Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Lei's Real Talk"
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"Gasifying coal" is not new technology. It's in fact been about 25 years since the first coal seam gas wells have been drilled. Why China, with it's large coal reserves, has not been producing natural gas from wells drilled into coal seams, is beyond me. Why has it been canvassed now in China, so much later than in countries who have been producing from coal seam gas wells for at least 20 years? Except that large companies, particularly large energy companies in China, are government owned and controlled. Energy costs (extracted from China's energy resources inside it's territory) also have tended to be fixed in price by the government. This is different to other countries and OECD fossil fuel exporters who use private companies to extract and sell energy resouces on the open market. With market competition, there is more scope for innovation and take up of new technologies by these private companies, partially because of efficiency. Hence, the rest of the developed world, using free market methods, are far in advance in this regard to extracting coal seam gases and producing liquid fuels from coal in comparison with China.
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It"s a big government model. The CCP owning everything, every economic asset or asset nationalization. This had ironically been practised (by a much lesser degree than China) in Australia from the 1940s to the 1980s when assets such as telecommunication, railways, power generation, urban water utilities and banking (to a lesser extent) were nationalised, I.e owned and run by Federal and State governments. This however, failed to protect the Australian economy from recession and unemployment cycles, and being subject to energy costs imposed internationally, such as the 1970s OPEC oil price shock. Also, the government controlled industries were subject to bureaucratic control, were less efficient than enterprises in private hands (the technology and infrastructure stagnated under government control to a certain extent) and lead to price fixing in those industries (e.g. power generation) which somewhat failed to take into account the actual market costs to consumers and infrastructure running costs. Some of these problems were attributed to the Australian dollar fixed at a certain ratio to the US dollar in that time period, which lead to inflation in the 1970s and 1980s coupled with frequent recessions; alleviated by the Federal Treasurer Paul Keating in the 1980s, allowing the Australian dollar to float against the US dollar which unlocked international outgoing trade barriers and balance of payments, ten years after this policy was put in place. The Australian economy now has not had a recession since the early 1990s and the GFC in 2008 was hardly noticed here. The CCP state planned economy basically ignores market demand, and goes much further than any Australian government's did in the 1940s to 1980s in state owned assets (as did the UK before Margaret Thatcher become PM). Australia at that time (1940s-1980s) remained a capitalist country with only limited state assets control, but the CCP has taken this to an extreme degree and continues to intensify state economic monopolization of everything. This leads to 90% or more of all economic assets of everything (including, dare I say it, the people of China in a captive state slave system), being in the hands of one party state (at a national and provincial level). Because of the economic crises at the provincial level government that even the Central government can't cover up completely to the outside world, the Central government will be likely to seize the provincial government assets and the bad debt along with it. The world, and the United States in particular, now sees CCP China as a state monopoly, subject unilaterally to political fiat decisions by the dictator and the Politbureau, and hence investing in China or holding capital assets there (such as factories) is high risk investment which increasingly seldom makes a profit when the Central government again makes a policy statement which meddles in the economy, or in the supply of energy, affecting their business holdings. The actual collapse of the economy of China, plotted and put into place by the economic plans of the dictatorship have a dire effect in the state monopoly system, also makes a lie about the growth trend of China where economic contraction coupled with price squeeze and small business failures for the average Chinese consumer is ongoing and will last at least a decade long. Finally, the demographics of China will fall off a cliff within the next decade (thanks to the One Child policy) also drastically stagnating and contracting the economy of China, even more than the economy of Japan did. The future of growth for large countries lies in places like India, not China in the next 20 years time.
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I have doubts that North Korea can field 100,000 troops even in a year. All these soldiers will need logistics supplying from Russia and North Korea. NK is very poor (even in the army, thanks to the narcissistic corruption by 7 decades of Kims), and Russia gives them very basic and insufficient rations such as food, water and medical supplies.
Furthermore, NK soldiers are not trained or equipped in combating drones and will be in a deadly battlefield space in Ukraine. They will be cannon fodder only, which is Russia's real intention and a win for China (as Kim Jong-un will be snubbed by his allies by his failings, and China thinks NK is getting too uppity).
However, when the NK soldiers realize this, they might revolt on the borders of Russia and Ukraine, complicating all stakes for the Russians.
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The CCP knows that EU is a confederation, not a nation state. It is actually a collection of ancient states that warred nearly constantly with each other over a millennia, until recently. The EU is a confederation where these states have loose political agreements and more binding economic ones, and each state is a democracy (Turkey would like to join the EU, but it's not a democracy). China despises and underestimates the EU, because of the CCP's revanchist position that a few countries in Europe had colonial empires until the recent past and these empires exploited China, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century which is partially true. What the CCP underestimates is Europe is the ancient centre of the Western world and largely of Western culture (Marxism was a counter-enlightenment philosophy that created the CCP; culturally the CCP is German), and that some of the best science in the world is still carried out in some countries in Europe. Also, the CCP tendancy to agglomerate facts is blindsided by the many poor rural people it has neglected, while in Europe the average person is freer and considerably better off than the average Chinese, regardless of the EU member country. I think Chancellor Scholz's visit to China was a mistake and he was pushed there by his own big business lobby. At any rate, people who understand Chinese realized the humiliating degree of lowly standing that the Chancellor was subjected to in his recent visit to Beijing. Germans as a whole are a cultured and well educated people, and they won't forget that humiliation in a hurry.
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The Arkensan or the Arsensaw? I have some theories about the Commie build and crewed ship "The Progressive" sank, like the Titanic, on it's maiden voyage; 1. Naming the ship; "Progressive" also means to make places, when the Progressive didn't even make it to the next port. It's Murphy's Law; for example, calling a ship " unsikable" and thus it sinks as soon as it's hull has left the slipway. You need to name a ship after a princess or the ship designer's daughter, then it will be unsinkable. 2. Faking the hull (speeding up the build process) with paper mache instead of steel. A great idea in principle, except the small problem that getting paper mache wet again turns it to mush. I've heard of stupider things being down under Mao's name, so this is entirely, possible. 3. Crewing it with revolutionaries. Now, I understand how the CCP loves Reds and won't trust any filthy capitalist running dogs to steal the ship and never be seen again, So let's crew it with die-hard revolutionaries armed to the teeth, including that box of old grenades put next to the hull at the bottom of the ship.. oh crap.
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None of what the PLA colonel said, makes much strategic sense except to strengthen the South China Sea with bases on coral atolls. This leads to a force multiplier effect on conventional warfare in the South China Sea, assuming these bases are bristling with anti-air and anti-ship missiles. Also the PLA can deploy squadrons of warplanes quickly to these island atoll bases from Southern China air bases in a crises, adding to the force multiplier affect and risk to USN carriers operating there. However, when I heard by the interviewed ex-PLA colonel that the PLA might deploy tactical missile strikes against US carrier fleets, in this scenario, I knew that the US has won already if tactical nuclear missiles were used by the PLA (additionally, you do not need a nuclear missile to sink a supercarrier; conventional anti-ship missiles can just as effectively do the job). Almost certainly in retaliation to such an egregious attack, the US nuclear strike submarines in the area will deploy tactical missile strikes against all the PLA bases in the South China Sea (they can do this as far away as East of Japan). A nuclear strike will severely damage these PLA bases in the South China Sea (issues with having fixed military bases), and render them inoperable for a least a period of time (even missiles stored deep in bunkers on these island attol bases will be very difficult to deploy by personnel operating in a highly radioactive environment). In this hiatus of inoperative PLA bases, the remaining US carriers can dominate surface action, sinking many PLAPN ships (undefended by the missing base assets like warplanes), and attack air and naval bases in Southern China. I will call that a very dangerous pyrrhic victory for the PLA and the CCP.
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Dr Shi Zhengli is a prominent international virologist and an expert in SARS-like viruses. She is contraversial because in 2020 she admitted that her research group (that she chaired as director) was working on a way to test whether bat coronavirises could be "modified" to cross infect species before the outbreak of Covid19, in my opinion, a very dangerous and highly risky experimental pursuit especially if the target animal is a primate. She denied that this was "gain of function" against humans, and that the Covid19 virus outbreak originated from a biolab in Wuhan. However, being also a government scientist, Dr Zhengli is also complicit in the politics of the CCP, and she has acted with secrecy and circumspection in regards to the total scope of microbiological pathogen research that the CCP no doubt has been secretly carrying out and she is highly likely at least to be aware of. In a more honest age, we would call "gain of function" germ warfare. Dr Zhengli is beyond being forced to front an international medical ethical board and answer questions relating to "gain of function" research, but her American and British colleagues researching "gain of function" in SARS virusus in China (e,g. Dr Peter Daszak), when we can find them, probably don't have the protection of a powerful totalitarian government to protect them from fronting a hearing and uncovering a dangerous truth, which is still a hair-trigger risk.
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Lying, corruption, theft, graft and abuse of power. No wonder the CCP is collapsing under it's own weight of enormities. On the way up, civilization is lead by upright, frugal and skilled people who control their own lusts for the greater good. On the way down, lust and power abuse become endemic. This is not just in China BTW (late Roman Empire), however China is already there now, and has been there before historically as well in it's long history (late Tang and Qing Empires for example). The real issues are the enemy from within, not the enemy from without. The enemy from within is not just your compatriots and family members in your society, but also yourself. Lose a generation of people to the miserable consequences; I pity the youth of China these days.
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The concept of "Unrestricted warfare" is highly dangerous because it posits near unthinkable actions as nuclear strikes, chemical weapons strikes and biological warfare (we got a low dose of biological warfare with the Covid pandemic), as being on the table of possibilities. Unrestricted Warfare runs all the way in the spectrum of warfare from low level cyberattacks and flying drones over enemy territory (we've recently seen that on a Kinmen Island) to all out nuclear weapons attacks. The political aim is to make the enemy fear retaliation and for a demoralising effect. The CCP, being the weaker but rising military power to the United States, will try low level (due to the low risk of escalation) attacks first because the target country will unlikely to respond over this, except sail warships more frequently through the Taiwan Straight. The mistake is that at the high end of Unrestricted Warfare, the enemy (which is likely to be a democracy), will not escalate the same attack, such as deploying a major nuclear strike of cities over 500,000 and military and industrial sites of value in China in relation of one or a few of it's cities being nuked (or possibly that of it's allies) because of the eggregious level of attack made. One nuclear attack by China on another country and the gloves are completely off by democratic nuclear powers; it was what kept the peace during the First Cold War. At this level of warfare intensity, no one worries that the punishing effects of radiation fallout on the world's ecosystems will likely to make the entire human race extinct in a few months. No one wins a nuclear war, but the United States, or any other attacked ally, will not simply take it to save humanity. The doctrinal lawlessness of Unrestricted Warfare paradigm may end the CCP in a nuclear conflagration, but it can and will do utmost harm and destruction to the rest of the world. Thus, it is a potentially a nihilistic instrument for total Ragnarok level destruction.
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On a purely military basis, i will compare the CCP (or the PRC) to the military and scientific achievements of the past Soviet Union. Both these countries were and are very similar; both are founded on Marxist-Leninist ideology and are large countries in Eurasia. But the Soviet Union was a superpower, while the PRC is not and probably now never will be. Why is that? 1. The Soviet Union occupied Eastern and central Europe in 1945. This enabled them to put puppet governments into many Eastern European counties in a neo-colonialist fashion. China has not had a collapsing or client government on it's border (except North Korea) to enter into a predatory relationship with, but recently it has gained influence and neo-colonial status with Myanmar and Cambodia (Pakistan is a little too unstable for this). 2. China purged all academics, doctors, engineers and scientists during Mao's time. This lead to a massive brain-drain in China that lasted 30 years, and the PRC fell behind in technology with the rest of the world. While the Soviet Union had it's purges of academics during Stalin's reign, it was not as systematic and thorough as what happened under Mao, and those Soviet engineers and scientists who survived these purges of Stalin got to work under Khrushchev, and made the Soviet Union a forerunner in rocketry and space science in the 1960s, This enhanced the Soviet Union's superpower status (also with more ICBMs in total than NATO alliance countries by the 1970s), the Soviet Union was a genuine superpower for 40 years. The PRC has a total of about 900 nukes as we speak (never anywhere close to the Soviet Union at it's peak which had about 3000 nukes). While the PLA is now recently busy building up it's nuclear weapons stockpile, it has to produce several hundred more to be in parity with the United States. You know, massive destruction is a deterrant and even more massive destruction an even greater one (this is the Nihilistic logic of the Cold War 1, and we are now in Cold War 2). 3. The world has shifted in technology basis since the 1960s. In that decade, intergrated cicuits or chips had just been invented. Industrialized countries, like the Soviet Union at that time could all manufacture electronic components, needed for modern warfare. Now, all electronics requires silicon chips, and the most advanced belong to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the United States (the United States designs chips, it does not make them. Companies like IBM, Intel, Apple and NVIDIA). 4. The PLAN has currently the most number of warships, but not in tonnage compared to the USN, and it's carriers are second or third rate, even in comparison to Japan's. Definitely no comparison to the nuclear powered 11 supercarriers the USN currently owns (even the 40 year old Nimitz class supercarriers are better). Also, the US has roughly 2.5 times the number of 4th or 5th generation warplanes than the PLA or PLAN; more advanced and more stealthy. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had more and better tanks than NATO (until the 1980s when Western countries starting building tanks that had Cobham armour and better main guns). And in terms of warplanes, apparently the Soviet Union during the Cold War had 3 times the numbers of warplanes than NATO had, although this figure is difficult to verify.
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As usual, a good report. And again facial recognition cameras are a horrible and ever-amplifying tool of complete repression and oppression. This turns China into an enormous maximum security prison. Chinese children born today are like kids delivered by mothers in jail. Like Nineteen Eighty Four, it's very difficult to hide from such a system, let alone overthrow it. Thus it's now impossible to overthrow the CCP through organized social insurrection by the Chinese people. Like cancer or an incurable parasite, the Chinese will simply have to endure the pain of CCP rule while it rots out their insides. Insurrection is suicide, no matter how clever the instigators. The only thing that could possibly bring down the CCP now is 1. Overthrow of leadership and open dynastic warfare at the very top including a coup by military leadership, 2. Incompetent leadership and/or 3. Complete economic collapse and mass starvation of the Chinese people or 4. International world war and extreme chance taking with hostile external powerful countries ranged against the CCP, whereby China's external food and energy supply is blockaded or destroyed (you don't have to be super powerful to do this, because of China's vulnerable supply geography, possibly India alone could do this). I think point 1 is the least likely as Xi has got his internal opponents nailed down, despite their combined hatred of him, and the military (at this time) seems outwardly loyal to Xi. I think points 2 to 4 are linked and this is the most likely or combined way the CCP will bring itself down. Not by organized revolution at home. The face recognition cameras see to that.
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Both Bushes' were naive about the CCP. Similarly with Nixon, Kissinger and Clinton. The CCP will be a dark age period in the long history of China. People don't understand the politics of the twentieth century. It's a history of the collapse of the traditional imperial or feudal regimes of Eurasia (in roughly the second to forth decade of the twentieth century), and replacement with authoritarian, ideological totalitarian dictatorship outside the Anglosphere and also some other countries in Western Europe who had undergone revolution a century before (France). This largely happened both in Europe and China (Fall of the Qing Dynasty 1912, Soviet Union 1917, Fascist Italy 1922, Showa Japan 1926, Nazi Germany 1933, Nationalist Spain 1939 and finally Communist China in 1949). Some rise of these dictatorships were preceeded by civil war, others were quicker and more bloodless. This resulted in a political and ideological divide in the form of government (democracy versus ideological dictatorships) which rapidly precipitated World War 2 (World War 2 started in China in 1931, in Europe in 1939). This ideological divide still continued in the Cold War after 1945. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 did not end the Cold War in the minds of the Communist CCP; it intensified and was codified doctrinally by works such as "Unrestricted Warfare" by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui 1999 (two PLA colonels). Works like these were largely ignored by Western scholars in strategic defence, but perhaps the language and ideological barrier helped ignorance as well. Thus ideological divide provides a potent and ongoing economic and political division between the democratic West and Communist China, as it has done for a century, and will continue into the near future. The CCP understands this divide much better than the Americans and Wall Street investors, but I think the US government is now slowly, but finally catching on.
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