geikei

They don't seem to be anywhere near the top, at least in the last decade. Dont know if it decreased even more or not Sadly Vietnam seems to be..

Either way as for sanctions they pretty much never do that in their modern history, for better or worse. Doupt its gonna change now. At least in any overt way

wonder who is by far the world leader in solar panel&tech production and also ignores westrern sanctons on Syria

Also its beyond meaningless when you consider that at most idk 3% of the population of Xinjiang and 1% in Tibet is considering themselves to be occupied by China and are remotely likely to participate or aid in an armed struggle against the CPC, even at the best possible conditions

Like sure, Tibetians have a right to engage in an armed anti-colonial struggle or kickstart an indeginous liberation movement ok. You probably couldnt even fill an NBA stadium with those willing so what does that leave their lib free Tibet dreams. The CIA was trying to recruit and instigate an anti-chinese sessesionist movement last century and they gave up because they couldnt find enough willing Tibetians to get the project off the ground. And they had a budget of dozens and dozens of millions to pay off poor ass Tibetians and they still couldnt find any fertile sessesionist sentiment. And thats on record

China doesnt decide what EU countries to get bold with, they are responding to interest and oppeness to investing and collaboration from EU countries. They wont reject much. If Germany, Portugal or idk Italy were as or more willing then China would have the same engagment as them. Same with the ME that they work with a lot vs less so. Hungary being the less anti-China EU country or better put the EU country that tries to take a more balanced stance in the emerging multipolar world only reflects bad on the rest of the EU

One of the major disconnects between China’s financial class and the central govt right now is that the former got the message that the govt would protect them from the side effects of the controlled demolition of the real estate bubble through a surge of state financial support. They think that just because Xi wants to shift the financial system toward a more developed equities and bonds market to cover the finances of local governments that they would be the recipients of that restructuring and that measure for progress should be how quickly the govt directly pumps liquidity in their direction.

The chinese financial class thought that they could win the govt’s efforts to pivot the financial system because they believed the govt would have to bail them out with fresh credit injections while RE finance was dismantled. That the CPC was line brained enough that they wouldnt do anything too disruptive that would kill vibes for the stock market while also leavung them unprotected. And that fantasy being jilted is at the root of prevailing anger toward the govt. Every rich chinese's financial positions were built around real estate bets with those RE bets backing their equities portfolios, and since real estate based assets are getting repriced downward across the board in the correction they are becoming the main losers from multiple angles. They saw themselves as indispensable actors who the govt could not deny needing in this pivotal moment. What they forgot is the govt is engineering this transition for a future economy. And not for those who’ve already made enough money to gamble on stocks or speculate on real estate beyond owning the house they reside in. The hard reality for the financial class is the Chinese govt does not in fact consider incumbent financial actors as indispensable or in any way the focus group towards which future growth and prosperity will be directed towards. And since the whole restructuring has many years to go still they have to accept that this is the way things are gonna be from now on. Its maybe only just begining and they arent offered a "well just become somewhat less rich and restricted for only a couple of years and then things will again go your way and you will have new opportunities to do the same thing you were doing before in maybe a different way" deal.

Seeing the once "empty" slogan of "paying lip service to the ghost of socialism" - now being so materialy present that is held "responsible for China's malaise" is a remarkable change, isn't it?

To make @[email protected] post bellow on Gorbachev even worse i remembered this gem of Gorby straight up selling the GDR out ,Mitterand going "bruh what the fuck are you doing, lets support Honecker?" and Gorby being so excited to push ahead with the reunification that even Thatcher being like "shouldnt we slow down a bit?"

On the eve of the famous negotiations in Arkhyz regarding the future of Germany, Gorbachev, through his assistant Chernyaev, contacted Helmut Kohl and began to lament: “I have nothing to feed the people, give three or four billion deutschmarks, and in return you will get everything you need in Arkhyz.” This phrase contains all of Gorbachev. He took loans from the West and was ready to pay for them not only with the integrity of the community of socialist countries, but also with the existence of his own country.

In addition to the negotiations between Gorbachev and Kohl in Arkhyz, in December 1989 the Soviet leader met with French President Mitterrand in Kyiv. Mitterrand invited Gorbachev to fly to Berlin together to support Honecker. Gorbachev’s reaction: “If you want to fly, fly!” But I won’t fly.” I also remember how Thatcher suggested to Gorbachev not to resolve the issue with Germany solely personally, but to create a commission on this matter that would include England, France and the USSR. Thatcher feared that as a result of Gorbachev’s unification, the western part of the country would swallow the eastern, and instead of a single German nation, there would be an “Ossie-Wessie” conflict. Gorbachev, in my presence, reacted to the Iron Lady’s proposal in this way: “I don’t want to wash the British and French’s dirty laundry, but I will support the unification of Germany.” This is how Moscow surrendered the GDR, Honecker, and all the East Germans.

I know for sure that at the negotiations in Arkhyz, Helmut Kohl asked Gorbachev whether Moscow intended to somehow help Erich Honecker, the SED and the entire socialist elite of the GDR. Kohl clearly thought that Moscow intended to help its German generals. But Gorbachev answered him: “These questions are your internal matter, and you know better how to deal with whom.”

But Gorbachev’s decision to “surrender” the GDR was not his personal one. The decision to “surrender” the GDR was suggested to him in June 1989 by George Bush, when the Gorbachev couple were in Washington. On the eve of this historical “clue,” US First Lady Barbara Bush “processed” Raisa Maksimovna “just in case.” These women worked in a well-coordinated tandem on the eve of the collapse of the USSR. In order for Gorbachev to commit another betrayal, one thing was needed: for “dear Barbara” and Raisa Maksimovna to put pressure on the painful ambitions of Mikhail Sergeevich, and he, from the consciousness of his own historical importance, swelled like a soap bubble. In such an inflated state, he received his Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. This was both payment for the betrayal of the socialist bloc, and an advance for the already planned and agreed collapse of the USSR

Смотрите оригинал материала на сайте "Совершенно секретно" : https://www.sovsekretno.ru/articles/banda-chetyryekh-i-gorbachyev/

To not put talk past each other i wanna note that the general question that policy decisions and directions depend on still stands?. How high or low is Chinese HH consumption actualy? Is it 35% or 55% ? If it isnt actually noticably lagging other developed asian or even western nations when calculated in the same manner then one can say "china must develop its consumer base" all they want but there actually be much less room to do so compared to the assumed one if HH consumption was actualy noticably weak. Its a different thing to try and bring a notably weak consumption to developed nation averages vs trying to bring a maybe somewhat bellow average consumption to gargantuan US consumerist brain levels. If the latter is needed for China to become a internal circulation and non exporter then i question the validity of such project or even its feasibility in timescales of 1-2 decades, or if it could have done something about it earlier on.

https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/d3/ae/c19095a185262/page.htm And its not just random unnamed bloggers. Actual research in China seems to be approaching these figures again and breaking down the pocibility of underestimating Chinese HH consumption compared to other countries due to accounting and economic particularities

As for dept i dont think household borrowing has played an important role in the increase of Chinese household consumption. Also the aggregated figure may tell us absolutely nothing about how distressed the average household balance sheet is given the income and regional inequalities in China. It could very well be an upper middle class problem and for housholds and individuals who leveraged a bit too much on the property market and speculation. Those people were gonna be losers in any restructuring and deflation, controlled or not, of the property sector either way. Its less of an issue if Hh debt going up mostly as a function of mortgage penetration for higher income earners but not coming at the expense of a savings or consumption (but also not financing consumption) for the average houshold. If we want to make this argument looking at income cohort specific data is the way to go if you have them available. And its something that seems to be plateauing and even dropping either way in the last couple of years while consumption continues to grow. But Overall households seem well above water in total net wealth with healthy balance sheets.

Doesnt seem thats holding back household spending and deposits also can’t grow (along with consumption) following income and gdp gains if debt servicing is what’s eating peoples incomes.

@[email protected] might be interested in this article since they often have noted that a big problem for China is its relatively weak Household consumption

https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/consumption-in-china-is-it-really-that-bad/

According to this perspective HH consumption in China is under-reported ,or more accuratly undercaclulated when comparing to numbers from other countries cause it uses different calculation methods, a soviet accountring approach that is, along with some other unique parameters tothe whole equation. And that if calculated in the same way as the HH consumption numbers of other countries China's household consumption as a % of GDP is actualy already in line or above its developed neighbours

Another thing i found that doesnt agree that Chinese HH consuption notably underperforms is that it has tracked the growth of GDP for since the GFC. Which is what would be healthy and expected. IMF data:

So while Chinese HH consumption has room to grow and is probably weak, maybe its already performing fine-ish enough that there isnt enough room to make China an internal circulation economy by boosting domestic consumption and there isnt enough internal consumption potential to absord its manufacturing and industrial capacity. And that the CPC itself cant really boost HH consumption significantly enough even if it tried its darnest

Actualy i heard its also a result of the CPC cracking down and bustinga lot of online scamming operations recently that where quite widespread and damaging especially in more remote parts of china and opperating with ethnic chinese in neighbouring countries like Myanmar . Thousands fled through and from neighbouring countries to excape the law and the US is a natural destination. Especially if they made some money already

30%+ of Israel's oil imports in the last couple of years have been Kurdish oil from Iraq (which includes Syrian oil thats exported to Iraqi Kurdistan from the US-SDF controlled oil fields in Syria)

It could be based if it would be anti-finance Chinese youth but Weibo is a more liberal site comperatively and im pretty sure lot of these complaints are Tier 1 City white collar ppl who saw almost no wage increase this last year are getting a bit "squeezed" with the property sector deleveraging and property values dropping (especially in tier 1 cities) and stock not performing (the horror) and just want more "free market" and liberalism. Blue collar wages and rural/tier 2 and bellow wages are performing much better and those workers feel better about some prices dropping ,have much more to gain by the property sector course correction and dont give much shit about line going down

Nah there isnt a fervent anti-China nationalist mythology and hatred among the Taiwanese at nearly the degree that has been constructed in Ukraine for a century now. Much different cultural mindsets too. Taiwan would fold socialy in any attempt to have them fight any attritional, mass mobilization war against the Chinese. Ukraine had hundreds of thousands of fascists frothing in the mouth for Russian blood with penetration at every level of politics and civil society , let alone the army. And a russophobic population ready to jump into "this is an existential war that we must fight till the last man" narrative fed to them. There wont be any mass ability or willingness to die by the tens of thousands on a war against the mainland. Hell they would probably fold after 2 weeks of Naval blockade of Oil/Gas/coal if the US doesnt try to break it, let alone fight on trenches on the beaches