Really good read overall. This reads really interestingly in combination withJake Sullivan’s recent address at Brookings And I think companies are very foolish if they don’t have a plan B for decoupling. We have a petri-dish example in the Ukraine of what happens when a leader decides they need to, for whatever reason, take some territory they believe is somehow theirs. And that could easily happen in the Taiwan Straits — and then things are going to decouple with a vengeance. Whether you have a plan or not, whether you want to or not — doesn’t matter. Then it’ll be over. So this is where the gloomy part of me gets into gear: I think there is a real possibility that could happen. I hope not, and we should do everything to prevent it. But this is going to rent the fabric of the world that we knew over the last twenty or thirty years. And if it does happen, it will throw us back into an irrevocably divided world that will make the Cold War, I think, look rather like child’s play. We think of decoupling as a Western defensive choice and debate its wisdom. But it seems more a necessary contingency plan for the very real possibility of Taiwan conflict
But we don't have to decouple if China invades Taiwan, just like we didn't have to decouple with Russia when it invaded Ukraine. We choose to do so as a punishment for their actions. Many of our allies were already reluctant, and we had to drag them along, even blowing up the Nordstream pipeline. And it's easy to see why they don't want to go along with it. Germany is now in a recession, but that's not even the alarming part. Their services economy is actually booming, they're in a recession because their industrial economy is absolutely catering. Europe's last manufacturing stronghold is rapidly deindustrializing before our very own eyes. Macron has already come out to say that France may not get involved if war breaks out over Taiwan, and my guess is that most of the world won't either. China already trades more with the global south than the collective west (includes Japan, SK, Aus, etc.), and this trend will continue. If a few western powers defect as well (looking at France, SK, and Germany in particular), then the companies who don't choose to decouple may indeed come out ahead.
Chinese summer camp reminds one of Hitler's summer camps for children, as military-themed camps become more popular there. Chinese children are taught to throw mock grenades, fire a mini-anti-tank weapon, and learn how to use mortars. Not to worry, it's all in good fun. Right up to the point where the kids start bayoneting dolls that look like Japanese people. It's like Disney, except with guns, knives, and grenades. What on earth is happening at this bizarre Chinese summer camp, where kids get to bayonet straw dolls dressed as Japanese soldiers and fire off mortars?
It's a recession, not the end of industrial Germany. Germany is primarily responding to the U.S. recession. They will bounce back when we do. England is actually enjoying a minor boom in their economy. And Macron even admitted today that France was slow to listen to eastern European countries' warnings about the dangers of Russia. Maybe he will change his mind on Taiwan. The thing about France is that their economy is heavily tied to China's demand for luxury goods (handbags, perfume, etc.). China's economy is in poor shape at the moment as it struggles to recover from Covid. Macron may realize that France won't miss that much if it separates from China. You may stop wringing your hands now.
I think Xi is practicing an ancient Chinese strategy, namely that of "ally with the far, fight with the near". The first emperor of China, the emperor of the Qin dynasty, used this strategy to end the Warring States and unite all of China. This holds completely true if you view Russia as a "far" power, as it's primarily an European state far more concerned about NATO whose members struggle to spend more than 1% of their GDP on security than the dramatically more vigorous military build up of the PLA. Similarly, you can consider the US a "near" power to China due to the large number of troops and bases around China as well as the presence of by far our most powerful fleet, the 7th, in East Asia. The Ukraine War is complicating matters for China, as it's impossible for them to court both Russia and Europe at the same time. They've instead focused their power on courting other "far" nations, making tremendous headway in Latin America, Africa, and West/Central Asia. The one thing I don't quite understand though is their conflicts with India. Even though India borders China, it's far removed from Chinese population centers and separated from China by the Himalayas as well as vast empty lands. As such it can be considered a "far" power like the Central Asian states. It seems to me that it would make sense for China to stop squabbling with India over some barren rocks in the Himalayas, but they seem to be pressing hard for some reason. They've settled all their land borders except those with India and Bhutan (which is due to shared border with India, so really just India), so this is puzzling to me.
The country that controls the Himalayas controls the snowmelt from the mountains. Himalayan snowmelt is responsible for feeding something like a third of the human population of earth. Global warming is reducing the amount of snowmelt as time goes by, so the water is becoming more valuable.
China is doing battle with the Muslims in their central and western provinces. I think that about 20-30% of the people in western China are Muslims (although only 1-2% of the overall population is), and China thinks it is a good idea if they "Sinicize" Islam so the people will know that they are to worship the Chinese government first, and Allah second. China has been removing domes and minarets from the mosques to help them get the idea. Thousands of ethnic minority Muslims defy Chinese authorities in defense of mosque
Two Chinese people and an American go on trial in New York for herding up Chinese nationals and persuading them to return to China to face persecution. US trial opens over alleged forced repatriation of Chinese abroad
That may be it. I'd imagine most of water right now is from downstream tributaries, but with global warming Tha might change. Right, the PRC's policy since founding is no military alliances. It's actually hard to find military alliances that doesn't involve the US or Russia since WWII, for obvious reasons.
China has been doing a lot of spying at Alaskan military bases, often posing as tourists to try to infiltrate the bases. Sometimes the "tourists" bring a drone to help them see the sights. The U.S. opens a case against suspected Chinese spies every 12 hours, on average. Suspected Chinese spies, disguised as tourists, tried to infiltrate Alaskan military bases
China is commissioning its third aircraft carrier, which is a major upgrade over the first two. It can carry more planes, and it has an electromagnetic catapult system. The system was undoubtedly stolen from the U.S., of course. China was going to put an electromagnetic system on its second carrier, but cancelled the system when the U.S. carrier Gerald Ford had difficulties with its EM catapults. Now that the Ford has solved those problems, so have the Chinese. Apparently, China has a direct connection to the U.S. military contractors' computer systems, and inspects the designs as soon as the American engineer saves the file he is working on. Very convenient for China. Very bad for world peace (and the U.S.). China’s new aircraft carrier will be dangerously close to matching US capabilities I don't know about the last sentence. I would probably withhold judgment on Chinese aircraft until Chinese military jets in general are proven in battle. Doing a reckless fly-by in front of a U.S. surveillance plane is much different than actual combat.
This is a gross display of pandering for profits imo. For Musk to absolutely know of the human and labor rights abuses embraced by China, and to willingly become part of propagating this ideology, is just sickening.
They downloaded a lot of our most advanced fighter files too. Very frustrating. Supposedly we have different modifications they don't. But it still is irritating
The strange thing is that China was until recently (and may still be) desperately trying to get their hands on an F-16 jet engine. Almost all of the Chinese military aircraft have under-powered engines. They have tried hiring arms dealers from various Asian countries to try to bribe U.S. repair shops to sell an old engine and other schemes, but they always got caught. So their technology theft is often incomplete. It probably helps that different companies or different divisions of the same company work on different parts of the same aircraft, so China doesn't get complete blueprints of the aircraft from one place. I agree that the U.S. has to do a better job of securing electronic files for military hardware. Hopefully, we let them find some intentionally flawed technology in addition to the good technology, and make them chase a few down rabbit holes.
You should re-read my post. It's not a recession that's concerning, it's the fact that industrial Germany is falling so quickly that a recession is occurring despite a boom in their service economy. German manufacturing orders skid 10.7% in March, far worse than forecast Look at their manufacturing PMI. It's literally at height of COVID levels right now. Germany Manufacturing PMI - May 2023 Data - 2008-2022 Historical - June Forecast And the UK? What does the UK make? They're almost wholly a services based economy. France actually sells a lot of Airbus planes to China. Their exports of planes and such are actually far greater than their exports of luxury goods to China. China's economy being in a "poor shape" is just a media narrative. That "poor shape" economy is gonna grow at 5+% this year. In all likelihood China will grow more than the G7 combined. They're also having very low inflation so they have a lot of room for fiscal stimulus. They just don't see the need for it right now and most likely will only take some mild measures like cutting banks' reserve ratios. You're swallowing way too much propaganda, so much so that you can brush off a regressing economy that is rapidly deindustrializing as "just a recession" while labeling an economy growing at a consensus estimate of 5.5% as in "poor shape."
While I'm sure they'll try to get whatever samples or information of our military systems, it's unlikely that they'd try to copy a F-16 engine. Fun fact, their most advanced aircraft engines are indeed based off of an American design, the CFM-56 to be exact. During our honeymoon period with the PRC in the 80's, we were actually working with them to develop an indigenous Chinese engine based off of the CFM-56, but that was abandoned after '89 for obvious reasons. They kept working at it, and now almost all of their advanced fighter jets are equipped with a WS-10 variant, which is developed based off of the CFM-56. As for the EMALS on their 3rd carrier, I think you got a couple things confused. Their 2nd carrier is an optimized copy of their 1st one which was a refurbished Soviet carrier. That carrier has a ski-ramp which is not really compatible with catapults. You're probably thinking about the original design for their 3rd carrier, which was reportedly originally planned to have steam catapults, but the design was later changed to use EM catapults. With that said, there is no evidence that they stole the Ford's EMALS design. China has far, far more experience with electromagnetic propulsion, seeing as how they have quite a few lines of Maglev trains of various design. The civil-military fusion there probably helped them greatly. In fact, their civil-military fusion in their whole naval development is quite astonishing. They're leveraging their increasingly dominant shipyards to churn out surface warships at a very rapid pace, and they've just built a gigantic submarine shipyard which will probably start churning out subs at a similar pace. I just read an article about how we may be able to counter this by leveraging South Korean and Japanese shipyards. They're the only shipyards (particularly SK ones) who can match China's scale. The issue is apparently that we want to protect our own shipyards as it supports some 400k+ jobs, so it's got a massive political hurdle to overcome. I think the fact that those East Asian shipyards are easily within Chinese conventional strike's reach is also an issue.
