Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "VisualPolitik EN" channel.

  1. Right, the PRC survives because it had to abandon the ideological purity of Communism. That's why critics are alarmed by Xi's push to return to its "roots", which hints that the Party is also losing its grip on an economic prosperity-driven legitimacy with little else but hateful nationalism to maintain unchallenged power.
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  2. Ironically at some point you'll be more likely to find it abroad, since Koreans who expatriate tend to be more religious and thus generally have larger families.
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  3. VisualPolitik originates from España 🇪🇸
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  4. We like to dramatize our challenges and faults, because that's also how we at least partially resolve them too.
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  5.  @eternalelysium4944  Actually the US had been reducing its military investments in the decade after the Soviet collapse. 9/11 turned that around.
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  6. We've been wanting to get out of the irreconcilable Middle East, but its centrality to shipping, aviation, and internet lines of communication make it impractical.
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  7.  @simonjones9455  The US has been on the "verge of collapse" since 1812, and various Panics, and the Civil War, and the anarcho-communist insurrection, and the Great Depression, and the assassination-a-month Civil Rights Movement. This "woke" vs MAGA battle is tame by comparison. America has already survived much worse.
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  8. ​ @beni4366 Which shows how long-tailed the extreme right has gotten, and that's especially concerning considering how America's "liberals" would be "mildly conservative" in any other developed nation.
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  9. Until suddenly you're unable to export American agriculture to Asia because the PRC closed off the Western Pacific to goods from "unfriendly" nations.
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  10. What's important is the QA in the process, which have to abide by strict international standards and not Chinese corner-cutting because Chinese airlines are flying Airbus and Boeing airframes overseas (including back to the EU and US).
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  11. It doesn't mean they'll ultimately end up on top, the USSR was similarly all about hard skills while neglecting the fuzzy emotional things humans actually care about. A less systemic example was the hubris of the early post-war US in thinking that nukes were simply a very efficient explosive until they realized how very very permanent its radioactive damage would persist.
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  12. The "charter" schools have to continuously compete against each other for real student achievement and thus public funding. Plus the teachers get subsidized intensive education themselves. None of this letting a church or other private organization set up a curriculum that's merely alternative to the government-run "failure".
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  13. Modern China seeks its pre-industrialization glory, desperately wanting to return to an age when the mass of muscle under its management meant superiority, ignorant of the fact that creativity combined with power tools have made that strategy obsolete.
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  14. That's probably why RCEP needed to be so weak, hardly better than the WTO baseline. Nobody trusts that China won't use it to exert political impositions later on.
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  15. What matters more is overall debt to GDP, along with how fast it's growing. America's grew by 10% across multiple administrations in the same last 10 years while China has doubled under their single Party, and China faces much greater challenges moving forward due to its own mistakenly tunnel-visioned policies and failure to generate trust in its claims of "win-win" partnerships.
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  16. If anything Taiwan should be first, since they're the lynchpin of both US allies and free movement of global trade in Asia, while also being fairly inexperienced with actual combat and softened by decades of a deceptive "peace dividend" with the Mainland.
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  17. Have you ever noticed that STEM folks make for horrible managers and often don't last long as politicians? It's because the strong technical focus usually ignores the things people actually care about. This is why leadership positions get ironically filled by those who studied stuff like art and history.
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  18. Did he ever have them? He managed to bankrupt a casino and other ventures multiple times.
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  19. You can thank Putin for that, along with Xi.
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  20. How so? China relies on the US for food and other raw materials for its industries. Cutting off China (and especially convincing some of our other friends to do the same) would force them to quickly empty their treasury ordering from alternative markets. Combine that with actual combat in the East and South China Seas scaring off civilian ships, and the PRC would implode in unrest as cities go dark and food prices skyrocket while the Chinese people wonder how come their only child disappeared on deployment.
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  21. Right, the last time China showed formidable naval prowess was like the Ming Dynasty. It'd be interesting to see how well the PLA Navy would perform damage control under fire, especially since most of their "warships" lack effective air defense and would be vulnerable to even cheap guided bombs.
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  22. Probably not. Chinese people aren't as brainwashed and infantilized as North Koreans (who generally would sacrifice themselves for the glory of Kim and the Korean race), and the deaths/disappearances of so many only-sons could incite open revolt against the Party now that those families have no legacy left to lose.
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  23. If it can afford them, along with the network of long-range sensors needed to keep the missile on target. Hypersonics are _expensive_. Meanwhile the US just came out with a bolt-on guidance kit that can handle moving targets (ships, tanks, etc) for its hundreds of thousands of dirt cheap gravity bombs... Russia apparently exhausted its stockpile of precision guided munitions already.
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  24. 13:28 If you're gonna be speaking a lot of foreign names, at least try to pronounce them properly. 현대 sounds like "hyun-day".
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  25. We should also look into raising registration fees on heavy vehicles -- the formula for estimated road wear involves the fourth power of average vehicle weight. This will help to get EV owners to pay their fair share, as their curb weights are surprisingly heavy.
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  26. China is facing a downward spiral of aging, household debt, soil pollution, emptied seas, and endemic corruption. If anything it's the West that can sit back and wait for China to peak in the next couple decades.
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  27. It's concentrated, not fragile. The USN has wayy more experience giving and taking hits in real hostilities.
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  28. Right, it takes the replacement of experience and mindset to make the changes durable, which unfortunately involves a lot of physical burials over time.
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  29. That seems to be happening, but absorbing the regular army could make the IRGC so powerful that they can start formulating state-level policies and strategies independent of the Ayatollah. There's rumors that the PLA in China (who are in this situation now that the ROC Army got ejected to Táiwān) have begun doing so, and that the CPC has to constantly watch their own army more than ever.
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  30. The Mountain Pass Mine in CA recently reopened after renovations that fixed its earlier pollution issues, and within two years went from 0 to 15% of the world's output. Next year its refinery should be fully operational, cutting China out of the loop for ore processing and giving the world a new cleaner alternative for rare earth elements.
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  31. Which is unfortunately controversial there because they often see it as some sort of genocide to limit family sizes by any means, even though they're spending a lot more of their limited wealth juggling resources between many kids and leaving little to invest on improving individual productivity and developing reliable market connections.
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  32. Correction: Republicans, through their policy of isolationism and disengagement.
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  33. HK was a safe Western portal into China, and I doubt Shànghǎi will attract foreign currency to the same extent. If anything, China is losing a major way of attracting overseas investments by closing down the HK gateway.
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  34. The PRC has had a horrible kill-death ratio for the objectives they achieved against a foreign force. In fact their modernization efforts may have been inspired by the Gulf War, where the curb stomping the Iraqi Army received didn't bode well for the PLA who were using similar equipment and doctrine.
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  35. Not to mention 50~100 years of production followed by thousands of years of nuclear waste afterward ☢️
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  36. Peak productivity still hasn't changed from the 25~65 age range, and automation is much more easy to replicate among the competition. A market where the bulk of the labor force is past its prime isn't as promising as an equally automated alternative who is in its midst or at least upcoming within a couple decades.
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  37. The US military provides the GI Bill to veterans, which pays for tuition and a stipend for attending higher education (not only academic university, but also expensive trainings like flight school). There's also additional Tuition Assistance for those actively serving and doing courses in their off time. The education benefits is by far the biggest bait to enlist new recruits.
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  38. Tom Clancy wrote "The Bear and the Dragon" going over this scenario, though it's a pretty fantastic one 🧚‍♀️
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  39. Which only makes China going to war even more risky for civilians, since their scope of "threats" is much wider. All it takes is a couple tankers to be mistaken as warships and suddenly nobody will be willing to sail anywhere near potential Chinese crossfire with the food and fuel China itself relies on.
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  40. I'd imagine if Russia invades and keeps the upper hand, Ukraine could petition for NATO after publicly ceding Donbass and Crimea to Russia... who will then have the tough choice of accepting or forcing them to be independent, which then raises troubling ideas in other parts of the Federation.
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  41. No, Canada isn't part of this arrangement. They're within the Five Eyes intelligence sharing group, although their focus is primarily on Russia.
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  42. The US has been the leader of precision weaponry since the end of WWI, when we realized we're not the type to accept millions of dead men in an mass mobilized slugfest. Hence the focus on instrument-compensated bombsights, guided missiles, smart bombs, drone observers, and increasingly automated weapon systems to ensure each shot renders the intended effect to clear the path for our soldiers, organizations, and ultimately diplomats.
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  43. There's wide discrepancies in China's purported census data and other counts like hukou registrations and school enrollments, totaling millions of Chinese who don't actually exist. The true number is probably closer to 1.2b, making China second to India by headcount.
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  44. Third one looks to be East Asia, likely cross-Strait or in Korea.
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  45. The US arguably still holds China's fate, just as it did since the end of the Opium Wars: empire-ending Western education, WWII materiel, abandonment of the KMT, switch of diplomatic recognition, support against the Soviets, introduction to global markets, allowing integration into the world economy post-1989, and constant infusion of knowledge and dollars. The Mainland also relies on the US for agriculture and open sea trade to import cheap food -- Americans can adapt to digital hacks and expensive gadgets, the PRC can only ignore polluted meals and empty stomachs for so long.
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  46. Turn against Australia? The Aussies are prolific in the expeditionary use of its army, and are consistently lauded for how well they do in combat.
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  47. Not to mention these include the Defense Attaché liaison offices at the 100+ US embassies, as well as military reservations that between exercises are merely empty fields.
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  48. Defending Taiwan will be a mostly technical battle of ships and planes, which America has the upper hand in both equipment and experience deploying, and very little opportunity for press camera embeds and plainclothes combatants. If anything this plays into the US military's strengths.
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  49. Huh, always wondered why Panama was a top choice of a business base. I've heard similar with the Russians and Seychelles.
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  50. Right, a lot of folks don't realize how difficult it is to store hydrogen. Pure heat is more straightforward and efficient, so I'd wager we'd see molten salt solutions before hydrogen ones.
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