determined by the resources at your disposal, i.e., the ability to get shit done and carry out ambitious projects. Russia has a stronger economy than any other country except USA and China. (Maybe Japan can barely compete.)
GDP and other fiscal metrics are a fictitious mirage, they don’t necessarily correspond with anything real-world.
Russia will never have a large GDP or a serious stock market because the Russian mentality won’t allow it. Russians style themselves as some sort of spartan people and despise bean counting.
What are the racial views of the Chinese? For how many is miscegenation with blacks acceptable, likewise how acceptable is miscegenation with whites? Do they consider themselves racially superior (or inferior), do they believe wealth can be achieved by only some nations or every nation?
This strikes me as yet another reason why Russia should not rely on China (no nation should rely on any other nation, of course). A more cynical view is needed in the Kremlin – China is a country on the rise and there is no guarantee the Russo-friendly lobby will always be in power.
We should think of China as a country that will still probably undergo major economic, cultural and political shifts over the next few decades. In my view, a wiser policy for Russia would be to balance between China and Europe’s upcoming nationalist regimes, rather than to tie itself to a particular nation/union/ideology.
I assume he meant in terms of per capita.
Europe’s upcoming nationalist regimes?
Why are you assuming that nationalists will win in Europe?
Russia is very rich per capita. Russia is so rich, they can afford to have a low GDP per capita.
(Sounds like a joke, but it’s not. There’s a world of difference between a country that has to integrate into the global monetary system but doesn’t have the resources to do so, and a country that has enough resources to give the global monetary system the middle finger.)
Not sure it’s a good thing, but it is what it is, and unlikely to change in the future.
It’s obvious to many.
LOL… Japan and the US, probably also Germany and Israel to a lesser degree, spend billions a year in propaganda in China, how much does Russia spend? In Japan’s case, it’s not even a secret, it made the news a few years ago.
Plenty of Paid Trolls on Chinese Internet, praising paradise Japan and US, bad-mouth Russia and North Korea.
The older generation Russophilia were the result of past propaganda, of course. Russia apparently has very low budget for new ones.
PS. Central and Eastern Europe tours not only more expensive than Western Europe, but also quite poor at promoting themselves. With the exception of Hungary, few have positive feedbacks from tourists too.
How is that possible?
How about the Russian far East? Have you been there to Vladivostok, Kahabarovsk, Amur Valley? A lot of the readers at this blog seem to think that Chinese and other Asian and local influences there are minuscule?….
I have some insights into Beijing. Before 2014 when the Ruble was stronger there used to be a robust Russian (and former Soviet world) neighborhood in Beijing centered around Ritan Park, a centrally located neighborhood that is adjacent to a diplomatic area. And in fact the Shanghai Cooperation Org Secretariat chancery is located in the area. It’s a modest building no bigger than a midsized country’s embassy. (Off topic: Sad that India and Pakistan joined the SCO. It would have been a great platform for Chinese and Russian joint control of Central Asia and thereby hegemony in Eurasia.)
During the height of Ritan Park as a Russian neighborhood, the wholesale markets for clothing especially fur products was the major economic activity in the community. The Ruble has recovered (and as a consequence Russian ice cream is no longer stocked at the 7-11s) but the wholesale markets didn’t re-open. As of a city-wide campaign to move non-essential functions outside of Beijing (the population is firmly capped at 21 million) the wholesale markets are now I believe in Hebei (province that surrounds Beijing). Ritan Park is still noticeably an ethnic enclave as there are thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, and Central Asians in Beijing and they need somewhere to eat, shop for groceries, have a tipple, and watch Cuban dancers (show at the Mango restaurant). 20-something Russians living in Beijing are very well integrated with the Western expat set in Beijing and so don’t really need their own watering holes.
By my count there are at least 10 Russian (counting also a popular Ukrainian restaurant and a good Georgian restaurant) in Beijing. A few of them are not located in and around the diplomatic areas and attract a largely Chinese rather than expat clientele. That’s about equal to the number of Indian restaurants in Beijing. As you can see Beijing people are not exactly curious eaters.
A lot of Russian students are from Moscow while expats working in Beijing seem to be majority from Siberia and the Far East (I’ve even met 3 people from the Sakhalin Islands). This might be a big reason why from Beijing there are flights to Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Ulan–Ude…
About Chinese attitudes in general towards Russia. I don’t think there has been enough discussion about it for there to be any firm beliefs, which is the impression that aquarius gives. But Russia hasn’t been catching on in mindshare. Tourists to Russia are as aquarius mentioned generally the 50-something or older set who have memories of Russia as a superpower.
It could change. Remember China’s elites’ children have been regularly studying in the boarding-schools inthe West (London, Switzerland etc). In the same schools, the second most common other foreign nationality is of course Russian.
Rapport with Chinese might not be easy, but people who had studied with them usually seems still to know a lot of Chinese people at least as far as the Facebook friends .
I doubt the next generation of China’s elite would have contempt of the most common other foreign nationality of classmates from their school days.
Which do you recommend to visit more (for tourism) – Beijing or Shanghai?
Lol I remember about those signs…
https://varlamov.ru/1044333.html
I like your thinking. I have been on similar vein of thought too. Not about Russia in particular. But kind want to say fuck to city life and move out to upstate.
It’s not obvious at all, there is very little reason to hope for such a development in Germany (which, like it or not, is still a crucially important country in Europe). I wouldn’t be suprised if there’s a Green chancellor in five years, and outright persecution of nationalists (which already happens anyway to some extent).
Besides, the impression I always get from AK’s posts and also the comments of many Russians is that Russians have given up on positive relations with Europe anyway. Probably understandable, if rather regrettable.
Nope I haven’t. I’ve only been to Moscow. The RFE is high on my list. But if there’s 1 milioniki gorod I want to visit in Russia, it’s definitely Yekaterinburg.
I do know there’s multiple daily Korean low cost airlines plying the Seoul to Vladivostok route, with the majority of the passengers being millennial and Gen-Z girls who want to take selfies in the “European getaway 2 hours away” for a short weekend break. This suggests that there should be some Korean influence in Vladivostok nowadays.
Moscow is full of Chinese tourists nowadays, but they are almost exclusively, as in 90+%, 50+ year old Sino-vatniki budget group tours, skew female and lower middle class from Tier 3 cities or below. They don’t interfere much, if at all, with city life in Moscow. They are carefully and strictly chaperoned, getting bused in between the tourist sights, and various Chinese-owned restaurants or amber shops, which in Moscow are very spread out.
I struggle to see any way that they will not. Just follow the trends.
Within a decade all but a few European countries will have nationalist or at least sovereignist governments.
Some such as Poland might go the opposite way, but even then I doubt it.
If you had to pick one then go to Beijing hands down because of the Great Wall and Forbidden City. I’m particularly a fan of Great Wall tourism and hiking. If you visit don’t do it the conventional tourist way which is to a section called Badaling (highly renovated and very crowded with tourists). Go to the many less visited sections for an all day hike along partially restored, crumbly sections of the wall. If you have a weekend in Beijing in the summer I also recommend signing up for a camping tour on the wall.
I also like the regional destinations around Beijing more. Pingyao in Shanxi province is the best preserved historical walled Chinese city (easily accessible by high speed rail) and the breathtaking Buddhist statues at the Yungang Grottoes also in Shanxi (high speed rail opening this year).
The most important thing that the Chinese care about is not who they go to school with, but strictly numbers and what they can deliver. When Chinese go to school overseas, they don’t interact socially that much with non-Chinese anyways; they form Chinese bubbles.
Russia performs weakly in both regards, except for natural resources, military power, and geopolitical resistance to the West; even then the latter is useful only in some situations from the Chinese perspective.
If I want to give Russia a suggestion on eliminating Russo-contempt, heavily focus on making the country “international friendly”, not specifically only China-friendly. Aeroflot provides a great template on how to do that. They are on par with any of the main European airlines, and deliver China-friendly and at the same time insert country-friendly experience.
Exportable entertainment is something that Russia can become a true global powerhouse in that they should really capitalize on. Russia may be able to pull off South Korea-tier entertainment industry if it plays its cards right.
Agreed on choosing Beijing over Shanghai. I’m not too familiar with surrounding cities of Beijing, but Beijing has so many sights that it can occupy a good week at least.
If you want to see China’s wealthiest and most international showcase city, that’s Shanghai. Great culinary and nightlife scene. On the downside, there’s not too much sights to see in Shanghai. Tourism in Shanghai is more about exploring neighborhoods, soaking in the vibe, and seeing what the most liberal, cosmopolitan, and wealthy parts of all of Mainland China has to offer.
Hangzhou 45 mins away by bullet train has the West Lake. It takes about a day to see the lake in full, but like just about anywhere in China, mass tourism really affects the appeal of tourist sights. Nanjing just over 1 hour away was the capital of the Republic of China, so there’s a lot of sights dedicated to that. Suzhou 20 mins away has some nice traditional gardens, and the local cuisine is what Shanghainese cuisine is largely built upon. All 3 are big cities in their own regard: Suzhou around 5 million, Hangzhou 6 million, Nanjing 7-8 million.
If you have over 1 week in China, I’d suggest you see both Beijing and Shanghai.
Perhaps the view inside Russia is different, but from the outside it seems like that is exactly what the Russian government is doing, trying to balance and reach out to both Europe and China.
Wouldn’t get my hopes up for the supposed future nationalist regimes in Europe, though.
Russian expats in Shanghai are actually majority 20-something girls working models. They speak decent English for the most part, and are firmly embedded in the Western expat scene. In fact, I’d say at least a quarter to a third of the “Western expat scene” in Shanghai consists of Russian girls.
Regarding Westerners in Shanghai, French is the single largest nationality by quite a bit (skew male but rather balanced gender-wise), followed by Brits/Australians (male dominated). I also notice a rapidly growing amount of Indians.
The Western expat scene in Shanghai is twice the size of Beijing. But Beijing has a large Russian vatnik/gopnik scene, not related at all to the Western expat scene, that doesn’t exist in Shanghai. The area near Ritan Park is indeed for all intents and purposes, “Russiatown”.
What’s with all these unnecessary put-downs of Russia? And why is Karlin is reposting AquariusAnon? Doesn’t he have anything more interesting to post?
I’m disappoint with lack of effort on the part of author of this blog. We need some new original Karlin content.
There are less nonstops to Eastern Europe, so are more expensive for starters.
There’s also a much smaller population of Chinese small businessmen in these countries, so the infrastructure for cheap tours on a mass scale isn’t yet possible. Budget group tours require Chinese small businessmen running their own restaurants, shops, and even hotels in some cases.
France-Switzerland-Italy is by far the most popular European travel route for Chinese group tours.
Vienna, Prague, and Budapest are indeed rapidly increasing in popularity among the Chinese, with solid double digit growth per year: In Prague they are now the 3rd biggest group of tourists after Germans and Russians. I can definitely see Chinese mass tourism hitting these 3 cities, plus Poland if the Huawei debacle dies down, full scale in the next 5 years or so.
On the contrary, I feel that allowing other interesting writers with perhaps a fresh perspective to voice their opinions or experiences, is a good idea. Even though Karlin has added a few new threads as of late, I agree that we need some new [interesting] original Karlin content. Perhaps, more insights into his ‘hard drug‘ experiences over the last few months? He’s touched on this (new?) recreational activity of his several times now? Is this related to his interests in transhyumanism?
I’m not putting down Russia man. I really want to see Russia become an attractive country to visit, live, and do business in: Moscow’s SWPL transformation is definitely a huge, and very important step in the right direction.
I’m pointing out how Chinese people view Russia. As I said, there’s zero irrational hatred of Russia in China. Among those under 50, its largely indifference among the middle class, and indifference mixed with contempt among the well-heeled elite.
And Russia’s soft power is indeed not up to par. You have severe PDS in the West, and the prevailing view that its Brazil with snow, nukes, and tanks in China. This is not a good sign.
I’ve enjoyed your svidomist perspectives lol. But personally, I’ll give Ukraine a pass unless I really need to be there for some reason (extremely unlikely for now) until they restore economic ties and resume transportation links with Russia.
I don’t trust you after you made up your trip to Belarus. Your anti-China agenda is obvious.
Regarding Japan specifically: Its products, from household items to clothes to cars down to the numerous bakery chains they operate in China, are indeed superior to all of their competitors, at least in the eyes of middle class and above Chinese consumers. It is also able to cater to all types of Chinese tourists well. I’m actually surprised that it took all the way until circa 2015 for Japanophilia to go fully mainstream.
And in China, the big reasons people respect the US are technology and education. A US diploma unlocks many doors in China today, and its technology is indeed world-class.
From a Chinese perspective, the reasons why a Westerner would like Russia don’t really apply. Right now, the only tangible thing Russia is known for to Chinese Gen-Z are a propensity to fight (both against the West and drunken fistfights), and models. Neither go very far: r/Sino levels of Sinotriumph is a small niche among Chinese Gen-Z (maybe 10% tops? Such numbers are hard to come by in largely apolitical bugmen China), and most Chinese men strongly prefer Chinese, or at least East Asian, girls when it comes to sex, dating, and marriage.
Russian confectionery and ice cream is very popular in the regions bordering Russia, but it seems like its full-scale mainstream popularity among Gen-Z in China ends right around there.
When did I say that I went to Belarus? I just sourced some pics from Google.
Belarus is a piss ant country that’s the next down to list to be in a fervor of anti-Russian hysteria anyways after Ukraine chills out.
How am I anti-China? What do you expect me to say? “CHINA NUMBA ONE, BEST CHINA, STRONG CHINA, CHINA CAN INTO RUSSIA!11!!1!!”
Exactly. And then you used that to argue that China is taking over Belarus. You exaggerate. You’re genuinely Sinophobic.
France has the possibility of going nationalist. There’s still not a cohesive nationalist movement, but people with divergent opinions are all angry at the EU establishment for different reasons. Channeled properly, this type of anger can morph into a serious nationalist movement.
French major cities seem to be hopelessly SWPL/Afro-Islamic dominated though, but the countryside, exurbs of major cities, and smaller cities seem to be ripe for a nationalist revival. The future of France will be interesting and fateful for Europe as a whole. Nationalism has the support of French siloviki it seems. I predict a 6th republic by 2030. Culturally and economically, it will probably continue to go slowly downhill of course for pretty much our entire lifetimes.
Regarding Germany, doesn’t Germany have some nationalistis in the police and the Bundeswehr? I do know the Germany is one of the few countries where nationalism is sharply declining among younger cohorts, and that the Greens seem to be super popular. Even Sweden has seem some fairly large strides with the Swedish Democrats.
Last years have shown that the establishment has plenty of tools to fight and undermine nationalists, from taking advantage of their need to cooperate with EU/Brüssel so that they can limit what elected nationalists can do to using and allying with extremists of the other side against them and to outright prosecution by people working for the government.
No one can deny that China has strong influence in Belarus. I have sources on the ground that can confirm this to me.
Supposedly, but tbh I don’t know if there’s any substance to that, it might well be just an attempt by the establishment to create a panic about nothing, so they can rebuild the police and the army to their liking (hiring more immigrants, “antiracism” initiatives etc.).
But in general it’s hard to be optimistic, the things going on in Germany are so insane that it’s hard to believe them (I certainly wouldn’t have expected them like that even five years ago, and I already voted AfD in 2013), it really feels like a steady descent into some nightmare “antifascist” GDR 2.0, only with open borders and mass immigration. The political and media establishment is inventing its own reality (a few months ago they made up a “pogrom” in Chemnitz which never happened) and obviously wants to crush all dissent with any means possible (now including the use of Germany’s internal security service for the protection of the constitution against AfD…the intent is clearly to sabotage and destroy AfD, like they did with another right-wing party Die Republikaner in the early 1990s).
Yet most people support this, or are indifferent, caring only about their own little happiness and consumerist bliss. Pure decadence.
Why do you need to give Ukraine a pass? Did I even remotely suggest that you need to visit Ukraine? I’m interested in your knowledge about China, not Ukraine. ‘Hackism‘ is good to a degree, but it’s not everything…bring on the egg-rolls, please. 🙂
Wasn’t Deng Xiaoping a Japanophile ? Apparently the whole high speed rail building craze apparently started when he formulated a “bullet train dream” after seeing the Shinkansen during his trip to Japan.
The Shinkansen is awesome.
Who wouldn’t want something like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3LLgzO_PrI
Svidomy robbed Russia of 1% GDP growth per year since, and including, 2014. Svidomy also robbed Russia of a quarter of its nominal GDP thanks to a currency collapse. Svidomy robbed Novorossiya’s close economic and personal ties to Russia. Svidomy cratered the Ukrainian economy outside of Galicia. Svidomy genocided 10,000 innocent souls of the Donbass.
Svidomy ripped apart half of the families of Ukraine. Svidomy permanently destroyed Ukraine’s best region, the Donbass, for at least 3 decades. Svidomy ruined Russia’s reputation among the global well-heeled crowd, artificially keeping European tourism flows half of what it should be.
Svidomy ruined Russia’s chances of getting visa free access with the EU (and vice versa). Svidomy is in bed with neoliberalism.txt. Svidomy robbed hrvynias from poor hohols that Turkish sex tourists would’ve spared them. Svidomy robbed the chance of the brave, masculine, and vigorous Turks having a safe sexual release valve.
Svidomy is evil. Remove svidomy now.
Thanks – interesting video.
The only problem I have with Shinkansen , is that the tickets are very expensive.
It will be great if the Sapsan rolling stock is used on the Trans-Siberian, and the special dedicated tracks on the Moscow to Piter route enabling speeds of 300+ km/h.
No Muslims, no Kashgar, no Kishi.
Xinjiang re-education camps wikipedia article has an interesting talk page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
Don’t you love those wikipedia pages where they have that disclaimer at the top about how “this page has multiple issues.”
Consequences of Russia grabbing Crimea. May have been worth it, but it’s Russia’s not Ukraine’s doing.
Naw, central Ukraine is doing all right. Only Donbas cratered.
That’s like blaming Assad for all the deaths in Syria, or Putin for all the deaths in Chechnya.
Donbas – HIV and abortion capital of Europe pre-2014. Lowest fertility rate in Ukraine. The HIV of Africa combined with the birth rate of Japan. Thoroughly a Sovok creation and cultural region, neither Ukrainian nor Russian. LOL at “best region.”
Once again, I don’t know why you bring up Ukraine or Svidomy? But since you do, it would seem to me, from what you’ve written (even if it’s true), that Russia should learn to deal with ‘Svidomy’ in a more even-handed and respectful manner. I mean, look at all of the bad things that have transpired because Russia has not learned to deal with Svidomy in more than a subservient and superficial role.
Ukrainian Svidomy have recently won a huge victory against Russian Svidomy, by establishing their own autocepholous church. Their head Svidomy is asking the Russian ones to show the world their own Tomos?
Where is it? 🙂
High speed trains are indeed awesome, which is why Russia should build high speed lines instead of spending its budget surplus on buying Forex:https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3842716?query=%D0%92%D0%A1%D0%9C , https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3842716?query=%D0%92%D0%A1%D0%9C
How the hell would you make the Sapsan run on the transsiberian? Oktobriskaya was modified for higher speeds several times (1980s for fast trains like nevsky express, late 2000s and 2010s for Sapsan) . Running the Sapsan on the transsiberian would require rebuilding most of the line.
In Russia’s case, it makes more sense to invest in aircrafts and airports than high speed lines.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/russian-aircraft/
This is what is really needed:
https://sdelanounas.ru/i/d/3/d/d3d3LmFleC5ydS9pbWFnZXMvbWVkaWEvOTAwLzE4ODQ1LmpwZz9fX2lkPTExNTQ1Ng==.jpg
The only way to defeat the Svidomy is show them fists. Show them that yes, Russia really is the successor to the Genghis Khan Empire, by using Genghis Khan tactics.
Formally declare war and a no-fly zone over Ukies and boycott everything Ukie. Pull out troops from Syria and redirect them all into the Donbass or the hohol border areas. Then launch a full scale offensive when the hohols are getting drunk from their svidomy moonshine. March all the way into Kiev and raise the tricolor high. Integrate all the oblasts as regular oblasts of the Russian Federation. Then exile the entire male hohol population to Yakutia and Magadan, and gift the entire female hohol population to Turkey, India, Pakistan, and the Arab League.
Svidomy problem will be solved once and for all.
Manifesto of the butthurt. In your case, by proxy?
Manifesto of Hacking Mr. Hack
QUOTE: Regarding Germany, doesn’t Germany have some nationalists in the police and the Bundeswehr?
NOTE
Germany’s current minister of defense, Ursula von der Leyen, was put in place specifically to search out and neutralize anti-globalist elements among the military and para-military officer corps in the post-Cold War world.
A considerable number of officers were canned or sidelined under threadbare excuses.
Von der Leyen is of solid Deep State stock, her father was a senior EU official before becoming prime minister of Lower Saxony.
Ursula herself spent four years in Stanford, CA within convenient reach of the CIA front company SRI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen
Yes. Air travel is more appropriate to a large thinly populated country like Russia. Shinkansen are not. I lived in Japan during the 1990’s. I can tell you that the Tokkaido Shinkansen (the one between Tokyo and Osaka) is the only profitable line. The others are not. The Tokkaido-sen is profitable because they have a train that carries 1500 people (3 jumbo jets worth of passengers) arrive and depart every 5 minutes during the morning and the evening, with each train being 90% full. That is the traffic density necessary for a shinkansen to pay for itself. Russia simply has no traffic corridor that comes close.
Taiwan and Korea have one shinkansen line each.
BTW, I like Shanghai better than Beijing. I like Asian cities that are built up rather than out. Shenzhen is not bad.
If Zhongnanhai is concerned about moral degradation of the youth, whybnot encourage Confucian values, along with encouraging the spread of evangelical Protestantism in China in order to spread socially conservative values? I am sure that American evangelicals would be more than willing to jump at the chance of converting more than a billion souls with the tacit encouragement of Beijing.
Now, I can somewhat understand all of your your looser butt hurt mentality that you’ve so cravenly woven into your Ukrainian manifesto. But the conclusion is a sure indicator that you’re ready to be committed into a funny farm:
Don’t you realize that Ukrainian women are among the most beautiful specimens in the world? And here I thought that I was dealing with somebody who had some intelligence. How wrong can you be?
Korean influence there is vastly larger than Chinese and Japanese influence combined.
I have the impression that Irkutsk actually has by far the most Chinese influence. A quick scroll on google street view shows me that an abnormally high amount of stores on the main street of Irkutsk are selling jewelry, and over half of all storefronts on Karl Marx Street have more Chinese than Russian, let alone English, on the display windows.
Lake Baikal is very well known among the 50+ cohort in China, almost even more so than Moscow/St. Petersburg.
Because Ukie chicks are some of the hottest in the world, to punish the Ukies for svidomism, the men should be stripped of their priviledge to bang hohol chicks. And to punish the Ukie girls for tagging along with svidomism, they should be gifted to Arabs, Indians, and Turks.
Plus Russia can gain a lot of allies in the MENA cheaply this way without even firing a single shot in Syria: Just promise the ruling elites of these countries that they can handpick their own 72 Ukie svido virgins in return for guaranteeing predatory trade and tributary/vassalage status for at least 100 years. In fact, Russia would be in charge of the entire global oil and gas in this case: All it would have taken is gifting some Ukie girls.
If we include India in this, not only svidomism will cease to be a concern almost indefinitely, but also Russia will have an unlimited source of gasterbeiters cooking Indian food for Karlin. Now Karlin should be able to have 5 competing authentic Indian restaurants within walking distance.
The Sapsan should be upgraded to 300+ km/h in order for SPB to have a chance of being a proper “second capital” of Russia. It should also be extended to Kazan. Also, upgrading the Allegro to the same standards would be great too, and can pull Finland into the Russian orbit.
Regarding airports: Sheremetyevo Terminal F should be knocked down and rebuilt, and the third runway and Terminals A/B/C should finish building asap. Improvements to the taxiway to accommodate the new Terminals and third runway should also be finished asap. Domodedovo should be expanded a bit more. Vnukovo is good as it is. Pulkovo Airport should be expanded until its the size of a stand-alone Moscow airport. Regional airports should all be upgraded to the standard of the new Rostov-on-Don airport, adjusted for size.
15 day visa free travel for EU citizens (but not US/UK/Canada) to travel to only St Petersburg arriving/departing by air, cruise ships, or the Allegro should be considered to pull St. Petersburg out of its relative economic malaise. Moreover, its historically not really a Russian city anyways so competing with say, Budapest, for EU tourism is not unnatural, and as I said, can pull Finland or even the Baltics in closer.
A similar program can be rolled out in Kaliningrad. And these aren’t drastic plans either, but just an albeit very large, relaxation of current programs.
The proposed nationwide E-visa program is definitely on the right track, while countries currently on the E-visa program for Vladivostok should be moved to visa free, provided they are willing to reciprocate for Russian citizens.
For Chinese citizens, it should be visa free provided China will reciprocate for Russians. In either case, have strict rules for the tour groups, starting with making Russian tour guides mandatory, strict ban Chinese tour guides, and a strict ban on the “zero dollar” model as a whole.
The Chinese model of 5-day visa-free transit for pretty much all functional countries should be on the cards for Moscow.
The M-11 should cease to be a toll road and finish building asap. The M-10 is too congested and almost embarrassing as the main airport road into Moscow.
You’re starting to sound like a fruitcake. Your ‘Ukraine’ all things bad and ‘Russia’ all things good spiel is rather boring and sounds demented. I hear that the ‘Insomniac Resurrected’, a typical small minded Ukrainaphobe, is looking to increase his readership – why not apply there for a cheerleader position? 🙂
High speed trains are more confortable, convenient and if you factor in waiting time at the airport, faster than airplanes. High speed lines are not always profitable but they often have positive externalities that lead to a net economic gain . Just look at how many people have moved to Tver in Russia and commute through rail to Moscow. Building the Kazan HSR could help provincial cities like Valdimir or Dzerzhinsk to reverse their population decline by bringing in commuters from bustling cities like Moscow or Nizhny Novgorod. Moreover it would also relieve conventional railways from passenger trains and thus leave more room for freight. October railway for instance is already overburdened and would benefit from the building of a Moscow Saint Petersburg dedicated high speed line.
I don’t like loser regions who cut themselves off from the main country, especially the more prosperous parts of your country that contains the main capital/megapolis. Kiev is just a milioniki gorod subordinate to Moscow.
And said loser region is poor, corrupt, and tries to be in bed with the globohomos. What “independence” do you have as globohomos keep you poor AND already turning you gay and probably even brown?
Commuting from Tver to Moscow everyday for work or school is still gonna be a tiring hassle and not a very popular option. Moscow suburbs would likely not extend more than say, 20 km outside of the MKAD. However, cities liked that being linked via HSR would make them solid, prosperous satellite cities.
There should also be 200+ km/h trains running from Moscow to Yaroslavl. This will give a huge boost to Sergiyev Posad.
St. Petersburg can improve itself by becoming a Europe-0riented, or at least those countries without unhinged Russophobia, free port, focusing on being the main port of entry to Russia for EU-originating goods and tourists.
Plenty of people buy real estate in Tver and work in Moscow already from what I read.
That’s a tiring, and expensive commute. It requires:
The Sapsan leg can be totally eliminated by buying an apartment in Moscow Oblast outside of the MKAD. Prices are probably still very reasonable in places like Khimki or Mytishchi.
You are historically illiterate. Ukraine’s “main country” is probably Poland, which is wealthier than Russia anyways. Forced marriage to Russia did not work out well and crumbled quite naturally.
You seem to think that Ukraine is Russia’s Taiwan; you are wrong.
I wouldn’t characterize Visegrad as such.
Russia has 15 or so times higher % of Muslims than Ukraine, and is in an economic union with central Asia. Ukraine is staying away from brown by staying away from Russia.
Touche! Will be looking forward to Mr. Ukrainaphobe’s reply to this one! 🙂
Svidomists are in bed with the neocons and the Democratic Party in the US. They like Hillary Clinton. That in my book is being in bed with neoliberalism.txt. Also they allowed gay pride parades and other straight up gay propaganda to take hold.
Hoholand isn’t brown yet, but watch them fling open the doors to Indians, Arabs, and Africans, perhaps even subsidizing them to appease their new masters. In fact, the Turkish sex tourists have returned, and from my sources on the ground, you see around a dozen blacks a day in Kiev nowadays, up from a few a week in 2016.
The Turks in their groups of 3 hunting for svidochicks have turned the Maidan area and Khreshchatyk Street into neo-Arabia.
Around half of Ukraine is culturally Russian and speaks Russian in business and everyday life. You can’t deny the Russianness of Ukraine. When Ukrainians go to Poland guess what they bring with them? Russian culture, values, and attitudes!
All the Ukrainians I have interacted with speak Russian, not Ukrainian. They look like Russians, dress like Russians, act like Russians. Stop being delusional and think that Ukrainians are Poles or Englishmen or whatever.
Caucasians and Central Asians have extensive history and contact with the Russian Empire. They were part of the Russian empire for centuries from circa 1800 all the way until 1990 (until present the Caucasian republics in Russia). This is different from randomly flinging doors open to random foreigners with no extensive historical ties with you.
And guess who else were core members of the Russian Empire? Ukrainians! Only Galicia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire (a.k.a. predecessor to the V4).
Kiev is as much of a Russian city as Moscow is. Odessa is one of the most important cities that Russia would’ve had if the Sovoks didn’t fuck up creating the country known as “Ukraine”.
There is no such thing as “Ukraine”. There’s just Galicia/Ruthenia, and Russia. Ukraine is the name used by Galicians/Ruthenians and delusional Russians who want some brownie points by worshipping neoliberalism.txt.
Ukraine should be split in half. The Eastern Half should be “Little Russia”, call it Malorus, Malorossiya, or Novorossiya, and become a core satellite state of Russia, and the Western Half can continue being Ukraine without the need to sever ties with Russia.
If by “Empire” you mean the entity that existed between 1721 and 1917, then you are half-correct. Ukraine was autonomous until 1764, and even after political integration remained a peripheral place, with its own speech, and with large Jewish and Polish minorities.
But if you mean Russia in general, then not even close.
I didn’t realize Moscow was once Polish-speaking. Or that Moscow ever rebelled against being part of Russia.
Most of the ones I know are Trump supporters. Trump’s son came to the Ukrainian Cultural Center where he promised that his father would do more for Ukraine than Obama did. And he was right.
There is something wrong with people who are obsessed with gays (either pro- or anti-). Healthy people don’t care about them. When Russia was a healthy country no one there cared about Tchaikovsky’s sexual orientation.
LOL, this was supposed to happen to Poland. Meanwhile Russia itself is about 15% Muslim, and in customs union with central Asia.
You see more blacks in Moscow (they tend to work by advertising on the street – “come to this restaurant”) than in Kiev. But very few in both places.
Never heard of such a thing.
Khreshchatyk 2017:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3993Ik_9FYI&t=483s
Even the guy microaggressing in the sombrero, and the silly lady in an Indian costume at the end, are Europeans. Kiev and Warsaw are probably the largest pure European cities in the world.
Khreshchatyk in May. Everyone, including the breakdancers, are white:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL_lHZmMe4o
You are guaranteed to see more Caucasians and Central Asians on Tverskaya than on Khreshchatyk.
And 95% of Ireland speaks English.
That just tells us about your sample, not about the country.
And all it takes is for the word “Ukraine” to be brought up and everyone gets unhinged.
This only further proves that Ukraine should be split up more or less according to this map:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Ukrainian_parliamentary_election,_2007_(first_place_results).PNG
Blue should be named Malorossiya or Malorus and be a Russian vassal state similar to Belarus or Kazakhstan.
Red + Orange, which I think is able to coexist just fine, will be the “new” Ukraine, be oriented towards the Visegrad, and perhaps maintain visa free access with the EU so they can dump the neoliberalism.txt shilling for LGBT or nonwhite immigration in London like what most of the V4 has done since the late 1990s. With Malorossiya as a buffer, this new Ukraine won’t even need to be unhinged anti-Russian and can have normal state-to-state relations with Russia. Even if the svidomy still choose to not restore any ties, at least the former Eastern Ukraine can be a buffer so Russia won’t have a hostile major nation right on its border.
This will make everyone happy, perhaps minus neocons who are dead-set on screwing with Russia: Svidomists, sovoks, pro-Russians, Poles.
Less than 2 mins into the second video and I spotted a fat black or Arab guy, and 2 Turkish sex tourists.
Okay, I stand corrected.
So 3 non-Europeans out of a hundred or so people ” have turned the Maidan area and Khreshchatyk Street into neo-Arabia”? Did you see any in the first video?
Here is beautiful Moscow, the same street as from the stock photo I posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSZt-0iId6o
Non-European faces in the first 10 seconds.
????? It is a Russian city of 18-19 centuries. Frankly more Russian than many ancient cities, from which almost nothing survived (in the middle ages in Russia built almost exclusively from wood), and which are now built up with terrible typical high-rise buildings.
Great Britain cares about Turing’s orientation. 1950s America cared about that in what is seen as a slapstick way today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17u01_sWjRE
Not unhealthy countries. (Though FTR, the persecution of Turing was sordid).
We’ve been through this.
First point is nonsense. It’s certainly well below 15%, and assumes that Muslim Tatars are even a problem.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/russia-will-become-majority-muslim-not.jpg
Only Muslim ethnicities that behave non-white are confined to DICh, who will constitute 5-6% of the population on current fertility trends.
Second point is largely irrelevant as pertains to demographics, because as I have pointed out, while Central Asian inflows and outflows out of Russia are huge, they are not settling, pumping out anchor babies, etc. Perhaps that will change one day, but that hasn’t come yet. France as a whole is demographically far more Muslim/Third World demographically than even Moscow/SPB to say nothing of the core Russian heartlands which are 99% Slavic.
https://akarlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map-russians-in-russia-2010.png
Your nose just peaked out from behind that post Shlomo.
The American video is funny, but it is obscure and represents something very marginal – in the 1950s when America was a healthy country most people didn’t care about gays at all. They weren’t prominent in the national consciousness. So much so that even people who are obviously gay such as Liberace could do their thing and not get noticed as such or persecuted for it. It was an alien idea for most people.
I made no assumptions about Tatars being a problem in Russia (they of course are not). Turks aren’t much of a problem in Germany, do we exclude them when we count percentage Muslims in that country?
According to Russian wiki, official statistics have about 10% of the Russian population being Muslims. This number does not include migrants/workers from Central Asia or places like Azerbaijan, so the actual number is around 15%. Maybe 13% or whatever, at any rate “around 15%.”
I agree that the situation in places like France is much worse. But the discussion was about Ukraine leaving Russia resulting in Ukraine becoming more “brown.” This is an absurd argument given that Ukraine and its immediate western neighbors are much less brown than is Russia.
Now even Matt Forney has raised the issue of Poland being quite pozzed, and if Ukraine ends up worshipping Poland and becomes a Polish vassal, Polish poz (which is slowly seeped in from Germany and the UK, especially the UK) will eventually seep into Ukraine.