This is not meant so much to be an “editorial” post as a set of notes for future reference purposes, although it is hoped that my readers may find them useful as well.
Summary of a couple of FOM polls of Russians on China:
- Russian Interest Towards China (2015)
- China (2018)
(1) As of 2015, some 55% of Russians think Russia is closer to Europe than to Asia, while 18% think it is the converse.
This largely invalidates the Eurasianist interpretation. Russia and “Europe” may have worse relations than Russia and “Asia”, but that is immaterial. After all, the Gaelic tribes were more hostile to each other than to English colonists.
(2) Russians think China is a friendly country.
By 62% to 16% who think it is unfriendly towards Russia.
(3) Sinophilia rises monotonically as Russians get younger.
Percentage considering China to be friendly by age group: 18-30 – 71%; 31-45 – 58%; 46-60 – 61%; 60+ – 58%. I suspect older people were more affected by the Sinophobic campaigns of the Sino-Soviet split.
Other observations from the 2018 poll:
- There are no significant regional differences in Sinophobia/Sinophilia, even in regions that one might expect to be “interesting” in this respect (e.g. Siberia).
- Sinophilia rises with income. From 57% amongst those with 8,000-12,000 rubles per month to 70% amongst those with more than 30,000 rubles per month. Young Russians with higher education are at 74%.
- Men are more Sinophile than women, at 66% to 59%. But Sinophobia is similar, at 17% and 16%, respectively.
- 68% vs. 18% of Russians think China is developing more successfully than Russian.
- 57% to 25% of Russians think Russia has more influence in the world.
- 57% to 22% think there are major differences in culture and values between Russians and Chinese.
- 12% of Russians are more interested in Chinese culture, while 35% are more interested in the culture of European countries. There are no major socio-demographic variations.
- 32% of Russians have had contacts with Chinese, versus 68% who did not. Predictably, there was greater exposure amongst younger, male, richer, higher educated Russians.
And from the 2015 poll:
- Ironically, the people who consider Russian civilization to be closer to Asia than to Europe give modestly more “Sinophobic” answers.
- 27% to 54% of Russians think China’s increasing power threatens Russian interests. Threat perceptions are broadly the same across age groups, but relatively more richer and more educated Russians think China’s rise *does* present a greater threat to Russia. (I.e., one rare point on which they are more “Sinophobe”).
- 32% to 19% of Russians think it is more important for Russia to develop economic and political relations with China as opposed to the West. Here, the relative preference for the China vector is greater amongst men; remains constant across age groups and education level; and strongly increases with wealth (32% China and 17% West amongst those with 8,000-12,000 rubles per month; 44% China to 12% West amongst those with more than 30,000 rubles per month).
Some other notes:
(4) Russian views on China have consistently been 60%-70% positive during the Putin era.
(5) I can’t find a Chinese poll on Russia attitudes as of right now, but I have seen quite a few of them over the years, and they broadly show that Chinese attitudes towards Russia are reciprocal, i.e. around 60%-70% positive.
E.g., Chinese net approval of Putin at 55% (should be adjusted upwards because this is measuring net approval, not gross approval; and because countries tend to be more popular than their leaders).
However, what I have yet to see is a Chinese poll on Russia where it is broken down by age, region, wealth, education, and other interesting socio-demographic factors. My guess:
- Equal Russophilia across age groups – Commenter AquariusAnon tells me that elderly maozuo are more Russophile, but this would probably be counteracted by young people tending to be more xenophile in general.
- More Russophilia in Beijing, less Russophilia in Shanghai. See AquariusAnon on the Chinese Regions.
- More Russophilia amongst the poorer and less well educated, at least relative to Americanophilia (this, at least, is the typical pattern amongst Western countries). That said, it is quite possible that this has changed in the past year as Sino-American relations have plummeted.
But do let me know if more concrete data is available.
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Thank you so much for the post! I was expecting the numbers to be reversed.
And on Russophilia in China, approval of Putin as a leader is very high among all social classes, but by younger, richer, upwardly mobile Chinese, Russia itself and Russian society is seen as poorer and more backwards than China. Its stereotyped in China as “the fighting nation”, so among the youth, Russophilia is heavily concentrated among the military nuts (usually men leaning nationalist). The “liberals” in China consider Russia to be a “in Soviet Russia” or dashcam meme outside of geopolitics.
Russia is a popular place to study abroad, but its popularity seems to have stagnated. I’m not exactly sure what demographics studies abroad in Russia, but the female % is rather high.
Strong Russophilia among the elder generation as Sino-Soviet split notwithstanding, they’re taught that pre-Khrushchev Soviet Union was the “elder brother” of the PRC. The ones educated between 1949 and circa 1968 even learned Russian as the foreign language. The majority of Chinese tourists in Russia are in this group.
Military and geopolitics aside, cultural Russophilia actually skews female among in all age groups. Among Chinese guys, Russia is seen as the geopolitical heavyweight standing up to the US that has a lot of hot girls. While most Chinese guys acknowledge that Russian girls are hot, its actually extremely rare for a Chinese guy to pursue one or to value them above Chinese girls.
Americanophilia is bound to collapse anyways if we talk about China: Many of the very liberals who go to the Anglosphere get disillusioned by it. Adjusting to a different culture 10+ hours by plane away from home is difficult, and compared to tier 1 cities, all US cities have objectively worse quality of life from a Chinese viewpoint. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that from an upper middle class Chinese perspective, China itself is the most livable country in the world.
I would imagine that UK will pick up the slack when it comes to foreign students, while culture affinity is making a rapid shift towards Japan. I’d say Chinese attitudes towards Japan is similar to Russian attitudes towards the West: Opposed geopolitically but “aligned” culturally.
How do these Chinese “liberals” deal with the campaign of the Liberal Empire against their country?
https://twitter.com/chinahand/status/1143179587620179969
Self-reliance and hope that relations with France, Germany, UK and Japan improve.
Military cooperation between Russia and China is going strong, but not in the civilian sector. the CR-929 project stalled out due to “Russo-contempt” from the Chinese according to sources quoted by Artyom Lukin.
The Huawei-MTS deal is just a regular 5G deal that they have signed with telecom companies worldwide, and might as well succeed doing so in swathes of core Europe too.
Russia is simply not that important in the eyes of China outside of natural resources. What China needs is a country that can supply the technologies of the US. Unfortunately, Russia doesn’t have anything like Silicon Valley and most upper middle class liberal Chinese write off Russian universities.
When I mean “liberals”, I don’t mean support of the USG Cathedral. But generally describing the upper middle class who support free trade, simplified international travel/capital transfer, and disdains having a strong geopolitics profile/military industrial complex. The USG Cathedral fans are an irrelevant force in China.
This just goes to show how poisonous the “international community” and parasitic “global institutions” are.
The World Bank was organized by the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference between Britain and America, and formally launched by the victorious “United Nations” (i.e. the wartime allies, not the modern United Nations organization) the next year.
Historically, it has been completely controlled by the transatlantic alliance. It traditionally has an American head, while the IMF traditionally has a European head.
So this organization, which should have been exclusively pursuing the interests of the Western powers, was developing a program for China to become a first world country with advanced manufacturing the equal of Germany.
And not until this decade did someone realize that maybe Chinese development was negative for our interests?
It’s in the objective interests of the United States for non-allied powers to remain as poor as possible. An orangutan can figure that out. Yet for decades “development economists” officially promoted by the US government have been working to achieve the opposite. We should be thankful that they are not very competent (or, when competent, not necessarily listened to).
Are we insane?
Considering how fairly unimpressive Chinese airliners have been so far, that smells of false Chinese arrogance/greed.
Is there any country that could and would do that?
If there’s one thing the Chinese are starting to have, its hubris. Keep in mind China is a face culture. And hubris is a common tactic to prevent a loss of face. Ultimately, you’d rather want to incur some loss of face and learn from what you think are countries you surpassed (Russia) than have an attitude of hubris.
In fact, the Chinese aversion to loss of face is what really blew up the trade war. Because accepting the deal back in May would be a massive loss of face even if in the long term, its possible to use it to their own advantage.
And on what country would be willing to share technology and offer a similar trade relationship to pre-tariffs US, the only thing the Chinese can bet on is for a mixture of economic desperation and Americanphobia to take root in core Europe and/or Japan. But even then, China has developed its tech industry to the point that only the US tech is still relevant to obtain from the Chinese perspective. Europe and Japan can supply China with biotech and heavy machinery.
Inspite of the sino-soviet split in 1960s, Chinese are genuinely grateful to soviet tech help/TOT during the 50s. Guess what, Chinese managed to make mig-15 fighters during the 50s; a result of willing teacher and earnest student
US trade demands are not really something the CCP can agree to as it requires fundamentally changing their economic model. China being what it is, that would also mean unacceptable changes to its political model. China initially agreeing to the terms was a farce to begin with. They hoped Trump was sufficiently desperate to make any deal that he’d agree to continuing the status quo with a sweetener like a one-time massive purchase of commodities, ideally timed with his reelection bid. Mnuchin wanted that deal, but it was a non-starter for Ross and Lighthizer.
Europe and Japan don’t have much to offer China in “tech” (semiconductor design and software), but plenty to offer elsewhere. Advanced manufacturing, precision machine tools, advanced materials, high efficiency turbines, and more. They generally lead the US here. In fact the next danger to China is that the US trade war expands to Cold War style COCOM controls which deny exports of advanced machinery and materials to China.
Russia has already been hit by this. The Irkut MS21 has been denied advanced composite materials from Japan, and so now these need to be developed in Russia or inferior substitutes much be used.
“In fact, the Chinese aversion to loss of face is what really blew up the trade war..”
A lot of people misunderstood what chinese ‘loss of face’ means
–It usually amount to little more than observing certain hierarchical ‘protocal’ like one would not criticize one’s boss/seniors openly.Or a person acts in a way inconsistent of his/her standing/capacity
–It has little to do with pride.
–Humility is a virtue
…..
Honestly, as I said before here or there, china is a 3rd world country.
Such as? Gay pride? Sex change operations?
I actually find it hard to believe anybody actually regards China or Russia favorably, much less Russians or Chinese. Millions dead will do that for you. And between the two of them, it’s a lot of millions, maybe not as many as Islam over the past 1400 years, but still staggering numbers.
Sure we hear a lot of fuss about the US, the Jews, the British, the Europeans, and the Japanese, Africa puts up some impressive numbers as well, hell just about everybody’s track record sucks, but few like Russia, China, and of course, Islam.
Funny if true, considering neverending failure with engines of any kind, not even necessarily in aviation.
…but if you consider their lack of experience in building any kind of modern airliner, hard to believe.
If you don
t want to be killed by russians, dont try to fuck with them, lol.I suspect it works for chinese as well.
China joined the World Bank and IMF in 1980. Before then China was represented by Taiwan. China’s joining in 1980 was part of the US rapprochement with China initiated by Nixon in ’72 during the Cold War. Russia joined after the USSR collapsed.
The World Bank began development lending to non-Western countries early on in its history. So unlike NATO, it never had the explicit mission of pursuing the interests of the transatlantic alliance.
Yet the Soviet Union never complained about it or made any moves against this. Strange. Did the Soviets ever complain about the Petro dollar? I mean, this system gives a massive economic and diplomatic advantage to your ‘enemy’.
The big internationalist bankers are preparing the People’s Republic of China for something.Of course the Chinese are a very competent intelligent people. But there is no doubt that the West has helped the rise of China and the Soviets did it before them. If say both the West and the Soviets/Warsaw Pact nations were controlled by the same people (who are not Westerners but Internationalists) behind the scenes, they wanted to help the rise of China for something.
They also seem to be helping the rise of India. But Indians (the masses not the high IQ elites) being more incompetent and being typical third worlders, could not rise as much.
The US government hardly works for the interest of America. Sometimes it does but many a times it does not. This is something many Third Worlders and Leftists do not realize or will not accept as it destroys their stupid world view of the West looting the World.
China takes the long view about former territory that is no longer under their control, eg Taiwan and the Senkaku islands.
How is Russia going to deal with the inevitable Chinese claims to territory they consider historically theirs but currently under Russian control.
Like Israel.
And that’s the trouble with the World Bank. Development of non-allied powers is undesirable. To the extent it can’t be prevented, you simply want to participate in any commerce you can’t reasonably stop.
There was a hope in the early Cold War that development would draw non-aligned powers into the Western alliance, but this didn’t happen. Certainly Egypt didn’t flip because of the promise of selling cheap shirts to Italians.
I’m reminded of when an Israeli Air Force base “accidentally” lost an F-16 jet engine to “bedouin theft”. These enterprising bedouins then somehow managed to ship the engine to China.
Who knew bedouins were so enterprising?
So-called steel belt is always waiting for their attempts.
But conventional artillery was more than enough last time.
Engines are one thing, developmental documentation for F-35 and various radars is quite another…
Perhaps one of the older Russian commenters here knows.
As far as I know the Soviets traditionally simply criticized the capitalist system itself and highlighted the problems of capitalism (like unemployment) in their propaganda.
The Soviets themselves were frequently short of hard currency and more than happy to export petroleum for Dollars.
Banking is just a business. People attribute far too much significance and influence to bankers, who like other businessmen are often frequently clueless. Wall Street has facilitated China’s rise because they make money on it (trade finance, currency futures, etc.).
This much is true.
LOL. Yes, who knew?
Men have more definite opinions on almost any question.
It could be a fun quest to find a poll question where men gave “don’t know” answer more often than women but I’m afraid it would take a long time.
Maybe maybe. But if I am not mistaken, in the post war period during the 50s and 60s, the Soviet Union experienced unprecedented economic growth as it went through heavy industrialization.
And we had a bipolar world, the USSR and the USA (and the wider NATO world and the Warsaw Pact world as a whole) were tit for tating each other in everything, may it be military build up, nuclear stockpiles, space research etc… Yet on this important issue, the petro dollar system which gives an enormous economic and diplomatic advantage to your enemy and rival No 1, the USSR just kept quite. This is akin to running a race where your competitor gets to ride a bike. The USSR did not come up with any rival alternative scheme like a Petro-Rouble or something neither did they question or raise their voice against this system. Makes me wonder how real the ‘Cold War’ really was.
I did read somewhere, I do not remember where, that it was the Chinese Leader Zhou Enlai who had quoted something of the kind that Moscow and Washington are really friends behind the scenes or something of that sort. If anyone knows anything about that quote please let me know.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/162900
This story? Seems typical story for Israel, where the army is teenagers conscripted after highschool.
In that case, the engines are at least from inside a base.
I’ve also saw videos where the Israeli army have forgotten about tanks and armored personnel vehicles that they leave randomly in the countryside, without any guards. So reporter can find unguarded vehicles (even with machine guns on the top) and drive them around for fun.
The USSR enjoyed some of the world’s swiftest industrial and economic growth from 1928-1970, minus the wartime catastrophe caused by Operation Barbarossa. After its heavy industrial build out was complete, growth stagnated as was typical in planned socialist economies.
https://nintil.com/2016/03/26/the-soviet-union-gdp-growth/
How exactly was the USSR to counter the petrodollar? The USSR was itself a net exporter of petroleum and generally in need of foreign hard currency. With its closed economic system, state ownership of capital, nonconvertible currency, and net energy exports it had nothing to offer OPEC other than armaments.
The USSR did try to create a wedge between Western Europe and the United States with its natural gas. In this department things haven’t changed much.
A few years back I was driving in a rental car on the Lebanese border, I rounded a bend and was suddenly confronted by two massive battle tanks and a group of heavily armed soldiers in full kit doing something by the border.
They paid me no mind, but I thought how in America to get anywhere near tanks and soldiers in full battle gear you’d have to go deep into closed military zones.
It’s a funny country.
Israel also sold to china the plans of the IAI Lavi, which allowed the Chicoms to build their first true 4th generation fighter, the J-10.
By kicking their ass as they did in the past. Russia has good track record in that regard.
But what is with this fantasy all the anti Russians have where they can’t wait for Russia and China to go at each other. You think Russians and Chinese don’t know this?
People react to politics, which is understandable. But…
there are 10 times more Chinese than Russians & they are a rapidly growing power, evidently dominant (due to many factors)
the Chinese are different, very different. A very different culture, ethics, history, aesthetics, way of life, family life, behavior, expectations from life ….
Russians are extension of Europe & all Euro-Asian talk is balderdash
when I think of deep currents, I see that Russia basically does not exist outside of Western culture. China….another planet.
I understand modern bozos, but life is more than food & basic entertainment. What can Russia get from China except some dishes? And exotic high culture for aficionados? Films, music..? No. The same with China re Russia.
global popular culture is 90% American. Out of this 90%, perhaps 80% is moronic, but universal in some respects (although less than 20-40 years ago), while many things are only superficially popular in other cultures (for instance sports, sport movies, superhero movies, …). Americans are conquering the world through idiocracy.
I’d say: Russians basically think: well, not bad for now, but they’re too numerous, too powerful & too close. And, after all- who they are? Chinese think: some land for grab, but it’s not worth it, it is some old stuff. We’re growing & we’ll dominate them. But- who they basically are? We don’t understand them. It’s America we want, they are our fascinating frenemy with all that glamour, women, money & material stuff of combined richness & dreams & fun (music, movies). And there is so much accessible stuff to make life better- because Anglosphere is the center of the world, and we want to suck in the best from them, and there is plenty of it we can use to enrich ourselves without contaminating at the same time.
Published in 1969:
https://esconderijodoslivros.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/The-coming-war-between-Russia-China-Harrison-E.-Salisbury.jpg
The optimal position for the US is to play the Russian card against China and the China card against Russia.
The optimal position for Russia is to play the US card against China and the China card against the US.
The optimal position for China is to play the US card against Russia and the Russian card against the US.
Last year when I was in Israel, I saw groups of Chinese businessmen (they look like spies), in suits and with portfolios. (They were all over the airport and also the business areas, even groups of Chinese businessmen in the supermarket).
I thought maybe it looked more like Israel had an invasion of Chinese government workers pretending to be businessmen, than real businessmen.
Israel calls the machine which digs the tunnels for its future metro, “Margaret Thatcher”.
But they use a Chinese digging machine – so postmodernism results in Margaret Thatcher’s name in Hebrew, under the red flag of allegedly communist, People’s Republic of China.
https://i.imgur.com/W8ZGUhZ.jpg
Vast potential investment, mutual tourism, and trade in the most important commodities.
For example, one of the main problems in China is air pollution, resulting from burning coal for electricity generation. And what can Russia help China? Pipelines of the largest and most steady supply of gas, which will allow conversion of coal burning power plants in China, to far cleaner gas burning power plants – improving in a concrete way life quality for millions of Chinese citizens.
Yes, sure – it’s still a primitive developing country, and its populations’ mentality reflect its recent poverty and lack of development.
But parts of the younger generation of Chinese people, especially of more bourgeois young people, are already becoming more similar to normal people.
When you look at videos of sneaker shops of Shanghai – it could almost be Japan.
Obviously, most of China is more like eight decades more primitive than Japan, but parts of Shanghai look already quite sympathetic and even culturally attractive.
There are a lot of Russians currently living in China. Strangely enough many got hired as English teachers. Of course there are a lot of Russian models as well.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Gizi555777
Or maybe less like Japan, and it feels more like a mix of Southern European and American city design?
Yes, this is one of the prime upscale central areas of Shanghai. Most of Shanghai isn’t that great especially the suburbs which are like any suburbs of Eastern Chinese cities. This is an area that’s popular with Western expats, as you probably notice from the video.
And on the “Southern European” architecture. It actually is European. Remember that Shanghai was a foreign concession and largely built by the French and the British. The side of town the video was shot in used to be French. The trees were imported from France when the city was being built 100+ years ago and today they’re still standing. Large swathes of Shanghai’s center retain the European architecture. The Bund was built by the British and can pass as a European riverfront. Too bad it has gotten way too touristy nowadays with crowds from provincial China, along with People’s Square which are connected by a famous pedestrian street. Even though its touristy, the majority of the residents are local Shanghainese retirees and a lot of of old timey stores and restaurants are in that area that locals go.
Shanghai’s urban planning is a big mix. The office towers are nicer, newer, taller versions of American style skyscrapers, the older suburbs/bedroom communities essentially look like “Sinicized” versions of Russian Khruschevas while newer ones look like modern Russian anthills but much more aesthetically pleasing. My first impression of Moscow was similar its outskirts looked to Shanghai outskirts.
And when I mean that for “liberal” upper middle class Chinese, this video is a good snapshot of their lifestyle. Its an extremely first world lifestyle, except better than other first world cities (even Hong Kong) due to how the majority of stores, bars, and restaurants specifically cater to Chinese tastes even the international brands or foreign owned stores: Same thing can’t be said of London. This crowd is also pro “multiculturalism” to the extent that they welcome the white expats and the stores that pop up that caters to their tastes in their neighborhood; socially white expats and Chinese remain highly segregated though.
To go from this to North America equal at best, a downgrade at worst. Not to mention the immense cultural gap which can make quality of life tumble down several spots than it should have.
That’s interesting. It has a “colonial” atmosphere.
In the area of the walk, some streets feel like Madrid. Other streets, feel more like an American city.
Overall, it looks a very cool city with interesting architecture (I’ve been watching a lot of other videos of Shanghai before, and they’re usually I guess from this same area).
I can see that.
But it’s surely not yet on the same city level (aesthetically or atmospherically) as a great Japanese city (Osaka, Tokyo, etc), or great European city.
That’s a rather depressing thought, even for a Sinophobe like me.
Yes Xintiandi is a major upscale nightlife spot in Shanghai, albeit a bit touristy. Thankfully its not clogged with lower class tourists from the interior like The Bund, People’s Square, and East Nanjing Road are. Its a nice area, lots of expats too. Similar demographics to West Nanjing Road, but a lot younger, in fact.
And on Tokyo being better than Shanghai, yes for a foreign visitor to both countries I would wholeheartedly agree with you. Japan is simply further along in development and they don’t have to deal with a “vatnik” population. I’d say around 50% of Shanghai’s population are migrant workers and the majority have questionable manners, though they make vast improvements the longer they work in the city. The older working class locals can be just as awful too. In fact, many, if not the majority, of Shanghai’s well-mannered, well dressed young middle class are the grandchildren of vulgar Maozuos who sit naked on the sidewalks playing cards.
But keep in mind I’m biased towards Shanghai for obvious reasons, and Chinese people have rather particular tastes: Japanese tastes come close and Japan is the single most well-liked country (not the government obviously) at least in Shanghai, but most Chinese still want to be able to speak Chinese and eat authentic Chinese food. Japan may be just as bustling, cleaner, and have way more first world behaviors, but at the end of the day, its still a different culture and requires adaptation for Chinese people to live comfortably in them: Likely even more so than the Anglosphere as the Chinese population only numbers around 750,000.
In addition to Chinese tourism in Japan about to break the 10 million mark, there has been double digit growth in Chinese people buying second homes in Tokyo and Osaka.
One area that Russia can investigate cooperating with China would be for Moscow to advertise itself as a strong contender for wealthy Chinese to buy a foreign second home, especially if Moscow would like to boost its real estate market value.
What ever happened to India? Wasn’t it supposed to be Russia-China-India as bulwark against American dominion of the entire planet?
Russia and China did not get played against each other, a la 1969. But somewhere along the way, Modi’s India fell into the status of client state. Subservient on Iran oil sanction, subservient on most other issues. And Iran is being salami sliced off.
India ditched the Eurasian idea and decided to join the Atlantians. It is more of a US-Japan-Australia-India-Vietnam axis now Vs a China-Pakistan axis with Russia maintaining good relations with both India and China. The Indian Brahmanical deep state is integrating itself into the American-Israeli deep state while maintaining some sort of friendly relations with Iran.
Anyways Russia remains very popular as a nation among Indians even today.
Good Twitter thread on China impressions. Even our very own Duke of Qin gets an honorary mention!
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1143314889374486528
QoL in China is now basically on par if not better if than the US if you compare Tier 1 cities in both. The US is still richer on paper but is dirtier and has much lower social cohesion. Also far more crime and much worse infrastructure. In practice, life for an average Shanghai or Beijing resident is as good if not better than life is for your average New Yorker. If you start comparing tier 2 cities, China does even better. It has none of the dysfunctional shitholes like Memphis, St. Louis, Baltimore, Minneapolis, etc.
I disagree with his points about supposed lack of racism, but that’s another debate for another time.
P.S. Twitter briefly banned Carl Zha, who Duke of Qin praised, because Zha questioned the Xinjiang narrative. So Western social media is not just cracking down on white nationalists, but increasingly on anyone deemed stepping out of line of Western ideological imperatives.
Chinese cities don’t have a lot of blacks, though. Thus, it would be better to compare White or Asian neighborhoods in US cities to Chinese cities.
Speaking of Shanghai and Japan, here is a vblog from a Taiwanese visiting one of the most famous battle fields/buildings in Shangha where 800 KMT soldiers fought to their death. One of the buildings was preserved and made into a memorial. How things have changed. The CCP is paying respect to what the KMT has done, and young Shanghainese actually like Japan.
This Taiwanese guy sounds like he might be a descendant of a KMT soldier.
A little background
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/shanghai-1937-chinas-forgotten-stalingrad-16396
Such as what exactly?
The Russian Far East was never Chinese. It was Manchu territory where the Chinese were forbidden to settle in their humiliation under their Manchu overlords.
In fact, the northern bits of today’s China became Chinese only after Russia destroyed the steppe nomad menace.
So no, Chinese claims on Russian territory can’t happen without the Chinese giving up on Han nationalism. Won’t happen.
Lol, Russian “models” are to be found in almost every single country, from Arabian shitholes to China and Korea.
Being a nation of whores isn’t a point of pride.
Traveling in China with my wife, almost all of our, admittedly limited, interactions with the locals start the same way:
“Where are you from?”
“Russia”
“Oh, Russia. You have a great president!”
So, pretty much the exact opposite of the interactions we engage in traveling in the West.
“Russia is simply not that important in the eyes of China outside of natural resources”
Correct, China wants $$$ and ‘Junior Partner’ Russia doesn’t have $$$, only the USA and Europe have $$$.
And as others have written in the past, Russia is not East nor West, not Eurasianist, but is its own ‘civilizational realm’. Russia is just supposed to be Russia.
But Russia is still way too fixated with Europe / the West. Who needs all that glamorous, fashionable and cultured Liberal LGBT nonsense when there is enough vodka, women and song on the Steppe anyway.
Indeed, “controlling for blacks” would conceal a great deal of problems. Excellent, at long last American Whites can feel calm and confident and great again? Even so, I don’t think I’d recommend that the Chinese take in a lot of blacks and then statistically control for their effect.
And what do you see re Japan’s “need” of Russia? Not much.
And yes, they are different. Can an average Swede or a Russian go to live in Japan for decades & feel at ease or “at home, to a degree”?
I think not.
While a Russian can go & live in Portugal & he can be just fine & happy.
But Magic Chinese Culture!
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1143314920747876352
China should 2nd reichize its foreign policy, redouble efforts towards MIRVING all its warheads, at least double the amount of warheads it has, launch more SSBNs, and raise defence spending to 4 to 5 percent of GDP, and try as much as possible to Prussianize culturally its officer corp, and make augsfragtaktik the doctrine of its NCOs and commissioned officer corp, a more effective NCO and officer corp, with sufficient autonomy to make tactical decisions in the battlefield should allow it to fight battles of attrition with a favorable loss exchange ratio and allow the PLAs officer corps to surpass its peers qualitatively in the field of battle, basically model its army on the late 19th century Prussian model, and its Navy on the Royal Navy.
Which is why is not a bad idea for China to adopt Calvinism or Lutheranism as a confessional state religion.
It ended badly for the Second Reich, though.
And once you actually go checking, “model” without fail turns out to be a garden variety khokhlushka, lol.
Taiwan could be helping a lot more with semiconductors and chip manufacturing , but attitudes have soured toward the mainland thanks to Beijing’s genius moves.
I’ve been saying this for years and only gotten shut down by blind nationalists, even though I’m as far from a liberal as possible.
China’s arrogant, thin-skinned and socially inept attitude towards the world will end in geopolitical disaster and material loss. Any Chinese who still thinks everything will work out as long as we get richer is a dangerous moron.
Who needs Calvinism when you have Communism.
If you don’t try to “build” it too actively (and especially don’t promise it to the present generation as Khrushchev did), you can make a functional state religion out of it. Remove the millenarian zeal, shift a couple more accents around, and it works. Auftragstaktik is perfectly compatible with it (provided you’ve got rid of the idea of an omniscient wise leader).
Lol, their magic might not be strong enough for that.
“China’s gonna claim Siberia!” is a conspiracy touted by more by Americans than Russians or Chinese. It’s a bad meme meant to try and get Russia on the side of American conservatives.
In reality both Russia and China are wary of your liberal democracy, which is a far greater threat than the unlikely possibility of revanchism.
Inaccurate. I’ve never met anyone who wants to dominate Russia. Eurasianism a la Dugin may be a distant dream, but that doesn’t preclude very different states working together to counter western hegemony.
The worst anti-Russian sentiment in China comes from materialistic shitheads who scorn Russia because it’s poor, and urban liberals who look up American values. Both groups overlap. Neither is all that common.
Russia is an ally, not a card. Cynical views of world players only isolate China from having real friends.
The optimal position for China is to be aligned with Russia in telling the US to eat shit whenever it tries to spread liberal democracy.
India’s elites love western liberal values with an unusual zeal, unfortunately.
Which is why China should’ve done much more in courting India instead of looking down on them or treating them as a rival. There might still be time for that, but it’s gonna take diplomatic finesse the CCP simply doesn’t have.
If Von Moltke the elder had been in command of the German armies in France they would have won in 1914.
But unfortunately, in the end, commies are gonna commie.
Censorship casts shadow over China’s top film festival: https://www.ft.com/content/30c4425a-90d9-11e9-aea1-2b1d33ac3271
But you mustn’t offend the foreigners at any price!
Incidentally, while portrayal of the Whites in a positive light was obviously a no-no in the Soviet film industry, this cucked desire not to offend foreigners with excessive patriotism/jingoism – in stark contrast to, say, Hollywood – was also one of its features. The sovok decrepits believed that the US would take this as a signal of belligerence.
Yet one more reason why I subscribe to #2 on this list: https://andrewbatson.com/2019/06/19/three-ways-of-looking-at-china-and-its-history/
These people are apparently unaware that there’s a movie industry in America. Someone should tell them that they should check out its products before censoring their own.
Or maybe if Schlieffen was still in charge.
Regardless, Germany’s strategic position was pretty weak in 1914.
Aside from the fact they want to squeeze the Kurils?
Japan is at least culturally important for Russia, as for other countries – they provide one of the only alternative pop cultural exports for young people, to the American pop culture.
–
On the other hand, what is Russia for Japanese? Probably – aside from Kurils – ballet, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, ice-skating.
I.e. attractive face of Russia in Japan will be the same, as it is in mind of French and English. But at least the general cultural level of population in Japan is a little higher, so on average they might think a bit more about Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, and a bit less about Putin.
Surely, Japan is a closed society.
Yet Europeans are still very culturally prestigious in Japan, and large cities in Japan also became a lot more cosmopolitan.
I first was in Tokyo for vacation a lot of years in the past (before it became as fashionable as now), and even then there were lot of Europeans everywhere (nowadays they are more flooded with Chinese tourists ).
The more serious racism issue for living in Japan, is against Chinese, Koreans (let alone lower Asian races, like Vietnamese, Filipinos , etc) – as they are apparently viewed in the same way Mexicans are viewed in America.
Japanese racism is more often directed against other Asian nationalities, than against Russians.
I have not been in Portugal. But – for all that Portugal is a beautiful country with superior working hours – it is clearly quite culturally closed, small and provincial, and you know Russian people there (if there are many?) would have not great social opportunities.
Even if you wanted to be friends with Portuguese people, it is easier if you lived in London where there are large numbers of Portuguese – as the Portuguese in London would be in the same situation as you, and everyone is more friendly when they are foreigners together, and likely to be younger and more educated people as well.
Though it didn’t extend all the way to the Napoleonic Wars, (“Tsarist”) Russian soldiers and generals were shown favorably in the context of that war. Maybe, just maybe, the Chicoms could also stop being paranoid about the KMT 70 years after having defeated them.
Have you been in vacation in Shenzhen and have any impressions?
It has a lot of media hype recently for its hi-tech companies. Bloomberg YouTube Channel is obsessed with there and makes videos there a lot
I didn’t mean literally, just: we’re better, richer, stronger.. Nobody cares about these Russkies. I think general trend in most layers of Chinese society is toward national pride, collective optimism, materialism, success story as exemplified by vulgarized version of American dream (not the original one).
Off with Confucian humanism & charitable approach to others, say, mentally retarded children ….
India and China have never had good relations to begin with and fought an actual shooting war in 1962, and China has long provided support to Pakistan to help protect its Himalayan rear. The boundary dispute between the two countries remains unsettled.
The idea of a Russia-China-India axis was presumably floated by not very bright anti-Americans who assume that all non-Western powers are invested in the idea of smashing the American world order.
I could see the idea being popular in Russia since Russia has good relations with both countries.
When will this silly “face” meme die? There was no accepting the US deal, which was really just unconditional economic surrender. Trade with the US was what kept Chinese technology down, since Chinese semiconductor manufacturers never got a chance to get off the ground due to America dumping semiconductors on the Chinese market. Now that Trump has so helpfully imposed a broad technological embargo, Chinese companies will finally get the support and market share they need.
Listen, I know riding Russia’s sac is the order of the day here, but do you honestly think that Russia can maintain any kind of technological lead – in gas turbines or anything else – over China with the ungodly sums of money China’s ploughing into R&D?
Why did you put Minneapolis in the same class as those three other cities?
The Twin Cities have obviously deteriorated thanks to “enrichment”, but overall it remains one of America’s nicer and more functional metropolitan regions. Housing costs are reasonable, many good jobs are available, flight connections are good, the indigenous locals are very polite, infrastructure and transport are solid, and despite the enrichment overall crime remains modest.
The MSP metropolitan region ranks seventh in per capita income but 26th in housing costs.
The biggest downsides are the climate, the lack of any dedicated heavy commuter rail (there is light rail), and the Minnesota state income tax.
The presence of large numbers of blacks in America massively degrades the quality of life for the entire country, even in areas where few or no blacks are present owing to their political impact as well as transportation.
China appears to be following many Wilhelmine concepts already.
Building a large fleet, commercial expansion, technological development, and grand overseas infrastructure projects (BRI = Berlin-Baghdad Railway).
And just like Wilhelmine Germany, they’re facing increasing opposition from the status quo dominant power and unable to find allies.
A country governed by a communist party will for obvious reasons never develop a Prussian army, and in any case it takes a century to create one. And why exactly would the world’s most populous country with the world’s largest industrial base need a Prussian army? Wouldn’t the Soviet army be a more appropriate model?
von Moltke the Elder was born in 1800 and would’ve been 114 had he still lived. Not exactly field commander material.
And in any case I’m not sure the weakening of the right-wing was decisive owing to logistical constraints.
If Germany had had a stronger federal government with taxation authority it could’ve appropriated more funds for the army and fielded five more army corps in the summer of 1914. That would have been decisive.
Alternatively, no big fleet program.
Anatoly Karlin,
“But unfortunately, in the end, commies are gonna commie.
Censorship casts shadow over China’s top film festival: ”
LOL… It’s not “censorship” that pulls the film, it was Netizen’s outrage that fast evolving to the threat of a boycott…
Since the film was ready to show, it means it has already passed all the censorship.
According to Bundeswehr Colonel Karl-Heinz Frieser, the big problem was that the final plan envisioned a huge battle to destroy the whole of the French army. Aiming for a much smaller battle around Metz and Sedan would’ve resulted in an operational victory, which could then be quickly developed into a decisive strategic victory.
Aiming for a repeat of the Battle of Sedan (1870) in other words. Not realistic in the age of industrial warfare.
We are all prisoners of the past.
Exactly. Frieser thought it was quite possible, due to the stupidity (OK, not very good planning) of the French.
Our summer lady appears to be a wee bit confused:
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1134010099826122752
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1143314928289243136
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1131253880329650176
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1143314931015536640
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1143314947402690560
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1134100756548730880
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1134107302540144641
Russia and Ukraine are both overrepresented in whoredom around the world, although the latter probably moreso. (The joke about Moscow and Kiev being sibling cities, since they both share Russian language and Ukrainian hookers, is largely true.) Still, it’s a national embarrassment when your country is famous for its whores to every Rajeep and Mohammed around the world.
Russia and Ukraine competing over this is like two niggers arguing who’s blacker
Frieser thought that due to the more flexible German command structure (Auftragstaktik), Germany was more likely to win a moderate sized battle. However, due to the impossibility of logistics and communications, it had no advantage in the huge giga-battle which the Schlieffen Plan envisioned.
So, he thought that Germany should’ve aimed for a battle which wasn’t beyond its ability to supply with logistics and control with command structure. At the Marne, German command broke down: they sent some lieutenant colonel to the front to check the situation and make a decision accordingly…
So basically a lieutenant colonel made the decision (at least he was the equal of the commander of the 2nd Army, and then forced the commander of the 1st Army) to retreat. (I’m not saying it was the wrong decision, but it shows how broken the decision-making process was. Anyway, some people are or were arguing that this was the wrong decision, and that in the absence of such a decision, the Germans might’ve captured Paris and perhaps even won the war. This opinion – as opinion, not as certainty – can be read in the Hungarian language Wikipedia entry on Richard Hentsch.)
Metallurgy, much like Semiconductor manufacturing – requires passing generations worth of expertise… Some problems can’t be fixed with money alone… That’s why nobody is able to outcompete Russians in metallurgy (yet)
https://twitter.com/June_beetle/status/1143314931015536640
It’s the same as our AaronB’s views of 6 months ago.
But if I remember, he was in vacation in Asia around that time, has a bad trip (maybe taking psychologically dangerous drugs there), and his whole viewpoint reversed, and he decided he hated Asia.
Last year, he was saying that Asia was healthy and the future, and that Islam was cool, and even was spamming positive feedback to Islamistbot Talha.
Well, can you imagine US, Russia or even terminally syphilitic UK taking thirty years to properly reverse-engineer an engine, with a stipulation that additional ones can be ordered anytime, and human expertise(even if second-rate khokhol) brought in?
Chinese clock is still ticking. ^_^
And it`s not just in the aviation, russian military recently had a bad experience with chinese ship turbines as well. Underspec performance, bad MTBF, all classic chink ilnesses. Thing is, these turbines are in any case only a stopgap, with Rybinsk coming out with their own.
So on with radars, subs, tanks, planes, ships, missiles, microprocessors, list goes on.
Maybe indigenous engineering school is not something you can buy but only grow. God knows they have had enough time for that, and still Samsung has to poach young talent all over Europe(Russia included) for its electronics division and/or license whatever new thing Qualcomm has. Japan could have been a GLORIOUS RICE ENGINEERINK STRONK contender, but still an american dude had to go there to teach them manufacturing in scale and literally a whole of US microelectronics industry to “lecture” them. Read, say, original Intel trio memoirs, jap shit in 70s was beyond ridiculous, and still they fell by the wayside once process density shrinkage began.
So I`m pretty positive Glorious Motherland has some steam in her yet.
True, especially when the whole competition takes place in your head alone. ^_^
On Junebug and saying that Shanghai is better than NYC and Hefei is better than Pittsburgh. This is true and false. As I said earlier, for the upper middle class with a local hukou in Shanghai and Pittsburgh, quality of life will only downgrade if they move to NYC and Pittsburgh, respectively. On the other hand, a white upper middle class person from NYC or Pittsburgh will also see their quality of life decrease in Shanghai/Hefei (internet censorship, everyday life bureaucracy, extreme noise pollution, lack of living space etc.). Different things are valued in different societies and the rich live the best in their home countries almost always.
Yes, Chinese cities are far more cohesive and have far less crazy hobos and garbage on the streets than American cities, but as a whole, Chinese do not have it better than Americans.
Work culture in the private sectors of China can be stressful, especially in tech companies or for the working class, with long grueling hours. This is partly what fuels the consumerist culture in China. While American working culture leaves a lot to be desired, the Chinese workplace is even more competitive and stressful.
The parastatals however, are a joke to work in (mandatory napping hours anyone? No joke.) but its grossly underpaid. Office politics and corruption are the best ways to make more money in parastatals.
I said earlier that upper middle class and upper class Chinese have first world lifestyles and assuming they aren’t willing to actually assimilate and actively participate in a foreign culture, has an unparalleled lifestyle anywhere, to the point that not even Hong Kong can replicate the lifestyle. For this group, wages are actually the same nominally as the US (e.g. Huawei pays its engineers 100K+ USD a year) while China has a lower cost of living. Places like Shanghai have every single amenity that you can think of, but even provincial capitals like Hefei can offer a comfortable lifestyle for the rich. But this doesn’t give you the picture of the middle and working classes.
High quality food and goods are very expensive in China. Imported food comes at an extreme markup, and dining out in hygienic restaurants costs as much as eating out in the US. Most working class can’t afford to eat out properly (street food doesn’t count), and they have to buy groceries in vegetable markets with cheap, low quality food. I even know working class people who can’t afford to eat meat on a regular basis.
Healthcare is expensive and poor quality in China. Government healthcare only covers cheap, low quality medication and surgical procedures in overcrowded hospitals. For higher quality medical care, one needs to pay out of pocket: Worse, if you want doctors to not botch your surgery or actually promise to use Western-standard medication you requested, significant bribes directly to the surgeon is required; a several thousand USD direct bribe to a surgeon for a surgery is not unheard of. The middle and working classes can’t afford to get sick or injured.
China also has the largest housing bubble in the world. Mortgages can take a lifetime to pay off and even for white collar workers, buying a property. Less wealthy transplants to Shanghai tend to buy an apartment in their hometown while renting in Shanghai, and middle class or below Shanghainese locals live with their parents until marriage: Shanghainese locals tend to have multiple apartments as their original dwellings have largely been torn down and the government compensate them with apartments, although the locations of their new apartments are usually undesirable from a local perspective: The last thing the local Shanghainese want is to live in the suburbs.
Chinese schools are pressure cooker systems: Extremely long hours with a lot of rote memorization, endless test taking, and cram schools on the weekends and weekday evenings.
Overall, I would say that the American lower/middle classes have it better in material wealth and access to high quality products, while the Chinese lower/middle classes live in a much more harmonious, bustling, and optimistic, albeit stressful, society.
I don’t know much about it, but are you sure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-11#Modern_J-11
There’s something that’s always intrigued me, but I’m not smart or informed enough to form an opinion.
It is a well-documented fact that the American side of the B.W. negotiations was Harry Dexter White, who just so happened to have been a highly-placed and deeply-committed Soviet spy. This was once a mere accusation until VENONA totally confirmed it.
Among the effects of White’s crimes were stupidly aggressive American policy towards Japan, which seems to have been exactly what Stalin wanted. White was a significant cog in the Roosevelt administration’s anti-Japanese war party. So clearly White’s malfeasance got Stalin what he wanted in that area.
Well, with that in mind, here’s a fun speculative question.
How much of what became the Bretton Woods “order” comes across to you as something Stalin and his people might want?
I’m tempted to think that White’s activity in this area was just part of his job – it’s not as though foreign governments affect ALL of their spies’ work – but still…
Any more details on what this means?
On Americanophilia in China: While its fairly common to be disillusioned by America, usually well-off tier 1 students who lived in America as students, or oppose its geopolitics, this very rarely translates into actual anti-America sentiments. Those who never been or have only visited indeed treat it as the friendly big brother with great entertainment, technology, and universities. The regard of American universities, Hollywood films, and American consumer products remains, and will remain, high among all Chinese social classes, whether they experienced America or not.
Its like how Karlin has a list of 10 things Russia does better than America, and also vice versa: This is what I mean by “collapse” of Americanophilia in China: It’s moving away from blind worshipping into level-headed praise and criticisms.
Overall, when it comes to societal views, I’d say what Japan/Korea is to China is what Western Europe is to Russia, minus the neoliberal nonsense plaguing Western Europe. Recent lowering of geopolitical schisms has caused a massive push of Japanese products in Shanghai at least, at least among the youth. Japanese food courts with Japanese chain restaurants are all the rage in Shanghai nowadays.
P.S. The biggest America-worshipper I’ve met from China actually lives in Russia.
This is a rare comment that, in my opinion, merits both the “LOL” and “Troll” markers it has received.
I wasn’t there for long enough, and crossed the border from the Hong Kong side.
It has excellent infrastructure, is very new, and has a great skyline. But there are noticeably more peasants in Shanghai and the accompanying behavior leaves much to be desired. The malls seem not as nice as Shanghai: Its just not as cosmopolitan. Its still common to do employee group exercises for restaurants and retail: Something that’s extremely Sovok-like and never seen in Shanghai.
The border area on the Shenzhen is a complete chaotic shitshow with peasants, taxi touts, unclear signs, infrastructure straight from the 90s, and poorly recorded loudspeaker messages.
Spool-up is supposedly still not up to par, according to USN pilots at least. We have to remember that after 31F comes 41F with thrust vectoring, plasma start and other niceties as well.
This is very true.
Oddly enough, btw, it’s almost as if all the propaganda American public education shoved into my youthful head, about the decades-long aggressive militarism and illiberal tendencies of the Prussians, was, say, somewhat exaggerated.
I guess you mean PLAAF pilots. Since it’s all classified, it’s all based on rumors, which could be out of date.
The Al-31F-M1 is a version which was introduced in 2007. So it’s a moving target: the Chinese have probably already reached (in some parameters surpassed, maybe a few parameters still somewhat lagging) the 1990s Russian level, but the Russians have also surpassed their own previous level, so the Chinese still need to keep improving. But the gap is closing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_WS-10#Development
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_AL-31#List_of_AL-31_family_engines
I remember USN quite distinctly, because I
ve read on this first at some kind of aviator forum. Maybe at Copps, not sure.But point taken, removingf 31F from the list of chinese failures for further investigation.
And about the gap I have a word-of-mouth anecdote: when younger dudes came to Pogosyan, who was the chief at Sukhoi at the time, and started complaining about chinese copies proliferating, he answered that there can be no solution but to be better still. ^_^
There’s no sensible reason for India to reject at least tilting more towards China by borrowing from China for infrastructure development as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. However, India in the realm of policy ideas is led by high caste Hindus. High caste Hindus think highly of themselves (and by extension want the country it controls to become a global power) and loathes to acknowledge China as the leader of Asia, which it essentially does by becoming a participant in BRI.
1) To links arms with China through the BRI would mean acknowledging China has won the development race well into the future.
2) To not build up troops and armaments along the border, a process that has been occurring since 2009, even when there is no growing threat from China* would concede that even decades into the future, India’s development levels will still be far behind China and India would not have the economic size to take on China.
The high caste Hindu can’t bear the idea that India is still going to be a relatively poor country in 2050. So the 1/8 of India belonging to the Hindu high caste encourage India’s policy to deliberately lay the groundwork for a more adversarial relationship with China.
*BTW before a standoff at Doklam in mid-2017 between the two, China had about 30-40k troops along the 2,000 km border. A remarkably small allocation of resources to the Indian border. Chinese armaments at the Indian border have been publicly upgraded modestly since Doklam as a warning to India, which in early 2018 responded by resetting relations (a turnaround called the Wuhan Spirit, after a meeting between the two leaders).
I obviously can’t speak for Hefei, but Pittsburgh is very nice these days. A little known gem.
“I played a lot of computer games and believe that gave me a deep understanding of military history and army principles” – the post
Can you be any more of a joke poster? The Schlieffen plan was deemed flawed and unlikely to work even in its original, unmodified form – the situation in summer of 1914 was even worse, and there was absolutely nothing the Germans could do regarding the pace of Russian mobilization, which drastically improved by the start of WW1 compared to the moment the plan was devised.
Hard to say really.
I get the impression that the basic American vision in 1944 was that the US, Britain, and the USSR would share in effectively “policing” the entire world. The economic problems of the interwar period had contributed to the aggression of the Axis Powers, so it was thought to be desirable to ensure all countries could develop and access global markets. Hence the “rules-based international order” we hear so much about.
The main thing America contributed to Bretton-Woods was shooting down Keynes’ concept of the “Bancor” as the unit of international account & trade in favor of a de facto gold-exchange Dollar standard. This would come back to harm, well, everyone.
The US objects to China’s SOEs, state banks, and party control/direction of private enterprises basically. The US side wants to see China treat SOEs no differently than a country like Norway treats Statoil and Norsk Hydro, and it especially objects to China directing its economic activity towards “strategic” acquisition of foreign technology.
Non-starter for the CCP for both economic and political reasons. It would require dismantling the “construction-industrial complex” and strong government control over business activity. Aside from the political implications, China is unlikely to do anything which would increase urban unemployment.
How do those goals translate into demands by the US? Does the US demand that state owned bank lending is drastically curtailed? It’s kind of hard to see how in the trade war negotiation context how ends like diminishing the role of the state in the economy can be achieved.
Yes I’ve heard about Pittsburgh being gentrified. It was arguably the worst performing Rust Belt city back in the 80s, but its 80% white demographics is saving it as we speak.
As far as mid sized, middle America cities go, our beloved poster AnonFromTN lives in one of the best ones in the US. Even though there’s a lot of complaints about tourists, they largely stick to downtown and leave most of it alone. In fact, I’d much rather have 95+% white tourists (what Nashville gets) over an empty downtown or a diverse, dangerous downtown, either or both is what majority of other, non-touristy American cities get.
I don’t know too much about Hefei either, having never been. However, the majority of migrant workers in Shanghai are from Anhui, of which Hefei is the capital, so I’m somewhat familiar with it. In terms of interior provincial cities I know well, I can only confidently say that for Chongqing.
Prussian Army is ridiculously overrated. Mythical powers attributed to both soldiers and officers.
7-year war – defeat at the hands of Russians – in my opinion no “miracle” saved Prussia, but Russian pragmatism – not destroying Prussia left it as a counter to Habsburgs, in addition to making Partitions of then-neutral Poland possible.
Inspiring ruler, far better commanders compared to Austrians enable a victory.
Napoleonic Wars – the whole Prussian Army – including Clausewitz, Blücher, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst – disintegrates in mere 3 weeks between October 14 and November 5.
A single French Corps (not elite) defeats the main Prussian Army twice its size.
1866 – muzzle-loading Austrians utilizing linear tactics savaged by breech-loading, loose order and terrain hugging Prussians
1870-1871 – industrial war – Prussians (and Bavarians etc.) mobilize en masse, more efficiently, achieve overall force concentration advantage, suffer badly in direct confrontations with French professional infantry (Chassepot vs. Dreyse) but Krupp steel field guns outperform French artillery and combined with superior fielded numbers, communication and strategic maneuvering, win the war.
WW1 German Army performed best against Russians and Italians, not so much against French and British.
It`s probably mostly a function of that Clausewitz book. And other widely imitated things, like Prussian school system.
Prussian Army pre-Gneisenau was only good under Frederick the Great, after that it didn’t perform too well, due to its inflexibility.
Regarding Napoleon, it didn’t perform well in 1806, but the French were considered a top quality army, and, well, absent Frederick, the pre-Gneisenau reforms Prussian army was just not that good, too rigid. However, after 1813, the Prussian army didn’t perform too badly at all.
I don’t think you can take from the Franco-Prussian War any conclusion that the Prussians were not superior – though as you correctly note, the difference was not enormous. (It doesn’t need to be. As Colonel Frieser noted, the Germans weren’t very much better than the French in 1940 either, but they were better enough, and of course they were luckier, too.)
All fronts (and quality and quantity of allies) taken into account it was outnumbered (not to mention the blockade, which denied the German economy raw materials and foodstuffs, resulting in lower quality and quantity of supplies), and even against the British and French it suffered lower casualties.
I don’t think you can argue that they weren’t measurably better.
Beware the wreckers. SinoRusso friendship forever !!!
https://chinainthecoldwar.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/2/9/14296024/1331824.jpg?359
They held the initiative every
time – in 1870, 1914 and 1940.
It was France which declared war in 1870, but Prussian alliance was better prepared and organized for immediate war, in addition to a significant edge in artillery – main casualty inflicter. The fact that artillery was the deadliest branch in both Napoleon-Prussian and Franco-Prussian War is in line with outcomes both times – Napoleon the artillery commander and Prussian Krupp steel batteries vs inferior French.
Exploiting the initiative until Marne battle, the Germans were strategically and tactically mostly on the defensive afterwards with fighting taking place in France and the Entente trying to expel them.
Trench warfare favors the defender and the side with an edge in heavy artillery (daily attrition), both numbers and quality – Imperial Germany. There isn’t a lot to improvise and exploit in positional warfare.
In 1940 the French Army was really subpar for a number of reasons, and the French state was left with a weakened demography and economy, both inadequate to face Germany.
I wasn’t doubting Prussian victories or German war performance in my post – I was expressing dismay at the fanboyism and simplicistic worldview that is promoted and spread by video games and popular history. Warfare is scientific and exact, and there never was a victory by an inferior force.
Probably. Cargo cultism.
Japanese hired German instructors and advisors, got their victory against the Chinese and tried doing the same to the letter against the Russians.
Employing mass infantry charges against Russian Maxims holding fire until 10-15 meters and storming entrenched (although not too well commanded) Russian positions = extreme casualties.
I’ve read interesting works on the subject. During Swedish zenith, Suvorov or Napoleonic times – cold steel was superior to musketry, bayonet charges and column advances would defeat linear musket formations. Canister-using artillery was the only counter.
So the 19th and early 20th century officers went through these historical lessons and cases during education, tried using them in times of shrapnell, machine guns, barbed wire and suffered accordingly.
Indeed.
Chicoms went too far.
https://twitter.com/PALE_Primate/status/1143489614193278977
Wouldn’t censorship prevent the movie from being created, not just screened?
Well, offshoots of prussian school system eventually sent man to the stars, so I dare say it`s not just a cargo cult.
All I read about the War of 1905 is literally Pikul, who is great when you need to rouse an emotion(PQ-17 and that whole book, maaaaan), but not so well with facts. He does mention horrible losses on the jap side in many stormings of Vladivostok defences, but still the war was lost in the end.
The bullet is a fool, but the bayonet is a fine lad.
It had a 20-25% edge in combat effectiveness over both. Holding out with a population of 65 million vs. enemies with a combined population of 87 million (while also aiding the hapless Austrians on a couple of other fronts) and coming close to victory 2-3 times during the war was not an unimpressive achievement.
That’s a simplification, since both sides reverted to defense after failed offensives, and then went on to attack after the enemy exhausted itself. The Germans tried there hand at attacking several times. So, over four years, you cannot simply say they had the advantage of defense.
Regarding the advantage in artillery, they were up against the united industrial might of the British, French and Russian Empires and the US (the latter already while formally neutral), I don’t think it’s a good explanation that they had some qualitative advantage in artillery.
The British during the Battle of the Somme realized that experience was still quite valuable.
You are assuming censorship is perfect and that the censors know from the first minute what they want or what they don’t want. That’s not how it works.
1) There are examples of movies made in communist Hungary which were prevented from being shown for a long time, the most famous example being the movie called “The Witness” (A tanú) about the 1948-53 political show trials, which was made in 1969 but premiered in Hungary in 1979 (!) only.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witness_(1969_Hungarian_film)
2) You cannot have a good picture of how the film will look like until you can see it in whole – it’s a bit like the difference between the trailer and the full movie. So it’s possible for the censors to think that it was acceptable, but then changing their minds after seeing the full movie.
3) It’s not like there’s a fully unified policy. Probably some censors think it’s okay, some don’t, and the decision might be overwritten later.
Verdun is an ambiguous German offensive, while the Spring Offensive was the only clear-cut one in my opinion.
In case of artillery, the French had the excellent 75 mm field gun – but they went overboard and intended to make up for its deficiencies through volume of fire – that one model dominating their artillery arsenal.
Simply compare the number of 8+ inch howitzers, mortars and guns in use by Germans on one, and French and Brits on the other side.
Lighter pieces optimised for shrapnell and fragmentation shells were of limited utility during trench and siege warfare – raw destructive power of HE and penetration of heavy concrete piercing shells dictated larger caliber.
History is neither scientific nor exact, only ideologues and historians hungry for science grant funding claim otherwise. Analysis of the wars of the past necessarily falls into the domain of history and is therefore subject to the inexactitudes of that field.
The second clause is a statement of faith rather than fact, which can only be ‘proven’ by simplistic and circular logic (defining the inferior force as the one that loses). Such a definition is neither scientific (it does not explain why the inferior force loses) nor exact (losing a battle or losing a war?), and ultimately expresses hubris – you are claiming that history has preordained outcomes, and that these outcomes are fully within our ability to calculate.
Come to think of it, probably there’s some censorship department, where the big boss doesn’t have time to follow the minute details of each and every production, and only has time to watch the final versions of the bigger movies. It’s quite possible that he occasionally overrides his underlings only to show who’s boss. Then he gets a chance to yell at them. However, it’s possible that occasionally the biggest party bosses want to watch a pre-screening of a particularly important or interesting movie, in which case they will have a chance to override the chief censor themselves. So it’s possible that some top brass from Zhongnanhai (perhaps Emperor Xi himself) showed up at a pre-screening, and decided to override the censors.
It’s basically impossible to imagine such a system without occasionally movies being made but then shelved in the last minute.
I didn’t notice this sentence. I strongly disagree with it, it seems to have come from an AaronB caricature of us. I think Vendetta answered it well.
This post is meaningless.
No, warfare is not a subset of history.
No, history graduates are not authorities on ancient, medieval, early modern and modern warfare.
If that were the case, they wouldn’t write nonsensical history narratives that run contrary to basic logistics calculations and often uttertly fail in books on WW1 and WW2.
My opinion was shared for example by Habsburgs and Prussians of the past, who established Hofkriegsrat and Kriegsakademie to improve on their warmaking through different ways respectively.
Yes, battle outcomes are perfectly predictable when logistics, positioning, troop experience and condition are taken into account.
Scouting, screening, picking the field of battle were crucial and determined the outcome before the main clash.
Yes, the outcomes of industrial wars are dictated solely by warmaking potential.
In case of aerial and naval warfare, chance played a large part in individual encounters. On the whole, it came down to equipment and personnel quality, tactics and strategy.
In armoured warfare, WW2 had demonstrated many important lessons which are lost on modern gamer and popular history fan population.
Do provide a counterexample.
Strong disagreements ought to be based on strong arguments.
Passing generations is better termed as a while lot of attempts resulting in many failures, partial successes until the right solution was encountered.
To do many repetitions of a process, you need money.
To do many repetitions of a process faster, you need many hands.
WELCOME TO CHINA.
Read and weep.
By a recent admission, R&D on engines and other components of a fighter plane would only begin if a fighter plane project was approve. This approach to doing things in China only changed like maybe in the last decade.
Lying is second nature to the CCP.
Trade agreements moved past simply lowering tariff and customs barriers a generation ago. Now they focus on intellectual property, corporate legal rights, and to a lesser extent labor and environmental standards. This is what the “progressive” opposition to the WTO and later the TPP and TTIP was about. “Modern” trade agreements would’ve subjected governments, including the US, to “investor-state” arbitration panels.
With respect to China the US sought to eliminate compulsory technology licensing & transfer, increase Chinese intellectual property protection, and eliminate preferential financing.
The US also sought to dismantle China’s “Made in China 2025” program, which channels state investment into key technological and industrial sectors.
China initially agreed to these terms, but then backed out (apparently a common Chinese move).
Lighthizer stated bluntly that China’s strategy is to move the US down the value chain and leave the US simply as a supplier of energy and agricultural commodities.
A general critique against the Prussian military system is that logistics and intelligence were allegedly neglected.
This was certainly in evidence during the German-Soviet War, though I’m not sure how much the Germans could’ve done to remedy this. Much has been written about the appallingly poor estimates made by Fremde Heere Ost about Soviet military potential. The size of the Soviet field army was more or less correctly estimated, but Soviet mobilization potential was underestimated by an order of magnitude (they estimated the Soviets could mobilize 50 new divisions in a 1941 campaign compared to the 800 they actually did). British intelligence, despite much less trade with the USSR than Germany, did much better on this.
Logistical problems were partly down to the limitations of the German economy (especially petroleum), but there were issues with planning as well. The German summer campaign in the East in 1942 frequently stalled for lack of supplies, something that obviously could’ve been planned for which means the offensive was too large. The defense of the West in 1944 showed similar errors. The Westheer was excessively expanded, and the Germans displayed a shocking naivete in believing their rail communications would function in the face of allied airpower.
There were similar problems in the First World War. It was known that insufficient transport existed for the Schlieffen Plan for instance, and famously the army refused to call off its campaign in the west because it claimed its mobilization schedule couldn’t be altered (the head of the Prussian railways wrote a book after the war demonstrating this was not true). The 1918 Spring Offensive of course petered out for want of supplies. German intelligence failed in a big way in anticipating the entry of Italy and Roumania into the war as well.
Doesn’t look like a client state to me.
https://twitter.com/ArtyomLukin/status/1143609988427857920
parastatals – Google tells me that this word is chiefly used in Africa.
“So it’s possible that some top brass from Zhongnanhai (perhaps Emperor Xi himself) showed up at a pre-screening, and decided to override the censors.”
Why insist on imaginated persecution?
The film was scheduled for official showed on 5th July, but it got a RMB1000 ($150) on the first day of advance ticketing… for a movie costs US$80 million! What’s worse was that a lot of forumers were cheering, for its coming failure. So it’s unlikely to get better later on.
They were already selling tickets, and still want to blame “censorship”? They have to pull it for re-make if they don’t want to lose the 80 million US dollars.
If someone was to take the blame, perhaps it’s the “history knowledgeables on Chinese Internets. Once they found out who is to be whitewashed, plenty came out to educate the netizens…
I mean SOEs. And no I’m not from Africa . I’m from North America. And you are right, a white South African did teach me this word.
I doubt Lighthizer’s version of the story. Lightizer is a very experienced and tough negotiator, across the negotiation table sitting a formidable opponent. How could he not know the terms are unacceptable to the Chinese? As you pointed out, the deal would change China’s economic model which in turn would change its political model. Maybe he misread the Chinese, or maybe he wasn’t interested in getting the deal done because he shared the view openly advocated by Bannon that the US should go to war with China economically or/and militarily at this juncture. When questioned about the failed negotiation, he could point the finger at the Chinese when they left the table.
Now that Trump and Xi are under more pressure to get a deal done as the trade war casualties pile up. Maybe they can get something done, or maybe not.
Can you provide a source? Thanks
Anon[834],
“Can you provide a source?”
http://c.hiphotos.baidu.com/forum/w%3D460%3Bq%3D100%3Bg%3D0/sign=995a0dfd8944ebf86d716539e9c2a617/150da9d3fd1f4134653031802b1f95cad0c85ed8.jpg?&src=http%3A%2F%2Fimgsrc.baidu.com%2Fforum%2Fpic%2Fitem%2F150da9d3fd1f4134653031802b1f95cad0c85ed8.jpg
Not sure if the picture will show as it’s from a movie forum. Here the thread on that forum, but it’s in Chinese, titled “Eight Hundred got 1000 on 1st day, worth a celebration”
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/6174417465?lp=5027&mo_device=1&is_jingpost=0&pn=0&
Your comments about China are very interesting.
Yes I can imagine how bad this is, after seeing Chinese tourist groups.
I experienced a Chinese tourist group “group singing” national songs, in Ancient Greek place. Well, it was amusing.
And the Hong Kong people are very snobby, about the mainland side of the border?
Depending on which borders. I remember there was a street where half is in HK and half is in ShengZhen.
This one looks recent?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sLDD4mKm6Fo
I think you’re correct that Lighthizer, Bannon, Navarro, and Ross never seriously expected the Chinese to agree to the terms. I doubt Lighthizer and Ross are belligerent jingoes interested in a shooting war with China, but certainly Bannon and Navarro are on record as supporting that.
WTO arrangements are simply not compatible with China’s politico-economic system, so this was bound to happen sooner or later even in the absence of Trump or the Pentagon’s increasing awareness that China is a “peer competitor”. Trump and China’s military buildup simply moved up the clock.
In a way we should thank the CCP. If not for them, how long would the baleful “Washington Consensus” around so-called free trade have continued?
On the US side the trade war casualties are mostly mental, so I don’t see much pressure for us to return to the status quo ante or accept a Mnuchin-approved bad deal.
The casualties are greater in China, but completely manageable (plus the CCP can simply blame us).
Excuses are cheap, good engines are damn hard.
I’m not sure a competitive jet engine has ever been developed outside of the United States and Western Europe. Even Russian engines lag, though they put Chinese engines to shame.
Maybe the IHI F7?
It appears to be an extreme technical challenge.
Depends on how you measure and what, as both sides in Cold War did leapfrog the other from time to time. In the line of Merlin – Jumo – J58/P4 – R-15 – F100 – AL-31 – F119 – that yet unnamed Su-57 thing each one will be a technological masterpiece of a kind.
And being a product of so many industries at once, jet engine is of course an extreme challenge.
Why are Merlin and Jumo on this list?
Not jet engines and not from the Cold War.
The Merlin wasn’t necessarily superior to other V-12 aero engines of the period, and Jumo was simply the name of Junkers’ engine division.
AL-31 may well be superior to the P&W F100, especially the early marks, so that is a good point. Su-27 is generally a marvel.
Should have said 004, yes.
But the electronics assembly can be moved to other countries?
LOL
I don’t know what happened to the movie.
One thing I know is that in China there are many online and TV documentary films praising the KMT heroic efforts fighting the Japanese. They built the memorial for “The 800” in Shanghai. I think they raised KMT’s flag in Nanjing Massacre Museum – The flag is visible to me in a photo sent to me by a friend visiting it in 2017.