Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "China Observer" channel.

  1. Wolf Warrior again. I think the CCP's sabre rattling is a sign of weakness, not strength..
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  2. This exposes the cracks and defects in online selling platforms and merchants who subscribe to this form of selling, lose out big time. The economic malaise in China in deep and awareness of it is disjointed by the people of China because they keep trusting the words of the government. The government lies outrageously, particularly on economic growth, pure and simple.
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  3. Alibaba and the 400,000 thieves 😂
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  4. Supermarkets in Australia are stable businesses in large towns and cities. It is rare that these food retailers go out if business. Taken over by other corporations and business buyouts; yes, collapse (like the Franklin group in the early 2000s), because an unsustainable business model and over-leveraged credit also yes. But collapse because of drop in consumer demand (except in a few rare places) is almost unheard of. The economic collapse in supermarkets appears to be the case in China in First Tier cities (what is happening in other regional areas and cities in China may be worse), because of low consumer demand. Foreign retail companies are leaving because of poor profits, relatively high overhead costs and less Chinese consumers. The CCP's asinine recent anti-espionage law also targets all foreign businesses in China, so this is also a push factor for foreign companies. Coupled with high unemployment and wage drops for the middle class in China, including erstwhile small business owners who used to be consumers too, when the economy was doing well. China's large population is no longer an asset to it either. With a rapidly aging population due to the One Child Policy, forceably enacted for 40 years since the 1970s has made China's Japanization demographic and economic decline in the 1990s, now similar but also considerably worse than Japan's. Unlike Japan which got rich before it grew old, China overall will not even enjoy this benefit.
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  5. The Soviets did the same in the 1960s by diverting water away from the Amu Darya or Oxus river in Central Asia for cotton irrigation, which fed water annually to the Aral Sea (previously a giant freshwater lake, despite the "sea" suffix). This was the Soviet's, "mankind's engineering to conquor nature", a similar sentiment echoed by the CCP over their even larger hydrological construction, the Three Gorges Dam. By 2000, more than two thirds of the Aral Sea had shrunk, the remaining water was too salty for the native fish to live in and the previously thriving fishing industry on it had vanished and in the semi-arid climate of the steppe, the exposed lake bed of millions of hectares had become exposed and a dust-bowl harbouring toxic levels of pesticide residue (such as DDT whose toxic bi-products remains in the soil for over 300 years) had become airborne with the dust, affecting the health of everyone living in that area. How is the Three Gorges Dam going to environmentally play out? Too early to tell if it's going to be a disaster as bad or worse than the Aral Sea, but time will tell.
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  6. Did the taxi driver got paid due to his long journey? If headstrong teenagers tragically do not want to listen to good advice, then many of them will be abused or murdered. I've heard of this wilful blindness and deafness, all for greed.
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  7. I've heard of these large scale organized crime operations in Myanmar and Thailand. It's likely to be sanctioned and backed by the CCP, by and large. Some high officials in the CCP must be profiting from it. It does detract from Thailand's reputation.
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  8. During the Mao era, manners was considered bourgeois and class enemy interactions and was purged from society. Their yokel behaviour says it all..
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  9. China's high speed rail is indeed "leading the world" in why an economic and environmental feasibility study should be made before building each line. The HSR in the densely populated East and South fringe of China made some economic sense, and two lines there were running at a profit. The other HSR lines are running at a continual loss since inception. Eventually, much of the HSR rolling stock and infrastructure will have to be adandoned or broken up and sold for scrap, which is a huge waste of manpower and money. In feasibility studies, HSR cannot freight much heavy goods, so is less economically efficient than standard rail. The HSR is again part of the large scale vanity projects by the CCP (a childish grandiose dream), that creates massive debt or environmental problems (like the Three Gorges Dam). The CCP has failed to learn brutal economic lessons from the time of Mao, and is doomed to fail.
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  10. In Australia for a service professional, for example engineers, the salaries in the private sector are substantially higher than in the government. This is true for all professions, other than doctors as Australia has largely socialized medicine.
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  11. I thought the Ponzi-scheme real estate industry in China has already collapsed. I think it's unsalvagable. It's much worse, per capita, than the US Prime Mortgage debacle during the 2008 GFC. Millions of these incompleted highrise apartment concrete shells will rot in the weather. Even well built highrise buildings (and these in China are mostly not well built), cannot withstand rusting of the concrete steel ties if exposed to weather for very long, due to incompletion of outside weatherproof cladding and glass in the windows. The rusting weakens the load bearing walls.
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  12. Vietnam was quietly building a maritime empire in the South China Sea, while the CCP's ships were busy distractively ramming the Philippines coastguard ships to test the response of their American allies. Well, well well 😮
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  13. Cavanagh can counter sue, if he's taken to court over this incident; 1. Uttering false accusations for a commercial gain. The CCP agents wanted to use that piano for a New Years' Gala in China, telecast by CCTV or another CCP media operation.. This is a commercially paid operation, for which they were collection a salary or commission by the CCP. They are in a public place and can be filmed or photographed, so asking for "image rights and to stop filming" from Cavanagh is a commercial request.. 2. Causing an affray for commercial gain. The repeated "don't touch her" yelling nonsense was just that. An act to encourage police officers to intervene on a non-offence. Had the act succeeded and drove off Brendan, then it was an affray for commercial gain.
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  14. Chinese manufactured cars, like all things made in China that is not under the supervision of foreign management in factories, such as Tesla in Shanghai, have a terrible build quality reputation. This is because of the prevailing culture in China manufacturing of cutting corners and cheapening components, or even installing fake components. This lesson of build quality and manufacturing quality control was learned as early as the 1950s in Japan and the 1980s in South Korea. The reputation of automobile brands from these two countries thus is high. China cannot hope to compete with the car making giants in Japan and South Korea without overcoming this hurdle of quality control, so poor build quality and hidden problems in their cars seems insurmountable in the corrupt CCP culture that permeates China. Even the Chinese prefer to buy the better foreign car brands, despite their increasingly erstwhile manufacturing strength in China.
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  15. Trams or streetcars have been successuly operating in Western cities for over 200 years, with electrified trams been developed in Germany since 1881. This is not new mass transit technology. The vehicles are called a tram car. They are good in medium to high density locations. They share lanes with road traffic, and have cheaper and lower platforms than trains.
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  16. Taiwanese and other foreign businesses in China. Strip the manufacturing plants and smuggle your own machines out of China (to avoid bureaucratic blockading). As for the buildings, keep the front lawns and gardens neat and tidy (for appearance sake), but lock the doors of the empty buildings.
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  17. China has installed more high speed rail lines than the rest of the world combined. This sounds like a feel good statement from the CCP, but actually it isn't. There are many problems associated with this; 1. With the massive rail network you would expect more accidents statistically than any other country. Assuming of course that the rail and train technology is the same as other countries, which it isn't (inferior and less safe). So the accident potential is worse. 2. Rail and train maintainence (which is all about safety) probably is going backwards in cash-strapped economy of China now, 3. Massive cost over-runs in China, as high speed train lines turn into a Grey Rhino. High speed trains line are expensive to build, carry far less freight than ordinary lines, and rely on high volume passenger numbers to remain profitable. Before the economic downturn, China was running into cost over-runs in the less profitable high speed lines. Now, all of them are running at a loss.
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  18. This is partly because of a weakness in Chinese consumer purchase power. In reality, much of China is a poor third-world economy with little purchasing power per capita. People in rural China are just lucky to get two square meals a day. The rural population of China still constitutes about half the total population. Less ruralized than in Mao Zedong's time and the CCP has urbanised much of China, but even in the cities of China now, borrowing has collapsed and people are poor and jobs are scarse. Dumping cheap shitty cars on the first world is a way of shifting the unwanted goods out of China for the population that has no capacity to purchase it.
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  19. In not a mechanical engineer, but the RPM speed of machine tools directly relates to the quality of their high speed bearings. Both Germany and Japan make high quality high speed bearings, something that China is seemingly unable to make or copy. This is because of industrial culture more than anything. Germans and Japanese engineers take a great deal of precision and care when designing and manufacturing these high speed bearing components, knowing the kinetic extremes these bearings go through, so they collectively do precise and careful work. This is similar with camera lenses. Both Germany and Japan have the best optics imaging quality lenses in the world. The same collective thirst for precision and quality engage optical engineers of both countries. And, unlike China, these specialists are well paid and have seniority management in the company. China in contrast, is always looking for short cuts and money saving operations in manufacturing. And they seemingly always copy instead of going through the hard work or original design and testing. With it's flawed industrial culture, Chinese engineers cannot hope to compete with the quality of German and Jspanese manufactured components.
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  20. I saw what the CCP did with their robotic dog rip-off of Boston Dynamics as it marched with a squad of policemen. It hit a minor slippery part on the pavement, flipped over and broke. This is not the terrain finesse acquired by similar robots that the CCP poorly copied from Boston Dynamics prevalent nearly 15 years ago. China copies; it cannot design or improve. It's equipment looks clean and new on the outside, but is substandard, shoddily designed and obselete on the inside. This fakery affect applies only to China, not to other advanced Asian countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. This is the "faking effect" of the CCP; a low-quality shortcut mindset that helps to push that ideological organisation into the historical garbage bin; along with the Nazis and Soviets.
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  21. What is the default rate of home buyers in China? 40%, 50%, 60% of buyers now with severe unemployment issues? The reaction of the CCP is predicable; screw the average mortgage payer until he she has no money left. 2. After defaulting, depress the credit score of the individual until he or she can't ride buses or go to hospital. If you are older this might be the end of you, but young people don't need hospital much. 3. Carry the real estate debt onto the next family generation. This would not be legal in the West, but this is the CCP we're talking about. 4. Destroy the building and wait for the next round of suckers to invest in building boom. This is least likely as the majority of people are not that stupid (for a generation). House buyers now will have much better price and supply choice.
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  22. Yes, because Taiwan is not Communist.
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  23. Vietnam has a kong history with China.. of being invaded. Vietnam also has had a long history of resisting these invasions (except cultural, like Rome some things that came out of China were appreciated), to the great annoyance of the Chinese. But like the Romans, the Chinese emipres of old and the current CCP indicate that China is an expansionist land power, and continually pushes at it's borders into smaller bordering states like Vietnam. The French invasion of the nineteenth century, and the Americans of the twentieth of Vietnam were eggregious, but not of prime importance to the Vietnamese, because once the whites were gone they were unlikely to return as hostile invaders, and their homelands are far away. Unfortunately, to the Vietnamese, China is awlawys there and continually grabbing parcels of land off of it. The massacre of 80÷ Vietnamese at the Battle of the Spratley Islands probably is another untold chapter of enormities against Vietnam that the Vietnamese have not forgotten. It would not suprise me, that when the CCP collapses, the Vietnamese may re-occupy the Paracel Islands and some parts of it's Northern provinces that China grabbed off it in tbe 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war. There may also be temptation for the Vietnamese to take over Heinan island, if they are strong enough at sea.
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  24. Domestic cycle is another word for a concept called economic autarky. Autarky didn't work well for the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany as both these countries applied it. In the Soviet Union, a huge country with plenty of resources, there was always a shortage of everyday goods and because the government fixed the price of these, these items were gone from shop shelves in a manner of minutes or sold for exorbitant prices on the black market. I remember seeing huge queues of Muscovites waiting to buy bread on the TV before the fall of the Soviet Union. In Nazi Germany, things were barely better even before the war started. Many consumer items were heavily rationed by the Nazis for ordinary Germans, including heating and cooking coal, and the Ruhr region in Germany had large numbers of coal mines. In modern times, the economies of countries are even more interlinked and specialized than they were 70 years ago. I guess Xi Jinping doesn't read history or basic market economics or thinks he has a better system of autarky. Like autarky in the former Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, it will simply impoverish the ordinary person in China even more.
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  25. Nonsense about the moon and sun's gravity affecting severe weather events in China? Sheer bunkum
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  26. Both China and Russia are expansionist land powers in Eurasia. Their imperial methodologies are quite similar; to push against and gobble up small or weakened nations on their borders. Harken to both the long conflicting history between Russia and Ukraine and China and Vietnam. As both countries are large, they may also eye off each other's territory, and like two large boxers, face off a stalemate. Russia has more propensity to a purely military solution than China, and has over 2000 nukes. China has less nukes, but a much larger population for manpower resources and has a stronger manufacturing sector than Russia. Thus they stalemate each other's power, but compliment each other evonomically; China needs Russia's food and petroluem and Russia needs Chinese manufactured goods since it is cut off from getting it elsewhere by sanctions. China might however, win in the long-run on the coveted North-East or Pacific Siberian Coast, because Putin is slowly bleeding the Russian people white in the Ukraine war.
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  27. Britain or more accurately the British Empire did not occupy Taiwan (previously called Formosa). The last foreign occupier of Taiwan was Japan. But the CCP has never occupied it.
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  28. The scenario of air launched anti-ship missiles launched from racks out of US transport planes en-mass is a bit far fetched. It might be deployed but with less numbers than suggested here. The CCP will attempt to wrest air superiority over Taiwan initially most likely, so it's ships can traverse the straight without being hit by air to surface-launched missiles from Taiwanese jets. It can be countered by 2 US supercarrier task forces steaming in a few hundred kilometres from the Taiwan straight. The CCP might attempt to sink these carriers with submarines or ballastic missiles, but now that the complete signature of the PLAAN subs are decoded, the USN has probably got a plan to counter that.
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  29. The Vietnamese look at current Chinese colonization (from below) of Laos, Cambodia and Mynamar and are determined not to go that way. Because of Vietnam's relatively large size, compared to these other countries, and it's long and cool relationship with China and the CCP (the last country the CCP waged a hot war on and got their asses kicked was Vietnam. This was in 1979), will keep Vietnam at relative arm's length from China by the government at Hanoi. The Vietnamese are generally correct; they treat the other asian powers (Japan, South Korea & Taiwan) and Western countries individually as equal to China. This is a smart move diplomatically.
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  30. I always wondered how a phone maker makes cars as well. This is the "winning" CCP business model, and exposes the nexus between the government and so-called "independent" Chinese corporations. Expensive "Potemkin" business models (with poor built quality) for immuture nationalist sentiment consumption. Just like the High Speed trains. No attempt at innovation and new technology innovation. All EVs (including Tesla) will be in museums of transport oddities soon.
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  31. Russia cannot confront all of NATO directly. Doing so finishes Russia within a year, despite it's size. China's allies are all quite weak; 3 out of 4 nuclear armed, yes, but collectively NATOs nuclear missiles match the number of the "Axis of Evil", only because of Russia. The Soviet Union came to an accord with NATO 35 years ago, under Gorbachev, ending the Cold War. Not just because Gorbachev was friendly to the West, but mainly because the Soviet Union was bankrupt and could not sustain (back then) cost of armament and miitary technology parity with the West with a moribund economy. The CCP launched it's military challenge too early to have an overwhelming buildup in ships and warplanes to challenge the US and it's allies (including some NATO allies). Even in the excess warships (counting hulls, not tonnage), the PLAN ships are not as technologically advanced as the US and Pacific allies and it's sailors are not as well trained. The CCP's idological desire to launch an attack on Taiwan is driven by 2 factors; 1. XI jinping's obsession about this and 2. The failed "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy act as a cover-up for causing the Covid19 pandemic out of Wuhan, China. These investigations are still stymied by the CCP and aggressive denial may be cover for guilt. Especially if "gain of function" germ warfare was pursued. Given the secrecy about this, and other coverups by the CCP such as the genocide of Uyghers in Xinjiang, and other concurrent Crimes Against Humanity by the CCP, we should certainly not trust the word or actions of the CCP these days.
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  32. There are many problematic and criminal government issues here; 1.Severe, long-lasting and dusruptive environmental pollution, both from the mining, refining and usage of the coal and uranium, 2. Use of coerced slave labour from prisons or gulags to extract the dangerous ore, 3. Weaponizing the uranium to produce nuclear weapons as well as power reactor fuel rods.
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  33. Memory is not CPU in integrated circuit jargon. In any case, setting up a memory fab plant was a mistake if you want to advance your chip making skills to the level that TSMC enjoys. You focus on improving the main CPU processing chip. Memory chips are not manufactured to the same small nanometre node as CPU chips so will not advance your chip technology very far..
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  34. The bigger they are, the harder and faster they fall 😅
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  35. Time has come to pay debts and interests. The only way local and central CCP governments can repay the loan and interest is to take from the current and future generations. I can see this happening. Arise and break your chains Chinese people and call the dictatorship to account.
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  36. Because Taiwan is an island, naval and air superior over it must be maintained with intensity, continually for over 60 days by the PLA for any amphibious invasion over it to succeed. Significant lapses in this intensity, due to logistics bottlenecks, enemy counter-offensives or mistakes and false intelligence by the PLA hands time and preparation to the Taiwanese and the allies of Taiwan (primarily the US and Japan). I doubt this is sustained level of intensity is achievable by the PLA for several reasons; 1. Lack of leadership and a comprehensive strategic plan. While this plan is probably still secret by the PLA, the leadership conflict issues are severe, 2. Logistics issues. The PLA has not fought a sustained military conflict for nearly 50 years. They have little experience in maintaining supply lines to battlefields, particularly made worse by a hostile sea barrier, 3. Comprehensive tactical plans of engagement. The PLA has no real plan to engage the Taiwanese air and sea forces effectively long-term, let alone against a major superpower (US) once it becomes actively engaged in the defence of Taiwan. This is in stark contract to Showa Japan in 1940-42, which at least had a partially effective naval and island hopping plan, 4. Political conversion against Taiwanese democracy. Ironically, this is the best chance the CCP has in taking over Taiwan, seeing that both countries share the same language. But because of bellicose territorial aggression by the PLA and Wolf Warrior diplomacy by the CCP, which psychologically tried fear rather than persuasion, this also is a failure.
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  37. There is no other jobs to go to in China. That's the problem
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  38. Fleet carriers are extremely powerful warships able to both defend the fleet and effect long range attack on mutiple targets and to establish air superiority in their area of the sea. They are the modern surface capital warships of any sizeable navy. However, they do requite dedicated and well trained veteran crews (both sailors and naval fleet air personnel) for any one ship to be combat effective, and as this video pointed out, carriers have lot of complex systems to operate at any one time. Any officer or serviceperson corruption, particularly in the carrier group, severely undermines their operational capabilities. The fact that the PLAN carriers are not out and training may be indicative of the PLAN unpreparedness for a naval war or amphibious operations against a first rate opponent in the near to medium future.
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  39. One thing obvious about the economy of China, are that regular jobs are gone and only an intensive scramble for low-paid limited gig economy work.
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  40. The amazing thing about all this is how it all hinges on politics. China was going to decline as a long-term investment goto place anyway, because of it's rapid demographic aging, but Xi Jinping's aggressively left-wing Communist policies plus his effective neutralisation of internal opponents in the public arena (the Jiang Zemin faction), has given the signal to foreign business and investors in China to leave, and to leave fast. I worry about this as it may occur to Xi that launching a war against Taiwan to kerb his largely self-made political-economic crises at home may be his only option left to hold onto power. The business community who listened to Kissenger et. al. in the first place might consider that just replacing Xi would be optional to consider re-investment in the future, but those business elites are deluded. It's the party and it's system (the CCP) which politically and economically pollutes China; not so much the dictator presiding over it.
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  41. Teamwork events is constant humiliation in China, like in many places outside China. These mostly worthless events only stroke the egos of bosses by making others do stupid, humiliating tasks. It teaches nothing but dislike and resentment. It does not build teamwork, character or company productivity. It's the morale draining sociopaths who get promoted, then ordering these events. Hence turnover and staff retention suffers as workers feel more shamed, not less. Think about what the company you're investing in does to it's employees before handing over money next time.
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  42. FYI South Korea is now a major arms supplier worldwide, and it's equipment generally is good. Sometimes excellent; better than it's peer competitors. Except in drones, China is not peer competitor in arms sales anymore. It's military technology is sometimes yoked to older Soviet and Russian equipment, so not current and of course, it's quality control is very poor; too many dudes.
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  43. Collective agricultural management is a consistent failure, in the past and present, over allowing individual management by market control by experienced farmers, i.e. growing foodstuffs sustainability by local experience using market supply and demand instead of bureaucratic edicts. The CCP local officials will lie again to central government about the food production figures, and widespread famine will ensue to China in an event of a war that the CCP is planning, once blockade ensues by a powerful enemy navy or navies. This will lead to widespread social instability and revolts across China, hamstringing the war effort on the home front. This is another awful travesty of communism and dictatorship yet again; mass starvation, as we have seen this before in Communist China and with other authoritarian governments throughout the 20th century.
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  44. General George S. Pattern, US Third Army, Normandy 1944
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  45. China's economic depression means there's insufficient funds for military spending 😅
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  46. The next stage; hyperinflation. Coupled with low consumption growth, we call that stagflation.
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  47. Few foreign nationals probably visting China these days. There is a skew of factors in this; 1. Unfriendly politics between China, North America and Europe, 2. Scapegoat culture being part of the CCP's DNA. To divert attention from it's own totalitarian enormities heaped upon the long suffering Chinese population, they use foreigner-bashing instead. Not just white people (excluding Russians), but Japanese as well. Actually, the Japanese businesses and people in China get the brunt of this ire from no fault of their own. Finally, 3. Autarky self-induced poverty. China is a quasi-autarky (totalitarianism again), because it places high barriers upon import of foreign manufactured goods entering China as a form of protectionism. Except specilized highly-engineered products like advanced silicon chips, robots and medical products it can't make for itself for various reasons (some political-economic). Now China is in a deep economic recession, there is little consumption from the masses anymore; combination of high debt and high unemployment.
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  48. No, it's a Sun bear. It has it's mouth open. Sunbears are quite smart animals. They are mainly from SE Asia and they are one of the very few bears to live in tropical jungles. Sun bears status in the wild are labelled as vulnerable and face deforestation pressures and bear bile hunting, which is erronious Chinese medicine.
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  49. I wish I had to sell my private jet to pay off debts 😂
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  50. For those intelligent Chinese people that are bored can count the number of cameras, the location of those cameras and the type of cameras. Information they can file in their brains, provided of course you stay out of trouble for a while.This is actually military intelligence work by the observant, but in this day and age and so many cameras, you can have a "hobby".
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